Tiffany Hansen: This is All Of It. I'm Tiffany Hansen, in for Alison Stewart. This year is the 50th anniversary of the founding of ICP, the International Center of Photography. The organization has long been a cultural center of photography here in New York. In honor of the anniversary, the ICP has opened an exhibition exploring the depth of their collection.

ICP at 50: From the Collection, 1845 to 2019, displays photographs that span three centuries, featuring famous photographers like Gordon Parks, Robert Mapplethorpe, Carrie Mae Weems. The show also traces the development of the camera from its invention to the present day. The exhibition is currently on view, open to the public at ICP through May 6th. With us now to talk about it is Elisabeth Sherman, ICP senior curator and director of exhibitions and collections, and ICP executive director, David E. Little. David, Elisabeth, welcome.

Elisabeth Sherman: Thank you.

David E. Little: Thank you. Great to be here.

Tiffany: David, let's start with you.

David: Sure.

Tiffany: It's the 50th anniversary, so let's get a little bit of history about the organization. It was founded in 1974 by Cornell Capa. Your website says, [laughter] I'm quoting your website, it was founded to "champion concerned photography." First of all, tell us a little bit about him and what he meant by concerned photography.

David: Sure. Well, Cornell Capa, as was mentioned was the founder, and he was a member of a group of photographers, Magnum photographers, who traveled the world and photographed. He really founded the institution, which he called purposely a center, in order to, first of all, house his brother's archive, Robert Capa. There were also three other photojournalists who were really killed in the duty as photojournalists. Then he also--

Tiffany: Killed during World War I, right?

David: Yes. Actually, there were different circumstances. Unfortunately--

Tiffany: Oh, right. There was the Indo-China war or something.

David: Indo-China.

Tiffany: I remember reading that.

David: Capa stepped on a landmine, and then the others were also killed in different ways. In any case, he founded it to house the archive, but more importantly too to exhibit photography of this sort. By concerned photography, he really meant at that particular moment, photography that somehow educated about events that were happening throughout the world and brought that to New York City. Now, of course, things have changed quite a bit since that moment.

Tiffany: That moment is 1974, right, when he founded that?

David: Exactly, yes.

Tiffany: What was happening at that moment that really drove him, do you think?

David: It's interesting. At that particular time, there really wasn't a photo market. There were a few photo museums, photo institutions, but no photo institution that was dedicated to photography. He was really an evangelist and a promoter of photography.

I really think that that's what drove him in addition to wanting to ensure that the great photographs of Capa and Chim Seymour were preserved and that people would learn about photography and learn about particular events that they had covered during the war, for instance. There was also an homage to these photographers, as well as promoting photography.

Tiffany: Would we be accurate if we said that his drive toward conservation and education was driven by his brother?

David: In part, yes. I think in part, but also part of a bigger spirit of photographers of that time and feeling that the image was really a way of communicating in a broad and democratic manner, much like we see today. He saw this special quality of the photographic image and speaking in a different way to a broader international audience. That's really the source too of this idea of the International Center of Photography, this really almost utopian idea of photography and the impact that it can have on the way that people think and understand the world that they're experiencing.

Tiffany: His brother, Robert Capa, died in 1954. Elisabeth, I understand there's a photograph that Robert took that's on view in this show currently. Tell us a little bit about that photograph specifically and how you chose it to be part of this.

Elisabeth: The photograph we included in ICP at 50 is actually one of Robert Capa's most iconic and well-known images. It's an image of US troops landing in France on D-Day during World War II. It's an image, I think, that many people will be familiar with, even if they've never heard of Robert Capa before. It really captures that feeling of being there in the moment. It's an incredibly blurry image. He's in the water. You really have that feeling of understanding from a distance, some quality of what it must have been like to be a soldier arriving in Europe during the middle of World War II.

We've decided to include that image in the exhibition because it's one of the most iconic images in our collection by a photographer who's so central to our collection, but we also wanted to include in the exhibition unknown images by well-known photographers.

Tiffany: That was going to be my follow-up question. You have 200,000 plus prints in your collection. That's a lot to sift through for this, [laughter] so what was the process?

