Masters of American Photography

Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California,1936, Edition #36/300, Published by Aperture under the auspices of the Dorothea Lange Collection at the Oakland Museum, 12 x 9 ¼ inches, Collection Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection [LC-USF34-9058-C]

Masters of American Photography

September 16, 2017 – January 14, 2018

Masters of American Photography features some of the great iconic images of the 20th century by Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Edward Weston, Margaret Bourke-White, and other master photographers. Spanning nine decades of creative achievement, this exhibition, organized by the Reading Public Museum, represents a brief history of photography as art, addressing themes such as portraiture, landscape, still life, and cultural history. Included are classic images such as Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother – Nipomo, California, Marion Post Wolcott’s Winter Visitors from Nearby Trailer Park, Picnicking Beside Car on Beach, Near Sarasota, Florida, and Ansel Adams’ Monolith, the Face of Halfdome, Yosemite National Park, California. The tonal beauty and subtle surfaces of these traditional photographic prints, developed in the darkroom, set this exhibition apart. “Many of these are vintage prints, made by the photographer very close to the time the negative was made, or late prints made by the photographer or assistant years later,” comments Rachael Arauz, Ph.D., independent curator for the exhibition. Masters of American Photography is organized by the Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania.