Learn the ABCs of Photography

To celebrate his fifth anniversary as the Norton Museum of Art’s curator of photography, Charles Stainback wanted a way to show off the breadth and depth of the museum’s permanent photography collection. It’s a lot of

material to sort through – photography encompasses some 40 percent of the Norton’s overall collection. An all-inclusive look at the history of photography would be difficult to accomplish and maybe even a little dry. So, as a spin on the tired old “Best of” survey, Stainback approached the project alphabetically, limiting himself to one photographer for each letter of the alphabet and hanging the results in a clockwise motion from A to Z.

The problem is, the Norton had no works in the collection from artists with an “X” or “Z” surname, prompting Stainback to buy a couple of works to fill out the show. “I said, ‘find me choices for X and Z, but you can’t tell them why you’re doing this, because it would be too embarrassing,’” Stainback told his staff.

But the resulting exhibition, titled “From A to Z: Great Photographs From the Norton Collection,” shows no signs of any of the works being thrown together at the last minute; they are in no way inferior to the Ansel Adams and Edward Weston images that surround them. While not intended to be comprehensive, the exhibition charts everything from the historical minimalism of Charles Jones’ 1902 “Bean Counter” to the modern, full-color, overblown complexity of my favorite photo in the exhibition, Chen Qiulin’s “Ellisis’s Series

#3:” a staged juxtaposition of a woman applying makeup by a smeared mirror, in front of an ominous nuclear power plant.

A few works in the show tend to define eras and cultures, from Arthur Rothstein’s endlessly reproduced “Dust Storm” (a painterly snapshot of a rural family fleeing a natural disaster) to Bill Owens’ “Reagan on TV, 1971” (The Gipper on television in a suburban home, framed by a Christmas tree, presents and religious tableaux), while other photos take on a more elusive, existential bent. Jerry N. Uelsmann’s “April is the Cruelest Month” is like an abstract painting – Escherian, mind-warping and gravitationally subversive – while Elger Esser’s empty landscape shot “Tracy-sur-Mer” creates a staggering sense of loneliness and isolation within and beyond the frame. Andreas Gefeller creates a similar effect in her digitally enhanced “Untitled, Miami,” a hyper-realist gaze at the sand of Miami Beach, whose infinite footprints suggest the human content that is hauntingly absent from the image itself.

According to Stainback, the response to the show has been “phenomenal,” particularly regarding the wall text about each photographer that accompanies his or her work. “I didn’t realize the educational aspect of it,” he says. “People can really engage it.”

“From A to Z” is on display through June 19 at the Norton Museum of Art, 1451 S. Olive Ave., West Palm Beach. Admission is $12 adults, $5 for visitors age 13 to 21 and free for members and children under 13. Call 561/832-5196 or visit www.norton.org.