Eight images that tell the story of America

The new exhibition of over 200 photographs is a 300-year chart of image creation in the US, showing the history of the country and how photography is carried out in parallel.

In 1840, Henry Fitz JNR produced it using his own copper plate. One of the world’s first selfieshis eyes closed gently, preventing the flashing from ruining the results. In creating this impressive blue image, he did more than document his appearance. He also documented America’s first essay in an art form that conveys the story in a radical new way.

Fitz’s self-portrait charts 300 years of image creation at Rijksmuseum’s latest exhibition, along with over 200 other photos American PhotosEurope’s first comprehensive study of this subject. Complemented by an international loan, the exhibition marks the first time its first collection of American images from the museum.

In the case of co-curators Mattie Boom and Hans Rooseboom, the exhibition’s starting point was to show the United States through the photographer’s different perspectives. Americans “used this medium just like we did. [the Dutch] Using painting in the 17th century, the boom tells the BBC. “America and photography are performed in parallel. The media is very connected to the country. ”

The exhibition deliberately deviates from the “top 100” approach, Loose Boom adds, saying, “It would have been too easy.” Instead, they have works with icons such as Robert Frank, Richard Avedon, and Diane Albus, sitting with memento, postcards and ads. “Amazingly good images no one knows,” he says.

The 19th century tints (images made of metal sheets) featuring men and women in front of a rustic barn are in situ. The image was sold on the spot by tin typists who travel “at a modest price,” explains Loose Boom. “Many people just arrived, lived in the countryside and there were no big cities nearby, so this was the only possibility to photograph your portrait,” the man looked at the camera and was proud. She stands thinking, but the woman’s head is bowing and she looks away. “Sometimes you can feel that people are not used to being simply being photographed,” says Looseboom. “Today, we’ve seen how to pos elegantly in magazines and movies.” This may be the only time in their lifetimes when they’re filmed, and the result is ” They’ll hang on the walls of the house they lived in forever.” adds a boom.

In contrast, the 1913 postcard featuring 12,000 employees of Detroit’s Ford Motor Company was “the most expensive photo ever taken,” and may have spit out the newspapers at the time. staff. This image is “the biggest specially raised group photograph ever made,” showing the turning point in which the industry saw value in large investments in promotional photography. It was photographed in the year that Ford introduced American ones. First Move Assembly Line And the US has become The world’s largest economythe photograph also depicts mass production that shapes the country.

The reappearance of images in Ford marketing was also an early example of Photoshopping. The same colored faces swarmed in the foreground, but the number of employees quoted in the caption increased exponentially, cutting off in one version of the building on the left and getting extra floors in another version did. “Apparently, many photographers and their publishers were not worried about abandoning the possibilities of realism in the medium,” he writes about the boom and loose boom in his exhibition catalogue.

Ten years later, New York portrait photographer James van der Zie also decorated his work, painted jewelry in his subjects, and went back his face to eliminate dark lines and wrinkles. “I put my heart and soul in them and tried to see that every photo looked better than the person.” He said. As a black photographer working at his harem studio Harlem Renaissancehis work chronicles a time when black immigrants fleeing segregationists were forging new lives for themselves in the northern part of the city. For the first time, African Americans and other minority groups were able to be filmed by someone in their community and expressed in ways that would lift them up. For example, Van der Gee’s Portrait of an Unknown Man (1938) is carefully raised to suggest confidence. The outfit is elegant, while the buttonhole daisy adds the prosperity of the dandys. It is an image that reflects the aspirations and upward mobility of African Americans, and reflects the pride of Van der Gee in his culture.

Growing up in Chinatown, San Francisco, Eileen Poon’s work focuses on the Chinese-American community. First generation immigrants from GuanghzouI ran the herbalist’s shop. The 1965 image features Poon’s sister Virginia at a local sweet shop, crowded with Hershey bars and Nestle bars. The letters “nest” allow her to peer out from the densely packed shelves, reinforcing the feeling that she is surrounded by this clump of graphic lettering. Beside her head, a “look” bar competes with attention, hinting at other ever-expanding roles in American photography. Advertisement – The sector where the US was the pioneer. “Many of the 20th century artists started out with advertising. It’s part of art history,” says Boom. “The whole field already exists, and photography as an art and art form is drawn from it.”

One of the most powerful images of the exhibition, stars and stripes forever? (1970) was created by New York Advertising photographer Bill Stettner. Bill Stetner attempted to raise the status of commercial photography and successfully campaigned for photographers to maintain their rights to their work. “I want to think that what I’m doing is art, being clearly commercial photography for advertising.” He told the interviewer Photographs from 1980s TV series photos.

Are the stars and stripes forever? , his most famous works were originally merely samples and were made. He said‘Inevitably’ boosts his portfolio after a financial downturn. The piece takes its name from a patriotic march and features a US flag made from a match that just lit up, perhaps suggesting the vulnerability of the US and the principles that established it. “Commercial photography is highly overlooked and not collected by museums, but it is an attractive area of ​​painting,” says Looseboom. “You find the precursors of modernism in advertising, but there’s very little anyone knows about this. [hardly anyone] They collect them and show them at exhibitions. ”

After the war, mass immigration to the United States brought new ways of thinking. The US took over from Europe as a cultural trendsetter, and photography was ultimately accepted as an art form. A playful approach to photography emerged, inspiring emotions beyond documenting people and places and seducing deep questions. Ming Smith’s America is seen through Stars and Stripes (1976), created in the Declaration of Independence, and once again transforms into a flag that invites America to reflect its history. By placing her figure in mirror sunglasses in front of the mirror window, she creates a disorientated mesh of the reflective surface. The grid structure suggests imprisonment, but in combination with round glasses and stars above the flag, it also creates abstract compositions reminiscent of modern art. “She is a careful observer and plays with all these layers in the image,” Boom says.

Smith explores the artistic potential of photography and experiments with double exposure, shutter speeds and collages. In one version of this image, she paints Bold red stripesChange this snapshot of the US with a blood or flame-like mark. Smith’s work is based on the civil rights movement that preceded it, and features activists such as James Baldwin and Alvin Eilee. She was the first woman to join the African American photography group, a Camoing workshop, and the first black woman acquired her work at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOMA). But her demographics were largely overlooked by the art world. “I worked to capture black culture, richness, love. That was my incentive.” She told the Financial Times 2019.

The political power of photography can also be seen in the work of Native American (Seminole Muscogee Nabajo) photographer Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie. “The cameras that are now held by outsiders watching the cameras, the cameras are held by brown hands that open the familiar world,” she writes 1993 Essay. “We can document ourselves with the humanization eye, easily create new visions, turn the camera and show how we see you.”

The caption of Tsinhhnahjinnie in the tourist image of Monument Valley, Arizona, this is not a commercial. This is my hometown, highlighting the commodification of American land, using what she calls “photo sovereignty” to bring us back to the beginning, reclaim and recell, receleim America The story of. Combined with works such as Bryan Schutmaat’s Tonopa, Nevada (2012) documenting the effects of mining on the landscapes of the American West, images like Tsinnazinny tell the stories of beautiful lands that mean different things for different people, such as financial interests, security, or sacred spaces. . As the cameras reached their hands, the stories of America increased. “American photography is a much richer and broader field than we knew,” says Looseboom. “There’s still so much to discover.”

American Photos I will be at Ricksmuseum in Amsterdam until June 9th, 2025. The exhibition will be accompanied by a photograph of the catalogue America by Matty Boom and Hansleuse Boom.