Human Interest: Photoessays From the Collection March 8, 2007

The middle decades of the twentieth century mark the golden age of photojournalism, when heroic cameramen and women went out into the field to track down stories, hard-working editors wrote captions and credit lines, and curious Americans devoured illustrated magazines. Leafing through the pages of these magazines, the reader would encounter hundreds of photographs, many of them merely supplying the who, what, and where. Other pictures, however, addressed the how and why. Complete stories were told in photoessays, carefully selected and assembled groups of pictures combined with text. In the photoessay, the photographer could express a point of view, share a personal experience, open a window onto other worlds. The publishers of mass-circulation magazines shared a mission to educate and entertain, and their broad, populist interpretation of 'human interest' remains with us today. Photoessays from this period provide glimpses into history, variously provoking nostalgia, amusement, and reflection. Acknowledging their continued power to shape our imagination, we can better understand the impact of the media in our own lives. This exhibition features prints by an international roster of 16 photographers, working between 1937 and 1972. Prominent among the artists is W. Eugene Smith, who has been called the "master of the photoessay."