“Presence: The Photography Collection of Judy Glickman Lauder,” a traveling show featuring about 100 photographs by some 50 artists, will touch down at the Southampton Arts Center on Saturday and remain on view there through Sept. 27. The exhibition has been co-organized by the American Federation of the Arts and the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, and curated by Anjuli Lebowitz, the Portland Museum’s curator of photography.
“Presence” includes photographs by some of the most influential photographers of the 20th century, among them Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Imogen Cunningham, Danny Lyon, Susan Meiselas, Gordon Parks, Joyce Tenneson, and James Van Der Zee, all of whose work engages with the human spirit, according to the A.F.A.
The show features portraits, landscapes, photojournalism, and cityscapes that represent some of the last century’s most important developments in the medium, from Pictorialism and social documentary photography to Surrealism and street photography. Among the other artists who have contributed to the history of photography are Nan Goldin, Graciela Iturbide, Lotte Jacobi, Alma Lavenson, and Lauder, who is herself an acclaimed photographer as well as a philanthropist and writer.
“I hope that visitors are moved by the emotional presence and lasting power of these images, just as I was,” said Lauder. “Photography connects us to history while reminding us that we are a part of its ongoing story. It has the power to tell authentic, compassionate stories about what it means to be human.”
Lauder’s father, Irving Bennett Ellis, a Pictorialist photographer whose work is included in the show, recorded her growth from infancy to adulthood, an experience that triggered her own love of the medium. She acquired her first professional camera in the 1970s, and took a special interest in cityscapes and sites in Europe related to the Holocaust. Her work is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
All of the photographs on view are promised gifts to the Portland Museum of Art. From Southampton, the show will travel to the Sarasota Art Museum, the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, S.C., and the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, “Presence: The Photography Collection of Judy Glickman Lauder” (Aperture, 2022), an overview of the entire Lauder collection.
