Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Among Others: Photography and the Group

May 31 through August 18, 2019

Composed chiefly of works in the Morgan’s collection, this exhibition explores how photographers have represented the bonds uniting people, whether in group portraits or in serial imagery. In arranged sittings, form is content: when commissioned to photograph the royals of Germany and England at a wedding in 1894, James Russell and Son’s Studio instinctively centered its composition around the family’s matriarch, Queen Victoria. Camera artists sometimes insert themselves into the action, as Susan Meiselas did when mingling with carnival strippers, first to portray them behind the scenes and then to photograph those in the audience from a performer’s perspective. Action can also be a pose: in 1970, when asked to create a positive poster image for the Gay Liberation Front, Peter Hujar asked the group’s members to run toward him on the street, enacting their slogan, “Come Out!!” Ingenuity may be called for when one’s subjects are all too well-known: a press photographer, Jean-Pierre Ducatez, appealed to the primal desires of Beatles fans by zeroing in on the lips of each band member, creating a captivating game of who’s-who. Bringing together works from the 1860s to the present, Among Others poses questions about family, diversity, democracy, representation, and visual delight.

Among Others: Photography and the Group is made possible by The Thompson Family Foundation.

Bob Adelman (American, 1930-2016), Peoples’ Wall, World's Fair, New York, 1965. Gelatin silver print. Purchased as the gift of Burton and Nancy Staniar. 2015.131, The Morgan Library & Museum. © Bob Adelman Estate

Selected Images

Bob Adelman (1930–2016), People Wall, World's Fair, New York, 1965, gelatin silver print. The Morgan Library & Museum, Purchased as the gift of Nancy and Burton Staniar, 2015.131. © Bob Adelman Estate

Amy Arbus (b. 1954), The Clash, NYC, 1981, gelatin silver print. The Morgan Library & Museum, Gift of Amy Arbus, 2018.74 Copyright © Amy Arbus

Eve Arnold (1912–2012), A training school for Black sit- ins. They are harassed but taught not to hit back when harassed by Whites, Virginia, USA, 1960, from the series Non-Violence, gelatin silver print. The Morgan Library & Museum, Purchased on the Photography Collectors Committee Fund, 2017.286. © Eve Arnold/Magnum Photos

Harry M. Callahan (1912-1999), Collage, Chicago, 1957, gelatin silver print. The Morgan Library & Museum, Gift of Richard and Ronay Menschel, 2014.100. © The Estate of Harry Callahan; courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York.

Jean-Pierre Ducatez (b. 1941), Beatle Lips: George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, 1965, gelatin silver prints. The Morgan Library & Museum, Purchased as the gift of Allen Adler, 2015.51:1-4. © Jean- Pierre Ducatez

Eugene Omar Goldbeck (1892–1986), Indoctrination Division, Air Training Command, Lackland Air Base, San Antonio, Texas, July 19, 1947, gelatin silver print. The Morgan Library & Museum, Purchased on funds given by members of the Photography Collectors Committee, 2018.63.

Peter Hujar (1934-1987), Contact sheet: Gay Liberation Front poster image shoot, 1969 or 1970, gelatin silver print. The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection, Purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund; 2013.108:8.1263. © Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

Art Kane (1925–1995), Harlem, 1958, In “The Golden Age of Jazz,” Esquire, January 1959. The Morgan Library & Museum, Purchased on funds given by Peter J. Cohen, Ronald R. Kass, and Elaine Goldman; 2018.120. Photograph by Art Kane for Esquire, a publication of the Hearst Communications, Inc., Art Kane. Courtesy © The Art Kane Archive

Danny Lyon (b. 1942), Haitian Women, March 1986. Gelatin silver print. Purchased as the gift of Ronald R. Kass. 2016.157. © Danny Lyon/Magnum Photos

Mike Mandel (b. 1950), Baseball-Photographer Trading Cards, 1975, photo-offset lithography on cards. The Morgan Library & Museum, Purchased as the gift of Jane P. Watkins, 2013.5:1-135. © Mike Mandel, courtesy the artist and Robert Mann Gallery, New York

Susan Meiselas (b. 1948), The dressing room, Fryeburg, Maine, USA, 1975, from the series Carnival Strippers, gelatin silver print. The Morgan Library & Museum, Purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund, 2018.60. © Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos

Myers Cope Co. Atlantic City, Photo-multigraph of unidentified girl, ca. 1920s, gelatin silver print with postcard back. The Morgan Library & Museum, Gift of Peter J. Cohen, 2015.119:100

Powell & Co. Anti-Slavery Constitutional Amendment Picture, 1865, albumen print. The Morgan Library & Museum, Purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund, 2018.64.

Studio Retrato-Escultura Victor, Fotoescultura with eight subjects, ca. 1940s, carved, painted, and assembled wood with hand-colored gelatin silver prints. The Morgan Library & Museum, Purchased as the gift of Richard and Ronay Menschel, 2016.163.

Photographer Unidentified, Group at the Main Building, Moscow State University, after 1953, gelatin silver print and mixed media. The Morgan Library & Museum, Purchased as the gift of Peter J. Cohen, 2018.129.

Photographer Unidentified, Untitled (women in aprons pose among trees), 1913, commercially processed gelatin silver print; postcard. The Morgan Library & Museum, Gift of Peter J. Cohen, 2015.119:101.

Photographer Unidentified, Untitled (human pyramid: fifty- six boys in white uniforms arranged in eight levels in a gymnasium), 20th century, commercially processed gelatin silver print. The Morgan Library & Museum, Gift of Peter J. Cohen, 2018.95:28.

Photographer Unidentified, Untitled (seventeen women in swimsuits hold magazines up on a low stage on a lawn), 20th century, commercially processed gelatin silver print. The Morgan Library & Museum, Gift of Peter J. Cohen, 2018.95:9.