The COVID-19 pandemic may have prevented a host of activities, but it didn’t stop the VMFA from continuing to collect powerful photography of note.

The museum’s current exhibition, “Face and Figure: Recent Acquisitions in Photography,” brings together 16 photographs, 22 photobooth portraits, two portraits in brooches and one photo card, all of which were acquired by the museum since 2020.

One of the biggest changes since that time was the museum establishing a separate department for photography and hiring its first full-time curator of photography, Sarah Kennel, who became the Aaron Siskind Curator of Photography and Director of the Raysor Center at VMFA in September 2021.

Most of the works now on view represent acquisitions she made as part of her collection plan designed to build on VMFA’s strengths, particularly in American photography, and to expand and diversify their holdings in terms of photographic work by women artists and artists of color. “I’m also thinking broadly about photography’s many histories, including so-called vernacular traditions such as the photobooth selfies in the gallery,” Kennel says. “I’m committed to expanding our holdings of artists working in Virginia.”

The lack of air conditioning in the 1930s and ‘40s meant that people were frequently outside. Photographer Helen Levitt took to the streets of her hometown, New York City, to capture people, often children, going about their daily lives. Levitt had been exposed to the work of French humanist photojournalist Henri Cartier-Bresson and met him at an event of the Manhattan Film and Photography League. Deeply influenced by his work, she turned her focus from more journalistic and commercial photography to much more personal work.

Her photograph “New York (The Foreign Legion)” from 1939 shows four young boys in poses reminiscent of the 1939 adventure film “Beau Geste.” The boys, possibly first-generation Americans, mug for the camera with gestures and improvised headgear probably inspired by the movie. Levitt captures in luminous detail the very different expressions on each child, set against a working-class urban backdrop.

Photographer Dorothy Norman captured a master in her 1946 photograph, “Henri Cartier-Bresson,” while the photographer was preparing for a major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Posing for her playfully, Cartier-Bresson holds his 35mm Leica camera as if he’s competing with Norman to see who can snap the first picture. The jaunty angle of his shoulders and his straight-on challenging gaze speak directly to the viewer.

Some of the photographs in “Face and Figure” feel like relics from another era, despite their fairly recent creation. Catherine Opie’s 1993 image, “Matt and Joe,” depicts two of her friends in the LGBTQ+ community. Set against a lustrous, emerald-green background and using subtle lighting, the dual portrait evokes the work of Renaissance painter Hans Holbein and European portraiture in general.

Although LGBTQ+ people were treated unequally and often faced violence within their communities in the 1990s, this was also a pivotal period. The same year that Opie made this photograph, the U.S. military instituted the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and gay rights began to move to the forefront of political conversation.

In the photograph “Matt and Joe,” Opie uses subtle details and gestures to convey the array of emotions – desire, tenderness, pride and wariness – that defined the couple’s lives and relationship at a time when being out was risky.

Much was already changing in the 1980s, also a time of intense social and economic divides. Photographer Jim Goldberg began a series in the late 1970s titled “Rich and Poor,” which documented residents of the San Francisco Bay area through powerful photographs accompanied by observations made by his subjects.

“Vickie Figueroa,” from 1981, shows domestic employee Figueroa standing in the kitchen behind Mrs. Stone, her elegantly dressed employer. Despite their physical proximity and closeness in age, the viewer immediately discerns that the distance between them in terms of lives led is vast. But it’s Figueroa’s handwritten statements under the photograph that pack the emotional punch. “My dream was to become a schoolteacher. Mrs. Stone is rich. I have talents but not opportunity. I am used to standing behind Mrs. Stone. I have been a servant for 40 years.”

The oppressive heat and humidity of the South permeate Baldwin Lee’s 1984 photograph “Plain Dealing, Louisiana – Baby in Lap.” Lee’s composition of a smiling mother with her naked baby stretched across her lap sleeping is luminous and heartbreaking yet dignifies its subjects. Only the chain link fence behind the bench hints at the bleak surroundings.

The commitment to acquiring work by women artists and artists of color has long been part of the museum’s strategic plan, which since 2015 has called for at least one third of its acquisition funds to be dedicated to work by African and African American artists.

Previous photography acquisitions as well as related exhibitions, such as Sarah Eckhardt’s 2020 show “Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop,” which followed the acquisition of the Louis Draper archives and was many years in the making, testify to the long-standing commitments.

Now it’s Kennel’s responsibility to carry that mission forward. She admits to being excited to bring in photographs by Asian American and Latinx photographers and increase the museum’s representation of work by LGBTQ+ photographers as well as women photographers from the early years of the 20^th century.

As for the concept of face and figure, Kennel chose it because it allowed her to reveal the diversity and wonder of photography as both a social and artistic practice. “It’s one that can be radically intimate and at the same time tell us something about who we are and how we live with each other,” she explains. “With the key understanding that ‘we’ is an open-ended proposition, one that photography is especially suited to explore.”

The exhibition “Face and Figure: Recent Acquisitions in Photography” runs through Feb. 11, 2024 at VMFA, 200 N. Arthur Ashe Boulevard. Vmfa.museum