Thru the Lens: Selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation
Date: July 21, 2025 – October 25, 2025
Opening Reception: Sunday, July 27, 2025 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.
Curator and Artist Walkthrough: Sunday, August 24, 2025 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.
Closing Reception: Saturday, October 25, 2025 12:00 to 3:00 p.m.
Curated By: Billie Milam Weisman
Venue: California State University Los Angeles, Ronald H. Silverman Fine Arts Gallery
5151 State University Drive, Los Angeles, CA, 90032
Hours: Monday – Friday, 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Exhibited Artists:
Annelies Strba, Bijou, Brian Forrest, Carlos Betancourt, Christopher Taggart, Chuck Close, David Hockney, Dawn DeDeaux, Debbie Fleming Caffery, Didier Massard Stephanie Washburn, Elad Lassry, Florian Merkel, Gilbert and George, Gustav Gurianov, Hans Christian Schink, Helmut Newton, Jane Gottlieb, Jarbas Loncar, Jay Mark Johnson, Jennifer Gunlock, Joe Goode, Judy Fiskin, John Baldessari, Joon-Sung Bae, Louise Lawler, M. A. Alford, Manfred Muller, Marjike Van Warmerdam, Melanie Pullen, Orlan, Paul Rusconi, Radcliffe Bailey, Richard Ehrlich, Robert Rauschenberg, Rocky Schink, Srajan Loncar, Tim Berresheim, Trujilo and Brian (Paumier), Yannick Demmerle, Yuri Kasparyan, Zhang Xianyong.
Thru the Lens: Selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation
Since its earliest inception in the 19th century, photography has been a tool for documenting the world and capturing a true likeness of reality. In the early 20th century, painting and photography were regarded as vastly different art forms, with photography seen as a “mechanical” process that had little to do with fine art. Over the course of the 20th century, photography has opened up to many different techniques, but the documentary impulse remains strong for many artists.
Robert Rauschenberg’s suite of black-and-white photos is a classic example of photography as document and exploration of the outside world—in this case, his travels in Europe and North Africa. Here, photography is straightforward documentation, taking advantage of the way a camera can record an instantaneous record of a scene or object. He used the camera to find interesting formal arrangements, to set up compositions, and to preserve scenes such as light filtering through curtains.
In contemporary art, photography is used as documentation by New Orleans artist Debbie Fleming Caffery, who focuses on elements that recall the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
One of the ways that contemporary artists are changing and exploring the documentary aspect of photography is through manipulating the process of taking the photo, printing, and developing. They intervene in the time a photograph is taken and the final result, often using computer programs to add or change aspects of the image. Hans Christian Schink and Annelies Strba manipulate the development of the negative or adjust the focus of the lens deliberately to produce blurry, grainy, or atmospheric effects, imparting a sense of mystery to the “reality" captured by the camera. Jay Mark Johnson brings his experience in the visual effects of filmmaking to his timeline photographs. He uses a specially modified camera to capture the reality of movement rather than a static scene.
Yannick Demmerle and Melanie Pullen have pushed “straight” photography into the realm of painting and cinema; the images the camera captures are elaborate and absorbing visual environments reminiscent of painterly tableaux. Demmerle records scenes from nature, while Pullen stages elaborate cinematic scenarios before taking the picture. They attempt to fuse a handmade object with computer-generated culture. Dawn Dedeaux uses digital drawings on metal to speak of a lost connection to nature. Didier Massard creates landscapes directly from his imagination, painstakingly constructing scenes in his studio, and Orlan goes a step further and reconstructs her own image in different fantastical guises, which are then captured in photographs. Paul Rusconi uses photographs as "working drawings for paintings…an essential tool for breaking apart light and shadow."
Other artists have taken up the status of the photograph as a document to explore more conceptual questions about the “reality” captured in the photographic image. They intervene in the idea that there is a one-to-one correspondence between image and world, and instead seek to expand the referential possibilities of the medium. David Hockney, Christopher Taggart, and Srdjan Loncar deconstruct photographic reality into multiple fragments to question the notion that there is one single world that is simply captured by the camera. These artists treat the documentary photo as a kind of pixel, or cell – an elementary unit or simple building block for constructing larger wholes, not for capturing the “whole” world.
John Baldessari and Joon-Sung Bae use photographs not just for their intrinsic value, but as a springboard for larger questions of visual meaning and the place of the image in contemporary culture. They manipulate found images, movie stills, or other artists’ work, and use photography to stage thought problems or make political statements. Korean artist Joon-Sung Bae has juxtaposed a photo of a contemporary Korean market with a 17th-century painting to elicit a relation between East and West, male and female. John Baldessari’s work is the juxtaposition of images and texts from everyday life, re-cut and re-combined into a new formal and imaginative synthesis.