Some photographers throughout history have embedded themselves in communities that they weren’t from to gain their subjects’ trust and catch them in unguarded moments. Others, however, have insisted on standing apart from their subjects and gained their cooperation anyway. These are the types of photographers that the Amon Carter Museum spotlights in their exhibition Looking In: Photography From the Outside, which opens this weekend.
Some of the works on display are pieces of ethnographic study, such as Laura Gilpin’s pictures among the Navajo people or Paul Strand’s photographs from his sojourn in Mexico, where he worked on several documentary films. Other photos look at insular religious enclaves – Dorothea Lange took pictures of Mormon communities in Utah, while Richard Avedon managed to induce numerous Hutterites to pose for photos even though that Anabaptist sect’s tenets forbade photography and other kinds of technology at the time. The names on the bill qualify this show as a blockbuster for the winter season.
Looking In: Photography From the Outside runs Sat thru May 10 at 3501 Camp Bowie Blvd, FW. Admission is free. Call 817-738-1933.
