Ratcliffe Power Station | Collections | The Huntington

Ratcliffe Power Station | Collections | The Huntington

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Impossible to forget : the Nazi camps fifty years after
Rare Books
"Michael Kenna photographed Nazi concentration and extermination camps from 1988 to 2000, subsequently donating all negatives, prints and their respective rights to the French Government and the Caen Memorial. Kenna first visited the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in France in 1986. Two years later he returned, still marked by the initial emotional impact, no doubt the key to his decision to develop a project about the Holocaust. Since then, he has repeatedly returned to Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Lublin-Majdanek, Ravensbruck, Buchenwald and many other camps to photograph their restless emptiness. Overwhelmed by the abomination of the gas chambers and by the inexpressible suffering of the victims, Kenna wanted to share a memory that he found impossible to forget. Knowing that a work of art can be an invitation to meditation, he went to the concentration camps to photograph what they had become: sites of contemplation. The photographs in 'Impossible to Forget' are directly opposed to the evil that continues to live in the camps, to nihilism and to revisionism; they are bearers of peace and compassion"--Publisher's description.
653188
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Retrospective two
Rare Books
"How can a sustained thirty-year career be an aberration? This is a time of turbulence and edge, but should we dismiss someone who knows that and yet consciously chooses to make pictures that offer order, harmony, and respite? The energy that critics may wish to be in his work is expended in the doing, in the creation of over a dozen separate, coherent projects and thousands of single images. With the same discipline that he applies to long distance running, Kenna distills and refines. He is not turning off his critical faculties, but rather employs them to pay homage. The rebel in Kenna responds, 'I derive so much satisfaction from photography precisely because I've had the luxury of not caring what the art world thinks of my work. I have been able to use the medium as a way to help choose my personal journey or pilgrimage through this life. Most of the places I've photographed I chose because I wanted to acknowledge them and indeed pay homage to them...I haven't tried to be different or break any rules. I couldn't care less what the rules are anyway.'"--From introduction.
653194
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Monique's kindergarten
Rare Books
"Michael Kenna's photographs from the Waldorf kindergarten are a homage to childhood and a paean to the imaginative potential of children's play. He came to know the kindergarten and Monique Grund first as a parent of his daughter, Olivia, and then as an artist who saw in the stuff of the place an emblematic presentation of the spirit of childhood. The images are the result of many sessions over several years in the kindergarten"--From introduction.
653099
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Confessionali
Rare Books
"These images of confessional boxes in Northern Italy symbolize what I continue to search for--the invisible within the visible, the intangible contained in the tangible, the illusion of reality. If words, thoughts and emotions could be made visual, these containers of memories would reveal a multitude of densely-packed hidden secrets, confessed, exchanged and discarded in return for some prayers and the blessing and forgiveness of a priest"--From photographer's introduction.
653361
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Power stations
Manuscripts
The collection consists of the personal and business papers of Henry E. Huntington. There is material related to the Huntington, Holladay (Henry E. Huntington's sister Caroline married Edmund Burke Holladay), and Metcalf families, but most of the collection deals with Huntington's business interests in Southern California, railways, real estate, and industry. There is a series about Henry E. Huntington and his family that includes biographical information, newspaper clippings, photographs, scrapbooks, ephemera, and physical objects. There is material related to the Huntington Land and Improvement Company, Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, and the Pacific Electric Railway Company as well as other businesses in Los Angeles County, Orange County, and San Gabriel Valley, California. This material includes business records, account books, annual reports, correspondence, maps, tracts, balance sheets, and others. There is also material related to the founding of the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens including auction catalogs, invoices, receipts, and bills for art and rare books, and information regarding a lawsuit about Huntington's estate tax after his death, and the passing of Proposition 15, in 1930, which exempted The Huntington from paying California property tax. There is also material related to Collis P. Huntington and his business interests and Arabella Huntington. The largest series contains over 22,000 pieces of personal and business correspondence spanning approximately 1790 to 1950. The physical objects include Henry E. Huntington's lunch box, razors, traveling trunk, and other items.
mssHEH
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Mont St Michel
Rare Books
"Viewed from a distance, Mont St Michel is like a shimmering mirage, an island of calm, delicately floating on barely moving water. Up close, it can transform itself into a massive earthbound rock, surrounded and engulfed by cars, buses and swarming tourists. Like life, Mont St Michel is what you make of it. Its many facets are open to interpretation and personal experience"--From introduction.
653196