I came of age photographically in the 1960s and early 1970s. It was a remarkable time – probably the best time – for a young, aspiring, creative soul to discover photography as an expressive tool. The political, social and cultural spheres were all undergoing significant and radical change, and everything was fair game for visual witness, exploration, and exploitation. Graphic and explicit imagery in the media brought the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War to the forefront of political consciousness and encouraged the breakdown of sexual taboos. Simultaneously, the rise of Pop Art erased distinctions between art, commodity and commerce.

My inspirations were no different from those of my contemporaries who were also exploring photography’s creative possibilities. The photographers who moved us heroicized reportage, transgressed the boundaries between art and life and sensationalized fashion. Among the idols and icons were the Magnum photographers, Andy Warhol and his counterculture collaborators and Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blow Up. Outside the media world, it was Ansel Adams’ majestic American landscapes that caught the imagination of our burgeoning, environmentally conscious population.

By the late 1960s, having found the stimulus to pursue photographic studies, I searched for the appropriate nexus. Adams and his following in California, the later-day f64 group, represented one. A radically different West Coast cluster of multimedia photographers such as Ed Ruscha, Robert Heineken and John Baldessari represented another. There was also Minor White and his followers who sought spiritual meaning in the medium; Nathan Lyons’ Visual Studies Workshop – the first school to stimulate curatorial interest in photography – and the already well established Institute of Design or “The Chicago School” of photographers exemplified by Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan and Arthur Siegel [among others]. Finally, in New York, there was Lisette Model, Alexey Brodovitch and the “king maker” John Szarkowski. While not a teacher, Szarkowski championed a loosely associated yet stellar group of “straight” photographers who adhered to a tradition that stemmed from Eugène Atget through Walker Evans to Garry Winogrand. I chose involvement with the Chicago photographers and, in particular, with Aaron Siskind, who represented an expressionist vision I had never conceived possible in the medium.

The various schools and points of view were not as disparate as they may have seemed, however. During this period, the non-commercial photography world was about community, an idiosyncratic group of people experimenting, investigating and questioning what could be said with the camera. All practitioners held a common faith in the power of seeing through the lens and in the great artistic potential of the medium. Each also shared a calling to move photography into a dominant place in twentieth century art. Anyone who was interested in the pursuit and shared this common goal was welcomed by others.

While the aforementioned photographers are now part of the canon, in those days, with the exception of [Ansel] Adams, they were unknown to both the generally educated public and other members of the art world. Despite Szarkowski’s posthumous, blockbuster exhibition of Diane Arbus’ work in 1972, one that undoubtedly popularized the medium, the battle for photography’s acceptance as an art form continued to be waged. Few, if any, photography galleries existed at the time; the late Helen Gee’s seminal Limelight, founded in 1954, had long since failed. We were all wondering whether there would ever be any credible critics, and there was only one history book, Beaumont Newhall’s The History of Photography. If a museum had a department of photography, with few exceptions, you could be sure that it was located in the basement. Photography teachers in major universities were equally few, equally low paid and, most likely, also to be found in the basement.

The intensity of interest in photography, nonetheless, led many a young photographer to want to become part of this newly defined canon although money and fame could hardly be a consideration. To be published in the few successful art photography journals such as Aperture, Camera Arts, or Album was the first step towards photographic immortality. A one-person exhibition in the rare museum or gallery that showed photography, or the purchase of a photograph by someone other than a relative, was a major coup. To have a monograph made, one had to be close to the grave or in it. The only other alternative was to self-publish. At a time when an Adams photograph could be bought for $200, the idea of making a living from the sale of one’s own photographs was still a dream.

By 1973, all of this was to change. Some of the teachers in Chicago switched places with those in California – Heineken went East; Winogrand went West. Former students like their mentors traveled across the country sharing portfolios in any city where there were like-minded people. The Society of Photographic Education conference became a mecca for all those who aspired to notice as well as a haven for many a grand master to cultivate a sycophantic following. The schools of thought were mixing up. In New York, the Witkin gallery and its competitor the Light gallery, bejeweled by the architectural offices of I. M. Pei, had opened in midtown. They became showcases for twentieth century photography and were as beautiful as any art gallery. Photography galleries opened in California and Chicago as well, and universities and museums from Tucson to Cambridge, Carmel to Palm Beach, established major new collections. A new bar was set for the possibility of selling photography to a yet undefined audience of collectors, and photographers and their students assembled and marketed portfolios with the buyer in mind. The New York Times and other papers began reviewing photographic shows on a regular basis; designers began using photographers in showrooms and offices, and corporate and bank collections realized that there were bargains to be had in collecting early twentieth century masterpieces. Photography was emerging from the basement.

The new showcases of the medium were deluged by a young generation of savvy, media conscious, emancipated students who accepted the medium unflinchingly for its inherent democracy, accessibility, and relevance to their culture. They demanded new courses, histories and introductions to photographic practice. Those of us with graduate degrees were delighted. We now had an opportunity to support ourselves as universities and colleges added new curricula, and museums and galleries sought photography curators and directors. By the late 1970’s, hardly an academic institution in America existed that did not have an emerging department of photography. Most of them could trace their origins to one or two of the schools mentioned earlier. Thus, the community of the cognoscenti was very tightly woven and shared at least the common calling to promote the medium, its history and aesthetic in an enterprising way.

That a new audience was acculturated through the study of photography either in the studio or lecture hall during this critical period is what, in fact, affects us most today. The students of the 1980s became the producers and consumers, editors and curators, connoisseurs and collectors who made photography the preeminent art form of the late twentieth century. As the audience grows, the museum has a new responsibility to be both a repository and a place of learning. In this relatively new role, the museum must look not only at the new generation of photography but also at the antecedents, the formative work of the late twentieth century that helped define today’s practice. The medium is still in its infancy, and its history continues to be written. Thus it is important that we continue to understand this era that marked such a turning point.