A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a photograph can create an entire epic. Two new exhibitions currently on display in the Tufts Galleries, ?¬The Amazing and Immutable?® and ?¬Evidence,?® contain multitudes within their frames.
The exhibitions, which opened last week in the Tisch and Koppelman galleries in Aidekman, are thought-provoking explorations into the topics they capture with the lens. Though they portray vastly different subject-matter ?? ?¬The Amazing and the Immutable?® ranges from the quotidian to the exotic, while ?¬Evidence?® focuses solely on war crimes in Kosovo ?? the two exhibitions tell stories that extend far beyond their snapshots.
?¬The Amazing and the Immutable: Photography from the Collections of Robert Drapkin and Martin Margulies?® brings an enormous collection of disparate works to Tufts. The exhibition consists of over one hundred photographs, some of which date back to the invention of the medium in the mid-1800s.
?¬The Amazing and the Immutable?® might be eccentric in its choices of subjects, but all of its pieces are eye-catching and thought-provoking, forcing visitors to closely consider the images shown in the works.
The exhibition showcases both the human and the unusual. Queen Henrietta and Princess Elizabeth gaze at each other in a photograph dating back to 1860. Nearby, Olafur Eliasson?s ?¬The Glacier Series?® (1999) captures the slow movement of gigantic sheets of ice. In an untitled photograph, a Hopi snake dancer dressed in a traditional outfit, his body streaked with white paint, stands alongside a photograph of naked human bodies, laid out in the grid of an iron bridge.
History lurks in unexpected places in ?¬The Amazing and the Immutable.?® A small, unassuming photograph shows the atomic explosion on Bikini Atoll in 1946. The execution of the Lincoln conspirators is depicted in a series of foreboding images, starting with the empty scaffolding and the arrival of the prisoners, to the placing of ropes around their necks, their hanging, and their final graves.
The pictures also trace the history of photography. Some of the works date back to the Civil War and others are as recent as the 21st century.
The unusual combination of dates and juxtaposition of techniques allows one to compare ?¬Manning the Yards for Lincoln,?® the photograph of an 1861 Navy ship with its crew decorating the masts, to photographs of service people from World War I dressed in red, white, and blue, arrayed in the shapes of United States flags.
?¬Evidence: The Case Against Milosevic,?® the gallery?s other major exhibition this fall, makes its aims much more specific. The exhibition showcases the work of photographer Gary Knight, who traveled to the nations of Albania, Macedonia and Kosovo during the conflict between the Yugoslav forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army in the spring and early summer of 1999.
Knight turns his work into an indictment against Slobodan Milosevic, the former president of Yugoslavia. Milosevic is currently on trial before a United Nations tribunal, where he stands accused of war crimes for sponsoring ?¬ethnic cleansing?® in Kosovo, one of Yugoslavia?s two republics.
?¬Killing is my business, and business is good,?® proclaims graffiti immortalized forever by Knight?s camera.
War crimes are an increasingly common topic in the news media today, but it?s difficult for an isolated American public to understand what they truly mean or to visualize the physical results of them. Knight?s stated goal for the exhibition is to make the idea of war crimes ?¬less abstract?® by using his photography to put a human face on the travesties.
The photographic essay stretches around the Koppelman Gallery, arranged in a series of three ?¬counts?® against Milosevic: deportation, persecution, and murder. The photographs themselves show children crying, a shantytown of tents, and men and women simply waiting, downcast and downtrodden, helpless victims of a brutal war.
The most powerful aspect of Knight?s work is the sheer humanity of it. One section of the exhibition shows hands holding photographs of dead bodies, alongside albums full of smeared, mud-splattered pictures. Shirtless soldiers pose for a picture in the snow, and men, their faces dehumanized by gas masks, work emotionlessly to bury executed civilians.
Though these photographs might be one step further away from the actual event, the human quality in them ?? the very fact that someone was obviously there to witness the deaths and the corpses ?? makes them even more real. People suffered, unbelievably and meaninglessly.
?¬Evidence?® was brought to Tufts by the Institute for Global Leadership. It, along with another photo essay called ?¬Envoys of War?® that is due to open later next month, is part of the celebration honoring the 20th anniversary of the EPIIC program (Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship).
At the heart of ?¬Evidence?® lies its story ?? a story that might be different than those contained within the works of ?¬The Amazing and the Immutable,?® but at its heart, one that is just as epic in scope. Photography is powerful because of its ability to capture images that can make us think, and at that, the two collections both succeed wholeheartedly.
