WELLESLEY, MASS.- The Davis Museum presents Measuring the World: Photography, Geography and Description, an exhibition exploring how the camera can function as a device for measuring the world, mediating relations between individuals and their surrounding environments. Drawn from the Museum’s extensive collection of historic to contemporary photography, the exhibition invites viewers to consider ideas about land and colonial expansion, mapping, the World Atlas, the question of scale, travel, tourism, and globalization. Measuring the World is on view from September 16 through December 13, 2015.

Through approximately 50 photographs by internationally recognized artists spanning from the 19th century to today, the exhibition explores fundamental shifts in perspective over landscape, geography, culture, and society caused by the increasingly widespread use of the medium since the mid-19th century. The photographers represented in Measuring the World include Eugène Atget, Ed Ruscha, Timothy O’Sullivan, Carrie Mae Weems, August Sander, Paul Strand, Dorothea Lange, and Tseng Kwong Chi.

“The Davis Museum has a diverse collection of photography by renowned international artists,” said exhibition curator Ileana L. Selejan, Linda Wyatt Gruber '66 Curatorial Fellow in Photography. “Our hope is that by bringing this group of photographs together, visitors will get a sense of how photography has helped us study history, as well as break down barriers in cultural understanding.”

Measuring the World: Photography, Geography and Description is generously supported by The Constance Rhind Robey ‘81 Fund for Museum Exhibitions.

One of the oldest and most acclaimed academic fine arts museums in the United States, the Davis Museum is a vital force in the intellectual, pedagogical and social life of Wellesley College. It seeks to create an environment that encourages visual literacy, inspires new ideas, and fosters involvement with the arts both within the College and the larger community.