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

“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.

However, when these meticulously curated photographs are placed in their more specific cultural contexts, many inconsistencies and contradictions with reality begin to emerge. One photograph depicts a “Tupperware party,” featured in advertisements for the new polyethylene product that is “The best thing that’s happened to women since they got the vote!” While it was promoted as an improvement for women’s lives and a way to reduce waste, many would argue that these notions also kept women in the kitchen and promoted mass consumption of plastic. To give another example, in a time when sex was highly stigmatized and birth control was not yet available, photographs of newborn babies circulated in U.S. Public Health Service reports to construct a narrative of postwar domestic expansion.

These photographs not only contained inconsistencies, but they also actively masked systemic issues and cultural diversions in an attempt to create a pure, unified image. “Postwar domestic expansion” was lauded at the same time as American eugenics and the forced sterilization of Native American, Mexican, and Black women, as well as other marginalized groups. Photos of family-friendly youth play and socialization were put forth to codify acceptable teenage behavior out of fear of juvenile delinquency.

As we examine our past, these joyful images, built to characterize the post-war decades, actively mask the social and political tensions of the time. From the Civil Rights Movement to presidential assassinations, American life was far from the pictured stability and uniformity. However, the invention of the camera and its widespread adoption led to some of humanity’s most active engagements with nostalgia and memory. It may not have always been a conscious choice to memorialize stability over hardship but rather a product of wanting to capture our happiest moments.

The Origin of the Exhibition and its Ethos

I had the privilege of speaking with Audrey Sands, the Richard L. Menschel Associate Curator of Photography at Harvard Art Museums, about her experience curating this exhibition. “The Way We Never Were” is Sands’ first proposed exhibition with Harvard Art Museums, and it comes from an extended process of examining the photography collection of the Museums and thinking in conversation with the history of photography in fine art museums across the United States.

Sands’ goal in curating “The Way We Never Were” was to explore new ways to introduce existing permanent collections to the gallery space. The American Professional Photographers Collection, curated by Barbara Norfleet, lies within the larger mass of 90,000 photographs housed at the Harvard Art Museums. Although a quarter of the collection is Norfleet’s archive, it has not been examined as a whole since leaving the Carpenter Center and coming to the Fogg Museum (the oldest and largest part of the Harvard Art Museums) in 2002.

This archive is deeply tied to the history of visual arts and photography at Harvard. The Carpenter Center preceded other museums in its interdisciplinary and inclusive engagement with photography, thanks to Davis Pratt, the photography curator from 1965-1972, and Norfleet. The initial photography teaching collection consolidated multiple smaller collections that focused on social documentation. This treated photography as both an art form and a scientific or historical analysis, a practice radically ahead of its time. This duality called into question ideas of “cultural memory” and “collective consciousness,” and how artists largely crafted them.

Barbara Norfleet led the photography program and collection at the Carpenter Center from 1972-2002. During this time, she traveled the country between 1975 and 1977 to gather prints and negatives from the attics and basements of more than 25 professional studios. This large collection helped characterize the Carpenter Center and differentiate it from other museums, and therefore it was with Norfleet’s retirement in 2002 that the teaching collection as a whole, consisting of over 10,000 prints and 40,000 negatives, moved to the Harvard Art Museums.

However, despite the size of Norfleet’s archive, it struggled to fit neatly into conventional photography exhibitions. Thus, it found few opportunities to enter the main gallery spaces of the Harvard Art Museums.

Because photography, after its invention, was quickly adopted across fields—scientific, legal, personal, and professional—the art world saw it as a threat to, or “less than,” the fine arts exhibited in museums. Thus, for a long time, museums didn’t actively curate photography, and only in the 1970s, after years of advocacy by curators and practitioners, did they start building photography collections. Even within the “fine art” sphere of photography, this usually meant edgy, experimental pieces by “fine artists,” not the everyday personal, professionally hired photographers who captured the images in Norfleet’s archive.

Even though these professional photographers still had personal style and strong artistic merit, because of the widespread notion that fine art was specifically “art for art’s sake,” for many years family portraiture or images created for advertising were seen as far below and less aesthetically interesting and unique, preventing photography from being considered meaningful fine-art.

“What was populating these collections was work by named, iconic individuals who were seen to have pushed forward the art history of photography,” said Sands.