Elisabeth: I have to be honest, the process was really intuitive. I think that we didn't want to try to say anything definitive because there is no definitive truth about the collection, about any one of these photographers, about any one story.

Tiffany: No theme?

Elisabeth: What we wanted to do was include as much as possible. We wound up choosing about 170 photographs by 170 photographers. We chose one image by every photographer that we included in the exhibition. As you said in the title at the beginning, as much time as we could cover with the collection. Really, from the earliest popularization of photography in the middle of the 19th century to works that we've collected just in the last couple of years. We wanted to give as much breadth to the depth of our collection as possible.

Tiffany: David, when we think about the depth of that collection, talk to us about how the ICP now acquires photos and what are you looking for.

David: We're really looking for the next generation of photographers, and we're also looking for photographers who are addressing these ideas of concerned photography in a different manner. When we talk about Capa and we talk about the founding of ICP, concerned photography was attached to typically war photography, but as we're finding today, photographers are very interested in social change, but that social change might be in self-portraiture. For instance, portraying a figure who normally would never be portrayed in the history of photography.

I understand that you're going to be speaking with Nona Faustine, and she is a perfect example of this. Also, recreating histories that have been somehow lost and depicting figures in history would be something that we would be interested in. We're really looking at the future of photography in terms of ways that photographers are considering the relationship between photography, contemporary culture.

Really, there has to be almost a catalyst for a new idea. It's not a pure aesthetic, so you won't see a lot of pure abstract photography in ICP's collection. You'll see more photography that is about social events.

Tiffany: Just as point of my own curiosity, is a photographer someday going to get a call from David [laughter] that says, "We like your thing. We want to put it in our collection."? Is that how this works basically?

David: Well, I think you need to speak to Elisabeth about that [laughter] because that is really--

Tiffany: They'll get a call from Elisabeth that says--

David: That's her. That is part of what Elisabeth does and the curators, and maybe you can speak to that, Elisabeth.

Tiffany: That also to follow up, because I know that the center acquired its first video back in 2017. Just talk a little bit more about that process of acquiring and then also, more specifically, why did you branch out into video and what does that mean?

Elisabeth: The process for acquiring work, we have a committee that supports acquisitions and our collection program in general. With that committee, myself, and the rest of the curatorial team will make recommendations of what we want to add to the collection. We bring those works to the committee, they vote. Usually, we've been in dialogue with the artist directly or their gallery, should they have one beforehand. It's not a, "Surprise. You're a Nobel laureate," kind of a call, nor is it that prestigious, but we're very proud of it.

I have to say, with this immense collection that we do have right now, our focus really is on celebrating and attending to the collection that we do have rather than really growing it aggressively at this moment. The collection has not been on view in any regular way in the last 10 years, and so we really want to understand what we have. We have a very new team I've only arrived within the last year. Understand what we already have, get it back on view, reacquaint our audiences with the collection before we are aggressively acquiring new works.

Tiffany: Video. How are you thinking about video?

Elisabeth: I wasn't at ICP when that video was added, but I will say, for me, these boundaries are really porous, flexible, and in some cases, illogical. The difference between a still digital image and a moving digital image for that matter, the difference between a still analog film image and a moving film image are really a technological difference and not an apparatus difference. If ICP is the home of photography of images made by the camera, by light and time, moving image is just as much a quality of light and time and the lens as still photography.

I think at this point we wouldn't suddenly try to be a home of the history of film and video. So many other great institutions in New York do that really well. Many of the artists and photographers that we work with, that we celebrate, are working across these mediums, and so we would never say, "You can't show this in our space. We won't study this." In fact, many of our students are working in these ways.

Tiffany: David, the collection also contains, I'm using air quotes, "related material." What is related material?

David: [chuckles] Well, you can see that in some of the shows that are on view, especially the David Seidner show, which is alongside the ICP at 50 show. In the case of the David Seidner show, you could see some of the magazines that he collected that portrayed the photographs that are also in the collection.

In other cases, David had this really wonderful list that Elisabeth and the team showed of the photographs that he had sold. He'd have a little picture of the photograph and he'd identify where he had sold it to. There's all these kinds of ephemeral [crosstalk] like that, which is really fun. In some cases, we have negatives for some photographers as well, as part of the gifts that we've received.

