Storytelling: Photographers Making Meaning

The Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College presents Storytelling: Photographers Making Meaning / Works from the Wellin Museum’s Collection. The exhibition explores projects by twentieth- and twenty-first-century American photographers in which meaning is made through the presentation of images in series, at times juxtaposed with text, resulting in narratives that communicate a particular message. Bodies of work by eleven photographers—Eve Arnold, Rhona Bitner, Danny Lyon, Mike Mandel, Wright Morris, Bill Owens, Gordon Parks, Milton Rogovin, Keisha Scarville, Lorna Simpson, and Garry Winogrand—are primarily drawn from the Wellin Museum’s extensive holdings of photography. Keisha Scarville will debut a new, photo-based installation made for this exhibition. 

The photographers depict a range of subjects, from moments of political import to disappearing American landscapes to the communities around them. Featured projects include Eve Arnold’s and Gordon Parks’s photojournalistic images of Malcolm X and the Black Muslim movement, Milton Rogovin’s moving social documentary portraits of the residents of Buffalo’s Lower West Side neighborhood, and more lighthearted work such as Bill Owens’ often humorous take on suburban life, and Mike Mandel’s set of artist trading cards, in which (often famous) photographers take the place of baseball players. 

The photographers featured in the exhibition deploy different creative strategies in their use of images and text. While a single image can tell a story, the cumulative presentation of pictures, with or without text, often enables the generation of more layered, nuanced, and powerful ideas. One image may communicate a concept that is destabilized by the picture that follows. Similarly, a text may reinforce—or undermine—the apparent message of an image, or series of images.

Some pictures on display were created specifically for publication in magazines or photobooks, often presented alongside text authored by the photographer, or another writer, whose voice significantly impacts a viewer’s understanding of the visual material. Moreover, decisions relating to presentation, such as scale and graphic design, can impact the character of the message transmitted.

Explains Elizabeth Shannon, PhD, Wellin Museum Collections Curator, “The Wellin’s holdings of photographs have grown considerably in recent years, and we are excited to be able to present very different bodies of work in which meaning is created through the basic elements of pictures and text. Storytelling engages with many current socio-political themes, particularly in relation to American life, and should provide abundant material for faculty and students, while also engaging our wider community. While most of us are not professional photographers, many of us regularly create carousels of images and combine image and text for social media posts. Visitors can bring their experience and critical eye to the works in Storytelling, and to the strategies utilized by these photographers, and consider how different types of meaning are constructed and communicated—from the serious to the absurd.”

About the Wellin Museum of Art
A teaching museum on the campus of Hamilton College in Central New York, the Wellin Museum invites visitors to discover the arts and form unexpected connections through groundbreaking exhibitions, a globally representative collection, visiting artists, and public events. Artists whose work has been featured in solo exhibitions include Jeffrey Gibson, Yun-Fei Ji, Sarah Oppenheimer, Michael Rakowitz, Elias Sime, and Renée Stout, among many others. Through its programs, the Wellin Museum sparks dialogues across disciplines, inspires experimentation, and fosters creative inquiry.

Designed by Machado Silvetti Associates, the Wellin Museum opened in 2012 under the leadership of Tracy L. Adler, the inaugural and current Johnson-Pote Director. The distinctive character of the facility turns the concept of a museum inside out, with glass walls that reveal the inner workings of the museum. Art storage, conservation workshops, administrative offices, and teaching spaces are all visible to museum visitors. The Wellin’s soaring 27-foot visible archive features rotating highlights from the collection, its open-plan exhibition gallery presents temporary shows, and its dedicated seminar rooms are customized for class visits.

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