Picture Windows: Photographs from the Collection showcases 18 photographs from the collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The exhibition explores the window as subject and device in 20th-cenutry photographs. Featured photographers include Imogen Cunningham, Lee Friedlander, O. Winston Link, Gordon Parks, John Pfahl, Ming Smith, Danny Lyon,Minor White, Garry Winogrand, Justin Kimball, Gordon Lee Bennett, Wynn Bullock, John Divola, Aaron Siskind, Alen MacWeeney, Mary Eleanor Browning, Morris Engel, and Joseph Breitenbach.
The rich variety of pictures on view illustrates how each artist explores the same architectural feature in distinct ways. These poetic, quiet, and luminous photographs of windows contemplate the use of formal devices to create metaphors, shape experiences, and enlarge our understanding of the world.
Picture Windows: Photographs from the Collection is curated by Dr. Sarah Kennel, VMFA’s Aaron Siskind Curator of Photography and Director of the Raysor Center for Works on Paper.
ABOVE Self Portrait on Geary Street, 1958, Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883–1976), gelatin silver print, printed later. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Gift of Christopher English and Meda Lane in memory of Harold and Elizabeth English, 2017.498
TOP OF PAGE 300 W. 23rd Street, New York, New York, 1978, from the series Picture Window, John Pfahl (American, 1939–2020), chromogenic print. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Gift of Kent and Marcia Minichiello, 2022.734