Iconic images

Some images are striking only because they represent something as we expect it to be seen. Dan Winters’ photograph of Texas Ranger Joaquin Jackson is one example. Mr. Jackson — I wouldn’t call him Joaquin — is 6’4″ and wears blue jeans, cowboy hat, and chaps. He is carrying a lever action rifle, the exact way we expect the Texas Rangers to be depicted.

That image and others are on display now at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston in an exhibit entitled “Made For Magazines: Iconic 20th Century Photographs.” The gallery is taken almost entirely from the MFAH’s own collection and is on display through May 4. It’s worth a visit, in part because it opens with a brief quip which defines a magazine: a shiny collection of papers that holds lots of pictures. Someone defined it as “an Ipad that you can burn.” Apparently there is a need to define this in today’s age of Twitter and Pinterest.

I never expected to see a magazine on display in a museum as if it were some sort of historic relic, but that may be a sign that I was born in another era, one before the internet. I still have collections of old magazines with images in them. These magazines, Life and the Saturday Evening Post, to name a couple, were as influential as Facebook and Twitter are today. Anyway, several original editions of Life Magazine, the Saturday Evening Post, and other magazines were on display as if they are some sort of unique historic relic.

They employed highly talented photographers and the images they brought back helped define public perception of work, play, personalities, and advertising for generations. On display are images from Alfred EIsensteadt,Arthur Rothstein, Gordon Parks, Garry Winogrand, Greg Morse, Grey Villet, Bob Gomel, Morris Berman, Cornell Capa, Herb Ritts, Diane Arbus, Annie Leibovitz, Irving Penn, Arnold Newmann, Helmut Newton, and others. Their work defined how we saw the world for most of the 20th century.

I was particularly struck by two images of Marilyn Monroe, one by Pete Sneyder and another by Garry Winogrand. In November 1954, the film The Seven Year Itch made its debut. Marilyn Monroe posed outside the cinema atop a subway grate and the occasional passing of a subway car would generate a windstorm that blew up her dress. Dozens of photographers weere on hand to capture the spectacle and the images taken of the scene defined her sensuality for a generation or more. Images can define you, even after you pass on, and these images defined an era.