The second photography exhibition in Dulwich Picture Gallery's history quietly captivates, tracing the construction of the modern urban environment and the evolution of photographic language. Focusing on 20th-century works from era-defining photographers across US cities, the show begins with pictorialist pioneers Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen, then moves through social documentary masterpieces like Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother and Lewis Hine's portrait of ironworker Victor Gosselin on the Empire State Building.
Master Photographers and a Unique Collection
All the greats are here: Ilse Bing, Mary Ellen Mark, Diane Arbus, Saul Leiter, Richard Avedon, among others. This is partly because the exhibition exclusively presents works from the DNB Savings Bank Foundation collection, limiting curatorial choices but ensuring high quality. A series of short film pieces offer alternative interpretations: a 44-second clip of the White Angel soup kitchen in San Francisco (where Lange made her Great Depression image) shows a lively community with a jovial matron, contrasting the photograph's grim loneliness.
Painterly Roots and Social Protest
Many photographers in the first part trained as painters, evident in their attention to composition and light. Aaron Siskind's Harlem Document reflects friendships with Rothko and Kline, using torn posters and peeling paint to create abstract expression and a new photographic language for social protest. Images of solitary figures against the city's immensity recur, such as Louis Faurer's 1949 Looking at the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center, where an anonymous figure in a fedora faces a building filling the entire frame.
Night Tensions and Urban Weirdness
At night, the city's tensions surface. Weegee's sensationalist snapshots of New York after dark depict murders, accidents, and odd moments—a face jutting from a column, a clock pulling the eye into shadows. Roy DeCarava's Hallway shows an empty tenement corridor lit by a single lightbulb, almost swallowed by shadows, making the viewer feel the claustrophobia. DeCarava finds richness in black, as complex as any hue.
Immigrant Narratives and Photographic Mastery
The exhibition retells the American city narrative through first- or second-generation European immigrant photographers. Photography became a way to deal with the overwhelming city, to make it their own. Garry Winogrand described his process as coming closer to “not existing,” a quote on the exhibition wall. The show highlights quiet-but-dazzling instants like Peter Hujar's Richie, a man standing in rain on a New York street at night, raindrops glimmering on a car windscreen.
Subway Finale and Unstoppable Motion
Moving through the 1960s and 1970s into more intense politics, the exhibition ends with Bruce Davidson's 1980s Leica shots on New York's graffiti-covered subway trains. Here, city life collides across culture, age, race, and class: people go to celebrations, work, fall asleep, fall in love, fight. Crimson sunset skies bathe the carriages in a sensuous glow. The train keeps moving, and the unstoppable city remains in maddening, merciless motion.
Portrait of a City: A Century of American Photography is at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, until 4 October.
