There are many ways to engage with the Baltimore Museum of Art’s new show Flashback: Two Centuries of Baltimore Photography, but one is through the eyes – the direct gaze of people depicted in these photos staring right at you as you stand there in the gallery.

One of them is an enslaved Black woman, flinty-eyed and defiant as she poses in 1852 for a formal portrait holding a smiling, chubby-cheeked white child we know is not her own.

Another is Baltimore stripper and burlesque performer Blaze Starr responding backstage not to the Two O’Clock Club crowd, but to photographer Diane Arbus. Starr struck a classic cheesecake pose, leaning against a brick wall. But her expression seems wary and a bit weary.

Then there’s Joe Giordano’s 2020 image of a police officer on duty the night Baltimore’s streets erupted following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

Wreathed by red and green emergency lights, stone-faced behind her plexiglass riot shield, the officer’s feelings about what’s being protested and her role in it are something to ponder.

These are just a few of the more than 200 images by 90 historic and contemporary artists in this ambitious show, running through Feb. 21 at the museum.

While some of the works come from the museum’s holdings, most are on loan from the National Portrait Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, the Library  of Congress and other institutions or private owners.

It’s the first exhibit to explore the pivotal role that Baltimore played in the development of photography in the United States, co-curators Leslie Cozzi and Antoinette Roberts say.

They note that the daguerreotype shop Henry Fitz Jr. opened up in 1840 on Baltimore Street was the third photography studio to open in the country. Included in the show are photos by Dora Russell, who in 1894 opened one of Baltimore’s first woman-owned studios, and Arthur Laidler Macbeth, a pioneering Black studio owner.

Even among the plethora of palm-sized historical photos in the show, there are piercing stares to be found.

One such steady gaze is that of the 23-year-old Frederick Douglas in 1841, just three years after his escape from bondage in Baltimore.

It’s the first known photo of the reformer, writer and orator, a visionary about the potential of the medium who “saw photography as a powerful tool of abolition,” the curators note in the 48-page book that accompanies the show.

“What was once the special exclusive luxury of the rich is now the privilege of all,” Douglass wrote. “The humblest servant girl may now possess a picture of herself such as the wealth of kings could not purchase 50 years ago.”

Likewise capitalizing on the newly accessible medium, Nicholas “Nick” Biddle had cards made up showing his hard-won claim to historical fame.

A 65-year-old Black servant from Pennsylvania who was among the Union volunteers marching down Howard Street in 1861, Biddle was gravely injured by the rock-throwing Confederate sympathizers who showed up to harass them that day.

“The first man wounded in the great American Rebellion,” proclaims his so-called carte-de-visite on display in the show.

Something for Everyone

Asked by The Brew what people should know about the show, one of the photographers with a piece in it apologized for the use of a cliche, but simply said “it has something for everyone.” It does.

Looking for images considered transgressive in their day?

You can see MICA professor M. Richard Kirstel’s intimate photos depicting two anonymous couples, one heterosexual, one lesbian – the first explicitly erotic photographs publicly displayed in New York City. In 1970, a subsequent exhibition of the work at Towson University was canceled by the school administrators.

“The Scopes trial of photography,” the New York Times called it at the time.

Also causing a stir were the photos that Coppin State University professor Cary Beth Cryor took of herself in the hospital in 1978, includng one at the very moment her daughter was born. (A strategically placed mirror was the key to getting the money shot.)

Looking for images of back in the day in Baltimore? Take your pick.

There is Eleanor B. Cahn’s 1979 depiction of “Saturday Afternoon Bingo at St. Casimir’s in Canton” and Roland L. Freeman’s joyful “Drums in the Park, Baltimore, Maryland August 1973.”

Hoping to see some images from the 2015 Uprising after Freddie Gray’s death after being tackled by city police?

There are plenty, including Devin Allen’s iconic shot that made the cover of TIME Magazine. (The curators made a point of including local photographers whose perspective is from the community as opposed to outsiders parachuting in.)

For those pondering the big changes a local developer wants to make at Baltimore’s tourist waterfront, there’s an interesting look back: John William Schaefer’s “Panoramic View of Inner Harbor from Federal Hill” shot in 1903.

Curious what’s believed to be the earliest photographic depiction of Baltimore?

It’s the 1844 photo of the Centre Market by Henry Fitz Jr., and it’s in the show. You can see the baskets of produce and the watermelons on the sidewalk.

Looking for photojournalists with a knack for finding the powerful geometry all around us? Consider these works by Jim Burger and Jennifer Bishop. (Both are onetime staffers at the late lamented Baltimore City Paper and now two of the Baltimore photog world’s OG’s, as is Giordano.)

Burger’s 1980 shot of Pimlico Race Course, looking down on the crowd, shows bettors standing amid the confetti of discarded betting slips, each with their own long shadow from the low angle of the setting sun.

The scene seems to vibrate.

Bishop’s “City Park, 2017” slices away the sentimentality of the typical Baltimore rowhouse shot with a snow-dusted, mirror-image wedge of land.

Which one is overtaking the other?

The same kind of dynamic composition is at the heart of two other standouts.

In Leonard Freed’s 1964 shot of Martin Luther King Jr. in Baltimore after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Black women clamor around his convertible, their hands clasping his, their arms radiating out from his grasp like spokes on a wheel.

Another photo with exhilarating angles is “Druid Hill YMCA Swim Class” by Irving Henry Phillips Sr., the legendary photographer for the Afro-American, whose work is well represented in the show.

Co-curator Roberts enthused about the 1954 shot at an event at the museum last week, calling its upward-pointed angles “perhaps a metaphor for the whole show.”

In their book, she and Cozzi said this about the photo:

“The diagonal of young swimmers cleaving through the water transforms a local youth program at a historically Black YMCA into a symbol of discipline and aspiration,” they wrote. “The sharpness of the swimmers’ line contrasts with the fluidity of the environment.”

“This is no pedestrian snapshot,” the authors continued. “The formal organization of the image elevates this collective portrait of a teacher and his students into an allegory for social progress and coming of age.”