“The Way We Never Were:” On View at the Harvard Art Museums

Harvard Independent

“The Way We Never Were” is a photography collection on view at the Harvard Art Museums from Aug. 29 to May 9, 2027. This exhibition features an archive selection assembled in the 1970s by sociologist and curator Barbara P. Norfleet, who earned a PhD in social psychology from Harvard University in 1957. Alongside her archival project, Norfleet was continuously involved with Harvard as a teacher, photographer, and curator. The full archive includes over 20,000 photographs from professional photography studios spanning the late 19th century to the 1980s across the United States, though most are from the late 1930s to the early 1960s. Audrey Sands, Madison Brown, and Bridget Hinz curated this exhibition.

American post-World War II commercial photography was largely defined by its power to shape public perceptions of American culture—put bluntly, a heteronormative, comfortable, structured, and unified suburbia. Through magazines and promotional images, professional photographers created a highly fictionalized yet nostalgic image of “American culture.” They did this by specifically documenting and promoting consumer products, staging photographs of “daily life,” and celebrating the triumphs of post-war America.

Read more at the Harvard Independent.