The Friends of Photography | Ansel Adams Center

Stieglitz | Kenna | Bernhard
April 4 - April 29, 2001

Ruth Bernhard, Angelwing
Gelatin Silver Print, 1943.
© Ruth Bernhard. All rights reserved.
Courtesy of the artist

Of Our Time: Celebrating Ruth Bernhard's Photography
April 3 - 29, 2001
Ruth Bernhard is a vital presence in the arts and photography communities of San Francisco. Her best-known work, highlighted in 50 images in this exhibition, ranges from nudes to still lifes. For Bernhard, "Light is my inspiration, my paint and brush." This is evident in her luminous, timeless figures as well as her carefully arranged still lifes. Says Bernhard of her work, "...the creation of a photograph is experienced as a heightened emotional response, most akin to poetry and music, each image the culmination of a compelling impulse I cannot deny." This exhibition, in honor of Ruth Bernhard's 95 birthday, celebrates her lifelong devotion to photography and honors the release of her new biography, published by Chronicle Books, entitled Ruth Bernhard: Between Art & Life.

Michael Kenna, Didcot Power Station, Study 1, Oxfordshire, England, 1985
Toned Gelatin Silver Print, 1985.
© Michael Kenna. All rights reserved.
Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco

Michael Kenna: Night Work
April 3 - 29, 2001
This exhibition of night photographs by San Francisco-based photographer Michael Kenna features images that play with the psychology of the night, with the fears and mysteries of darkness, with subjects that range from the path in a seventeenth-century French garden to the cooling towers of a modern power plant. During the past decade, Kenna has developed an extensive body of night photographs of a variety of subjects, and it is from these images that the photographs in the exhibition have been drawn. The exhibition is in celebration of the re-print of the best-selling Untitled Series: Night Walk, published by The Friends of Photography in 1987. The new publication, Night Work, published in association with Nazraeli Press includes both stunning new images and classic favorites.

Stieglitz and his Circle: The Art of the Photogravure
April 3 - 29, 2001

Ansel Adams in the Harriet Kellogg Maxwell Gallery
ongoing
In an ongoing series of exhibitions highlighting Ansel Adams, The Friends of Photography devotes a gallery space to honor the work of one of the best known photographers in our century. The rotating photographs on display provide an opportunity to view the breadth of the many different aspects of Adams' work.

Back to PAST EXHIBITIONS