While meandering around the Internet last week I accidentally stumbled across a reference to a new photography exhibit at National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Since I still have a few reasons left to go back and forth to our Nation’s capital I decided to take a drive down to see the show and take care of a few errands.

The show celebrated the merging of the NGA’s collection with that of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, which sadly ceased operations in 2014. As such, there was a good amount of Stieglitz (from the NGA) and Eadweard Muybridge (from the Corcoran) to be seen, as they formed the original foundations of the two institution’s holdings. The idea was to explore the connections between the collections, focusing on five common themes that the NGA identified in the work of the two greats — movement, sequence, narrative, studio, and identity. Works by other well-known photographers were also included.

I can’t say that it was one of my all time favorite shows – I’m sure my sadness over the now departed Corcoran had something to do with this – nevertheless it was well worth the trip from Pennsylvania to see it, as I left with several valuable takeaways.

An especially interesting theme of the show was that of narrative, where photographers combined words with their images – either hand written on the picture itself, underneath the picture area on a deliberately large white border, or completely outside of the framed picture but adjacent to it. This struck me, as I have long been a fan of photographs with accompanied text, such those by Wright Morris. The picture needs to be able to stand on its own, but some words can add useful and interesting insight into the photographer’s thought process and worldview.

Perhaps the single most stunning feature of the show for me were twenty-five black and white 4×5 contact prints by Minor White included in the sequence collection. These little jewels were portraits of two of his close friends coupled with pictures of favorite landscapes they had visited. Again, this strengthened my feeling about the power and ability of smaller prints to draw in the viewer – if, of course the images are powerful themselves.

So if you happen to be visiting our Nation’s capital, or need an excuse to do so, go ahead and make a stop at the National Gallery of Art. It’s free and a good example of our tax dollars well spent!