y 1990s. More than 300 works, including many rare, less well-known, or virtually forgotten images, were selected from the notable Hallmark Photographic Collection of some 2,600 prints taken by 400 photographers.
Another traveling exhibition, "The Garden of Earthly Delights: Photographs by Edward Weston and Robert Mapplethorpe," provoked controversy with its pairings for comparison of 82 prints by these two photographers. Though each artist was a rebel and a sensualist, some questioned whether they shared a common vision, as the exhibition seemed to suggest. Some critics, however, found a striking commonality of perception and style in the paired portraits, nudes, and erotic shapes of plant life. Others found the attempt superficial and unconvincing, arguing that the photographic genres for which each man was famous--landscapes for Weston and homoerotic images for Mapplethorpe--were too unalike for paired comparison.
"Dirty Windows," an exhibition by Merry Alpern, tested the limits of artistic expression, with photographs that some felt bordered on the merely sensational or pornographic. By photographing across an air shaft through the grimy window of a Manhattan sex-club bathroom, Alpern framed anonymous yet startling fragments showing sexual encounters and drug transactions taking place there. Though her project was selected to receive a grant by a peer-review panel of the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Council on the Arts, which reviews such recommendations, rejected it. Collectors, galleries, and leading museums were quick to acquire her pictures, however, which also appeared in book form.
News of a rare daguerreotype unveiled by Sotheby’s created a stir among collectors and aficionados of such works. Made in 1846 and tentatively attributed to early American photographer John Plumbe, Jr., the half-plate daguerreotype depicts the U.S. Capitol building with the Bullfinch-designed dome that replaced the original destroyed by fire during the War of 1812. Rumoured to have been purchased in the 1960s for about $5, it was estimated by Sotheby’s to be worth between $100,000 and $150,000.
The 1995 Pulitzer Prize for spot news photography was awarded to Carol Guzy of the Washington (D.C.) Post for her series of photographs illustrating the Haitian crisis. For their coverage of Rwanda, the Pulitzer for feature photography went to four Associated Press photographers: Jacqueline Artz, Javier Bauluz, Jean-Marc Bouju, and Karsten Thielker. At the 52nd Annual Pictures of the Year Competition sponsored by the National Press Photographers Association and the University of Missouri School of Journalism, James Nachtwey (see BIOGRAPHIES) of Time magazine/Magnum Photos was named Magazine Photographer of the Year, while Michael Williamson of the Washington Post took the title of Newspaper Photographer of the Year. At the 38th Annual World Press Photo contest, the World Press Photo of the Year award was given to Nachtwey. The primary W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography went to Russian photographer Vladimir Syomin for his ongoing documentation of life in areas of Russia left untouched by industrial development. A secondary grant went to Fabio Ponzio of Rome so he could continue photographing life in Eastern Europe for his project "The Other Europe."
Alfred Eisenstaedt, one of Life magazine’s first four photographers and probably the most famous photojournalist of the 20th century, died at age 96. (See OBITUARIES.) "Eisie," as he was known to friends and associates, left a memorable montage of evocative photographs that chronicled his early years in Weimar Germany and Hitler’s Third Reich, World War II, and postwar life in the U.S.