Milwaukee Art Museum

Street Seen: The Psychological Gesture in American Photography, 1940–1959 January 30–April 25, 2010 Milwaukee Art Museum

See more than 100 photographs in the first major exhibition of street photography from this era in nearly 20 years. Refuting the common claim that photojournalism was the only significant photographic activity at the time, Street Seen: The Psychological Gesture in American Photography, 1940–1959 uncovers a crucial time in American art, when global media was in its adolescence and photography was just beginning to gain recognition in the art world. The exhibition focuses on the work of six photographers (Lisette Model, Louis Faurer, Ted Croner, Saul Leiter, William Klein, and Robert Frank) who broke the rules of conventional photography to create emotionally engaging photographs. More

Update: The Streets, Frozen in Neon —Carol Kino, New York Times

• Infused with the modernist compulsion to wrench an identity from an increasingly anonymous world, their work is perhaps as relevant and affecting now as then.

  — David Kennedy Jones, New York Times

• this show breaks important new ground in our understanding of life and culture in midcentury America — no small feat for such a mythologized era

  — Mary Louise Schumacher, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

• …these artists left us not just a snapshot of the time, but an intimate look at the psychological and social landscape.

  — Mollie Boutell-Butler, Onion A.V. Club

• It is art that, despite being mostly black-and-white photography from more than a half-century ago, feels as relevant to our time of uncertainty as anything I’ve seen at the art museum in recent years

  — Mary Louise Schumacher, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

• With historical distance and great intelligence, Lisa Hostetler, curator of photographs at MAM, gives us a fresh look at six photographers who make equally keen observations about that changed reality.

  — Mary Louise Schumacher, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Selected works from the exhibition

Click to view full image and credit line

Street Seen is made possible by our lead sponsor, the Richard and Ethel Herzfeld Foundation. Generous additional support provided by the National Endowment for the Arts as part of American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius, the MetLife Foundation, and the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Photography Council. The exhibition was organized by Lisa Hostetler, curator of photographs at the Milwaukee Art Museum.