The Photographic Impulse constituted a novella in the Henry’s series of Short Stories. This exhibition, spanning more than 150 years of photographic history with approximately 200 photographs from the Monsen collection, considered some of the reasons pictures are taken, collected, and viewed. The exhibition traced five important impulses that influence the myth of an objective photographic truth. These included: the impulse to make visible distant places and cultures and to reveal marginalized subcultures; the impulse to organize and archive the phenomena of the world; the impulse to consolidate and disseminate personal masquerades of identity; the impulse to commemorate significant people and events; and the impulse to usurp the traditional role of artistic painting.

Illustrating and illuminating how these themes work together constituted an alternative approach to understanding the history of photography — each section of the exhibition combined and juxtaposed older, iconic works with up-to-the-minute contemporary work. This exhibition was both a thematic survey of outstanding examples from the history of photography and a critical account of the profound social, political and cultural implications of photographic practice.

This Henry exhibition was derived from an exhibition curated by Henry associate curator Thom Collins for the Cincinnati Art Museum in 2002. This survey gathered objects from the La Jolla and Seattle homes of Drs. Joseph and Elaine Monsen, as well as from their generous gifts to the Henry Art Gallery. The Henry’s presentation of The Photographic Impulse reprised the five themes while adding some very recent gifts to the Henry Art Gallery, and also featured selections from the Monsen’s ever-growing private collection.