Eye Wonder: Photography from the Bank of America Collection

Eye Wonder: Photography from the Bank of America Collection

February 18, 2011 - May 22, 2011 

National Museum of Women in the Arts

1250 New York Ave.  NW

Washington DC

By selecting offbeat subjects, shooting intense close-ups, or manipulating focus and color, the artists featured in Eye Wonder have created dreamy and often haunting photographic images. As part of the modern or postmodern eras, these artists have understood that photographs offer only an illusion of reality and that the medium is as subjective a means of expression as other visual art forms, music, or literature. Highlighting photographs created from 1865 to the present, the exhibition displays a rich diversity of subjects and styles that demonstrate the artists’ firm grasp of technique. The works in Eye Wonder depict everything from landscapes, seascapes, and skyscrapers; to artists, writers, and dancers; to vegetables, flowers, and silverware. By applying dynamic techniques, the photographers suggest evocative narratives that may be read in infinite ways.

Drawn from Bank of America’s renowned collection of international photography, Eye Wonder features more than 100 works by a wide array of artists, including Berenice Abbott, Margaret Bourke-White, Rineke Dijkstra, Gisèle Freund, Candida Höfer, Graciela Iturbide, Dorothea Lange, and Hellen van Meene.