In contrast, Norfleet, who trained in sociology alongside photography, focused on images that permeated everyday life in advertisements, magazines, and family portraiture. Thus, Sands worked to draw attention to this particular thread of photography, examining it and the tension it holds with what we consider as “fine art.” She examined the collection as a whole to determine how best to present it to the public.

“It has to be something we breathe new life into … It cannot just lie dormant,” she stated.

This exhibition, which occupies only a single bay in the Harvard Art Museums’ special exhibition space, reaches across the United States and showcases a wide range of social phenomena over time. Through this multidisciplinary approach to photography, which combines history, science, and art, Harvard’s archival wealth comes to light.

She explained that a major goal is to advocate for making art and art history accessible, making the museum’s holdings transparent, and allowing viewers to connect with the works.“We really try to look at what holdings, what deep pockets really characterized our collections and make us distinct from other museums,” she described.

The timeliness of the exhibition: why now?

Sands described how, while the photographs themselves are a narrow and idealized representation of “American life,” grounded in white suburbia, the goal in curating the exhibition was to offer new entry points into the collection.

“The task at hand is to think about how we present this collection that is filled with extraordinary and bizarre pictures that are joyful, humorous, and troubling to look at while we also present them in a way that complicates how we look at them and provide a number of pathways for visitors to look at them,” Sands said.

In an art world that often tells viewers what they are looking at and how to look at it, this exhibition offers an opportunity for individuals to reflect on the cultural context of the country they stand in and to connect with the exhibit on multiple fronts.

“Each piece comes from a cultural context of protest, of violence, of loss, of environmental degradation,” Sands described, but also from an attempt to codify American life, ritual, and social identity in a way that is playful and nostalgic, directly following a period of time that was so hard on U.S. citizens. The exhibition encourages viewers to participate in broader national conversations about how we remember our past and treat our history.

Norfleet’s archive began in 1975 with a National Endowment for the Humanities research grant, which allowed her to begin organizing the collection at Harvard. This time marked the 200th anniversary of the United States, and it featured a lot of cultural looking back that mirrors us at the 250th anniversary. Sands brought up questions regarding patriotism and “American culture” that the exhibition is infused with: “What does it mean to celebrate this nation that is so deeply divided? Can there be a cohesive picture of who we are? What makes an American individual or society?” Each question requires dual perspectives and a conscious effort to enter these “seemingly objective ways of telling.”

Looking back further, the art and craft of photography emerged from the camera’s first technological inventions and its ability to “capture reality,” as it were. In the art world, technology has long been a source of influence and inspiration, but also a point of tension, as it highlights issues of accessibility and class divide. This has begun to change in recent years. Whereas in the 1950s only trained professionals could manually paint and alter photographs, that process has become much more accessible. Social media has become a breeding ground for beauty standards and for opportunities to “perform” and “improve ourselves” for the camera, social perception, and memory.

Looking back at our history, we can see that throughout art, literature, and science, humanity has long faced this tension between capturing reality and altering it.

All in all, this is an amazing exhibit with playful, iconic photos that evoke a complex American history beneath its stereotypes and ideals. It is a unique part of Harvard’s incredibly robust collection, engaging multiple fields and encouraging viewers to take one or more of the many pathways into the perception world that connects past and present.

Sam Park ’29 (shpark@college.harvard.edu) would like to thank Audrey Sands and Jennifer Aubin, assistant director of media relations in the Harvard Art Museums, for helping organize this opportunity for the “Harvard Independent.”

Notes 9/18/26

Why did you curate this exhibit? How was the experience of curating it?

Curator of photography, first exhibition that she has proposed

New ways to introduce existing permanent collections

Usually smaller, single bay within the special exhibition

Draw attention to a single thread or a single argument

“We really try to look at what holdings, what deep pockets really characterized our collections and make us distinct from other museums”

Has only been collecting photographs as fine arts since 1970s

45,000 photographs from carpenter center transferred to the fogg then harvard art museums

Had always worked in many museums across

Barbara Norfleet had a unique vantage point

Training as a sociologist

Inherited this history of collecting photography

90,000 photographs in collection

Everything is here for a different reason

“American professional photographers collection”

Within this subset, 20,000 of them ¼ of them belong to single archive built in Barbara Norfleet

Not been looked at as a whole since it came to the fogg

“Advocating for making accessible, making transparent what our holdings are.”

