The Center for Creative Photography in Tucson has a new exhibit to celebrate the golden anniversary of a vast and ever-growing collection co-founded by Ansel Adams.
The exhibit called Picture Party features landscape photographs spanning about a century. Portraits have been arranged to connect people, places, cultures and eras.
Chief Curator Rebecca Senf said the display samples the infinite ways the center’s collection can be organized and interpreted through viewpoints of creator and observer.
“It’s the perspective, or the background, or the life-experience, or the knowledge that allows the grouping of photographs to tell their particular story,” Senf said.
Also on display for the exhibit are tools Ansel Adams used to make prints.
The center, located at the University of Arizona, was founded in 1975 on archives of works by five people. Among them was Adams.
Senf said he was fond of daguerreotypes from a 19th century portrait studio in Boston.
“It’s a very rare object. It's from the first decade of the history of photography. And (Adams) was really interested in the history of photography and how he fit into it,” Senf said.
The center’s collection has grown to include hundreds of archives and thousands of photographers.
