Lee Friedlander, Monsey, New York, 1963. Gelatin silver print. Yale University Art Gallery. © Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
With the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy approaching on Friday, November 22nd, the Yale University Art Gallery’s new exhibition, A Great Crowd Had Gathered: JFK in the 1960s, is both moving and timely. I had the privilege of meeting the curator, Marisa Nakasone, who was so generous as to give me a tour of the exhibition that will be up until March 30th.
Nakasone, the Marcia Brady Tucker Senior Fellow of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Yale University Art Gallery, explained that the exhibition follows the gallery’s collaborative effort on the recently published, JFK: A Photographic Memoir by Lee Friedlander. She also noted that all but one of the exhibition’s photographs are from the permanent collection at the gallery – many of which are Friedlander’s. What is so distinctive about Friedlander’s photographs, from which Nakasone carefully and deliberately chose only a small fraction to display, is how oblique they are. In fact, the sole photograph that was loaned to the YUAG for the exhibition, taken by Robert Frank of JFK and Richard Nixon in 1960, is also the only photograph that shows JFK’s face directly. Because JFK’s visage is one among the most iconic in American history, the exclusion of it from an exhibition commemorating him is as jarring as it is purposeful.
As its title, A Great Crowd Had Gathered, implies, the exhibition focuses on JFK through the public’s perception of him throughout the 1960s. It features only photographers who were active in the 1960s and is arranged almost entirely in a chronological order that matches the corresponding timeline of years and events written above the pieces themselves. The timeline articulates the most critical events between in the 1960s and serves as a useful contextualization of the photographs below it.
Augmenting the exhibition’s momentousness, A Great Crowd Had Gathered is housed in room that is comparably much smaller and more secluded than other exhibitions and is one that lacks the natural lighting present within the rest of the gallery. The photographs are all framed by simple, modern frames in either black or white and are hung on one of the four navy blue walls at eye level. These unique, defining characteristics separate this exhibition and give it an enhanced severity and gravity.
Garry Winogrand, Democratic National Convention, Los Angeles, 1960, printed 1992. Gelatin silver print. Yale University Art Gallery. © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Although impossible to focus on isolated photographs because they are all so dependent upon each other and form a cohesive storyline when viewed together, there some selections made by curator Nakasone that are especially compelling. The first and last, by virtue of being at either end of the exhibition, are fundamentally noteworthy and worth highlighting. Both of these photographs were taken by Garry Winogrand, a well known and highly praised street photographer in the 1960s with many other photographs on display in the exhibition. The first photograph, taken from behind, shows JFK’s address at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles in 1960. In the photograph, JFK’s body is silhouetted by the camera lights as he speaks to the public on television. A television on the ground behind him shows JFK as the American people see him, yet the photograph makes clear his audience is, in actuality, an empty one of cameras and a stage. The paradoxical nature of this television broadcast, a result of the two possible audiences to whom it can be argued he is addressing, sets an ambiguous stage for the exhibition itself. There is no forced message, but there is instead an open interpretation and one that the viewer has to make for himself.
Ambiguity is a recurring theme that permeates throughout the exhibition. Many photographs are equivocal in terms of their subject matter, composition, etc. and the tone of the photographs is often unclear. The doubt the photographs stimulate is empowering, however, giving the viewer the capacity to arrive at his own conclusions regarding JFK and his perception both now and in the 1960s. The final photograph, taken in Cape Canaveral, Florida at the John F. Kennedy Space Center in 1969, conveys a much more optimistic tone than do many of the photographs that precede it. As Nakasone explained, one of JFK’s major goals was to put a man on the moon and this photograph, after the launch of Apollo 11 that would achieve this, is of a generally hopeful tone. Despite his assassination before Apollo 11’s launch, JFK’s legacy is still in mind with the realization of the goal of putting a man on the moon and, more explicitly, with the space center that is named after him. As is consistent with his previous photographs, Winogrand features the reactions and moods of the public. Those watching the launch are either waving their hands with excitement or, like Winogrand, capturing the moment with their cameras. Despite the unfortunate, harsh reality of JFK’s death and his inability to share this historic moment with his people, the launch of Apollo 11 denotes the godly transcendence of JFK as an icon and historical figure. The highly emotional response – usually an amalgam of sorrow, patriotism, and promise – that JFK’s image often prompts is also impressively and delicately achieved by this exhibition.
Garry Winogrand, Dealey Plaza, Dallas, 1964. Gelatin silver print. Yale University Art Gallery. © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Other photographs in the exhibition include newswire photographs that capture historic moments, simultaneously spontaneous and staged at the start and development of modern media coverage, as well as Diane Arbus’ photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother, Marguerite, commissioned for Esquire’s May 1964 issue with an article featuring the letter correspondence between her and her son. It is the obliqueness of each photograph that makes them both individually and collectively powerful; they force a closer look and a less certain interpretation that brings the viewer closer to the exhibition through his interaction with it.
About midway though my tour, an older man asked if he could interrupt us to offer his own perspective. He not only expressed how impressive and striking the exhibition was to him, but also gave a detailed and incredibly precise and account of the memory he had of where he was and how he reacted when he first learned of JFK’s assassination. He also told us – something I knew to be true from hearing my mother talk about it – that everyone alive at the time could offer a similar story. Nakasone, a young woman who was not alive at the time of JFK’s assassination, had a difficult and profound job in curating A Great Crowd Had Gathered: JFK in the 1960s. JFK’s legacy and the memory of his assassination are incredibly sensitive matters for much of the American population, thus Nakasone is accountable to all these people. Additionally, she has the responsibility of providing those who, like herself, were not alive at the time of JFK’s assassination, a perspective of the public perception of this event and of JFK before and after it. She masterfully and tactfully accomplishes these two seemingly impossible tasks in an exhibition that is as informative as it is enjoyable.
On Thursday, November 21st at 5:30 pm at the YUAG, one day prior to the 50th anniversary of the assassination of JFK, there will be a film screening of Bruce Conner’s Report and Television Assassination. The film screening is open to the general public and will be co-hosted by Curator Marisa Nakasone and Professor J.D. Connor. Please see the link below for more details about the event.