Going

Inge Morath
A Llama in Times Square, 1957
Gelatin silver print
2020.10.277

The noted photojournalist Inge Morath made this photograph of a llama in Times Square, easily her most recognizable photograph, for Life magazine in 1952. Although the image looks spontaneous, it was part of a highly planned assignment. The image was published in a one-page story, in the magazine’s humorous “Animals” section, and was entitled “High-paid llama in big city.” The piece featured a menagerie of television animals—including, in addition to the llama, dogs, cats, birds, a pig, a kangaroo, and a miniature bull—living at home with their trainers in a Manhattan brownstone. Morath’s full caption for the image reads, “Linda, the Lama [sic], rides home via Broadway. She is just coming home from a television show in New York’s ABC studios and now takes a relaxed and long-necked look at the lights of one of the world’s most famous streets.”

Michael Spano

How’d
2020.10.580

5th Ave. & the Park
2020.10.606

Shoes & Sneakers
2020.10.582

[From the series “Auto Portraits”], 2005
Gelatin silver prints

Dona Ann McAdams
Hood Ornament, Surf Avenue Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York [From the series “The Garden of Eden Portfolio”], 1985
Gelatin silver print
2020.10.271

Matthew Connors
West 41st Street, 2004
Archival pigment print
2020.10.48

Ted Croner
Slushy Street, Times Square, 1948
Gelatin silver print
2020.10.55

William Klein
Christmas Shoppers, 1954
Gelatin silver print
2020.10.217

Jesse Diamond
[A crowd gathered to watch the Macy’s Day Parade], 1997–2007
Archival pigment print
2020.10.69

Michael Spano
Untitled [Man with bicycle], 1994
Gelatin silver print
2020.10.596

Alfred Stieglitz
The Street—Design for a Poster, 1903
Photogravure
2020.10.626

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was perhaps no more important figure for the advancement of photography’s position in the arts than Alfred Stieglitz. At a time when photography was viewed as a fact-based, scientific craft, Stieglitz had an unerring ambition to prove that the medium was as capable of artistic expression as painting or sculpture. This photograph, taken at Fifth Avenue and 30th Street, with its moody scene and soft-focused, impressionistic aesthetic, exemplifies the painterly qualities Stieglitz espoused (sometimes described as Pictorialism). In later years, the photographer changed course and embraced “straight” sharp-focused photography as the best representation of the artistic qualities of the medium.