FACING UP TO A CHALLENGE IN EXHIBIT

“To me, the face--the eyes, the expression of the mouth--is the thing that reflects character,” the famous portrait photographer Philippe Halsman once said. “It is the only part of the body that permits us to see the inner person!”

Fascination with photographic portraiture and its possibilities for revealing personality beyond mere likeness is almost as old as the history of photography itself. Abraham Lincoln, in a prophetic recognition of the power of image in politics, is reputed to have said that if it had not been for his Cooper Union speech and Mathew Brady’s distinguished daguerreotype images of him, he might never have been elected President.

Coffeetable books of celebrity portraiture as well as monographs and exhibitions by such renowned photographers as Irving Penn and Richard Avedon have become staples of the public photographic diet. It is rare, however, to see portraits in as wide a range of sensibilities as in “Attitudes and Expressions: Classic and Contemporary Portrait Photography,” at the Mills House Visual Arts Complex in Garden Grove through Jan. 27.

The show is co-sponsored by the Mills House Volunteers, Santa Ana College and the Garden Grove Assn. for the Arts, and was curated by gallery director Lora Pethick Brown. Intending the exhibition as a “valuable sampling of many significant 20th-Century photographers who express themselves through portraiture,” Brown selected 19 “major artists” from a list of 40 suggested by the photography faculty at Santa Ana College and nine “emerging artists,” many of whom live and work in the Orange County area. The exhibition is accompanied by a small illustrated catalogue providing concise biographies of each exhibitor.

Divided between the two hospitable exhibition spaces of Mills House’s Spanish-style complex, the gathering runs the gamut from traditional to experimental. The main gallery holds the better-known image-makers, though “the intention was not that one gallery was classic and one was contemporary,” Brown explained. A sampling of Judy Dater’s portraits and self-portraits and large Polaroid studies by Marsha Burns are exhibited here, along with George Hurrell’s portrait of Marlene Dietrich, Yousuf Karsh’s Einstein and Avedon’s Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

The ever-present problem of omissions in an exhibition of this scope is counterbalanced by frequent pleasures and surprises: two early pictorial works by Imogen Cunningham exhibited along with the classic study of her father at 90, seated with dignity at the edge of a woodpile, and Henri Cartier-Bresson’s unobtrusive views of Henri Matisse and Alberto Giacometti in their studios.

Works of a more experimental nature by the artists in the opposite gallery tend to stretch the conventional definitions of portraiture. Dennis Callwood’s vision of the Los Angeles Latino community and Linda Rich’s observations of Cleveland residents become social documentation while Jerry Burchfield’s Process pieces and Daniel Martinez’s large installation incorporate portraits into expressive statements that extend beyond the identity of their subjects.

“This was an ideal exhibition, in my mind, to be able to combine the established artists with the up-and-coming artists,” Brown noted, “because I feel that this is a strong role we can play as a community gallery, to give people who are just starting out an opportunity to show.”

Beginning in the spring, Mills House Visual Arts Complex will accept exhibition proposals from artists and curators for future shows.