One thing I wanted to say somewhat related to what Elisabeth was noting about video is just one of the great discoveries for Elisabeth in looking through this collection, and I think for me, is just seeing the range of media. We talked about early on Capa and the original photographers, they were for the most part photographing in black and white.

Capa did, Robert Capa did do some color. We have a whole range of technologies and techniques in photography in the collection. One of the things that we found looking back at our exhibition history is the third show was a hologram show, which just took us by surprise. There was also a show that did include some abstract photography, which surprised us.

It's interesting to see how the institution is always, while concerned, critical to the content. The way that artists develop that or deliver that content is in many different media. That's why, for instance, AI as a new form of media is something that, no doubt, there'll be some sort of integration of that-

Tiffany: No doubt.

David: -in some form. What we'll always be interested in is a more critical perspective of thinking about AI in particular and its relationship to history, truth, and knowledge.

Tiffany: Elisabeth, we have thrown the term "iconic" around a little bit. I know that folks have a sense of what they think of when they think of an iconic photograph. The first thing that popped into my mind was Dorothea Lange's photo of the Dust Bowl era, Migrant Woman, in California. If I say that most people, that image pops into their mind. Images from 9/11, for example. What does iconic mean to you as a curator?

Elisabeth: I love that question because I try to challenge this supposition as much as I can. I think for me as a curator, there is that popular conception of what is iconic. What will the general public recognize most immediately? Then there is, what are the images, what are the works of art that have changed culture the most, that are emblematic of the maker, of the time, of the period, in a way that in themselves they can tell as many stories as possible?

I think those are the images, sometimes the ones that are well known, are doing those more curatorial definitions of iconic, but I think the work we're also trying to do is to expand the images that are well-known for those other qualities that they might hold.

Tiffany: We talked a little bit about black and white images and I want to get to that, but we're going to take a quick break. We are talking with ICP senior curator, Elisabeth Sherman, director of exhibitions and collections, and ICP executive director, David E. Little. We're talking about ICP at 50 here on All Of It and we'll have more coming up after the break.

Tiffany: Welcome back to All Of It. I'm Tiffany Hansen in for Allison Stewart, and we are talking about photographs. The International Center for Photography has its ICP at 50: From the Collection exhibit happening now. We're talking with Curator Elisabeth Sherman and Executive Director David E. Little. Elisabeth, before we took our little break, we were talking about black and white photos and I mentioned Dorothea Lange's photo, which is in black and white. We have so many tools at our disposal right now, but what is it about black and white specifically that still captivates people?

Elisabeth: Well, I think that it's the way that images were circulated and disseminated for so much of their history. Color photography as a technology exists well before. It's part of the popular imagination. It's harder to print. It's harder to circulate. It's harder to make. It's expensive.

We have seen history. We have seen art photography in black and white for the predominance of the medium's lifespan, so that's how we have, I think, come to recognize and imagine these moments in history. At the same time, there are so many important documents in color that I think deserve to be seen and be written into the so-called canon because they exist and they are there from an earlier point.

Tiffany: Such as?

Elisabeth: Such as, we have a work in the show by Jeanette Klute, who was a female technician working for Kodak in the '30s and the '40s developing color photography, and on her own on the weekends was going outside and making gorgeous wildlife pictures in the Finger Lakes region outside of Rochester in the '40s and '50s, a time in which we don't even think of color photography as existing.

Tiffany: We're talking about back in history here. I'm wondering specifically about your oldest photograph that's in the exhibit. Tell us what that is. I know that the collection goes way back in the Wayback Machine.

Elisabeth: The earliest works in our collection are all examples of early popular photography. Not the very, very first examples of images being fixed on a plate or a sheet of paper, but the first technologies that were accessible to everyday people. Those are daguerreotype, ambrotype, and tintype.

Those are all technologies that, because of their relative ease of use, let's remember they were still incredibly difficult to use, they required preparing a plate or a glass surface with wet photochemical materials, taking incredibly long exposures, and then fixing them onto the surface, all happening in the portrait studio or out in the field where the images were being made.

These were easier and more financially accessible ways of making images, and so they're the first kinds of images that everyday people are making of themselves. We really see a proliferation of portrait photography in the mid-19th century because of the accessibility of these images.

