Picturing Modernity: Highlights from the Photography Collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

By David A. Ross and Douglas R. Nickel. SFMoMA, 1998. Exhibition catalog. New in wraps, as issued, in original shrink wrap.  Nice reproduction quality, mixture of well known and less well known images. 70 photographers including Ansel Adams; Diane Arbus; Eugene Atget; Brassai; Julia Margaret Cameron; Cartier-Bresson; Imogen Cunningham; Roy DeCarava; Disderi; Walker Evans; Roger Fenton; Joan Fontcuberta; Robert Frank; Lee Frielander; John Gutmann; Lewis Hine; William Henry Jackson; William Klein; Dorothea Lange; Sherrie Levine; Dora Maar; Gordon Matta-Clark; Ralph Eugene Meatyard; Abelardo Morell; Daido Moriyama; Nicholas Nixon; Man Ray; Moholy-Nagy; Wright Morris; Irving Penn; Jacob  Riis; Alexander Rodchenko; Sebastiao Salgado; August Sander; Charles Sheeler; Cindy Sherman; Aaron Siskind; Edward Steichen; Alfred Stieglitz; Paul Strand; Josef Sudek; Hiroshi Sugimoto; William Henry Fox Talbot; Andy Warhol; Carleton Watkins; Weegee; Edward Weston; Garry Winogrand et al. Summary:

Picturing Modernity (1998) is a landmark survey of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s (SFMOMA) permanent collection, chronicling the medium’s evolution from 19th-century documentation to contemporary conceptualism. The book frames photography as the primary engine of modern visual culture, emphasizing how the "camera eye" fundamentally re-engineered the way humans perceive time, space, and the social body.

Core Themes and Narrative

• The Modernist Break: The collection highlights the shift from Pictorialism (mimicking painting) to "Straight Photography." It traces how masters like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston used the camera to celebrate industrial geometry and biological structure.

• The California Tradition: As an SFMOMA catalog, it places significant weight on the West Coast School (Group f/64). It details the "Sharp-Focus" revolution, where the lens was used to find a "sacred clarity" in everything from a bell pepper to a jagged Sierra peak.

• Documentation as Art: The book explores the tension between "The Document" and "The Expression," showing how street photography and social reportage (Lange, Levitt, Winogrand) gained the status of high art through their formal rigor.