In a dramatic fusion of prizewinning photographic and literary art, ten stories of raw humanity are on display at the Center for Documentary Studies.
The collection "Hand & Eye" is in part a fifteenth-anniversary celebration of the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize, a cash prize awarded for documentary collaboration. The ten exhibits within "Hand & Eye" are all past winners of the prize for their excellence in combining written word with imagery.
"A challenge for us was to communicate that the text is also very important in [these exhibits]," Exhibitions Director Courtney Reid-Eaton said.
Written work is as important as the imagery, a thought evident in the attention to the texts' display. In "Hand & Eye," texts describing the exhibit and the essays or poems accompanying the photos are simply displayed on pieces of white paper, lending a minimalist look.
In addition, the paper is mounted only with a thin strip across the top contacting the wall. It flutters as viewers walk by, catching their eyes and piquing their curiosity. This text is unquestionably more viewer-interactive than the typical wall-mounted block indicating only a work's title and artist.
Several collections within "Hand & Eye" are especially thought-provoking, providing artists' interpretations of many broad, societal issues.
"Garden of Eden" by Dona Ann McAdams and Brad Kessler depicts the lives of mentally ill adults at the Garden of Eden group home on Brooklyn's Coney Island. McAdams and Kessler note that Coney Island has become "a kind of clearinghouse for Manhattan's mentally ill" in recent years.
The collection is collaborative on more than one level: While stories of the patients at the institution border the neatly framed black-and-white photographs, the display also includes several smaller photos of the residents that they themselves have colored.
Another collaborative project called "Women" by Mary Berridge and River Huston calls attention to the growing number of American women with AIDS. The women were photographed at their homes, showing the reality of the disease and its effect on the women's families.
An added level of meaning comes in when the viewer realizes that Huston herself is also HIV-positive. In a sense, the oral histories and the faces full of hope captured in their photographs peer into the effects of AIDS on both the artist and the artist's subjects.
Another interesting compilation is "One Big Self" by Deborah Luster and C. D. Wright. A small cabinet with pull-out drawers holds prints of prisoners from three Louisiana prisons-people the general public would treat with fear and mistrust. On the back of the prints, the prisoners' information is etched: name, sentence, date of birth, families left behind.
The artists wanted to produce "a document to ward off forgetting, an opportunity for the inmates to present themselves as they would be seen."
Take a closer look at the photo. "You're having an intimate moment with this guy, because you're holding him in your hand, you know?" Reid-Eaton said. "That's sort of an exciting way to present documentary work to people who might ordinarily think of it as pretty dry."
The "Hand & Eye" exhibit is one worth seeing. Delve deeply into the art and its accompanying texts or simply brush by the paper-lined walls. Go see the documentaries that Reid-Eaton says will create opportunities for empathy and understanding.
You won't be sorry.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.