Curator Tour | Moment in Time

The first photographs ever made astonished the public with their apparent ability to freeze time. Even today, in an age in which we are witnesses to an endless flow of images, we continue to be fascinated by the power of photography. Moment in Time features more than 100 photographs dating from the early years of the medium in the 1840s through the mid-20th century. The exhibition includes compelling masterworks by William Henry Fox Talbot, Julia Margaret Cameron, Timothy O’Sullivan, Alfred Stieglitz, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and Walker Evans, among others. Their interests ranged from perfecting photography’s technical capabilities to documenting the formal beauty of nature to exposing the social realities of America. All, however, explored the breadth and depth of the camera’s ability to capture a moment in time.

Assembled by the pioneering curator and historian Nancy Newhall, the Bank of America’s groundbreaking photography collection originated in the 1960s as the first corporate collection of photography in the United States. This exhibition has been loaned through the Bank of America Art in our Communities program.