Transgressions and Amplifications: Mixed-Media Photography of the 1960s and 1970s

At a time when the black-and-white camera image dominated the field of photography, a small cadre of American artists began developing new approaches to the medium that brought photography into conversation with other art forms. Against the backdrop of the Vietnam conflict and social justice movements, these artists incorporated historic photo processes but also printmaking, collage, and new technologies such as photocopying and Verifax, even bringing photography off the wall with books and sculptural pieces.

Transgressions and Amplifications: Mixed-Media Photography of the 1960s and 1970s examines this inventive work as it developed into the 1960s and 1970s and reinvigorated the vocabulary of photography. Several key practitioners settled in New Mexico, making them important touchstones for the museum’s collection and reinforcing the state’s reputation as a place for creative innovation. Among the artists with work in the exhibition are Thomas F. Barrow, Darryl Curran, Robert Fichter, Betty Hahn, Robert Heinecken, Joan Lyons, Jerry McMillan, Joyce Neimanas, Bea Nettles, Keith A. Smith, Michael Stone, and Alex Traube. Much of the art is drawn from the museum’s collection with significant loans from the University of New Mexico Art Museum and additional pieces from the Center for Creative Photography, George Eastman Museum, and other generous lenders.

Anne Wilkes Tucker – Not Women Artists, Artists

Eminent photo-historian Anne Wilkes Tucker, curator emerita of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, speaks in conjunction with the exhibition Transgressions and Amplifications: Mixed-media Photography of the 1960s and 1970s. Tucker addresses the challenges of being female in the art world in the 1970s and discusses various image series and limited-edition books of artists Joan Lyons, Bea Nettles, and Marcia Resnick. Each woman used their own lives to tell very different stories of home turf, dreams, memories and urban fiction.