The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts > Exhibitions

The Performance of Self in Everyday Life: Photography by Dona Ann McAdams

From March 6, 2007 through July 28, 2007
Steinberg Room Gallery
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, 40 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023-7498 (directions)

The Performance of Self in Everyday Life: Photography by Dona Ann McAdams
Dona Ann McAdams has photographed dance and performance for over twenty-five years, winning both Obie and Bessie Awards for her work. Yet long before she ever stepped foot into a theater, she was already making art from the performances of everyday life. Early in her artistic career she intuited that people in public places were unwitting performers, and the way their bodies moved through a city street or plaza or suburban park could be as expressive and beautiful as a dancer’s on a stage.

McAdams’ street work goes back to 1970s San Francisco and continues to this day. On the street, as in the theater, McAdams becomes part of the live performance: she anticipates and reacts to the movements of the “performers” around her. She has an uncanny ability to capture the public pageantry, to frame her figures in the perfect moment, and reveal the irony--and wit --of accidental performances. In the theater McAdams uses a proscenium. On the street she creates her own stage with the lens of her 35 mm. Leica. Her photographs are stunning moments of light and movement and time.

McAdams’ photography draws on the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Diane Arbus, but also on that of sociologist, Erving Goffman. Goffman used the language of theater in his study of everyday social interaction, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. He believed people in public were actors on a stage. The photographs in this exhibit make Goffman’s words explicit. In McAdams’ work, all the world is indeed a stage. The performances are breathtaking.