Every child has done it. Scanning through the tightly-packed shelves of yellow, bound magazines that your parents so religiously collected, hoping to pick out a volume of National Geographic filled with pictures of wild animals, exotic places and even bizarrely dressed, but usually undressed, people. If it is the undressed people you still want, you won’t find much of it here, but otherwise the Newseum’s current exhibit can offer you plenty of striking shots from around the world.
Housing an exhibit entitled National Geographic’s Women Photographers: A Different Focus, Arlington’s Newseum recognizes the work done by those females behind the lens. Despite the name, this collection is a far cry from a feminist plight for recognition in the arts and visual media. The exhibit easily appeals to the photographer and the ordinary person alike. The selected female photographers manage to capture themes of exciting ventures to intimate emotions with photographs covering a wide range of subject matter and visual interests.
The portfolios of five selected photographers arrange the exhibit into five featured divisions also including the work of several other female photographers. Two of the most outstanding selections, due to their impeccible ability to tell life’s stories, include Jodi Cobb’s “Insight” and Sisse Brimberg’s “Incandescent Moment.” Although every section has its own focus, the recurring theme found in each calls for recognition of a successful balance of a demanding career, family and a strong sense of femininity in a traditionally male-dominated world.
The statement this collection attempts and successfully displays is the versatility of experiences and arenas in which only female photographers can gain access. Whether it is working behind the scenes at a fashion show or a close encounter with a veiled woman from the Middle East, the ordinary American viewer is instantly faced with another world unlike anything experienced on a daily basis. A stretched description might categorize the exhibit as the world through a woman’s eyes, but that would be too narrow, as many of the photographs include non-gender specific images. More appropriately, this collection focuses on the oft-overlooked moments of humanity found in all cultures.
The appropriate start to the exhibit, photographer Joanna Pinnero’s close-up of a Mali mother and her two children napping during a sandstorm, provides a warm look at family in other parts of the world. Lynn Johnson’s more gut-wrenching photograph shows a repairman hanging from an antenna cable atop of the John Hancock building with the entire city of Chicago looming thousands of feet below. The exhibit also shows that there is substance to these deliberately composed shots. Does the faint shadow of a dancing ballerina on the wooden floor represent the thoughts of the sitting dancer in the foreground? Possibly.
Filling only a gallery space separated into five sections, the Newseum’s exhibit seemed rather condensed, leaving onlookers with a whetted appetite and ready for more. But considering that the admission is free, maybe this is the advertising ploy used by the museum to entice patrons to file into the gift shop and buy the $40.00 hardcover of the entire collection. If that is the case, then it works.
A Different Focus opens a window into a unique grouping of National Geographic female photographers and their photographs. A cultural safari of sorts, the Newseum’s present exhibit has surely saved one of its best for last.
The Newseum is located at 1101 Wilson Blvd. in Rosslyn. Admission is free.
