fall 1989 - summer 1990 exhibition program

Louise Lawler
September 8 – October 15, 1989
This installation by Louise Lawler featured a site-specific work entitled The Show Isn't Over, subtitled Who Says Who Shows Who Counts, that incorporated references to and aspects of the Massachusetts cultural scene. Lawler sought to explore how the presentation and display of art affects the ways in which we perceive it.

Tibor Varnagy and Jennifer Sloan
October 4 – October 29, 1989
Tibor Varnagy, a Hungarian photographer and director of the Liget-Galeria in Budapest, presented TV Contacts and Fire Contacts. In these works, Varnagy exposed photographic paper to TV screens, capturing an ethereal vision of the broadcasted image. Jennifer Sloan, a New York-based photographer, showed color photo-collage portraits that were aimed at re-ordering the traditional power structure of photographer and model, and in turn spectator and image.

Marc Riboud: Lasting Moments, 1953-1988
October 25 – December 3, 1989
This traveling retrospective, edited by Marc Riboud himself, included over 100 images from his illustrious photojournalism career, including many never before seen images. Riboud covered a range of topics that included, landscapes, architecture, people, and events of all kind in urban streets and country lanes.

Irene Shwachman: A Retrospective
November 3 – November 30, 1989
Irene Shwachman: A Retrospective honored the memory of this local photographer, teacher and curator of photography. Much of her work, which includes four books, combined photographs with text, various metaphors, and images. In her work she displayed her wit, her sense of theater, and her sensitivity to a wide range of human emotions and issues.

Locomotion

December 13, 1989 February 25, 1990
Locomotion presented historical and contemporary photographic studies of movement. The show included works by Eadweard Muybridge, Thomas Eakins, Jacques Henri Latrique, Harold Edgerton, Gjon Mili, Barbara Morgan, Frank B., Lilian Gilbreath, Hollis Frampton, Marion Faller, Anna and Bernhard Blume, Mike Mandel, Duane Michaels, and Lois Greenfield.

Constructed Spaces

March 9 – April 22, 1990
In conjunction with the Boston Architectural Center, the PRC presented Constructed Spaces , a major exhibition of approximately 15 photographers involved in the creation of fictional spaces. The artists represented in the show challenged the one-point perspective of the world traditionally associated with photography. They altered existing spaces to construct their own spaces, or created photographic works that extend into three-dimensions. Artists included Barabara Kasten, Lorie Novak, Tyron Georgiou, Sandra Stark, Susan Rankaitas, Pat Ward Williams, Bruce Charlesworth, Gloria DeFilipps Brush, Thomas Barrow, Gillian Brown, Serge Tousignant, Holly King, Norman B. Colp, Ellen Garvens, Nancy Goldring, Hank Herrera, Patricia McPheron, Jake Seniuk, and Doug and Mike Starn.

Douglas Prince: Italian Observations

March 2 – April 1, 1990
Douglas Prince's surrealist photographs combined elements of classical architecture and sculpture with nature in a group of subtle and elegant still-lifes. He has shown his work for over 20 years and is included in the permanent collections of major museums.

1990 PRC Benefit Auction
April 7 – April 20, 1990
This exhibition included many of the 130 prints that were offered for the auction by artists such as Ansel Adams, Paul Strand, Eliot Porter, Wynn Bullock, Jerry Uelsmann, Margaret Bourke-White, and many others.

Jonathan Sharlin: Jew in Germany

April 27 – May 27, 1990
This exhibition featured the black and white photo-collages from Jonathan Sharlin's Jew in Germany series. He combined large silver gelatin prints with graphite, acrylic, spray enamel, and imposed text. These disturbing and poetic images metaphorically recalled the horrors of the Holocaust as perceived through our unconscious rather than our immediate senses.

John Baldessari : Various (Male) Responses to Nature (Near and Far)

May 4 – June 24, 1990
In this site-specific installation, John Baldessari, one of the earliest image appropriators, practiced a humanistic, intellectual and narrative photomontage. His work incorporated color as a censoring device, tinted images or decorated them with spheres of color, and included an element of abstraction. By obscuring faces and objects he left the viewer wondering what was being protected or hidden, and challenged the viewer to try to decipher the work.

Youth Photography Exhibition
May 19 – June 17, 1990
This exhibition of work was culled from over 300 entries representing more than 35 secondary schools in Eastern Massachusetts. The goals of the project were to encourage excellence in photography among youth, to offer students a unique opportunity to exhibition their work at a major gallery in Boston, and to enable young photographers to be aware of what their peers were doing in the field of photography. Jurors for this exhibition were Lou Jones, David Ulrich, and Lauren Shaw.

Ted Degener
June 1 – June 30, 1990
Ted Degener's photographs provided a whimsical look at the foibles and oddities of American culture. Degener's images served as metaphors that created irreverent double-edged humor.