Foto Week DC

Last Friday I visited the Edison Place Gallery, which is a stones throw away from the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The gallery was participating in Foto Week DC sponsored by National Geographic and featured works by two amazing photographers – J. Baylor Roberts and B. Anthony Stewart. Their work was displayed in one large room in the gallery but separated by a small wall in the middle. The handful of their work displayed was in black and white and from the first half of the 20^th century.

J. Baylor Roberts was a photographer in the marines during World War I and then became involved with National Geographic. Three photographs of his really stud out for me. The first was A Date Night at the Drive-In, Route 1, Alexandria, Virginia from 1941. It is a beautiful picture with a scene of a football game playing on the screen in the background and a dozen or so sleek, identical black cars in the foreground. The second, Looking Through a Lens, Japan (c. 1950), shows a really neat and 'new' perspective; in the photograph a woman holds up a small magnifying lens which blocks her face, but in the actual magnifying glass one can see her whole face. The last photograph to stand out for me was Electro-Chemical Plant Furnace, Portland, Oregon (1942), this was not because I found it a breathtakingly amazing picture but because it was so underwhelming and not aesthetically pleasing or interesting. To make matters worse, it was given the position of the main photograph!

In contrast to this less-than-awe-some photograph, the main picture for B. Anthony Stewart's section was really cool. It was entitled Coal Miner, Omar, West Virginia (1938) and featured a full-on close-up shot of a man who had just come out of the mine. The miner was still wearing his hard hat with the lantern attached and was absolutely covered in coal dust; so much so that it had settled into every wrinkle of his face and highlighted his graying beard. His eyes, which are staring fully at the camera (and thus at the viewer) watery and full of emotion. This photograph is definitely the most amazing picture the gallery had of Stewart's and it more than deserved its place in the spotlight.

B. Anthony Stewart, Coal Miner, Omar, West Virginia (1938)

Both of these men have works from all over, which demonstrate that a photojournalist (like all types of journalists) must be willing to follow the story where ever it may be. The simple, no frills layout of the exhibition really allowed for the photographs themselves to speak and be admired for the great works that they are.