Geographic Puts Best Images Forward in Museum Exhibit

The Indian holy man stares straight into the camera, his open mouth revealing the wire that he has pushed through his cheeks as self-inflicted penance.

A lama caretaker in China poses in a library of ill-fated printing blocks used to publish the Tibetan Buddhist scripture.

Three balloons are frozen in various stages of explosion as the bullet that tore through them seems suspended in mid-air.

These images are just three of more than 700,000 that were taken by photographers on assignment for National Geographic during the magazine’s first 100 years, and three of the 289 that made the final cut for the magazine’s touring exhibition, “Odyssey: The Art of National Geographic.”

By themselves, out of the context of their accompanying stories, the photos may seem quirky, almost novel. As part of the exhibit, they help bring home the point that, for 100 years, National Geographic was not simply delivering the world’s natural and social exotica to its readers, but elevating photojournalism to a fine art.

The exhibit doesn’t attempt to remind us of the magazine’s greatest stories. The emphasis here is on the images themselves, informational photography as an art form. The photos range from hand-tinted black and white photos of turn-of-the-century Korean children to the sky of cumulus ash clouds that rose with the eruption of Mt. St. Helens.

Two identical shows, organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., are on simultaneous three-year tours in the United States and abroad. It makes its only West Coast stop at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego (today through Jan. 15).

Organizers from the Corcoran and National Geographic spent almost two years preparing the exhibit, working their way through a warehouse of photo archives.

“It was absolutely virgin territory. We felt we were pioneering,” said Jane Livingston, the Corcoran’s chief curator and associate director, who spearheaded the archival odyssey that also produced an impressive 360-page coffee-table book. “The difficulty with such a vast amount of information and so many images is that we felt we could only scratch the surface.

“Fully 65% of the images in the show have never been published before. It gives an idea of the unknown treasures that reside there.”

Livingston, joined by three museum associates and National Geographic special-projects editor Declan Haun, looked at about 4,000 photographs every day. They considered every 35-millimeter slide ever taken for a National Geographic shoot, and paged through every issue of the magazine, even those in the early years before photos were published. (Photos in the exhibit date from the late 19th Century.) The team also asked living National Geographic photographers to send in their best work.

The determining factor for selection in the exhibit was aesthetic value, Livingston said. But the team also wanted the show to reflect the history of the magazine and its vast stable of photographers.

Ultimately, Livingston acknowledged, the choices came down to her subjective judgment.

“It’s two black women, one painting the other’s toenail,” she said in describing a personal favorite in the collection. “Why is that great? What’s interesting about that? If you tried to explain it, people would wonder why the hell you bothered. Some photographs have no rational explanation, no reason, but they’re unquestionably great.

“In some cases it’s the subject. A 2,000-year-old tanned hand (photographed in a bog) is fascinating.” A small Japanese sailboat that is on the cover of the book struck Livingston because of “the delicacy of that perfect little composition. The sails reflected in the water are the essence of Japan. It’s a small black and white image that had built-in power for us.”

In the case of Harold Edgerton’s black and white photo of balloons being popped by a gunshot, Livingston was caught by the composition.

“It’s an arresting image visually,” she said. “It’s a horizontal image. It has a formal abstract appeal to me.”

Several of National Geographic’s regular contributing photographers will be attending a preview breakfast of the show this morning. Five Californians, including San Diego underwater specialist Flip Nicklin, have work in the exhibit.

The photographers seem as awed by the images as everyone else.

“You can go through it for the sheer pleasure of the image,” said Jody Cobb, a National Geographic staff photographer who said she’s glad the show was set up as an art rather than a historical exhibit. “I think if it were a chronology, the images would be subordinate to an organizing concept. This way you are exposed to the sheer visceral response that was there when you took the photograph. It’s so overwhelming--so many images. I went back many times.”

Said William Allard, whose six photos in the exhibit include four that were never published: “A typical National Geographic story involves a tremendous number of images made--thousands of pictures--and in the story there are 20 of them.”

Allard said he doesn’t think being on assignment means he’s not creating art.

“I think I can make a picture answer the needs of my editors, but also be strong enough to merit hanging on a museum wall,” he said. “I’m not the least ashamed to say that I’m working as an artist, but not all my work is art.”

Livingston and Haun noted that National Geographic editors insisted on publishing color images during the first half of the century, when black and white photos were being used almost exclusively in magazines. The result, ironically, was to foster discrimination against the magazine’s photographers. The novelty of color didn’t begin to wear off until the late 1960s.

“Any picture that was in color was a ‘color photograph,’ ” Haun said. “In the fine arts field it’s taken them a long time to accept color as a serious medium for serious photography. If you were a serious photographer, you didn’t shoot color.

“(This exhibit) is the first time in 100 years in which the photography and the photographers have been recognized for the really fine photography and photographers they are. And to my way of thinking, it’s about time.”