Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2008 - (Page 22)

www.hnoc.org largest on record to date, produced 4.65 million bales — of which 2.25 million passed through the port of New Orleans. With few exceptions, Edwards’s photographs take “commerce” as their subject matter. They do so explicitly, through views of the port and levee. And they do so implicitly, through views of public and private edifices, across the city, built figuratively upon a foundation of sugar and cotton, banking and insurance. More difficult to fit into a context of commerce are two wonderful environmental portraits (see on this page) that begin to put a human face on the city. Steam power, a defining technology of the Industrial Revolution, serves Edwards as another principal subject. The scale of its use (the sheer size and cost of the equipment, the need for a full-time specialized mechanic to minister to the boiler, gauges, pipes, and pistons) was suited to commercial operations, but had not yet made great inroads into personal, domestic life. Photographs of steamboats and steamships, railroad engines, and firefighting equipment marshal evidence — from all corners of the city — of the harnessing of this vaporous servant. Other images make their case through suggestion. Photographs of bales of cotton and hogsheads of sugar, massed along the levee, imply — even when they do not show — the presence of steam-powered cotton presses and sugar houses. right: American Aloe or Century Plant, between 1858 and 1861, a salted paper photoprint by Jay Dearborn Edwards. below: Magnolia Tree [Japanese Plum or Loquat Tree], between 1858 and 1861, a salted paper photoprint by Jay Dearborn Edwards. Nearly all of the Edwards photographs in this exhibition are related to images sold at auction in London in 1982. The Swiss consignor, when asked about the provenance of the photographs, said that his great-grandfather had collected them while traveling in America. Perhaps the selection reflects purposeful inquiry; perhaps the images simply appealed as souvenirs. Regardless, we must acknowledge this 19th-century “curator” whose taste in photography has shaped our understanding of J.D. Edwards. Edwards’s photographs, in round numbers, are now 150 years old. It is high time to take “a closer look” at the world they depict. To this end, each image is paired, in the galleries, with a complementary — or contrapuntal — item. In some cases, the exhibition curators have yielded to the temptation to contrast “then and now” views of the New Orleans cityscape. But in other cases, the content (or subtext) of the photographs suggests other, less obvious, comparisons. Each pairing functions as a portal into history and reminds us of the open-ended narrative potential of photography. Gone, perhaps, is the sense of sheer wonder shared by photography’s earliest audiences. But the photographs of J.D. Edwards still inspire us, as viewers, to see his world, and ours, anew. The exhibition is free and open to the public and continues on view through Friday, February 20, 2009. —John H. Lawrence Director of Museum Programs 22 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Fall 2008 http://www.hnoc.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2008

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2008 Contents Friends Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities New Orleans Immortelle The Historic New Orleans Collection Highland-Fairfield: The Historic Heart of Shreveport The Ogden Museum of Southern Art Perils of the Mississippi River Louisiana Foodways Harvest of Life King Oliver: The Forgotten King of Jazz Louisiana Architecture Jazz Notes Louisiana State Museum Eye of the Storm Louisiana Association of Museums Soul Resin Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2008

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