Ripin Gallery
July 30–December 15, 2019
Comprising more than 60 works on paper from the AMAM collection, Shutter Speed explores the ability of photography to capture movement, particularly of the human body. The exhibition spans the history of photography, from the late 19th century to the end of the 20th, stretching from Eadweard Muybridge’s attempts to arrest motion with the camera shutter to Harold Edgerton’s experiments with the stroboscope, and on to Sarah Charlesworth’s appropriated images of falling subjects.
Not coincidentally, Shutter Speed also features many photographs of dancers and athletes, including recently acquired vernacular photographs from the Peter J. Cohen Collection. Conveying the elegance, physicality, fluidity, and velocity of the human body traversing space requires technical expertise and a deep sensitivity, both of which are in evidence in photographs by Cornell Capa, Richard Avedon, Philip Trager, and others. Together these images of movement attest to our fascination with the camera’s ability to catch “the moment,” in the words of André Kertész, “when something changes into something else.”
Organized by Ellen Johnson ’33 Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Andrea Gyorody, with assistance from Amy Baylis ’20.
Image: Philip Trager (American, b. 1935), "ISO," 1988, gelatin silver print. Oberlin Friends of Art Fund and gift of the artist and Ina Trager, 2014.43.8