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Landscape Photographs on View at Princeton University Art Museum
PRINCETON -- "Photographs from the Collection of M. Jay Goodkind, Class of 1949" will be on view at The Art Museum, Princeton University, through September 5, 1999. Goodkind has lent thirty-nine works of landscape and nature photography in the exhibition in honor of the Fiftieth Reunion of his Class at Princeton.
"Collecting photographs is an activity of passion, not unlike making photographs. The essence of a photographer's conception is realized only in the original photographic print, and to admire or desire this sensibility is to force one to become a photographer or collector. M. Jay Goodkind, a former physician and teacher, participates in both endeavors," notes Peter C. Bunnell, faculty curator of photography and acting director of The Art Museum.
Goodkind's interest in photography began in 1938 at a summer camp in the Adirondacks. In 1948 he won his first prize for a photograph while he was still a student at Princeton. As an undergraduate, Goodkind was a member of the Graphic Arts Club, led by Elmer Adler of Firestone Library. Adler encouraged Goodkind's interest in photography and introduced him to the work of major photographic artists, one of whom was Ansel Adams, who was invited to the campus by Adler to discuss his work. About 1959, while teaching at the Yale School of Medicine, Goodkind became more serious about his own photography and began to exhibit and show his portfolio to other serious photographers. He began collecting photographs in 1964, with the purchase of a work by Ansel Adams, Aspens, New Mexico, 1958, which hangs in the exhibition.
Nine photographs by Adams set the overall tone of the Goodkind Collection. Goodkind found in the artist's work the manifestation of the qualities he had tried to embody in his own pictures: a superior technique within the style of straightforward, black and white photography and, in terms of subject, "an appreciation of the environment and a desire to convey that appreciation to others." He remembers Adams saying, on his visit to Princeton, that his role in photography was to use his photographic technical ability "to make nature more like nature than it really was."
The collection also includes superb images by Edward Weston and his son Brett, Bruce Barnbaum, Paul Caponigro, William Clift, Robert Dawson, William Garnett, Dianne Kornberg, John Sexton, George Tice, and Don Worth, among other artists. Attracted by "their skill, their vision, and the beautiful images they produce," Goodkind has described these photographers as "truly experts." His collection today numbers over one hundred photographs, and he has exhibited his own work in over fifty one-person and group exhibitions.
One area of concentration in the collection is sand dunes, particularly of Oceano and Death Valley, California. Exhibited together in his home in New Hope, Pennsylvania, the depth and variety of this group of images are extraordinary. The sinuous lines of the dunes and contrasting areas of brilliant light and deep shadow give a phenomenal vibrancy to these pictures. Goodkind has observed that he admires these pictures as much for their accomplishment as for the consolation they bring to his own frustrations in making similar pictures -- the challenge for his eye as well as for his technique.
While Goodkind's interest in social or documentary photographers of subjects other than landscape is limited, his collection includes notable pictures by Alen MacWeeney, Sally Mann, Mary Ellen Mark, Marc Riboud, Eugene Richards, Sebastiao Salgado, and Marion Post Wolcott, among others of the genre. Explaining the focus of his collection, he has said, "I believe my interest in contemporary photography is limited by my lack of formal training in art. I am not excited by the combination of various media with the photographic process. I guess I am limited to a love of pure photographic imaging."
Born in New York City in 1928, Goodkind graduated from Princeton University in 1949. He received his M.D. degree from Columbia University in 1953, and did his residency at Bellevue Hospital in New York. By 1958 he was chief resident at the Grace-New Haven Community Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut, and began teaching at the Yale University School of Medicine. In 1964 he joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, retiring in 1994 as clinical associate professor of medicine. As a specialist in cardiology, he was affiliated with the Philadelphia General Hospital from 1964 to 1977, where he also held numerous administrative appointments. Between 1974 and 1998 he also was staff physician at the Mercer Medical Center in Trenton. Goodkind is the author of numerous articles in professional journals.
"With his collection of twentieth-century landscape photography, Jay Goodkind has assembled vital works that express his love for the medium and for his environment," said Professor Bunnell. The Art Museum is deeply grateful that he has made this selection of works from his collection available for exhibition in celebration of his fiftieth Reunion at Princeton. We also thank him especially for his promised bequest of the entire collection, which will enable Princeton students for generations to experience the unique opportunity to engage great art at a time in their lives when it truly can make a difference -- for them as it did for him."
The Art Museum is open to the public without charge. Free highlights tours of the collection are given every Saturday at 2 p.m. The Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Sunday from 1 to 5p.m. It is closed on Monday and major holidays. The Museum Shop closes at 5 p.m.
The Museum is located in the middle of the Princeton University campus. Picasso's large sculpture Head of a Woman stands in front. For further information, please call (609) 258-3788.