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In photography, we have this great photography collection here. We have more than thirteen
hundred photographs. I think we have exactly thirteen hundred and thirty one photographs.
But you know, it's really amazing for a museum of this size to have such a great collection
and it's one of the reasons that I came here. We have a show now that has some of the major
photographers of the 20th and 21st century. When I was looking at how to represent the
photography collection it was looking at a lot of pictures. I think that there might
have been some idea of making this kind of our greatest hits, like our most famous photographs.
I thought it would be more meaningful to look at the photography thematically. How photographs
kind of tell the history of photography in the 20th century. What's some of the major
themes like documentary photography and how that evolved into street photography and so
in some cases I chose images that weren't the most famous images, but just to show certain
points...to show that there was a visual language that evolved and you see it kind of over,
over and over again over time. So, in this case a lot of the work was chosen to support
major themes, of traditional landscape as opposed to constructed landscape, you know,
of portraiture and the portrait of gender in photography, that type of thing. There
is still that division between photography and art. People think well its not art because
its made with this mechanical device. They don't think anything of contemporary artist
who might have something manufactured to their specification or to you know there were artists
in the renaissance or Baroque artist who used studios, and they had assistants who were
painting large portions of their painting. But there is still resistance somewhat. I
just think that photography is so fascinating, and I hope that people can come in with an
open mind and really appreciate that. I hope that they love the photographs as much as
I do!