Naked City: Photographs from Vassar College's Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center

At the time of this exhibition, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center owned close to 3,000 works of photography ranging from nineteenth-century works by early innovators to master works by twentieth-century photography icons to the most cutting-edge contemporary work being made today. This exhibition featured a small selection of the collection representing photographic scenes of urban life and including some of the most iconic images of social documentary and street photography made in America the last century. The exhibition took its title from the acclaimed 1945 book of photographs by Weegee, which with its explicit tabloid-style images of Manhattan crime, crowds, and spirited nightlife, changed the face of American photography almost overnight. On view were significant photographs by fourteen renowned photographers that favored directness, immediacy, and realism. The subject matter of the works explored architecture, alienation, personalities, everyday life, street scenes, family, poverty, and urban progress. Collectively, the artists in the exhibition portrayed the unique characteristics of the places they depicted, and captured the true spirit and raw energy of twentieth-century urban life.