Went to the NGA (2025)

Zoe had a busy Thursday so I pretty much fucked off for like 4 hours after we had lunch together. She works much closer to the museums nowadays, so I went to the NGA to kill time and wear out my legs. I quickly looked up what was on display, and went straight to a particular exhibit, leaving in three weeks, "The 70s Lens: Reimagining Documentary Photography." I was blown away. 

I took note of each artist by opening a Safari tab on my dying phone for each one. This is everyone I liked, in order. Many of these are part of a series, but I'll only show here what was on display and otherwise link to the artist's portfolio.

First, Jim Goldberg's "Rich and Poor" series, which I liked for its handwritten captions. Each piece's title is the name of whoever is pictured. So the pieces displayed here are called Clyde Norbert and Vickie Figueroa respectively. I encourage you to look at the rest of it too.

 

I really loved this picture by Tseng Kwong Chi, from a series called "East Meets West." You can see the remote capture wire but he looks pasted on there!! And of course I'll always love a picture about New York. More on his site here.

These two are from a book called Rimbaud in New York 1978-1979 by David Wojnarowicz, which reminded me of this awful movie that depicts Arthur Rimbaud's malevolent relationship with Paul Verlaine called Total Eclipse (1995). Both young gay artists, Wojnarowicz saw himself in Rimbaud's works and life. In this series, Wojnarowicz becomes a modern Rimbaud using a mask he made by himself...

 Arthur in beloved Coney Island:

 

 Arthur in a NY diner:

I loved the color in this one, called Greenwood, Mississippi. William Eggleston had three pictures in this exhibit, but this deceptively simple one was my favorite of them all. This is the highest resolution image that I could find of it, but it cuts out a sex poster on the bottom right that's usually partially in view :(

 

 The scale of Conical Intersect is insane to me, but I loved how it was captured at the National Gallery. Gordon Matta-Clark cut a vortex into two adjacent old houses to offer passersby a view into the forthcoming demolition site to make space for a neighborhood-wide "renovation." I found a neat film about it on YouTube, where you can see him actually making the hole. From a puncture in paper to a cavernous entrance, you can feel each strike and smell the site just from looking at the rubble. And when it's done, you can see how it looked from the street— a portal into time. What can be displayed of this gargantuan Parisian project in a museum faraway in DC are two scans of the photographs, film borders intact:

 

Oh! And they had a Nan Goldin on display too, which was nice. Hers was the most familiar name to me after seeing All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022) a couple of years ago with Winnie. This one's called Christmas at the Other Side, Boston.

 

Overall a fantastic exhibit, especially having learned way more about photography in the past year. I wish it were on for longer.