The Eastman Collection at UMMA

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The next chronological section of the exhibit, "The Shaping Eye," includes photos by chroniclers of less picturesque aspects of American life, including Al-fred Stieglitz's 1907 print The Steerage and One of Many Young Spinners in a Carolina Mill, Lewis Hines's sobering 1908 photo of a girl about eight years old, unsupervised, adjusting something on a huge machine — taller than she is and filling an entire room.

The following section, "Active Witness," presents prints from Walker Evans that include Roadside Stand, Vicinity Birmingham, Alabama, 1936, showing two boys proudly holding giant melons in front of a fish shop's sign promising "Honest Weights, Square Dealings." There's also West Virginia Coal Miner's House, his 1935 photo of a bentwood rocker in front of a cardboard-covered wall decorated with cutouts of two high school graduates holding up diplomas, facing a Santa Claus cutout hoisting a Coke.

There's also Robert Capa's 1944 print U.S. Troops Landing on D Day, Omaha Beach, Normandy Coast and Joe Rosenthal's endlessly reproduced 1945 Old Glory Goes Up on Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima. Harold Edgerton informally referred to his famous 1964 stop-motion photograph of a bullet piercing an apple (above) as How to Make Applesauce. Another of his stop-motion photos shows a drop of milk plopping into a layer of milk, creating a crown of droplets.