PHOTOGRAPHS
Cumming, Robert
U.S. (1943 - )
The Burtons, Academy Awards (from New California Views portfolio)
1978
Silver-dye bleach (Cibachrome) print
7 15/16 x 9 15/16 in. (20.2 x 25.3 cm) image and sheet size
Monsen Study Collection of Photography, gift of Joseph and Elaine Monsen
FA 92.7

Robert Cumming is best known for his psychologically loaded photographs of staged tableaus involving common objects. But here he has made the world strange in the quintessentially direct mode of the journalistic papparazzo. Jostling with a crowd of photographers for candid pictures of celebrities attending the Academy Awards, he snaps a picture of Richard Burton and his spouse. Unlike his counterparts--interested in making flattering images for sale to tabloid magazines and consumption by adoring fans--Cumming reveals the couple in an awkward, unflattering, and psychologically suggestive moment. The artifice associated with the packaging of Hollywood stars is here deliberately and startlingly stripped away. --Label copy for The Photographic Impulse: A Critical History of Photography, The Joseph and Elaine Monsen Collection, Cincinnati Art Museum, October 12, 2001 to January 6, 2002.