Debating Modern Photography: Triumph of Group F64 May 3, 2008

This exhibition features highlights the heated debate between photographic factions in 1934 that considered the future of the medium. A small group of California photographers were challenging the painterly, soft-focus photography style of the pictorialists. They argued that the appropriate direction for the photographic arts exploited characteristics inherent to the camera's mechanical nature: sharp focus and great depth of field. This small association of innovators - named Group f.64 after the camera's smallest aperture, which produces the greatest depth of field - included Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Willard Van Dyke, Alma Lavenson and others. This exhibition endeavors to revive the controversy, not only to acknowledge the pictorialists' arguments, but to illustrate how avant-garde the work of Group f.64 once was. It includes images by members of Group f.64 and such pictorialists as Anne Brigman, William Dassonville, Johan Hagemeyer, William Mortensen and Karl Struss.