Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography -- at NY Museum of Modern Art

Went to the "Pictures by Women" show at the MoMA for the second time today.  The first time, I had just stumbled across it while I was looking for an exit.  It's a very exciting show!  Everything is from the museum's permanent collection and includes the work of some very famous names (Diane Arbus, Dorothea Lange, Cindy Sherman), but most of the photographers I hadn't heard of before.  I felt as if I had discovered a secret stash of buried treasure.

In this untitled 1973 photograph by Polish-born photographer Lucia Radonchonska, the girl in the foreground stares at the camera with an aggrieved expression.  Why?  Is she annoyed at the boy behind her?

"Untitled #92" by Cindy Sherman (1981).  When I entered the room where this photograph was hanging, even though the room was crowded with images, this one immediately grabbed my attention.  First off, it's huge.  Then there is something compelling about the expression in the woman's eyes (which are a vivid blue, a color echoed, slightly muted, in the shirt -- the picture here doesn't do the colors in the original justice) that's captivating, something about the way she is looking up and over.  The picture looks as if it could almost be a shot from a horror film, the way she is crouched down, as if she had recently been swiped by a blow from a mighty paw and now is watching the monster return.  Yet her expression is not terrified -- only wary.  The plaid skirt suggests a Catholic School uniform, but she is a grown woman.

"Walking House" by Laurie Simmons (1989). (The actual photograph consists only of the black-and-white house, legs, and leg shadows. Everything else is a reflection from my photo-of-the-photo. Sorry about that.) The artist, in the museum's audio program, said this photograph was one of a series she had done on objects with legs. She was inspired by a commercial she had seen when she was very young of a cigarette pack on legs dancing on a stage. The legs in this photo are actually only 3 or 4 inches high, and the house is a miniature from a model train set. The print as exhibited, though, is huge, I'd guess about seven feet tall. Simmons said that it was very important that the prints in this series be "human scale."

"Mother with Children Harlan County Kentucky" by Sheron Rupp (1990).  I was struck by the poverty in this photograph, with all the garbage in the background.  Yet this family is such a tight unit, with one holding the next holding the next, like a set of nested Russian matryoshka dolls.

"Revlon" by Elinor Carucci (1997).  This extreme close-up of an eyelash curler looks like a medieval torture device.

Another startling image by Cindy Sherman, this one of a woman who appears to be dead. (Apologies again for the reflections.) This is Untitled #153 (1985).

"Still Water (The River Themes, for Example)" by Roni Horn (1999) consists of four photographs with poetry in the form of footnotes at the bottom of each.  The combined effect is mesmerizing.  Here's a close-up of a section of the text from the photograph above:

The exhibit will have a very long run, through March 21, 2011.

For more info, see the MoMA page on the exhibit: Pictures by Women

Click through on the pictures for slightly larger versions.