George Eastman House: The Best of Photo and Film

Afterimage, Nov-Dec, 2003 by Charadin Frank

The Best of Photo and Film encompasses the entire history of film and photography, from the first camera, the first photograph ever made to digital prints, alluding to the future of photography. Upon entering The Best of Film, the viewer is met by reels of film stacked on metal industrial shelves. The participants find themselves instantly transported into the bowels of the museum's motion picture vault. The room is romanticized by old movie posters hung upon the walls; they are of a time long past, images that still informs the present in movies, art, and fashion. Silent films restored by the George Eastman House are shown in a continuous loop as the central elements of a mock screening room bedecked with director chairs. Films lost in the past, now found, are shown in separate spaces on television. One film in particular. The Cook, is a hilarious piece starring Arbuckle, Keaton and their amazingly choreographed slapstick humor. Glass cases around the room contain the tiny details of films: old scripts such as The Ten Commandments, music cue sheets, and even key books which contain photographs of every scene in a film.

In the next room is The Best of Photo. Displayed photographs are grouped into central progressive themes. "In the Beginning" is the first theme visited, introducing the first forms of photography, the French daguerreotype and William Henry Fox Talbot's calotype (the paper negative process). "A Better Eye" illustrates the progression of science that photography advanced. William N. Jennings's photographs of lightning discard the old style of drawing lightning as a zigzag, and Eadweard Muybridge's movement studies illustrate how photography informed our vision and understanding of the world.

The modern world ushers in the question: Is photography art? The museum answers by including such protagonists and artists as Paul Strand, Edward Stieglitz, Steichen, and Edward Weston. Social documentation and commentary from Lewis Hine and the photographers of the Farm Security Administration, such artists as Dorothea Lange or Arthur Rothstein, to Robert Frank are all part of the exhibit's narrative.

The Best of Film is more of a retrospective, centering on a distinctive era, the first decade of motion pictures, in contrast The Best of Photo offers a larger time frame as well as a glimpse into the future. The exhibition is well coordinated and condensed, with historic relics and groundbreaking prints created by artists who have made an impact not only in the world of photography, but on the way people view the world around them. This exhibit is also significant as a reminder of the considerable contribution that George Eastman has made to our now visual sphere and that the museum perpetuates through its collections and through the dedicated work of its employees and volunteers.