Lolita HarperThey are smiling, crying, loving and...

Lolita Harper

They are smiling, crying, loving and mourning. They nurture, excite,

infuriate and toil. They are women, and their beauty has been

captured, one frame at a time, in a breathtaking exhibit of

photographs on display at the Orange County Museum of Art.

Adorning the walls of the Newport Beach museum is “Woman: A

Celebration: Photographs from the Collection of Peter Fetterman.” It

is a survey of some of the most memorable portraits of women famous

and unknown from the mid-19th century through the 20th, museum

spokesman Brian Langston said.

“Everybody knows women,” museum curator Sarah Vure said. “I think

the emotion that is captured in these photos is something everyone

can relate to.”

There are those who are unfamiliar with the arts, with exhibits

and with museums, but nobody is unfamiliar with women. Anyone who

knows a woman, has ever loved a woman or is a woman can find

something moving at this exhibit, Vure said.

People are surrounded by photographs all the time, Vure said -- in

magazines, on the Internet and on billboards. But Fetterman’s

collection introduces people to a world of photography before digital

enhancement.

The exhibit has images of Mother Teresa, Helen Keller, Billie

Holiday, Katharine Hepburn and other women, unknown but equally

radiant. Women are shown with their children, hard at work, in times

of war and times of jubilation. Some photographs follow women through

their lives. Shots of girls with cherub faces framed by flowing locks

lead up to shots of mature, knowing women with lines that represent

experience.

“The women depicted embody the human experience and are portrayed

in various roles,” Langston said. “There are traditional portraits

and nudes, compositions of women at work and at play, icons of

timeless beauty, and pictures of powerful individuals who have

changed the world.”

All photographs in the exhibit are reproduced in the accompanying

book of the same title, published by Chronicle Books, San Francisco.

The volume is edited by Fetterman, who single-handedly collected the

more than 100 photographs in the exhibit.

“I have known Peter Fetterman and have been to his gallery in

Santa Monica and he has shown me these wonderful photographs in the

past,” Vure said. “When he told me he was working on a book on them

and we had an opportunity to show them as a collection, it was just

too good to pass up.”