AMERICAN EXPOSURES A GROWING, CHANGING NATION UNFOLDS BEFORE THE CAMERA AT SKIRBALL.

Byline: Steven Rosen Correspondent

A NEW PHOTOGRAPHY exhibition at the Skirball Cultural Center shows us how well every picture tells a story.

And the story here is nothing less than the history of America.

``The Photograph and the American Dream: 1840-1940,'' which runs through Jan. 4, aims to tell it through approximately 130 photographs, moving from the tiny, faded daguerreotype portraits of pre-Civil War families to a massive panoramic photomural of an early-20th-century American city. Virtually all are black-and-white prints.

Stephen White, the Los Angeles photo historian whose collection is the basis of this internationally touring show, has chosen to see that history as a progressive and ultimately uplifting, if imperfect, one. ``It speaks to the innovative spirit of the country,'' says Barbara Gilbert, Skirball's curator of fine arts. ``It revisits the history of the U.S. through well- known events and the experiences of individuals.''

Another curator or another show might have taken a more downbeat approach - stressing Civil War dead, racial injustice and anti-labor outrages, the despair of the Depression. White, in selecting these photos, certainly didn't overlook the negative. The signature image of the show is a hauntingly stark Lewis Hine portrait of a child worker at a Georgia cotton mill in 1909, and there are other somber, sobering photos about tragedies and social problems.

But White doesn't accentuate the negative. Instead, a sense of hopefulness permeates the show. It is best represented in the final image, John Albok's ``Wall Street and Lower Manhattan From the Chrysler Building.''

The time is 1933, the heart of the Depression, and this image is fundamentally dark with grim clouds above the skyline. And yet sunlight has broken through to distant silhouetted roofs. ``I thought it was a lovely photo to end the show with,'' White says. ``You see the rays of light coming through, so you see the endless optimism.''

This exhibition debuted at Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum in September 2001 and proved exceedingly popular - and intensely appropriate after 9-11. In fact, 9-11 inadvertently changed the meaning of one of the show's most spectacular images, White says. Fairchild Aerial's shot of New York's ``Woolworth Building in Clouds,'' circa 1930, suddenly became reminiscent of the World Trade Center engulfed in smoke.

Exhibit's first U.S. visit

The Van Gogh Museum's head of exhibitions, Andreas Bluhm, co-curated the show with White. It subsequently traveled to the Patrimoine Photographique at the Hotel de Sully in Paris. The Skirball, which aims to look at connections between American cultural life and Jewish heritage, is the first American institution to display the show. There is an accompanying catalog with a foreword by former President Bill Clinton.

Divided into six themes, such as ``All Men Are Created Equal'' and ``The City Rises,'' the photos show how both America and the art of photography grew in the first 100 years of the medium.

Some of the most interesting photos chronicle technical innovations in the photographic process. One unidentified artist combined cutout portraits with a watercolor sketch of a plane to create a lively, surreal collage about early flight in 1915.

From a photographer identified as Welden comes a remarkable 1908 experiment in sustained exposure - three hours watching the title object of ``Moon Over Fairbanks, Alaska'' on a frigid night. The effect is to leave a white streak - like a rupture in the heavens - across the sky. ``He probably left the camera in the snow and came back three hours later,'' White says. ``It's pretty amazing what he had.''

The exhibition does feature some important photographers - Hine, Eadweard Muybridge, Edward Steichen, Carleton Watkins, Margaret Bourke-White. But the subject matter is more important than the star power. Many engrossing images are by unfamiliar and even unidentified photographers. That's what gives this show its pulse. It's a fresh approach to a topic - a photo-history survey - potentially as worn-out as a fading, creased snapshot.

Because westward expansion is such an important part of American history, the show chronicles the changes to our rugged landscape wrought by time and development. And it is especially insightful about California.

A revelatory print, in terms of what it says about L.A. life, is C.C. Pierce's 1930 panoramic shot of small homes and oil derricks vying for space in Venice and Marina del Rey. Side by side and creating a kind of hyperactive, hop-scotchy visual rhythm, these structures reveal that sprawl and willy-nilly development are nothing new. But it is a form of real-estate modernism.

Los Angeles also figures in a wonderful photo from the Aerograph Co. In 1924, radio station KHJ sponsored a barbecue in Topanga, and the event was observed and preserved via an aerial shot. Car upon car - closer to horseless buggy than modern auto - is parked in a remote field. The rows extend as far as one can see. It is a visual testament to the power of modern communications to create new communities where none existed.

The show's largest photograph is a 360-degree panorama of San Francisco shot by the resourceful Muybridge in 1876. So large it needs 13 panels to be displayed in full, it presents an endlessly extended vista of this bustling, vibrant and impressively big city. (White's copy of the panorama was painstakingly reshot from an original.)

This image teaches that, some 130 years ago, the West already had an urban landscape. And then next to it, from 1906, is a photogravure print of San Francisco in ruins after the great earthquake. Shot from an airship by George R. Lawrence & Co., it shows how America must keep reinventing itself, out of either delight or disaster, to grow. And it reiterates that photography is constantly there to record the process.

THE PHOTOGRAPH AND THE AMERICAN DREAM: 1840-1940

Where: The Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles.

When: Noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday; through Jan. 4.

Tickets: $8 general, $6 students and seniors, free for children under 12. Call [phone].

What else: There are numerous special events associated with the exhibition, including an American Dream Music Series that begins 8 p.m. Sunday with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Tickets are $18 general, $10 students. [phone]; www.skirball.com.

CAPTION(S):

5 photos

Photo:

(1) ``Spinner, Cotton Mill'' (1909), silver print, Lewis Hine

(2) George B. Billings Rego, first child born at new immigration processing center in Boston

(3) ``Stringing the Grand Piano, Steinway Factory, New York City'' (1934), toned silver print, Margaret Bourke-White

(4) ``Amelia Earhart'' (circa 1935), silver print, Acme Photos

(5) ``Theoline, Pier II, East River, Manhattan, N.Y.'' (1936), silver print, Berenice Abbott