At the National Gallery

[Greg Blank]

http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/darkroominfo.shtm

Anyone in Washington DC area or scheduled to be there before Mid March should stop by and have a look. One of the included photographers Joan Cassis I have previously printed some of her work for her relatives.

Joan was a talented photographer that past away in her mid 30's in the 1980's. In the last 7-10 years her work has just begun to be acquired and appreciated by the Corcoran, The Womens museum, Smithsonian Museum and and Philiadelphia museum of fine art. The work of hers that I have personally seen encompasses some very unique handcolor prints and straight black and white human interest of subjects she cared for as a Baltimore Social worker.

[Kirk Gittings]

Thanks for that. i was not familiar with her work. That "Sharon in a party hat" is mesmerizing.

[Greg Blank]

Kirk;

Her work is extensive, I've only seen a small
tip of the iceberg.

The May King is one of my favorite images
and this one
http://clara.nmwa.org/index.php?g=detail&object_id=912

Thanks for that. i was not familiar with her work. That "Sharon in a party hat" is mesmerizing.

[Scott Davis]

While I don't specifically recall Joan Cassis' work at the In the Darkroom show, I will give it further props by recommending the show as a whole. This is an interesting survey of the history of wet darkroom processes from the daguerreotype and calotype processes through to modern color. Where it falls down is in the modern color department - perhaps 80% of the show is devoted to black-and-white processes of various sorts, with multiple examples of each type. With the color, however, there are major gaps in process examples, in most cases just one or two examples of each process, and often odd curatorial decisions leading to weak examples of the color works of the artists represented and not the best artists of the genre either.

A much better show is up the street a few blocks at the National Portrait Gallery-

Faces of the Frontier: Photographic Portraits from the American West, 1845-1924

This show is probably the best photography exhibit I've seen in the past five years. It encompasses a good two hundred give or take images, ranging from a whole-plate daguerreotype of President James K Polk through to silver-gelatin promo shots of Hollywood stars in the 1920s. I saw the show back in November with several friends, and we were of the same mind that the NPG is trying to challenge the NGA for the title of premier photography venue in DC (and succeeding, I might add). The show will be up in DC through January 24, but moves to San Diego from March through June, and then to Tulsa, Oklahoma from October to January 2011.

http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/frontier for more info.