American Moments

In celebration of recent major gifts, The Phillips Collection presents for the first time a major photography exhibition drawn exclusively from the museum’s permanent collection. American Moments: Photographs from The Phillips Collection features more than 130 photographs by 33 artists that showcase the strength and variety of the museum’s fast-growing photography collection through examples of Modernism, street photography, documentary expression, and photojournalism.

These remarkable new additions guide the broad themes of the exhibition. The city became one of America’s most potent symbols after World War I, and photographs by Berenice Abbott, Margaret Bourke-White, Lewis Hine, Clarence John Laughlin, and Paul Strand, among others, capture its sense of wonder. Their abstractions of buildings and machinery—tightly cropped compositions taken at unconventional angles—evoke signs of invention and industry. Abbott documented the transformation of New York City into a modern urban center with impressive photographs of the skyscrapers that replaced older buildings. Louis Faurer’s bustling street scenes and crowded spaces lit by movie marquees offer a different point of view, capturing the energy and nightlife of Times Square. Other images explore the expressive potential of land and nature; an inspiration to many of the great Modernist photographers including Ansel Adams, Harry Callahan, Alfred Stieglitz, Brett Weston, and Edward Weston.

The exhibition highlights photographs of urban and rural scenes taken on travels across America for the federal government, as magazine commissions, and as private work. Sent to the field to frame images of middle-class life during and after World War II, Bubley, drawn to the world of the everyday, responded with photographs of women at work. Documentary photographers Jack Delano, Walker Evans, and Life magazine contributor Alfred Eisenstaedt also recorded the changing face of the workforce during this time. Traveling along Route 1, Abbott took photos from Maine to Florida, expertly capturing the essence of small-town America, while William Christenberry, Bruce Davidson, Eisenstaedt, and Lee Friedlander transformed vernacular subjects into engaging social commentaries. Portraits by Arnold Newman offer a glimpse into the character of the artist. Other photographs show intimate scenes of familial connection inspired by the snapshot and moving images that broadly consider issues of identity, representation, and memory such as those in Davidson’s East 100th Street series.

These gifts—many on view at the museum for the first time—distill key narratives taken during a time of immense change and transformation in the United States, and enrich the museum’s commitment to modern and contemporary photography.