U-M Diversity: News & Events
Paul Outerbridge: Color Photography from Mexico and California, the 1950s
Paul OuterbridgeGas Station, Mexico, circa 1950 © 2008 Graham Howe |
UMMA OFF/SITE EXHIBITION
June 14 through September 7, 2008
In 1943, after a decade of pioneering work in color photography, American photographer Paul Outerbridge (1896-1958) moved from New York to Southern California. He settled in Laguna Beach, a seaside town and an artists’ haven just two hours north of the Mexican border. In the tradition of Edward Weston, Paul Strand, Anton Bruehl, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, all of whom made significant photographic forays into Mexico and who also photographed in California, Outerbridge visited the seaport towns along California’s coastline and Mexico’s Baja peninsula and began to make a new kind of color photograph. Exchanging the control of the studio for the spontaneity of the street, these works depict vernacular subjects with virtuosic use of form, color, and atmosphere. Recently printed from Outerbridge’s 1950s Kodachrome transparencies, this last and exemplary body of work by one of America’s greatest Modernist masters of the 1920s and 30s shows us that new ways of seeing can be accomplished simply by seeing everyday subjects in a different way.
This exhibition is organized and circulated by Curatorial Assistance Traveling Exhibitions (CATE), Pasadena, California.
The Ann Arbor presentation is made possible in part by the University of Michigan Health System and Ernestine and Herbert Ruben.
GUIDED TOURS @ UMMA OFF/SITE
Paul Outerbridge: Color Photographs from Mexico and California, the 1950s
Thursday, August 21, 7 pm
Sundays, August 3, 10, and 24, 2 pm
UMMA OFF/SITE, 1301 S. University (at S. Forest), Ann Arbor
Open Tue, Fri, Sat, and Sun 11 am to 6 pm; Wed and Thu, 11 am to 9pm
*Admission is free.
More information: 734.763.UMMA; http://www.umma.umich.edu/