A Decade of Collecting Photography: 2015-2025

Since the invention of photography almost 200 years ago in 1826, the medium has successfully served as a tool to capture and rethink our world. This exhibition explores the evolution of photography as a fine art form and its expanding presence in art museum collections, as seen in the growth of Telfair’s photography collection from 400 works in 2015 to over 1,100 today. Telfair’s collection features prominent figures like Joel Meyerowitz (b. 1938), whose adoption of large format color photography in the early 1970s influenced emerging practitioners. The exhibition also considers the success of women like Helen Levitt (1913-2009), who despite encountering obstacles in a field largely dominated by men, captured engaging scenes of city streets in the 1940s. Unsurprisingly, the Southern landscape, and Savannah in particular, are frequent subjects of the works in the collection, like George Barnard’s (1819–1902) skillfully framed post-Civil War photographs of Savannah’s River Street. This exhibition also celebrates Savannah-based artists such as Jason Miccolo Johnson (b. 1956), a nationally recognized photojournalist whose image of a pastor in front of a burned down church stands for loss and resilience. Ultimately, this exhibition is a celebration of photography and its powerful presence in our culture.