The Tumultuous Fifties: A View from the New York Times Photo Archives
January 26 - April 7, 2002

The Tumultuous Fifties: A View from the New York Times Photo Archives was a collaboration between the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the New York Times Photo Archives. Conceived as an exhibition of about 200 vintage photographic prints, its focus was the 1950s, a decade distinguished by significant transformations in the cultural landscape, from McCarthyism, space travel, civil rights, and Cold War politics to post-Bebop, Abstract Expressionism, and Beat poetry. While partial to news photographs that are visually compelling in their own right, the project curators, Douglas Dreishpoon, Curator at the Albright-Knox, and Alan Trachtenberg, Professor of English and American Studies at Yale University, selected images that bring symbolic weight to their subject. The exhibition brought together noteworthy photographs from the Times archive that alter our preconceptions of this postwar period. The exhibition was also an investigation of the dynamics that defined the field of photojournalism during the decade.

The project was documented by a 272-page catalogue, co-published and distributed by Yale University Press, with approximately 200 illustrations, an introduction by Luc Sante (reprinted from the "New York Times Magazine"); essays by Dreishpoon and Trachtenberg, and a synoptic chronology highlighting developments during the 1950s at the Times and worldwide.

The Material Fifties
Additional Venues and Dates

In cooperation with The New York Times Photo Archives and Times History Productions, a division of The New York Times. Made possible through the generous support of the ABC Companies, Inc. and the New York State Council on the Arts.