The Sophian

Issue date: 9/28/06 Section: Arts

If you have an extra half-hour or so between now and Dec. 3, stop by the Smith CollegeMuseum of Art and check out Women are Beautiful, a black-and-white photography exhibit by Pioneer Street photographer Garry Winogrand (1928-1984). Most of the images on display at the museum were published in the photographer's 1975 book of the same name, which features 84 photographs of women, mostly taken in public places. The exhibit is not particularly extensive, but the 45 images are surprisingly captivating. Winogrand's images have a kind of beautiful, understated honesty to them; he allows his subjects to speak candidly to the camera, even when they seem unaware that they are being photographed. In one of the photographs, a woman at a party turns away, her dress unbuttoned just low enough to look like an accident. In another, two waitresses stand together at a café in the mountains, their faces grim. In yet another, a woman dances barefoot at a party, her limbs splayed.

"I respond to their energies," said Winogrand on his choice of subjects, and his photographs articulate this concept exactly. They are portraits both of women and of a photographer's reaction to them; through his images he urges us to see along with him.

"I don't know if all the women in the photographs are beautiful, but I do know that the women are beautiful in the photographs," said Winogrand, and very simply, he is right.

The Smith College Museum of Art is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 to 4 and Sunday 12 to 4. Admission is free for students. Also recommended - especially to any printmakers - is The Early Modern Painter-Etcher, an exhibit of etchings by master painters - not printmakers - of the 16-18 centuries. The subjects range from bizarre to religious, and the detail of craftsmanship is intense. The etchings are up until Oct. 29.

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