One Woman’s ‘Defining Eye’

Pictures of people--mostly women and children--dominate “Defining Eye: Women Photographers of the 20th Century.” Few landscapes, fewer nudes and not many formal (or abstract) photographs are to be found in this engaging and occasionally inspiring exhibition at UCLA/Armand Hammer Museum of Art.

Organized by the St. Louis Art Museum and drawn from the collection of Helen Kornblum, a St. Louis-based psychotherapist, this selection of 81 photographs by nearly as many women is not a comprehensive survey of the century’s greatest works by an impressive roster of female photographers (as its title implies). Instead, its judiciously chosen imagery defines a personal, sometimes quirky vision.

To emphasize that Kornblum’s collection does not represent an authoritative, institutional overview but rather an intimate outlook that favors particular genres and sentiments, it has been installed in eight thematic groups. Some (“The Portrait,” “The Human Bond” and “Documentary Photography and Photojournalism”) make sense. Although the most moving photographs, like Dorothea Lange’s wrenching “Mother and Child, San Joaquin Valley” (1938), could fit any of these categories, this says less about them than the power of art.

More often than not, the most straightforward pictures are the most riveting. Marion Post Wolcott’s “Town Meeting, Vermont” (1940) is as complex a masterpiece as has been made with a camera. In the jam-packed print, the gazes of about 40 citizens ricochet around a crowded town hall, expressing curiosity, amusement and contention while drawing both the photographer and viewer into the tumultuous give-and-take that animates all spirited social exchanges--art-viewing included. Among the other standouts: Margaret Bourke-White’s “Woman, Locket Georgia” (1936), Consuelo Kanaga’s “School Girl, St. Croix” (1963) and Mary Ellen Mark’s “Tiny, Halloween” (1983).

The remaining categories, however, have less in common with the works they are meant to elucidate than with ill-conceived sociological posturing. For example, “The Flaneur” includes only four photographs, all of which could easily be accommodated in “The Portrait.” But had they been, the show’s schoolbookish reference to Charles Baudelaire could not be made.

Seven prints make up “Surreal Realities, Surreal Tableaux,” including terrific works by Ilse Bing, Helen Levitt and Inge Morath. But this section’s artsy title (and its convoluted wall text) don’t mention that all of its images either depict women and children willfully covering their faces or present bodily surrogates in the form of masks, mannequins, dolls and shadows. Mundane masquerades are thus treated as art-historical exercises rather than as events common to everyday life.

“Place and Space” functions as a catchall, juxtaposing such unrelated images as Berenice Abbott’s haunting picture of a New York storefront, Martha Rosler’s scathing photo-collage protesting the war in Vietnam and Uta Barth’s mesmerizing distillation of the space between things.

The least intelligible category is “Image and Identity,” under whose generic heading more than a quarter of the works are grouped. Alma Lavenson’s “Self-Portrait” (1932) is here, along with Gertrud Arndt’s “Self-Portrait With Veil” (1930). A theatrical tone is set by images of 1920s dancers and dramatists by Ursula Richter, Charlotte Rudolph, Jane Reece and Nelly (Elli Seraidari). The frank playfulness of these pieces echoes in a witty photomontage Claude Cahun made in 1930.

But the majority of the works in this category lacks verve and resonance. Made in the 1980s and ‘90s, they include one-dimensional images staged by Laurie Simmons, Sandy Skoglund, Jeanne Dunning, Lorna Simpson and Cindy Sherman. Overburdened with self-consciousness, these thin, unsatisfying prints strive so hard to make a single point that they fail to invite or reward prolonged viewing.

It comes as something of a shock that the early photographs are so much more compelling than the recent ones. Now that photography no longer plays second fiddle to painting or sculpture, and female artists are closer to being on equal footing with men than at any time in history, it’s surprising to see that recent works pale in comparison to their antecedents. This suggests that art is best when it goes against the grain of social expectations, and that adversity is what fuels true creativity.

In a sense, this is just what motivated Kornblum in assembling her collection. The fact that all of the works were made by women does not imply that the collection gives form to some timelessly feminine or womanly “essence”--an attribute or characteristic that unites its diverse works by distinguishing them from those made by men. On the contrary, Kornblum’s single-sex collection is based on the observation that women, as a group, have been left out of major collections, textbooks and art-historical surveys. “Defining Eye” tells the story of an ambitious, independent woman who looked at the world, didn’t like what she saw and did more than her share to change it.

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* “Defining Eye: Women Photographers of the 20th Century,” UCLA/Hammer Museum of Art, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood, (310) 443-7000. Through Aug. 22. Closed Mondays. $4.50; Thursdays free.