EXHIBITION: AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHY
The American image has long been shaped by photographers who moved between fashion and art—figures fluent in surface, but drawn to what lies beneath. In “American Photography“, now on view at the Rijksmuseum, their work is presented not as fashion imagery, but as a broader cultural document.
The exhibition opens with Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, and Diane Arbus names closely linked to fashion, but shown here for how they challenged its conventions. Avedon’s portraits confront the viewer with age, fragility, and psychological intensity. Penn’s stripped-down compositions reveal an almost surgical precision. Arbus remains at the margins documenting lives that sit outside the narratives commercial photography once upheld.
The inclusion of lesser-known and amateur photographers adds depth, grounding the exhibition in everyday perspectives and overlooked histories.
Together, these works offer not one story of America, but many, each framed through a different eye and intent.
On view until June 9 at Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
Photo: America seen through Stars and Stripes, New York City, New York, 1976, by Ming Smith. Photograph: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts/Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund
