People in the City: Modern Portraits from the Baruch College Art Collection

People in the City draws from photographs and prints in the permanent collection of Baruch College to look at how artists in the city have represented lovers, passersby, colleagues, and icons. About From the construction of the contemporary celebrity image to the anonymous but instantly recognizable figure of the New Yorker, these works have shaped the genre of modern portraiture and help us understand what it meant to be human in the city between 1929-1986. Edward Steichen’s celebrated In the Studio portfolio (1929-1932) is a defining work of modernist photography featuring Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, and Rudolph Valentino. Milt Hinton’s lively studio photographs of Billie Holiday, Count Basie, and other jazz greats document historic sessions and show musicians posing for the pages of Esquire magazine. Significant works by Gary Winogrand and Jerome Liebling capture mid-century metropolitan denizens on the street, while Andy Warhol’s Polaroids of Dolly Parton and Sylvester Stallone and portraits taken for his Interview magazine are complicated by more intimate images of lovers and friends. Iconic portraits and self-portraits by Alex Katz, Cindy Sherman, and Robert Longo meditate on the role of representation and figuration in postwar American art. This exhibition examines portraiture through the lens of photographers and artists who helped to critically define the medium, and in turn, the urban individual. Prints Photography