Getty Photography Exhibit Depicts Truth And Artistry

Documentary Photography Since The Sixties

In an era when digital video streams seem to come at us from all sides, a powerful new exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum reminds us that still images still have the ability to command our attention and make us think. Entitled Engaged Oberservers: Documentary Photography since the Sixties, the installation provides and in-depth look at projects by some of the most significant photographers of the last 40 years. At the center of this exhibition is “The Sacrifice” (a detail of which has been scanned to digital above), a massive photo collage by James Nachtwey, depicting intense scenes from military field hospitals in Iraq. The piece is sure to evoke a wide range of emotions, from simple curiosity, to sadness and anger, guilt, pride, and compassion. Like many other works featured, “The Sacrifice” presents vivid and sometimes graphic images that may be too intense emotionally and visually for children, but which provide a rich historical context for anyone interested in understanding more about the world.

James Nachtwey is one of many photographers who, in the decades following the second world war, began to develop what the Los Angeles Times called an “independently minded and critically engaged form of photography.” This new documentary photography combined photo journalism with the individual photographer’s artistic vision to create extended photographic essays that were both personal and global in content.

The individual pictures that compose “The Sacrifice” seize the viewer’s attention with intimate moments – we see the desperation in the eyes of a soldier, the compassion in a chaplain’s hand. But it is the enormity of the juxtaposed images pressed together that gives a sense of scale to the loss and suffering, making the experience at once personal and all-encompassing. 

Engaged Oberservers: Documentary Photography since the Sixties will be on display through November 14^th, 2010. Other featured photographers in the exhibit include Philip Jones Griffiths, Leonard Freed, W. Eugene and Aileen M. Smith, Susan Meiselas, Mary Ellen Mark, Lauren Greenfield, Larry Towell, and Sebastião Salgado. To see more photos from the exhibit that have been scanned to digital, visit http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/engaged_observers/