I've been looking at the Paul Fusco photographs made on June 8, 1968 which were recently published by Aperture, and exhibited at James Danziger Gallery. The photographs show a wide range of Americans--thousands of them-- lined up along side the train tracks bearing witness to the passing train which holds Robert F. Kennedy's remains, a silent and beautifully diverse human tribute to the man. Fusco made them as the train moved along the tracks from New York to Washington, DC. Life had assigned him to provide pictures of the prominent people aboard the train. Fusco might have done that, but he also knew that the real story was in the faces and presence of the many nameless Americans passing him by in a slow blur. The train cut through a wide social swath of America that day, passing through neighborhoods of every ethnicity, rich, poor, and every social station in between. That this vast sea of diverse America all came out and stood in silent tribute to the transformative reach of this one man into their lives seems particularly resonant at this moment in history. Their silent presence bespeaks a moment bereft of cynicism, a moment when people didn't cast an indifferent eye on politics and politicians...at least not this politician. All seemed to have felt that this man had mattered enough for them to take a few hours out of their lives to silently comport themselves in the aura of his presence, even if only posthumously.

I remember a luncheonette on Jamaica Avenue, not too far from where I grew up in the Hollis section of Queens, NY. This luncheonette, which was located directly across the street from an Ideal Toy factory, had been the site of a visit by Robert Kennedy when he was campaigning, and had made a campaign stop at the factory across the street, then crossed over to the luncheonette. Perhaps he had stopped in long enough to shake a few hands, take a bite out of a greasy hamburger, and then depart. But for as long afterwards as I could remember, people spoke of the little anonymous luncheonette in almost reverential tones: "Bobby Kennedy had been there," heads on the bus continually turning for years afterwards as we passed it by, straining to hold it (and memory) in sight. The visit, and the memory of his presence lingered magically all those years later.

I thought of this recently (and over the past few months) watching the diverse masses of people who have flocked to Barack Obama's rallies, and earlier to cast their vote in the primaries. Whether 75,000 people massing at a rally in Oregon (left), 200,000 flooding the streets of Berlin, or endless lines snaking through the snow leading to the polling places in states like Iowa, there is clearly a belief by many (and yes, this writer) that something transformative is taking place, and we are living in a singular historical moment, that the winds of change are indeed blowing. The belief that one visionary person--this person--harnessing the ideals of many can make a difference seems to be confirmed each time these televised and published images make that idea both palpable and visible. The people in Fusco's photographs and the people we see in the Barack Obama images today (in America and now Europe) are a testimony to the enduring--but rare--qualities I think we had almost given up on ever seeing again in the popular body politic.

I've been curating exhibitions now for some twenty years, thirty-two if you count my first museum show at the Studio Museum in Harlem, since I selected and supervised the hanging and placement of my work in that exhibition. I've engaged in this curatorial work periodically...or perhaps sporadically over the years, mounting shows at both museums and smaller exhibition spaces in different parts of the country, usually with a few years in between projects. But recently I've begun to pick up the pace, engaging with it more consistently, and now find it to be another viable and ongoing part of my practice as an artist and thinker. It provides an oportunity to engage with ideas that I don't necessarily want to make photographs about, but do want to examine more closely. I've never approached this work reluctantly; after all who knows the work more intimately and incisively than someone who actually also makes it? And after thirty some years of dealing with museum directors, curators, registrars, education staff, docents, preparators, framers, art handlers and shippers, as well as editors and designers, I am extremely well versed in the professional practices--and the multiple staggered deadline needs--surrounding the presentation and publication of art objects.

I've been asked--most recently in a radio interview--how an artist curating is different from a curator curating. While I certainly don't think that there is any one way that curators think or work, I have noticed that curators--particularly younger contemporary art curators, whose training is largely in the theoretical and conceptual aspects of art--on the whole are not always terribly knowledgeable about just how the object actually comes into being materially, and so are less invested in the "quality" of the object, or its individual material character, instead privileging the conceptual or narrative aspect of the work. This is particularly true with photographs, which seem deceptively easy to produce as objects.

