National Exposure January, 1999

National Photography competition at ARC Gallery

The best of the prints submitted to the National Exposure competition suggest that photographers are going back to basics. After two decades under the influence of Post-Modernism, which put them at a certain remove from their medium, photographers now seem to be embracing it whole-heartedly again. On exhibition, at any rate, photographers are recovering their interest in the astute and quirky observation and in what used to be called “photographic seeing”- in the pleasures of catching and fixing those moments that only the camera can reveal.

Whether confronted with the vastness of landscape, the intimacies of domestic life, or the impersonality of the city streets, the photographers seen here have responded to the quickness of the situation, to that jutting detail, that unexpected ming juxtaposition, that brings the scene to life. The result is work that aspires to the kind of transforming vision of which photography is capable at its best.

Colin L.. Westerbeck

Associate Curator

Department of Photography

Art Institute of Chicago