Transformational Imagemaking: Handmade Photography Since 1960

Rochester: A “Happening” Place

By the mid-to-late 1960s, artists were staging their own celebratory versions of Allan Kaprow’s 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (1959). Kaprow referred to his Happening as “A game, an adventure, a number of activities engaged in by participants for the sake of playing.”⁷ Instead of relegating art to only something that hung on a wall, Kaprow facilitated audience participation, allowing viewers to become personally involved in an actual experience. Visually, Happenings can be likened to collages of events that unfold in a specific span of time and space.

In front of this kinetic backdrop, this new culture of visual options found fertile ground in the Western New York region where George Eastman House (GEH), the Rochester ...