A Literacy of Images: Nancy Newhall and the Art of Photography

Best known for writing text to accompany the photographs of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, Nancy Newhall was also a widely published writer on photography, conservation, and American culture. During her marriage to Beaumont Newhall, former director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, NY, she substituted for him during his World War II military service. Newhall initiated a kind of “literacy of images,” which this exhibition explores through her writing, in relationship to the actual photographs by the artists she championed. This is a long overdue homage to a woman who devoted her life to photography largely through writing. She gave modern language a new way of looking at this dynamic medium.