Eye to eye World-class photographers lead UM museum’s debut exhibit in new home

The University of Maine Museum of Art will open its doors in Bangor on Friday night with a bang – and a whisper.

The inaugural exhibition will feature big, bold photographs of New York City’s ground zero by Joel Meyerowitz and smaller, more introspective works by the late Mexican photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo and his wife, Colette Alvarez Urbajtel. The show will celebrate the museum’s move from Carnegie Hall on the Orono campus to Norumbega Hall in Bangor. The new facility will open to the public at 4 p.m. Friday.

The large-format, color photographs in “American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center” pack an emotional punch. Meyerowitz, best known for his atmospheric depictions of the light on Cape Cod, turns his lens to the twisted skeleton of the twin towers and the fleet of firefighters and police officers that haunted the scene day after day. He was the only photographer allowed at ground zero, and his documentation includes more than 5,000 images commissioned by the Museum of the City of New York. The university will exhibit 25 of them.

“The images are such that the impact is a little different when you see them on the wall as opposed to seeing them on the TV screen,” UMMA director Wally Mason said.

In the neighboring gallery, photographs by “the maestro” Manuel Alvarez Bravo stand in quiet contrast. His insightful portraits of Mexican life are subtly stunning in black and white. Though Alvarez Bravo’s work rarely travels, Mason and guest curator Edmund Yankov culled the photographer’s estate and New York’s Witkin Gallery for the opening exhibition. The body of work spans from 1930 to 1996.

“He was trying to celebrate his own nation in a number of ways,” Yankov said of Alvarez Bravo, who passed away in October. “His images are very humanitarian. You could see him in those pictures. … They really did reflect him as a person – he was involved politically and cared a lot about his people.”

Yankov, who moved to Maine six years ago, worked for nearly 20 years at the Witkin Gallery. Lee Witkin founded the gallery in 1968 and it became one of New York’s pre-eminent photography galleries, exhibiting the work of such artists as Alvarez Bravo, Berenice Abbott and Ansel Adams. Yankov started working for Witkin in 1978, first as a framer, later as an independent curator, then as a full-time employee. He met Alvarez Bravo there 25 years ago, and the photographer left quite an impression.

“He was the humblest, most gentlemanly of the big star

photographers that I’ve ever met,” Yankov said. “The only other photographer like him was Ansel Adams. They never really let their fame, or should I say, their reputation, get to their heads.”

Though Alvarez Bravo may not be a household name here, he’s considered the 20th century’s foremost Latin American photographer, and widely respected by his contemporaries. When he celebrated his 100th birthday last February, it was front-page news in Mexico City, and a local radio station devoted the entire day to songs chosen by Alvarez Bravo.

“He’s as common a name as if you were to say George W. Bush,” Yankov said. “That’s how well-known he was.”

Alvarez Bravo’s humble, personable demeanor allowed him to roam freely among dignitaries and street people. Thus, he was able to capture images of Mexico’s cultural dichotomy. He traveled extensively to photograph the country’s indigenous peoples, but he also stayed close to home to document life in Mexico City.

“Many photographers tend to be aloof, or separate from their society,” Yankov said. “Manuel Alvarez Bravo was not like that. … Without him ever saying this, I’ve always considered him a Socialist. His work reflects that, being part of the people.”

Alvarez Bravo came of age in the midst of the nation’s 1910-20 revolution, snapping pictures with an old box camera for fun. He started taking pictures in earnest at 27, and became a leader in the nation’s cultural renaissance, along with his friends Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Octavio Paz, who collaborated with Alvarez Bravo on a book of poetry inspired by his photos.

“Manuel Alvarez Bravo’s art is essentially poetic in its bare, spare realism,” Paz wrote in “Essays on Mexican Art.”

His work has been described as poetic, surreal, stark and symbolic, drawing from the country’s mythology and the smaller stories of everyday life. Many of the 55 photographs in this show deal with those stories.

“These are very quiet, very contemplative,” Mason said. “It’s art that’s easily overlooked. We just don’t spend enough time with them.”

The images by Alvarez Bravo’s wife, Colette Alvarez Urbajtel, are equally subtle – lace handkerchiefs waving in the breeze, puffs of clouds against a grassy mountain. Alvarez Urbajtel, an economist by trade, came to Mexico and studied with Alvarez Bravo. The two married in 1962, and she became a renowned photographer.

“Ms. Alvarez Urbajtel emphasizes the intimate,” critic A.D. Coleman writes of her work. “This goes hand-in-hand with a concern for pattern, layering and density; her images are thick with texture.”

In contrast, Joel Meyerowitz’s photographs are less about aesthetics and more about a reality that has changed forever. He takes the viewer to places TV can’t – inside a dust-covered day care center, and outside, where the glowing light of late afternoon looks jarringly beautiful behind the wreckage. For those of us who don’t live in New York, these images satisfy a curiosity about what happened in September 2001.

“People are going to be talking about this for decades, and these Meyerowitz photographs are very relevant,” Mason said.

In addition to the photography exhibits, works from the permanent collection will be on view, including old favorites and recent acquisitions. There is no theme – Mason just wants to show off some of the blockbusters in their new home. A giant Frank Stella print will finally get its due, as will Claes Oldenburg’s “Soft Saxophone” print. Paintings by Maine artist Bill Irvine also will be on display, as will an early watercolor by Andrew Wyeth, an etching by Winslow Homer and “The Elm” by Hudson River School painter George Inness.

“When you see it in context here, it’s going to look very different from when you see it at Carnegie,” Mason said. “The seriousness of the pursuit is much more intentional here.”

The University of Maine Museum of Art is located at 40 Harlow St. in Bangor. An opening reception will be held from 4 to 8 p.m. Friday, during which admission will be free. After that, an admission fee of $3 per person will be charged. The opening show will run from Dec. 6 through Jan. 18. For information, call 561-3350.