ST. PETERSBURG.- The MFA continues its 50th anniversary celebration with its most expansive survey of photography to date. Approximately 200 images are featured in Five Decades of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, featuring The Dandrew-Drapkin Collection, from Saturday, June 20-Sunday, October 4. Many were gifts from Ludmila and Bruce Dandrew and Chitranee and Dr. Robert L. Drapkin, whose donations between 2009 and 2012 elevated the collection to an entirely new level.

Hazel and William Hough Chief Curator Jennifer Hardin, who has worked tirelessly to enhance these holdings, has organized the exhibition and will present a Gallery Talk on Sunday, June 21, at 3 p.m.

The photographers represented read like a “Who’s Who” in the art form: Henry Fox Talbot, Édouard Baldus, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Julia Margaret Cameron, Margaret Bourke-White, Berenice Abbott, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, Edward Steichen, Brassaï, Lewis Hine, Walker Evans, Henri Cartier-Bresson, André Kértesz, Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, Minor White, Ilse Bing, Paul Strand, Aaron Siskind, Robert Frank, Ruth Bernhard, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Clarence John Laughlin, Richard Avedon, Jerry Uelsmann, Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Kenro Izu. The list could go on and on.

The images extend from the formative days of the medium in the mid-nineteenth century to the early twenty-first. They encompass fine art, photojournalism, portraits, breathtaking landscapes, and recent experimentation. It reveals why photography is one of our most vibrant and popular art forms. Dr. Hardin has written that The Ludmila Dandrew and Chitranee Drapkin Collection is “a visual history of the modern era.”

All known photographic media are on display, including a rare image, View of the Boulevards of Paris (1843), by William Henry Fox Talbot; salt prints; daguerreotypes; ambrotypes; and tintypes. Among these early works are portraits of showman P.T. Barnum; tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt; Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky with a young woman on his knee; the young, dashing poet John Greenleaf Whittier; and author Henry James. There is also a fascinating tintype of a male torso (about 1998) by contemporary photographer Jayne Hinds Bidaut, who specializes in this older process and whose work has been collected by our foremost museums.

The twentieth-century portraits are unforgettable. They encompass Man Ray’s portrait of Jean Cocteau (1924), one of the first multimedia artists; Arnold Newman’s of Surrealist Max Ernst (1942); Lee Miller’s of sculptor Isamu Noguchi in his studio (1946); and Richard Avedon’s of Marian Anderson on the occasion of her Metropolitan Opera debut (1955). Ms. Anderson, at 57, was the first African American to sing at the Met. Her artistic power radiates from this rare print of her in the midst of song.

Five Decades of Photography will take visitors on a journey through time and around the globe. On view are Antonio Beato’s albumen prints of Egypt and its antiquities, Alvin Langdon Coburn’s atmospheric photographs of early twentieth-century London, nineteenth- and twentieth-century views of Paris, and classic images of New York by such major figures as Berenice Abbott, Lewis Hine, and Garry Winogrand.

India, the Near East, the Holy Land, and North Africa captured the attention of photojournalists from an early date, and there are signature photographs of the American West by Carleton Watkins and Edward Curtis.

The great Ansel Adams is represented by important photographs, including Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park (about 1940). Adams wanted to support the MFA’s efforts to establish a photography collection and donated three images in 1972, which helped set the high standard for the initiative.

The twenty-first century photographs are by such gifted artists as Carrie Mae Weems, a 2013 recipient of the MacArthur Foundation “genius grant”; William Wegman, known for his large-scale images of theatrical Weimaraners, often in costume; Dianora Niccolini, celebrated for her male nudes; and Linda Connor, who has explored the exotic and fantastic around the world.

The photography collection, now numbering approximately 17,000 images, is a crowning achievement of the Museum of Fine Arts and of the discerning donors who strove for excellence. Five Decades of Photography is the perfect anniversary gift to the community.

The Ludmila Dandrew and Chitranee Drapkin Collection
The gifts of more than 15,000 images from Ludmila and Bruce Dandrew and Chitranee and Dr. Robert L. Drapkin were nothing less than historic in the life of the MFA. The photographs were originally collected by the Drapkins, longtime Museum friends who have been named two of America’s top 100 collectors by Art & Antiques magazine. They have also given rare photographic equipment, pre-Hispanic pottery of the Southwest, pre-Columbian objects, and other works to the MFA. Dr. Drapkin began collecting photography in 1975 while conducting research at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

After moving to Clearwater, the Dandrews met the Drapkins and ultimately acquired a large portion of their photography collection, with the goal of giving the images to the Museum. They made large donations in 2009 and 2012. The Drapkins made a similarly generous gift of photographs in 2010. Both couples wanted to keep the collection intact and to make it available to the public, including students, teachers, and scholars, for exhibitions, research, classes, and publications.