Celebrating Photography at the National Gallery in Washington DC

Parsons Photography Faculty Matthew Jensen is featured in an exhibition at The National Gallery in Washington DC — Celebrating Photography at the National Gallery of Art: Recent Gifts, on view from November 1, 2015 – March 27, 2016.

This exhibition brings together an exceptional group of gifts and pledges made in honor of the collection’s 25th anniversary, ranging from innovative photographs made in the earliest years of the medium’s history to key works by important 20th-century artists and contemporary pieces that examine the ways in which photography continues to shape our experience of the modern world. Among the highlights are important vintage prints by August Sander, Frederick Sommer, and Robert Frank, strong groups of work by Lewis Baltz, Henry Wessel, and Joe Deal, and extraordinary portraits by Diane Arbus, Deborah Luster, and Rineke Dijkstra. The exhibition also celebrates the first acquisitions of work by the 19th-century photographers Vicomte Vigier and Duchenne de Boulogne, 20th-century artist Albert Renger-Patzsch and contemporary photographers Paul Graham and Matthew Jensen, among others.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a major publication, The Altering Eye: Photography at the National Gallery of Art. This volume will chart the history and distinctive aspects of the National Gallery’s collection of photographs and will highlight 250 of its most important works, with brief essays situating these treasures in their historical and aesthetic contexts.