More William Carter Prints Held by SF MOMA

My previous post of May 8, 2016 brought you news about the sparkling exhibition celebrating the massive expansion and re-opening of the redesigned San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, a William Carter picture, “Near Jerome, Arizona, 1970″ hangs in the photography galleries.

This Arizona print is also reproduced in the large book cataloguing the exhibition: The Campaign for Art.

The official re-opening date of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the exhibitions, including my print, is May 14 and run until Sept. 5. Members have earlier admission dates.

Click here for more information on admission and tickets.

Here are more William Carter prints held in the SF MOMA’s permanent collection:

 

Near Jerome, Arizona, 1970

 

Geneseo, Illinois, 1973

 

Detroit, 1973

 

Mississippi River, Bellevue, Iowa, 1973

 

Atherton, California, 1972

 

Concornio (Lake Orta) Italy, 1989

 

Sa’da, Yemen, 1964

William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.

William Carter Print Featured in San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Re-opening Gala

As part of the sparkling exhibition celebrating the massive expansion and re-opening of the redesigned San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, a William Carter picture, “Near Jerome, Arizona, 1970″ hangs in the photography galleries.

Near Jerome, Arizona, 1970

This Arizona print is also reproduced in the large book cataloguing the exhibition: The Campaign for Art.

The official re-opening date of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the exhibitions, including my print, are from May 14 until Sept. 5. Members have earlier admission dates.

Click here for more information on admission and tickets.

Twenty-four Carters are held in SFMOMA’s permanent collections, including these:

Central City, Colorado 1970

 

Seattle, 1962

 

Northern Minnesota, 1973

 

Lower East Side, New York City, 1963

 

San Francisco, 1969

 

Northern Minnesota, 1973

William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.

Versions of Ourselves

I am as addicted to digits as the next person. But my caring comes from elsewhere.

Culture wars, like other wars, take their toll.  Unexpected outcomes flow into our sinews and, welcome or not, affect our feelings and expressions.

I grew up in a town dedicated to change — in an era summed up in the famous motto of a leading corporation, “Progress is our most important product.”  Postwar LA, powered by newborn defense industries, famous for its movies, a thinly peopled, dry basin lacking deep cultural roots, facing the vast Pacific, was perfectly placed for the unfettered growth and change that was soon underway.

My own personal model was the opposite.  I sought permanent values, humaneness, the depths not the surfaces.  Spiritual affirmation — particularly in the arts. So, physically and mentally, I went the other way from LA.  The older tradition of great West Coast photographers had inspired me, but by the 1960s I needed to move on from there to places like New York, London, the Middle East and India – where close-up tenderness and long-term values still seemed alive and honored.

In California there were plenty of photographers of the old school to inspire me. But their dynamic was gradually being eclipsed. Although not particularly “outgoing,” I did go out. I developed the unfashionable notion that the role of the artist was not to stand off and snipe at the ugly aspects of world, but to offer a positive alternative: in that most unfashionable of words — beauty.  In an era beset by counter-cultural attack modes, I remain a counter-revolutionary.

The two photographs below, by Struth and Cunningham, are well-known offerings of contrasting states of soul.  Which would you rather hold close?

 

Thomas Struth, “String Handling,” SolarWorld, Frieberg 2011

 

Imogen Cunningham, “The Unmade Bed,” 1957

Copyright statement: William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.

Carters in SF MOMA Show

Photograph by Chuck Frankel. Viewing Carter prints at SFMOMA: this museum was among the first in the world to collect photographs as a fine art.

From November 29, 2012 the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is showing the following 4 William Carter prints.  Part of Carter’s “Humanity” series, as represented in his book Causes and Spirits, these photographs are in SF MOMA’s permanent collection and can be seen in the rooms displaying the Museum’s ongoing series, “Picturing Modernity.”

San Francisco 1969

Central City, Colorado 1970

Geneseo, Illinois 1973

Fuengirola, Spain 1968

Copyright statement: William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.