SEVEN DECADES, FOUR PHOTOGRAPHERS

Focus on Four: Rhode Island Photographs by Gertrude Käsebier, Lewis Hine, Charlotte Estey and Aaron Siskind

October 24 - January 18, 2010
Sponsored by Robin Grace Warren and Fred Warren

Gertrude Käsebier Charles in White Cap,Newport, RI, 1903 Gun bichromate print Courtesy of Lee Gallery

Comparing photographers across generations reveals significant changes in artistic schools of thought, society and technology. "Focus on Four: Rhode Island Photographs by Gertrude Käsebier, Lewis Hine, Charlotte Estey and Aaron Siskind" shines a light on the different approaches, intentions, techniques and levels of critical success these photographers achieved and draws our attention to links between past and present, and between society and art.

Gertrude Käsebier (1852-1934) spent the summers of 1899 and 1903 in the Paradise Valley area of Middletown and described the region as "a veritable garden of Eden." Her photographs of family, friends and story-book settings evoke the romance of those summer months. Though Käsebier is now recognized as the most important woman of the Pictorialist movement, her photographs have had little exposure here.

Lewis Hine (1874-1940) worked in Rhode Island briefly in 1909 and in 1912 under the auspices of the National Child Labor Committee and the Consumers' League of Rhode Island, reporting on child labor and conditions in New England textile mills. To Hine the camera was not a creative tool-not a paintbrush-but an instrument of truth that could reform society's ills. Hine's Rhode Island photographs are being graciously loaned by Slater Mill Historic Site, Pawtucket.

Charlotte Estey (1869-1967) a native of Westerly, Rhode Island, began work as a photojournalist in Providence in the 1930s. "Focus on Four" features work from Estey's three-part 1952 series about an ethnically diverse community facing the upheaval of urban renewal. Estey was "talented...and sadly neglected," according to former Brown University historian Paul Buhle.

Aaron Siskind (1903-1991) came to the Rhode Island School of Design to teach in 1971, already secure in his position as one of the twentieth century's most influential modern photographers. Siskind broke from documentary photography in the late 1930s, formulating his belief that photography was about abstract concerns, turning recognizable objects into symbolic or metaphorical ones, re-interpreting three-dimensional everyday forms on a two-dimensional surface.