Las Vegas, from “Master Prints Volume I”

Description

Postwar street photographers such as Elliott Erwitt often revel in suggesting subtle visual ironies betweee people and inanimate objects. His somber image of a young boy in Colorado, whose right eye is positioned behind the center of a shattered window, associate the fragility of the glass with the vulnerability of youth. In contrast, in Las Vegas, Erwitt photographs the interaction between a stoic woman and a lifelike, cowboy-shaped slot machine through a glass door labelled "PUSH." In doing so, Erwitt renders the kitschy artifice and disorienting mirrored spaces of a Las Vegas casino simultaneously fantastical and humorous.

Danny Lyon emphasizes the humanity of his subjects while at the same time immersing himself in their world. In his 1965 image of anmother and son hesitantly smiling through a car window, Lyon's reflection in the glass fuses the image of the photographer and those of his captive subjects.

Joel Meyerowitz takes a more aloof approach to documentary photography in his image of the Catskill Mountain resort where he worked as a waiter as an undergraduate, later returning as a newly minted professional photographer. Frames within frames are a key pictorial device for Meyerowitz, who here uses a three-paned glass wall to divide his poolside picture into a grid of symmetrical bays, interrupted by an unexpected lone foot rising above the central lounge chair to catch the sun.