by mo riss
Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West examines how photography has established and transformed the image of the West, from 1850 to the present.” This is how the curators quite simply describe what is contained in just a few small rooms on the third floor, all the way in the back of the MoMA, and I feel like they hit the nail right on its head. Just over 70 photographers and about 120 photographs comprise this intimate, yet broad, analysis of the mindset behind the glorification of the West, from its golden appeal, to its seemingly endless wilderness and hidden secrets. The photographers range from modern fine art like Cindy Sherman, all the way back to daguerreotypes and primitive photographs first used by explorers to bring back images for study of the land and people.
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The very first picture you see when you step into this exhibit is the popular traditional view of the American West: a cowboy, with the hat and boots, doing his lasso tricks in the middle of the desert. The rest of the photos are all organized by theme, rather than chronological date, so all the Wild West cowboy shots are clumped together, as are the landscapes, portraits of natives, etc. The one thing all of the photos seem to capture very well is the sense of space and adventure, which was very much what set people in that direction in the first place.
This show was especially intriguing for me, being a native of the northwest myself, and getting to see the outsider view of how people see this region that I call home. I can only imagine what it must be like for those who are unfamiliar with the West to see these, mostly stereotypical, ideas of what the American West looks and feels like. An exhibition like this could either change or validate views you might already have.
At first I was shocked to see so many images of urban California, both past and present. When I think of the West, my inborn prejudices take me immediately to rain forests and mountains. But that just goes to show my own stereotype of the region. I forget that much of the allure of the West was the open spaces to build urbanity, and that allure still stands. There are in fact, beautiful images of mountains and other landscapes, which gave me the smiles, but it is the portraits of the people within the West who create the personality that is so ingrained in the minds of most. The exhibit does a spectacular job showing the outsider view, which is exactly what it is aiming to do. Now for an exhibit that shows how Westerners see themselves perhaps?
You can also learn more about this specific exhibition by attending the gallery talk with Diana Bush on May 13th at 1:30 p.m.
