Don James | Supply Lines, 25th Street & State Line Road, Kansas City, Missouri
“People are the foundation of a place, they are the difference between this place and that place,” wrote Jason Dailey, one of 49 photographers whose work is featured in “Portrait of the City” at The Box Gallery, the exhibit’s second stop following its debut showing in spring 2024 at the Cerbera Gallery.
Past and present, people have imposed their will on the prairie, river and bluffs to transform Kansas City into a distinct place. Eschewing iconic landmarks, “Portrait of the City” reveals multifaceted residents, structures, and moments shaping contemporary Kansas City.
“Portrait of the City,” a collaboration between The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the Kansas City Society for Contemporary Photography (KCSCP), was inspired by the 2023 exhibition “Evelyn Hofer: Eyes on the City” at the Nelson-Atkins. Hofer’s photographs of major U.S. and European cities prompted the question: How would Hofer picture Kansas City today?
Participating Kansas City photographers produced five city portraits each. Nelson-Atkins graphic designer Shirley Harryman, Nelson-Atkins senior curator of photography April M. Watson and KCSCP president Angie Jennings judged submissions and selected two images from each artist.
In a workshop, photographers “worked together to sequence their images as a book. April provided a talk about book layout,” said Jennings.
Harryman designed the “Portrait of the City” catalog that inspired the exhibition’s design — nearly 100 photographs grouped by geographic area, such as the West Bottoms and Westside.
The exhibition’s signature cover image, Don James’s “Supply Lines, 25th & State Line, Kansas City, Missouri,” finds poetic sinuous lines navigating through urban industrial infrastructure. Otherwise, the exhibition’s matted images appear in uniformly sized black square frames and maintain equal visual weight, producing a collective slideshow effect. Only when the viewer draws near a photograph does the subject matter impose its own gravity, completing a duet that mirrored the photographer’s process. What or who attracted the photographer and viewer to dwell on this captured moment, place, or person?
A Hofer photograph of owners of a trucker bar inspired Brian Wicklund’s image, “The Belfry, 16th St & Grand Ave, Kansas City Missouri,” portraying proprietor and chef Celina Tio with bartenders Cy Shamet and Sergio Cazares. Seeing his name in the photograph’s catalog caption, “Sergio never thought he would see his name in print,” said Wicklund. The power of the photograph to document, represent, and actualize someone as more than a face, some place as more than a location, resonates. Images by Wicklund and his peers amplify this power 100 times over. Randall Hudson’s spontaneous Crossroads shot features a shirtless Black male bicyclist in the afternoon sun, a golden Apollo holding space near the Kauffman Performing Arts Center’s dramatic architecture. Elise Gagliardi’s midnight black-and-white snapshot of a man smoking and holding a paper plate sign at Easy Inn is a testament to someone seen.
Our city’s compelling backstory of people and scenes feed a plot that continues to unfold.
“Portrait of a City,” continues at The Box Gallery in the Commerce Bank Building, 1000 Walnut St., through February 21. Hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday – Friday. For more information, visit theboxgallery.org.
