The Crossett Connection: Celebrating the Photography of Carolyn Crossett Rowland '37

Bennington College celebrates the historic photography of Carolyn Crossett Rowland '37, beginning Wednesday, September 20, 2006, in the College’s Usdan Gallery. The exhibition, "The Crossett Connection," is free and open to the public and will be on display until October 20, 2006. The exhibition will survey a selection of both Carolyn's and her father Edward's photographs that demonstrate their shared passion for the medium and their connection to some of the illustrious personalities who helped support the practice of photography as a fine art.

Rowland's notably ambitious involvement with photography first began at the College by initiating the construction of a darkroom under the eaves of the Commons building. Without any formal training, Rowland explored photography with her father—a well-established photographer—and soon began to exhibit her work internationally alongside Crossett.

Rowland left Bennington College with a degree from the art department and during her final Field Work Term of her senior year walked into the New York gallery of the prominent photographer, collector, and publisher, Alfred Stieglitz and showed him her photographs. In the winter of 1941 she was selected to be a student in one of Ansel Adam's photography seminars in Yosemite National Park. Growing out of that first seminar experience in Yosemite, a close friendship developed between Carolyn and Adams that lasted until his death in 1984.

The exhibition provides viewers with a truly unique context in which to explore the underlying differences between modernist and pictorial photography. In particular, the show will provide two versions "Ruins of Antigua," a photograph—borrowed from the Boston Museum of Fine Art’s collection—that captures an archaeological site in Guatemala in 1940. Carolyn printed the negative in two countering styles; one with an atmospheric Pictorialist rendering typical of the early 20th Century, while the other shares the graphic modernist rendering popular with the contemporary generation of photographers.

For further information, please contact 802-440-4549.