Tiffany: Is the oldest in the show a portrait?

Elisabeth: Yes.

Tiffany: It is?

Elisabeth: Yes. A lot of these dates are really what we would call a circa date, they're estimations.

Tiffany: Right, squishy. They're squishy.

Elisabeth: Exactly.

Tiffany: How is the preservation more generally of those materials? I can imagine preservation of those old photographs is something to be considered. David, first to you, is that something that the center is directly involved in?

David: Yes. We have a space out in Jersey City where we store the works, but even when you come to the exhibition, when you're up on the third floor, which is where the show begins. Those works are from the late 19th century, you'll notice that the light levels are very, very low. It's almost dark-like, and that's to protect these images that are much more sensitive to light.

Photographs are fugitive. They can disappear, so our job is really to ensure that they're not only shown to the public in our exhibitions, but that they're preserved for a long period of time. When those works aren't on view, they're in acid-free boxes. They're in a space that has a certain temperature levels, all of which to ensure their preservation.

Tiffany: Elisabeth, what's the most recent photograph in the collection that's being exhibited right now?

Elisabeth: I believe the most recent work in the collection is a work by Nona Faustine, who David mentioned, we think will be on this program in a couple of days. It's an example from her White Shoe series and it's our most recent acquisition to the collection. The wonderful thing about this work is that Faustine, who's working today, making work about the unseen histories of the role of slavery in the economy of New York City, and really trying to tell stories that we often very proactively overlook. It calls back to one of the earliest works in our show.

In each of the works in these series, she's stopping at a specific address in New York and looking at the history of that place. In the work that we acquired, she's thinking about Sojourner Truth. One of the earliest works we have in the show is called a carte de visite. It's almost like a calling card, a business card with a picture on it. Sojourner Truth would make these and sell them.

There's actually an inscription on the bottom that says, "I sell the shadow to support the substance." She would sell her image to raise money for her own work in abolition. It's really incredible. I think there are very few institutions like ICP that can have that original Sojourner Truth carte de visite on view as well as the contemporary artist who's calling back to that early history.

Tiffany: We talked, David, about the process in creating these early photographs. I'm curious how you think about the invention of the camera even and how it affected how we think about ourselves.

David: Absolutely, and it goes through many, many different stages, but I think really what we're experiencing now is so different than in any other period at least since the invention of the iPhone because right now, pretty much everyone or a large percentage of the populace has a phone or a camera in their pocket. That technology specifically affected things. It's not just the technology of having a mobile phone, I think the main thing is this idea of being able to then take an image and then share it instantaneously.

The carte de visite that we were talking about earlier was one of the first forms where figures became popular nationwide. One of the most popular carte de visites was of Abraham Lincoln, and Lincoln's image became well known. If you think about images now, because of technology, someone could become well known within a year or a very short period of time, and they have no fame at the level or substantive fame like someone like Lincoln.

Technology plays an absolutely critical role now and we don't know what the fun thing about photography is. Elisabeth always kids me because I say this often, is every time you try to define photography, it will elude you. A lot of times, technology is seen as something negative in relationship to photography, but I really see it as really a great source of creativity.

Every time there's a new technology, we see incredible new ideas come out of photographers. The iPhone is a way that-- or I shouldn't say the iPhone, but I think the mobile devices really have transformed the technology of image making and image production.

Tiffany: As we think about that evolution from the daguerreotype to the iPhone, Elisabeth, if we're looking at photography as a very long span of time, I realize, but it has to have had an effect on how we view our world. How do we see that change in photographs?

Elisabeth: It's everything. It's everywhere. It's interesting, we're so inside of photo history that sometimes we don't step outside and think, "What has photography done in general?" It's really altered. Thinking about David talking about AI, I think a lot of the questions around this new technology are about truth. I think one of the funny relationships between photography from the very beginning is to the relationship of truth. There's this innate feeling that photography tells the truth, and yet it never has from the very beginning of the technology.

I actually think that wrestling between this sense that it is a tool for documentation and telling of truth, and yet it's very innate manipulability that it is always being altered, it's always leaving things out, it's always a lens and not the full reality is something that's there, again, right from the very beginning, but that is really present and urgent today.

