January 14 through May 28, 2006
Fred Beans Gallery, Doylestown
Radical Vision: The Revolution in American Photography explored
the radical changes in American photography from the late 1940s through
the late 1970s from the work of some of the best-known photographers of the time,
as well as some important figures whose work deserves to be better known.

Louis Faurer, Eddie on Third Avenue at 52nd Street, NY, NY,
1948/1980, gelatin silver print on paper, H. 14 x W. 11 inches,
The David Sestak Family Collection
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Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, 1953/1990s,
gelatin silver print on paper, H. 20 x W. 16 inches,
The David Sestak Family Collection
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The decades after the Second World War were a time of incredible growth
and change in the American photography scene. Parallel to the rise of
Abstract Expressionism, American photography in the post-war years was
marked by innovation and discovery and, like Abstract Expressionism,
it made the United States the center of the art world in photography.
Recognized and championed chiefly by John Szarkowski at the Museum of
Modern Art in New York, post-war American photographers from Robert Frank
to Diane Arbus, from Lee Friedlander to Gary Winogrand, questioned both
the old social order — in order to expose racism and
alienation in our midst — and the old esthetic order
in photography. Challenging the hegemony of the sharply focused print
that exhibited a full range of tones from white through gray to
black — championed by Ansel Adams and Edward Weston,
among others — these photographers explored oblique
framing, radical cropping, the use of the natural grain of the film,
extreme close-ups, and subject matter that ranged from the disposed to
the freakish to the oddly normal in American society.
The exhibit was drawn from The David Sestak Family Collection, and curated
by the noted area photographer, critic, and editor Stephen Perloff.

Lee Friedlander, Route 9 W, New York, 1969/1990s,
gelatin silver print on paper, H. 11 x W. 14 inches,
The David Sestak Family Collection, Image Courtesy of the Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
A L S O S E E
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