Massive area was not organized in making it accessible

This kind of photograph is really different from other museums

Photography was invented in early 1900s (kind of originated in portraiture, daguerrotype), picked up by all different fields at once (scientific, legal, personal, professional)

“To be utilized by whatever field has discovered it”

“Dominant medium of visual communication”

Seen as a threat to/less than other fine art in museums

For a long time photography didn’t enter museums

1970s, after years of advocacy of curators and practitioners, museums started hiring curators to build photography collections

Relatively short history

Rubric for what is “fine art” material

Usually edgy, artsy stuff, not everyday personal professional hired photographers, not advertising (seen as far below and less-aesthetically interesting and unique

“What was populating these collections was work by named, iconic individuals who were seen to have pushed forward the art history of photography”

Aesthetically unique

Bobby Norfleet was interested in photography in everyday life

“When I first looked at these photographs, they were so nostalgic and playful and mapped onto this vision of America.”

Collection built by sociologist and rituals and class in America

Thought experiment for how to build a collection

“It has to be something we breathe new life into… It cannot just lie dormant”

This collection doesn’t fit neatly into other collections

Major collection that is really different and has not been examined as a whole

“Be this expression of american life, american ritual, american social identity in the 1950s”

Spans late 19th century to 1970s, but bulk is the middle decades, so Sands focused on the postwar years

Clearly not a 1-1 representation of american life

Narrow and idealized slice, representing white, suburban life

How are we offering new entryways into a collection?

“Lens of how we think about how we present this collection that is filled with extraordinary and bizarre pictures that are joyful, humorous, and troubling to look at while we also present them in a way that complicates how we look at them and provide a number of pathways for visitors to look at them

Collection was began in 1975, National Endowment of Humanities grant, 200th anniversary of USA, lots of cultural looking back that mirror us at 250th anniversary to look back and complicate

Participate in broader national conversations about how we remember our past

The exhibition is infused with many of those questions—what does it mean to celebrate this nation that is so deeply divided. Can there be a cohesive picture of who we are? What makes an American individual or society?

Looking back at that 1950s moment and see the complexity of flattening

One takeaway from exhibition

Duality of perspectives and multiplicity

“Seemingly objective ways of telling can be entered”

Holds attention taking promotional photos—joyful photos meant to instill ideas of national pride and modeling of behavior

Cultural context of protest, of violence, of loss, of environmental degradation… to make those two visual planes coexist for visitors

Holding space for a multiplicity of experiences and contexts

Possibility that’s not made accessible in museums enough

We get told what we’re looking at

Photography as a medium that conveys things “as they are”

Follow up questions:

How has it felt being part of a history that is still so in progress?

Both aesthetic and commercial expression are grounded in this technological innovation. What does that signify for today?

How does artistry and photography as an art fit into this?

At an art museum and not at a history museum

The Harvard Independent, as opposed to other campus newspapers or city-wide newspapers, is less restricted in its messaging and therefore has the unique ability to connect directly with students. That being said, I’d like to hear more about what the curators would like students to draw from this exhibition.

Why now? Why at Harvard?

How would you want students to approach this exhibition? How to engage with it?

How does this exhibit engage with the museum and the university as a whole?

We see yet another instance in history where industrial and technological breakthroughs act in tension with ecological and environmental concerns; would you say that that is relevant to today?

What are your thoughts on having these photos pulled out of their contexts? Many of the photos were said to be shown in magazines or alongside articles or campaigns, so how does that change when we see them in a gallery?

As someone who has worked with photography, what are your thoughts on the artistry of these photos? There seems to be an interesting tension between how photography was seen to have the unique capability to “capture reality,” and how these professionals took advantage of that fact to manufacture reality.

Do you think that this has since changed the way that people view photography?

The manipulation has exploded

What has changed is the amount of people that have access to manipulating

Social media is a prime example of how that operates

How we perform and “improve” ourselves for the camera

Change what a body looks like, what a face looks like

Difference is in the 1950s is that they were trained professionals

Shows how photography has changed over time, change in accessibility

Exhibit shows the proof prints

Annotation: “Remove all bones” collar bones, neck bones, didn’t convey ideals

Paint it over

Evokes practice in looksmaxxing movement