Photography Collection

W. Eugene Smith (American, 1918-1978), Tomoko in Her Bath, 1972, Gelatin silver print, 11 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches

The New Orleans Museum of Art presents The Art of Caring: A Look at Life through Photography, a major exhibition of more than 200 works exploring the moments that shape our being, from intimate memories to historic tragedies. Renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz
sets the tone with a preface comprised of images hand-picked from her archive to illustrate the exhibition’s seven thematic components: Children and Family, Love, Wellness, Disaster, Caregiving and Healing, Aging, and Remembering. The Art of Caring showcases several works from Time & LIFE Pictures, including recognizable classics by such legendary photographers as Alfred Eisenstaedt and W. Eugene Smith. Contemporary artists include other established photographers such as Tina Barney, Nan Goldin, Chester Higgins, Sally Mann, Nicholas Nixon, Tatsumi Orimoto, Robert Polidori, Dona Schwartz, Neal Slavin and Larry Sultan. The exhibition features as well the work of emerging artists Elinor Carucci, Jeff Charbonneau, Eliza French, Peter Granser, Jessica Todd Harper and Misty Keasler.

Larry Sultan (American, born 1946), Untitled, (My Mom Posing for Me, Palm Springs), 1989, Chromogenic color print, 17 3/4 x 21 1/2 inches, edition of 25

A series of corresponding HBO Films will further illustrate the seven themes. For example, Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts will complement the still photography of the “Disaster” segment. “With its Katrina experience in mind, the New Orleans Museum of Art felt that this exhibition could serve as an important reminder of the essential elements of the human experience and how they need to be nurtured and sustained,” said New Orleans Museum
of Art Director E. John Bullard. “The arts are not luxuries but necessities in troubled times—a source of solace, comfort and rejuvenation.” Beginning at the conclusion of World War II, the slightly more than 60-year time span encompassed by the photographs in this exhibition allows the viewer to witness many of the great events that shaped the last half-century, as well as those that are shaping the new millennium. The stage was set during World War II for photography to take on an unprecedented role as chronicler, consciousness raiser and educator. Throughout the war, new magazines like Life, as well as Vu in France and the Picture Post in Britain, were credited with turning “documentary photographers into photojournalists and photojournalists like…W. Eugene Smith into heroes.” After the World War II, photo-essays by photographers like Smith and Gordon Parks in Life were credited with helping to stoke “the ‘can-do’ energy of the times.” By the 1970s, many of the same established photo-journalists, whose images stirred a nation and world, saw their professional lives evolve from careers replete with opportunities to have work published in Life, Look and other magazines, to earning a livelihood from less constant sources upon the demise of these same publications. At the same time, the advent of color photography and its acceptance as a legitimate artistic medium closed the gap between fine art and commercial work in new ways.
The people of New Orleans are critically aware of how desperately help can be needed in order to survive, and how a timely, caring hand, gesture or other assistance can determine one’s very survival. In organizing this exhibition the New Orleans Museum of Art has reached out and invited to participate as our community partners a number of organizations that played and continue to play a role not only in the recovery of New Orleans after Katrina, but also New York after September 11, Indonesia after the tsunami in 2004, in the Sudan today, as well as in innumerable disasters around the globe over the time span covered by the photographs on display.

The Art of Caring: A Look at Life through Photography
New Orleans Museum of Art
One Collins C. Diboll Circle, City Park
May 16 to Oct. 11
Wednesday 12 - 8 p.m.
Thursday through Sunday 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.