Revisions: Celebrating 50 Years of the UMBC Photography Collections

The Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery presents Revisions: Celebrating Fifty Years of the UMBC Photography Collections, featuring highlights and lesser-known gems from UMBC’s considerable photography holdings. Looking back at a half-century of collecting, the exhibition offers thematic groupings and visual juxtapositions of photographs from the nineteenth century to the present. The display asks viewers to approach the history of photography with fresh eyes.

Among the artists featured are Berenice Abbott, Diane Arbus, Cary Beth Cryor, Darryl Curran, Judy Dater, Robert Frank, Roland Freeman, Ralph Gibson, Lewis Hine, Lisette Model, and Alfred Stieglitz.

The Photography Collections at UMBC were inaugurated in 1974 with the donation of a print of Sun Rays-Paula, Berlin by the eminent American artist Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946). During the ensuing five decades, holdings have expanded to include over 3 million photographs ranging from proto-photographic materials to glass and film negatives and contemporary prints.

Today, the Photography Collections illustrate the variety of formal, technological, and conceptual strategies employed throughout the medium’s nearly 200 year history. Revisions celebrates the significant milestone of a half-century of collecting photography at UMBC. Highlights and lesser-known gems spanning the nineteenth century to the present showcase the breadth of the collections.

Photographs are believed to be windows onto the world, faithfully replicating objective reality, hence their use as scientific and legal evidence. But with the power to harness light and shadow, suspend or extend time, and even disrupt sequences of events, the medium has the ability to alter how we perceive reality.

In addition to showcasing photographs by some of photography’s historical masters, the exhibition also includes contemporary photographs by Shannon Collis and Liz Donadio, Tommy Kha, Devin Morris, and Irina Rozovsky. Highlights from recent gifts to UMBC’s photography collections are also on view, including selections from a group of fifty photographs by Brett Weston, an archive of prints and manuscript materials by Stephen Marc, a collection of prints and digital images by Baltimore-based photographer Jim Burger, and the Kerry Coppin Collection, an archive of the late photographer’s career, featuring negatives, contact sheets, prints, digital, and manuscript materials.

An opening reception and curatorial tour will be held on Thursday, September 12, at 5 p.m.

Visitor Information

Admission is free. For complete driving and parking information, please visit here.

Library Gallery hours:
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday: 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Thursday: 10 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday: 12 p.m. – 5 p.m.

Image: Kerry Coppin, Untitled from Materia Obscura/ Dark Matter, 2003. Inkjet print. The Kerry Coppin Collection, UMBC (Coll355).