Shared History: Photographs from the Martin Z. Marguiles Collection
Ritter Art Gallery:
January 24th - March 14th, 2020
Opening: Thursday, February 13, 2020 from 7pm - 8:30pm
Guest Curator: Jeanie Ambrosio
Artists in the Exhibition
Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, Russell Lee, Marion Post Wolcott, Jack Delano, Carl Mydans, Walker Evans, Jessie Tarbox Beals, Bernice Abbott, Helen Levitt, Mario Algaze, Fan Ho, Danny Lyon, Ed Ruscha, Frank Gohlke, Lewis Baltz, Robert Adams, Walter Gropius, Ruth Hallensleben, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Werner Manz, Hugo Schmolz (Karl Hugo Schmolz?), Bernd and Hilla Becher, August Sander, Mike Disfarmer, Seydou Keita, and Malick Sidibe
The exhibition Shared History: Photographs from the Collection of Martin Z. Margulies presents historic photographs made using analog technologies. The works have been selected from the renowned post-war and contemporary art collection of Martin Z. Margulies who has collected photography since the early 1990s. Margulies consciously built a historic collection of photographs aimed toward educating himself and students on the medium. This led him to open the public space, The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse in Wynwood in 1999.
The photographs in this exhibition pre-date digital photography and the rise of social media, each of which has exponentially expanded the quantity and dissemination of images. The analog photographs in the exhibition ask viewers to consider how images were shared prior to our contemporary access to technology. In particular, the exhibition presents multiple examples of the way that photography can bring images of underrepresented spaces or groups of people into public view. Over time these images illustrate a time period or region and thus create a collective memory of people, places or events. Photography in itself makes a shared space.