The Photograph as Artifice. November 1 - December 1, 1978.

Grossmont College Art Gallery, 1978. By John Upton. California State University, Long Beach, 1978. Exhibit Catalog. Photographers: Felix Bonfils; William Henry Jackson; Edward Steichen; Herbert Bayer; Paul Outerbridge, Jr.; Walker Evans; Aaron Siskind; Frederick Sommer; Russell Lee; Bart Parker; Timo J. Pajunen; Minor White; Leland Rice; Graham Howe; Robert Cumming; and Max Yavno. Exhibit also traveled to Friends of Photography, Carmel, December 15, 1978 - January 15, 1979, and Santa Barbara Museum of Art, February 25 - March 25, 1979. Includes checklist of 73 works, some not included in catalog. Wraps, 38 pages. Summary:

The Photograph as Artifice is a 38-page exhibition catalog curated by photography historian and educator John Upton, with organization by Constance W. Glenn. Published by the Art Galleries of California State University, Long Beach, it documented a traveling exhibition that ran at the Grossmont College Art Gallery from November 1 to December 1, 1978.

The catalog examines the conceptual shift away from the traditional view of photography as an unmediated window to absolute truth, exploring instead how the medium inherently relies on illusion, manipulation, and artistic construct.

Key Curatorial Themes

• The Myth of Photographic Truth: Upton’s curatorial essay challenges the late-19th-century philosophy of "naturalistic photography" and the baseline assumption that cameras merely record reality. The exhibition investigates how choice of perspective, scale, cropping, and chemical processing transform a real-world subject into an intentional piece of artifice.

• Survey of Historical and Modern Masters: The exhibition featured 73 works bridging early photography with late-20th-century conceptualism. It juxtaposed 19th-century documentary and travel views with the highly deliberate compositions of early-to-mid-20th-century masters.

• Abstraction and Surrealism: The checklist highlighted how photographers manipulate form and reality to create entirely new visual textures. This was explored through the abstract expressions, surrealist arrangements, and structural experiments.

• Contemporary Transformations: The contemporary portion focused on post-war and 1970s photographers who pushed the boundaries of the medium via narrative fragmentation, theatrical staging, and structural interventions.

Copies available:

• Fine.
• Very good with crimps on cover and pages.