Prosaic Images of a Manifested Culture.

Tagged as presenting a predictably bleak view of America's realization of it's Manifest Destiny, "Into the Sunset: Photography's Image of the American West" generates provocative and amusing conversations between the images throughout.  The medium of photography is seen as incidental, reflecting the coincidence between the invention and development of photography and the rise of the west, a highly fantasized, but real, industrialized area.  Photography of the west served as empirical documentation and a visionary expression of a world unexplored, opening the doors to a world offering seemingly infinite possibilities, allowing transcontinental expansion.  Some argue that the photography following World War II transforms into cliche documentation of the understated indictments of modern civilization, producing images only good enough for the tourism and real estate industries.  Equivalently, the images of people subsequent to World War II are less admirable than those preceding the war, for the photographs degrade the subjects into pathetic, disadvantageous men and women of a place that should be portrayed in the light of unprecedented freedom for individual expression and experimental behavior.  The stark contrast between the images of people dated before the war and those that are dated after comes from the heroic nature required to endure and persevere in a newly established area.  The problem that arises is whether contemporary photography should capture something better, leaving failure and disappointment in the shadows. 

The veracity is that the quandary falls with the lack of meritorious subject matter to be captured; photographers are only failing because critics are looking for the awe-inspiring image that the viewer diagnosed with stendhal syndrome.  Until the public provides artists with subjects that are valuable, we are stuck celebrating the lackluster American culture.

"Into the Sunset: Photography's Image of the American West" is a resonant exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.