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.