Ed Sappin | Philanthropy & Community

Giving & Volunteering

Traveling Exhibits at the ICP Museum

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The International Center for Photography, which I’ve written about before, showcases exhibitions that travel to and from venues worldwide. Because of this “traveling exhibition” feature, ICP’s exhibits are worldly and intermittent; since the photographs featured tour the world, they are viewed by people of all ages, ethnicities and nationalities. This makes it all the more impactful to get a glimpse as New York takes its turn.

At the ICP there is currently a traveling exhibition called The Mexican Suitcase, a collection gives the public a chance to experience rare images recovered from negatives from the Spanish Civil War. In 2007, three boxes of 4,500 35mm negatives considered lost since 1939 arrived at the ICP. The photographs were taken by three photographers, Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, and Chim (David Seymour.) These men — who lived in Paris and worked in Spain — laid the foundation for modern war photography.

Their coverage of the Spanish Civil War is considered uniquely innovative and passionate — The New York Times has a great review of the exhibit for those that want to know a bit more. The article describes the lives and struggles of the artists and the story the exhibit tells of their lives and works. Described are the three boxes, “timeworn but intact,” a tattered telegram, notebooks, and many images of everyday Spanish life during the war. Here’s an excerpt:

This total immersion, made possible by increasingly hand-held cameras, generated huge numbers of images. And that’s what you get in this show: hundreds and hundreds of tiny pictures lined up edge to edge on contact sheets to create a display of a kind that museumgoers rarely encounter but that photographers see all the time: squint-inducing, unedited, in progress.

Another traveling exhibit, which unfortunately ended on July 31, is Capa in Color, a glimpse at the famous photojournalist’s colored photography, most of which captured life postwar. The exhibit showcased over 100 contemporary color prints that demonstrate how Capa adapted to color photography and a new postwar sensibility.

Seeing as the traveling exhibits inherently change up, it’s worth checking in every so often to see what’s featured. Some exhibits are only briefly showcased, while others, like the Mexican Suitcase, span four months or more. If you’re a photography enthusiast like me, there’s a good chance you’ll be delighted. After all, photography is an artform that documents a singular moment. It makes sense that exhibits would be transient, too.

Pushing the Boundaries of Photography: The New ICP Museum

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On Thursday, June 22, the relocated International Center of Photography opened at its new home in New York City at 250 Bowery. As a photographer, the opening of this museum has been on my radar for a while now, and from what I’ve heard it does not disappoint. That is, unless you’re expecting traditional photography. The first exhibit is decidedly much edgier than that.

Called “Public, Private, Secret,” the New York Times says that this exhibit shows how the ICP has been renovated for the so-called “selfie age.”  In its ultra-modern 11,000 square foot space, with an all-glass street-level facade (erasing any inside privacy) it would seem that the architecture matches the artwork in this respect.

Organized by Charlotte Cotton, the museum’s first curator in residence, “Public, Private, Secret” explores the way that public image collides with self identity. This, I think, is very fitting in an age where everyone with a smartphone has become a photographer and social branding expert in their own right. Rather than treating the everyday selfie as art, the work showcased is elevated and conceptual: cameras capture museumgoers and turn their images into a pixelated display, art is created out of found footage from social media, to name just two examples.

The ICP’s Bowery debut comes after a move from Midtown Manhattan, its home for many years. The museum has an interesting history: it was originally founded in 1974 by photographer Cornell Capa, who was concerned with upkeeping the legacy of what he called “concerned photography” — photography with a humanitarian impulse bent on having social impact on the world. Capa started ICP after leading the legendary Magnum Photos. Since ICP’s founding, it’s become one of the world’s leading institutions dedicated solely to photography and the visual arts.

The concerned photographer expresses “genuine human feeling predominates over commercial cynicism or disinterested formalism.” This opening exhibit is a portrayal of human feelings as they exist in a digital era, where the line between public and private is as thin as you want it to be, and sometimes erased altogether.  

But what I find especially great about ICP is that it’s more than just a museum. I took my first formal photography courses there when the museum was based on the Upper East Side. Throughout its history, ICP has engaged the surrounding community, including schools and public programs, and photography is brought to the forefront instead of treated as an afterthought as you sometimes see in art museums. I can’t wait to visit ICP in its new home, as it continues to break boundaries and impact visitors through careful curation, outreach, and innovation.