The Jewish Museum and the Columbus Museum of Art are co-organizing The Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936-1951, the first comprehensive museum exhibition in a generation to consider the breadth and impact of this unprecedented organization’s work. From its social documentary roots in t... Read more
The Jewish Museum and the Columbus Museum of Art are co-organizing The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951, the first comprehensive museum exhibition in a generation to consider the breadth and impact of this unprecedented organization’s work. From its social documentary roots in the 1930s, the League became more experimental throughout and after WWII, exploring diverse approaches to street photography that would later become known as the New York School. Drawing on the depth of two great museum collections, the exhibition will comprise 150 vintage prints and extensive ephemera. To place the League’s origins in context, the exhibition will explore a range of sources out of which the idealism of the group arose, beginning with the convergence of the aesthetic and political concerns within photography and filmmaking that characterized the worker-photography movement of the 1920s and 1930s in Germany and the Soviet Union. The Radical Camera will present the work of the Photo League against this international background as the still photographers separated from the Film and Photo League in 1936 to underscore the medium’s autonomy and extraordinary potential. Following its New York City showing at The Jewish Museum, the exhibition will travel to the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH (April 19 – September 9, 2012); the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA (October 11, 2012 – January 21, 2013); and the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL (February 9 – April 21, 2013).
