Masterworks of American photography

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), April, 2006

More than 50 images from the Amon Carter Museum's holdings of over 30,000 photographs are on display in the rotating exhibition, "Masterworks of American Photography." Twice a year, visitors are able to view and enjoy a new selection of the finest examples of the medium's different artistic movements by the country's most important photographers.

Included in the current "Masterworks" exhibition is the work of:

Carleton E. Watkins (1829-1916), who primarily was a landscape photographer--the Ansel Adams of his time. After working as a daguerreotype operator in San Jose, Calif., he established his own practice and soon made his first visit to the Yosemite Valley. There, he made 100 stereograph views that were among the first photographs of Yosemite seen in the East. Partly on the strength of Watkins' photographs, Pres. Abraham Lincoln signed the 1864 bill that declared the valley inviolable, thus paving the way for the National Parks system.

Isaiah W. Taber (1830-1912), who acquired the negatives of Carleton E. Watkins--he had gone bankrupt--in 1.876, made prints with his name on them although he kept Watkins' numbers. He was well known for his large stock of California views. He lost his enormous collection of 20 tons of view and portrait glass negatives in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, a tragedy that ended his career.

George Barker (1844-94), who was the most famous of all the Niagara-based photographers, was well-liked and successful, winning 11 international awards. Like most other Niagara photographers, however, Barker needed other means to make ends meet, so he operated a variety store, selling curios, souvenirs, and photographs.

William Henry Jackson (1843-1942), who is considered one of America's foremost photographers of the early West, had a long career that was intertwined with a large number of important events and institutions, including the early U.S. Geological Surveys, the Yellowstone and Mesa Verde National Parks, and the Western railroad and Colorado mining industries.

Marion Post Wolcott (1910-1990), who went to Europe in 1932 to study dance, saw her career aspirations change when she met Trude Fleischmann, her sister Helen's professor in Vienna. Fleischmann recommended she pursue a career in photography. The sisters subsequently experienced firsthand the rise of the Nazis and actively were involved helping the children of persecuted socialist workers. Back in the U.S., Post came to the attention of noted photographers Paul Strand and Ralph Steiner, who introduced her to Hollywood director Ella Kazan. She worked on his "People of the Cumberlands," a film about union organizing in the South. Meanwhile, Steiner sent her portfolio to Roy Stryker, who hired her for the Federal government's Farm Security Administration. Her FSA photographs often explored the political aspects of poverty and deprivation. In 1941, Post married Lee Wolcott, an assistant to Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace. She never worked as a professional photographer again.

June Van Cleef (b. 1941), who has been recording the culture and lifestyle of Texas for the past 25 years, specializes in photographing people in the studio and in the environment, printing in the nonsilver processes (such as platinum and palladium), and working in alternative, creative techniques (such as hand coloring of images and multiple imagery). One of her major documentary projects resulted in the book, The Way Home: Photography from the Heart of Texas.

The current edition of "Masterworks of American Photography" is on view at the Amon Carter Museum, Ft. Worth, Tex., through June 25.