Description:

Dating from the 1840's to the present, the one-hundred photographs in "Defining Moments" are selected from the Ackland Art Museum's collection of 1,500 photographs. The exhibition is organized according to themes that have historically defined the medium: landscape, nature close-up, architecture, shapes of industry, the city, social documentary, portraits and travel. A section devoted to photographic processes focuses on the variety of ways that images have been created, beginning with the daguerreotype and including the most recent innovations in color photography. Photographers featured include: Bernice Abbott, Brassai, Lewis Carroll, Paul Caponigro, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Tseng Kwong Chi, Harold Edgerton, Walker Evans, Nan Goldin, Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange, Lisette Model and Gary Winogrand. A group of new acquisitions including work by Steven McCurry, Richard Misrach, Toshio Shibata, Gordon Parks and Sebastio Salgado have been integrated into the exhibition's themes.