I've had curators look at my pictures and ask how many pictures I "took" on each roll, even though the highly descriptive material and optical quality of my large scale photographs indicate that they are made with a large format camera, which means methodically exposing a single sheet of film at a time, which is also intrinsic to why the pictures and subjects appear the way they do. Others react with surprise when I tell them I use artificial studio light in all of my recent work, even though the "catch lights" (the reflection of the light) are right there in the eyes of the subjects, indicating exactly where the light was placed, white umbrella and all. And still others have remarked on my ability to "catch" a particular pose, not realizing this is all quite deliberately staged, as it must be when working with a large format camera mounted on a tripod. Knowing these things, I believe, allows for some sense of both how and how well the artist/photographer is wielding the very tool in pursuit of the making of the image. It provides a way to understand, in fact just how the artist is making the photograph. It explains--if you will--just what you are looking at, since part of the meaning of the work does lie in the method of its conception; the relationship of tools and process to finished object.

I once had a conversation with a curator who seemed unaware that it was the use of a small aperture and a wide angle lens that makes Thomas Struth's pictures look the way they do, with their deep sense of pictorial space and sharp focus throughout the picture plane. A very different kind of picture--using a different lens and aperture--could be made from the very same location. It is the myriad subjective choices that the artist deploys that makes the object this way and not some other way. This same curator further indicated to me that he was actually not interested in the particular qualities of the individual photographs by another artist; it was the work as a project that interested him. He made no value judgement about the success or failure of each individual picture. I, instead, thought some of the photographs were better executed and well made than others.

Of course, there have been--and will continue to be--a vast number of engaging shows curated by people who don't have this knowledge of process and material, but are engaged by the work for other reasons. And there are other legitimate ways to engage with the objects. But if you ask me what is different about the way I curate, I would have to say that I am deeply interested in the quality of the object and its execution; it is the well executed object, in context with other objects by that artist (coupled with a meaningful set of intentions), that then leads me to the other conceptual and perhaps narrational aspects of the work. A poorly or ineptly made object will never lead me to that deeper investigation, certainly not a sustained one. I've mentioned them before, but curators who have a background as artists--Rob Storr, Jock Reynolds, David Travis, and John Szarkowski for example--are a very different kind of curator. Not better, not worse...just different. Maybe it's just up to those of us who are artists to continue to educate those who are responsible for making our work visible to the public, and to also be more articulate in providing the language through which our work, and the works of other photographers and artists, are viewed and engaged.

My latest curatorial project is currently on view at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago. Titled, Are We There Yet?, the exhibition examines the various ways in which a shifting sense of place, and how the ability or inability to move from place to place defines an essential aspect of early 21st century social experience, globally. Featuring photographs by a diverse group of artists including Howard Henry Chen, Alan Cohen, Christine DiThomas, Aron Gent, Rula Halawani, Surendra Lawoti, Curtis Mann, Oscar Palacio, and a video installation by Adriana Rios, the exhibition will have an opening reception on Sunday, August 3rd, from 3-5 PM. If you are in Chicago, do come and take a look. The exhibitions continues through September 28th. Here is the link to the exhibition at the Hyde Park Art Center site: www.hydeparkart.org/exhibitions/2008/07/are_we_there_yet.php

I am also in the midst of curatorial projects at the Weatherspoon Museum of Art in Greensboro, NC and the Walters Museum in Baltimore, MD. At the former, I am curating an exhibition of portraits from their collection, including objects as diverse as a Catherine Opie surfer portrait, a Chuck Close self portrait, Elizabeth Catlett's "Sharecropper" print, a cast bust portrait of two subjects from the North Carolina by John Ahearn, and a self portrait by Susana Coffey among other objects. The exhibition (and the attendant text) examines what characteristics make the human subject come alive psychologically and emotively on the two and three dimensional surface. At the latter I will this week begin curating an exhibition of historical portrait paintings and juxtaposing them with examples of my own work that have a similar theme, seeking to make a thematic connection across differences of time and subject. Twelve teenagers will be working with me at the Walters, and they will develop the interpretive materials as well as contribute to the selection of the historical paintings and drawings that will be juxtaposed with my photographs. Watch for these.