Robert Pledge (center) and Ronald Pledge (right)
Photograph by Elizabeth Krist
When I walked into the Artefacto Exhibit Space in Georgetown the evening before the opening of "Contact/s: The Art of Photojournalism," not a single piece of art was hanging on the walls or from the ceiling. Robert Pledge, co-founder and director of Contact Press Images, had arrived for the day to oversee the installation of the exhibit, but even after he raced out to catch a plane at 8 pm, there was still only one oversized contact sheet in place. And yet, when the opening began just 22 hours later, the exhibit was miraculously up and ready for prime time. The adrenaline of the last-minute just seems to be a grand Contact tradition.....
The show is an impressive look at one photography agency's journey through the last 30 years of news and human drama. But it is also a tribute to film in the digital age, celebrating the artifact of the contact sheet, which documents a photographer's step-by-step approach to a particular subject on a particular day. Not like today's slippery digital catalogues, with images diving out of sight or slipping out of order. Just the (in this case) black-and-white rectangles locked into their original sequence unfolding over time. As Ronald Pledge, Robert's son, wonders, will the next generation even know what a contact sheet is?
Contact Sheet - Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran, February 1979
Photograph © by David Burnett (Contact Press Images)
