Through the Lens: American Photographs from the Carter Collection

Scott Pavilion S1–3

At the turn of the twentieth century, the once highly technical, specialized process of photography transformed into a readily available and accessible medium, engaged by a growing number of practitioners towards documentary, commercial, and artistic ends. In the decades since, photographers have turned a lens to the United States and its people, bridging the nation’s vast and varied landscape with a visual record of communities, places, and historic events. Through the Lens presents a selection of more than fifty works from the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, demonstrating the aesthetic potential, documentary value, and social power of photography.

The exhibition encompasses a range of approaches and genres—including landscape, street photography, photojournalism, and portraiture—highlighting a range of images and artists that contributed to and challenged the construction of a national photographic tradition. Images of prominent national figures and decisive historical moments are featured alongside monumental landscapes by photographers such as Ansel Adams and Laura Gilpin, innovations in color by William Eggleston and Eliot Porter, candid documents of American life by Robert Frank and Gordon Parks, and idiosyncratic portraits by Deana Lawson and Alec Soth. Presented in the nation’s 250th year, Through the Lens features a plurality of perspectives across a century of images, illustrating the role of photography in shaping a collective vision of the United States and its histories.

Through the Lens: American Photographs from the Carter Collection is organized by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art.

Pictured: Laura Gilpin (American, 1891–1979), White Sands, 1945, gelatin silver print, 7 5/8 × 9 9/16 in. (42.6 × 50.2 cm), Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, Bequest of the artist, P1979.123.144, © 1979 Amon Carter Museum of American Art