In the midst of the sweeping social change and political turbulence of the late 1960s and 1970s, the four artists gathered here turned their cameras to the city streets, finding photography and film to be an immediate and accessible means of responding to their surroundings.
Barbara Brändli’s photographs of Caracas, Venezuela, form a pop-culture portrait of the city through details of its architecture, billboards, and graffiti. Richard Misrach documents the counterculture of Berkeley, California’s Telegraph Avenue. Takuma Nakahira produced a real-time photo diary while in Paris for the 1971 Biennale. And Nalini Malani’s diptych projection combines an animation inspired by utopian urban architecture with footage of a young woman observing life in Mumbai through a window.
The works in this gallery reflect the personal perspectives of their makers as well as the dynamic social shifts playing out around them. As Nakahira reflected, “Photography has by its very nature [the potentiality] . . . to lay the world bare.”
Organized by Lucy Gallun, Associate Curator, with River Bullock, Beaumont & Nancy Newhall Curatorial Fellow, Department of Photography.
