PHOTO REVIEW : Pictures Pack a Punch

“Eyes of Time: Photojournalism in America” is not a subtle show. Picture after picture, for 150 works, it hits you over the head.

But, then, photojournalism is anything but a subtle medium.

A house burns. A plane crashes. A soldier kisses his wife goodby.

Most photojournalism is remembered only as long as the story is hot. But sometimes, as is aptly illustrated in this exhibition at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park, a picture becomes an icon.

* From 1974 by an unidentified photographer: President Nixon shows his lack of personal warmth on a walk during a trip to Belgium. Without missing a step, he checks his watch with a worried glance even as he shakes hand with a well-wisher.

* From 1972 by Huynh Cong (Nick) Ut: An anonymous young Vietnamese girl runs naked and screaming down the street--a caption tells us she’s ripped her burning clothing off her body after an accidental napalm attack on her village.

* From 1963 by Flip Schulke: A crowd of furious white girls scream angry threats as the first black students enroll in their Birmingham high school.

* From 1944 by Peter J. Carrol: Hundreds of American soldiers march in combat gear down the Champs Elysees in Paris with the Arc de Triomphe as a backdrop. This picture was later used on a 3-cent stamp.

Photojournalists aim to tell their stories economically, to capture in a single image the drama of natural and human accomplishments, conflicts and disasters, to show compelling portraits of joy, anguish, terror, deception or sincerity.

This exhibition tries to be brief and to the point, too. It attempts to make sense of the history of this action-packed photographic form in a substantial, but still limited, selection.

To a large extent, the show is successful. And, like the best of photojournalism, it certainly is not boring: You get a wham, bang star-studded picture of what the medium has offered American publications during its 125-year history.

But, unfortunately, the deeper and more sensitive issues of photography are not conveyed in this show. As you go through the installation, you get little sense of the complexities of the task, the out-takes and editing processes that went into the selection of these pictures by the photographer and his editors. Or the drudgery of daily coverage. Or, most importantly, any sign of the ethical questions about the manipulative nature of the medium that is always at issue in photography.

And, often enough, it would have been so easy to let us see more.

For example, a picture by Joe Rosenthal shows a group of soldiers raising the flag at Iwo Jima. It was the cause of controversy when it first appeared in Time magazine--Life had rejected it because the picture looked staged, which it was. The picture became a classic, nevertheless. The catalogue points this out. The show doesn’t.

If only we could occasionally turn away from these icons and get a glimpse of the rest of the photographers’ negatives--the rejects, many of which must still exist. Added to what we see here, they might tell us of the complex nature of photojournalism, and its inherent responsibilities.

In fact, many of these significant issues are covered in the show’s lengthy catalogue, which was edited by Marianne Fulton and published by the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y., but their substance is not conveyed through the exhibition itself.

In essence, this show is merely an index of some of photojournalism’s greatest hits. It dazzles, but it doesn’t teach.

Curated by Fulton for Eastman House, the show has been traveling in Europe and the United States since 1988. In its current installation at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park, the show begins in the present, displaying an Associated Press Wirephoto machine in action, with photos flowing off as news breaks. Some of these are installed unframed on the wall, giving a more-or-less unedited, insider’s view of the contemporary world of journalism.

In truth, this machine provides the freshest part of the show, and also the most mundane. Looking at the latest photographs, you get a good sense of the quantity--and quality--of each day’s output from just one wire service.

But, then, the grayed images also are boring for the most part. Though they don’t tell you how an art editor at a newspaper or magazine might select images, they do give you a sense of what the raw material looks like.

From this glance at the present, the show steps back in time to the medium’s earliest examples.

Among the most stunning of these are a series by Alexander Gardner showing the 1865 execution of four conspirators involved in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. As awkward and slow as these early images must have been to produce, they still convey a strong sense of the drama of the hangings, as well as the heat of the day.

As the works become more recent, their feeling of spontaneity naturally increases. Casual incidents, completely candid moments become the rule, not the exception.

And, as we reach the end of the show, there are some color pictures, too. And we have some sense of how the medium is moving toward that much flashier end.

And we see that it is not all for the better.

A black-and-white photograph by W. Eugene Smith of a Japanese village where people have been hideously and painfully disfigured by exposure to mercury is extraordinarily powerful. No less so than an extraordinarily sad color picture by Alon Reininger of a man disfigured by AIDS.

It is not the color that makes these pictures powerful, it is the subjects.

They work because the photographers have captured images that, quite simply, do not need a thousand words.

“Eyes of Time: Photojournalism in America” continues at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego’s Balboa Park through Oct. 21. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursdays until 9 p.m. For information, call (619) 239-5262.