American Children: Photographs from the Collection of The Museums of Modern Art

In American Children, sixty photographs from the collection of The Museum of Modern Art provide a historical survey of the changing concept of childhood as reflected in American photography from the middle of the nineteenth century to 1978. Photographs taken during the 1840s, 50s, and 60s capture the Victorian sense of the child as a solemn miniature adult. As the expressive capabilities of the medium developed, the Photo-Secessionists idealized children in settings of complete harmony and beauty, while social reformers such as Lewis Hine and Jacob Riis documented the deplorable conditions of the urban slum children. During the 1920s there was a concern with beauty of form, as evidenced in Edward Weston’s photographs of his son Neil, while the Farm Security Administration photographers of the 1903s portrayed young victims of the Depression. In the 1940s, equipped with a smaller camera and faster film, street photographers such as Helen Levitt captured the private fantasies of city children at play. The postwar years brought a renewal of family values and a new approach to photographing children; it also resulted in an increasing awareness of adolescent sexuality and of childhood as a complex psychological period.

This book confirms that photographing children remains special, as the author states, “for children still live out their fantasies as part of their reality, and sensitive adult photographers share this proclivity. Because they keep alive the child in themselves, they understand and can capture the elements of fantasy in the child’s subtle and fleeting array of gestures and movements.”

Photographers whose work is represented in the book include Diane Arbus, Harry Callahan, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Lewis Hine, Gertrude Käsebier, Jacob Riis, Edward Weston, and Clarence White, among many others.

Susan Kismaric is Associate Curator in the Department of Photography of The Museum of Modern Art.