Admission is free.
The Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona is celebrating its 50th anniversary with “Picture Party: Celebrating the Collection at 50,” an exhibition showcasing more than 100 iconic images, recent acquisitions and archival objects from its world-renowned collection.
Opening May 3, the exhibition offers a fresh, dynamic experience that invites visitors to explore photography in new and unexpected ways in the Alice Chaiten Baker Interdisciplinary Gallery.
Departing from a traditional chronological or thematic structure, “Picture Party” encourages a more open-ended and interactive experience, co-curated by Chief Curator Rebecca Senf and Emilia Mickevicius, Norton Family Assistant Curator, with Emily Una Weirich, Public Services Manager.
One example of this approach is a group of nine landscape prints spanning nearly a century, which together explore themes of abstraction and realism, the expressive power of natural elements, and the impact of technology on the land. Another is a salon-style wall of more than 20 portraits, inviting fresh connections across people, places, bodies, cultures, and eras.
The exhibition brings together works by renowned photographers – including the CCP co-founder Ansel Adams, Harry Callahan, Tseng Kwong Chi, Imogen Cunningham, Roy DeCarava, Robert Heinecken, Graciela Iturbide, Susan Meiselas, Minor White, and Carrie Mae Weems – alongside emerging artists, creating unexpected juxtapositions that spark fresh perspectives.
In addition to prints, the exhibition will also feature interesting, archival objects from the collection, like:
- Ansel Adams’ dodging and burning tools: These handmade tools help illustrate the way a photographer crafts a gelatin silver print. Includes the tool Adams used on his famous black-and-white image, “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico.”
- David Hume Kennerly’s helmet: Dating from his Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Vietnam War, a poignant reminder of the bodily risk assumed by photojournalists covering conflict.
- Lola Álvarez Bravo’s sunglasses, Edward Weston’s wedding ring, W. Eugene Smith’s fingerprints: A reminder that the photographers represented in the Center’s collection were and are real people.
- Southworth and Hawes daguerreotype: Among the earliest photographs owned by the Center for Creative Photography (19th century), from the Boston portrait studio of Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes.
