George Fiske, Galen Clark on Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park, ca.1900, from Special Collections
As part of a student-curated intervention into the USC Fisher Museum's Four Rooms with a View exhibition, David Evans Frantz writes about the representation of the Western landscape in work by C.C. Pierce, George Fiske, and other photographers he encountered while exploring the USC Libraries' special collections. re:View, the student-curated intervention, opens on March 27 at USC Fisher Museum.
As Frantz explains, re:View will display historic photographs by Pierce and Fiske alongside artists' books by Ed Ruscha. In addition to exploring representations of the American landscape, Frantz writes that these works call attention to the troubled history of "the assimilation of photography into the art museum." The material histories of the individual photographs and works of art are also significant for re:View. Frantz writes,
It is also my hope that displaying the images outside “the frame” (not that they could escape the greater frame of the museum) will highlight certain particularities often suppressed in museum settings. Some of the photographs selected for exhibition clearly show wear as objects of use: some are frayed, bent, or have marks on the print. Some images are printed on different photo papers: while many are on a typical glossy surface, others are on thinner, tinted paper or thick board. Still others show a considerable amount of fading and deterioration.
Similarly, the books by Ed Ruscha also show signs of wear and use. The page creases of Every Building on the Sunset Strip have yellowed. The pages of Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles are close to falling out of the book’s spine. These minor idiosyncrasies, these small marks of use, will be a subtle reminder that the books and photographs had alternate lives prior to entering the library and (for a short while) the museum.