Color!

American Photography Transformed

A color photograph of a bedroom with blue walls and furniture, orange goldfish floating throughout, and two White people on the bed: one sleeping and one sitting on the edge.
October 5, 2013–January 5, 2014
Second floor

Color! American Photography Transformed presents the first historical survey of American color photography from the medium’s earliest days to the present. Through 75 key works, the exhibition tells the fascinating tale of photographers’ halting acceptance of color. The exhibition brings visitors into the discussion on how to make color photographs convincingly artful, revealing through rare vintage prints the surprisingly extensive and diverse ways that photographers incorporated color into their work as they sought to shape a language of creativity. By bringing this tale to the present day for the first time, the exhibition uncovers the fundamental change that color has brought to how photographers think about their medium—their replacement of a definition of photography as an essentially documentary practice with a new acceptance of the medium as a way to shape and comment on reality.

Through a wide range of works by established and lesser-known artists, Color! makes clear the surprising breadth and diversity informing creative color photography through the decades leading up to the medium’s full artistic acceptance. By using color to address cultural mores, broaden conceptions of photographic realism, and even to enter into direct conversation with painting, this exhibition concludes that these photographers have transformed photography into a far more flexible tool for reflecting and commenting on life.

Installation Photos

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In the Press

The Wall Street Journal
November 11, 2013

This exhibition was organized by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and is presented by Frost Bank, with additional support provided by Humphrey & Associates, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), XTO Energy, and the Alturas Foundation. Promotional support provided by the Star-Telegram and WFAA.

The exhibition catalogue, published in association with the University of Texas Press, is made possible in part by a grant from the NEA.