An exhibit featuring works by some of the most celebrated women photographers has arrived at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers for its only metro-area appearance.
“Modern Women | Modern Vision: Photographs From the Bank of America Collection” (through May 10), features almost 100 images from 1905 to 2015 by such artists as Diane Arbus, Berenice Abbott, Margaret Bourke-White, Barbara Kruger, Dorothea Lange, Cindy Sherman and Carrie Mae Weems.
“Women have shaped photography from its earliest days, pioneering movements and styles that continue to influence the art form,” Masha Turchinsky, director and CEO of the Hudson River Museum, said in a statement. “This exhibition celebrates their vision and invites all to experience how these artists framed, and continue to define, the modern world through the camera lens.”
“Through our Art in our Communities program, Bank of America provides curated exhibitions from our art collections at no cost, fostering discovery and learning for all,” added José Tavarez, president, Bank of America New York City and Westchester County. “It’s with great pride that we share ‘Modern Women | Modern Vision: Photographs From the Bank of America Collection’ with the Hudson River Museum, providing visitors a unique view through the lens of women photographers.”
The exhibition is organized into six thematic sections, chronicling the trailblazing technical and artistic contributions of the artists who worked during each era, including Modernist Innovators, Documentary Photography and the New Deal, The Photo League, Modern Masters, Exploring the Environment and The Global Contemporary Lens.
“Since photography’s inception in 1839, women have stood among its artistic and technological pioneers, at the forefront of every photographic movement and style,” the exhibit text notes. Northern Europe took the lead, with women in France, Germany and Scandinavia opening photography businesses as early as the 1840s. (The first U.S. photography studios run by women opened in New York City in the 1890s.)
But it was the first half of the 20th century that established women’s place in photography and photojournalism, with the greats staking out different genres. Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) would become known for crystallizing New York as it emerged as an ascendant cosmopolis; Margaret Bourke-White (1906-71) for her work as the first female war correspondent in World War II, the first woman photographer for Life magazine and the first foreigner to photograph Soviet industry; Imogen Cunningham (1883-1976) for her sensuous botanicals and nudes; and Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) for her searing images of homeless farm families and migrant workers in the Great Depression.
In the second half of the 20th century and our own times, such women artists as Carrie Mae Weems, Diane Arbus and Cindy Sherman took to combining photography with other media and using it to explore the role of identity, race, sex and gender in our culture.
“Celebrated images now familiar to us are placed in historical and thematic contexts, and contemporary works are given new prominence,” the show says of their works. “’Modern Women / Modern Vision’ reveals the bold and dynamic ways women have contributed to the development and evolution of the art of photography.”
