Reception: April 21, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.

7 Documentarians is drawn from the permanent collection of the David Winton Bell Gallery and includes both works seminal to the history of documentary photography and lesser-known series by renowned American photographers Berenice Abbott, Walker Evans, Garry Winogrand, Larry Clark, Danny Lyon, Jim Dow, and Jay Wolke. Subjects range from New York City and the rural south in the 1930s; to life in Texas prisons, days in the streets of New York, and the drug culture in the 1960s; to the Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago and baseball stadiums in the U.S. and Canada in the 1980s. The exhibition does not attempt to provide a comprehensive history of twentieth-century documentary photography, rather it illuminates important social and technical changes that have affected the genre throughout the century.

The term "documentary" was first used in 1926 by the Scottish filmmaker John Grierson. At the turn of twentieth century, the documentary photographer -- epitomized by Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine -- was understood to be a concerned advocate who discovered adverse conditions, brought them to light, and instigated correctives. By the 1930s, Walker Evans had set a new standard for American documentary photography; influenced by the work of Eugene Atget and Matthew Brady, Evans adopted an unembellished and unpretentious style that bespoke objectivity and truth. The exhibition surveys Evans' work, from images of Cuba (1932-33) created to accompany Carelton Beals The Crime of Cuba and the rural south done for the Farm Security Administration (1935-38), to candid portraits of subway passengers in New York City (1938-41) and commercial work for Fortune magazine (1941-63).

Returning from New York in 1929, Berenice Abbott was struck by the changes in the city, the result of the second great skyscraper boom. Abbott set out to "make a documentary interpretation of New York City." Photographing skyscrapers and elevated trains, street peddlers and storefronts, she mapped the city from Wall Street and the South Street district to Harlem and the outer boroughs.

Documentary photographs in the 1960s and 1970 -- represented here by the work of Garry Winogrand, Larry Clark, and Danny Lyon -- drew largely on the use of small format cameras (35mm SLRs) that allowed photographers far greater flexibility in responding to their subjects. The quintessential street photographer, Garry Winogrand chronicled contemporary American life as it was manifest in public, usually in New York, including the works presented here from Women Are Beautiful, a series from the 1960s and early 1970s.

Danny Lyon and Larry Clark explore American sub-cultures with which they are intimately familiar. Lyon is represented by selections from Conversations with the Dead, a series photographed inside six Texas penitentiaries. Allowed access to all prison areas Lyons photographed men in their cells, working in the fields, eating, and passing the time. Clark's landmark series Tulsa, portrays the aimless drug use, violence, and sexual activities of Clark's circle of friends. The deeply personal series signaled a new style of subjective documentation, providing the model for Nan Goldin's confessional series and inspired countless other young photographers.

The late 1970s and 1980s provided a challenge to the documentary mode. Influenced by semiotic and structuralist theory, photographers explored the photograph as sign and simulacrum, and embraced a new world of fabricated imagery. Documentary photography disappear from museums and commercial galleries. However, the questions of photographic veracity did not prevailed over documentary photography, as the works presented here by Jim Dow and Jay Wolke attest. Wolke series Along the Divide: The Dan Ryan Expressway explored life on, around, and under this notoriously dangerous Chicago highway. Dow's American and National League Stadiums records more than 200 major and minor league stadiums in the U.S. and Canada.