New York’s Jewish Museum: Photography and the American Magazine; When Avant-garde Techniques in Photography and Design Reached the United States via European Emigrés

Photography and the American Magazine April 3 — July 11, 2021 New York, NY

New York City’s Jewish Museum will present Modern Look: Photography and the American Magazine, an exhibition exploring how photography, graphic design, and popular magazines converged to transform American visual culture from the 1930s to the 1950s. The exhibition will be on view from April 3 through July 11, 2021.

Lillian Bassman. Blowing Kiss, 1958. Gelatin silver print. Collection of Eric and Lizzie Himmel, New York © Estate of Lillian Bassman

Modern Look: Photography and the American Magazine highlights a time when avant-garde techniques in photography and design reached the United States via European émigrés, including Bauhaus artists forced out of Nazi Germany. Whether in the service of advertising or fashion, image-making began to burgeon as the relationship between photography and text grew more nuanced. As the standard of photojournalism rose, so did the power of the photograph. In magazines like Life or Look, it came to be understood as a potent new language, superseding the written word as a means of kindling the imagination. The unmistakable aesthetic made popular by such magazines as Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue — whose art directors, Alexey Brodovitch and Alexander Liberman, were immigrants and accomplished photographers — emerged from a distinctly American combination of innovation and pragmatism.

Featuring over 150 works including vintage photographs, art book layouts, and magazine cover designs, the exhibition considers the connections and influences of designers and photographers such as Richard Avedon, Lillian Bassman, Lester Beall, Margaret Bourke-White, Louis Faurer, Robert Frank, William Klein, Herbert Matter, Lisette Model, Gordon Parks, Irving Penn, Cipe Pineles, and Paul Rand. The exhibition is organized into five sections: “Art as Design, Design as Art,” “Fashion as Desire,” “The Contested Page,” “Reimagining Industry,” and “Graphic Effect.”