David: One of the things I was to add to what Elisabeth is saying, I think a great example would be the D-Day photographs that we started with Capa. When Capa takes the D-Day photographs, he is brought by the military. He's part of the first wave going on to the beach. He's got his camera and he's taking his photographs. He's embedded.

If we think about the historic photographs that have happened in the last five years, in many cases, someone is at the event. It's not a photojournalist. It's not someone with a camera. It's someone who is experiencing some sort of-- either they're experiencing trauma, or they're witnessing it, or they're witnessing event and they photograph. It's really there's a new accessibility too, I think, with the technological change in addition to all the valid points that Elisabeth's making about the truthfulness about those images.

Tiffany: We haven't lost that ability to think of photography as a way to document the truth just because it's in our pocket?

David: No.

Tiffany: What is it, Elisabeth, about our fair city that makes it so photographable? On our air, we say, during Manhattanhenge, for example, if you're going to go out and take a picture, please don't get hit by a cab [laughter] because so many people are out trying to capture Manhattanhenges, of course, when the sun comes between the buildings in just the right way, and everybody loves to get that great picture.

One example, but there are a million examples across the city. I just saw three kids today with cameras, actual cameras, not iPhones, so they must have been part of some class out here taking pictures of the phone box. What is it?

Elisabeth: Well, as someone who has grown up in and around this area my whole life, I have to say, well, because New York is so compelling, magical, [laughter] and beautiful, of course, I think the more thoughtful, less New York-centric answer would be that these images are self-perpetuating. When we have been the seat of a lot of culture and journalism for the history of photography, we're going to see images coming out of New York. Then people are going to learn that that's how images are made, and so when they come here, they're going to want to make those kinds of images themselves.

For example, in the fall, we're going to have an exhibition of contemporary international street photography. That's really an attempt to say we associate the genre of street photography with New York, but that's because those are the people we've seen. Those are the people that have been exhibited and circulated. Actually, this is a mode of image-making that's happening all over the world all of the time with access to cameras. It is both truthful that New York is desired by the lens and also a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Tiffany: Want me to tell you what I think?

Elisabeth: Yes, please.

[laughter]

Tiffany: I think it's the proximity of beauty and the grit of this city in such tight, tight, tight proximity that makes it so compelling to photograph the flower growing between the crack in the sidewalk type thing.

Elisabeth: Absolutely. I agree with that.

Tiffany: Take that for what it is. [laughter] David, before we let you go, let's talk about this exhibit, some of the events that are-- what's kicking off? What's kicking things off here for this 50th anniversary?

David: Well, one of the things that we have coming up is just a whole series of really great talks that are happening in connection with the show. We have Pete Souza, who's going to be speaking for instance, and then I'm going to actually turn it over to Elisabeth for some of those other events.

I do want to mention this really quickly. Those students who had cameras were hoping that they were at ICP because we offer classes there. I do want to mention also very quickly that in terms of the camera technology that we've discussed, is that while we talked a lot about the iPhone, analog photography is as popular as ever. Students-

Elisabeth: Warms my heart.

David: -love to make pictures. They love that magic of being in the darkroom. I just want to say that before I turn it over to Elisabeth to talk a little bit about the programs that are kicking this off.

Elisabeth: As we do for every season, we have an incredibly robust series of public programs of talks. In fact, this Thursday, we're talking so much about AI despite our interest in analog photography. This Thursday, we'll be having a panel conversation on AI as part of our series of programs celebrating the 50th. Everyone can visit our website under the events page.

Tiffany: I was just going to say.

Elisabeth: We have one to two talks a week and we would love to see everyone.

Tiffany:: Lots and lots of information. It's at icp.org if I'm not mistaken.

Elisabeth: That's correct.

Tiffany:: All right. It's the International Center for Photography is what we've been talking about. ICP at 50: From the Collection, 1845-2019 is the exhibit currently ongoing. Correct? All of the info at icp.org. We've been talking with Elisabeth Sherman, ICP senior curator, and executive director, David E. Little. Thank you to you both.

Elisabeth: Thank you so much.

David: Thank you so much.

 

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