A View of One’s Own, on view through December 10th at the Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania, presents a curious story told threefold: three women photographers: Esther Boise Van Deman, Georgina Masson and Jeannette Montgomery Barron each visit Rome for three different purposes in three different eras, produce three wholly different interpretations of the Eternal City in three different photographic media. The curation offers competing impulses of record-keeping, seduction, and stream-of-consciousness insights, which, at first glance, would seem to provide rich fodder for the exhibition. However, the execution of the show is fundamentally flawed in that for the most part, each artist is kept within her own view, so to speak: the photographs are presented in discrete chronological collections in the gallery space, which ultimately robs the viewer of the opportunity to evaluate just how each woman’s unique version of the same city responds to the others.

Exhibition Review by Deborah Krieger