HOUSTON CENTER FOR PHOTOGRAPHY
Spring 2016
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contents Re-Vision: Anne Wilkes Tucker Reflects on the Curatorial Endeavor with Allison Pappas Curating the Imperfect Madeline Yale Preston with Dr. Marta Weiss
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18 On the Future of Photography Curating: An Interview with Sasha Wolf with Paula Kupfer
5 for 5 Dean Daderko with INGZ
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Curating Photography, Creating Community with Julia Dolan, Yaelle S. Amir and Tricia Hoffman
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Humble Origins Andy Adams with Jon Feinstein
60 Six Edward Weston Portraits of Esperanza Velásquez Bringas (1896-1980) by Fernando Castro
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Photographing the Unseeable: A review of Alejandro Cartagena’s Before the War by Ashlyn Davis
72 Spotlight
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HCP’s 2015-2016 Supporters
Spring 2016
Editor Ashlyn Davis Editor Caroline Docwra Design Antonio Manega, Gazer Design Printing Masterpiece Litho spot Web Design Bandwidth Productions HCP Publications Committee Jonathan Beitler, Peter Brown, Ashlyn Davis, Caroline Docwra, Madeline Yale Preston, Howard Hilliard, Susie Kalil, Jean Karotkin, Antonio Manega, Mary Virginia Swanson spot is published twice yearly, in conjunction with the fiscal year of Houston Center for Photography. Subscriptions are free to HCP members. spot is a journal of independent opinions published by Houston Center for Photography as one of its many services to the photographic community. The ideas expressed do not represent positions of Houston Center for Photography’s administration or membership and are solely the opinions of the writers and contributors. Copyright © 2016. All rights reserved. No portion of spot may be reproduced without the permission of Houston Center for Photography. Captions are based upon known information of the photograph. In cases where print type and medium are not listed, the image provider has noted these as variable. Houston Center for Photography’s mission is to increase society’s understanding and appreciation of photography and its evolving role in contemporary culture. Houston Center for Photography strives to encourage artists, build audiences, stimulate dialogue and promote inquiry about photography and related media through education, exhibitions, publications, fellowship programs and community collaboration. For details about membership or advertising, contact: Houston Center for Photography 1441 West Alabama, Houston, Texas 77006 Telephone: 713.529.4755 Fax: 713.529.9248 E-mail: info@hcponline.org Visit us online: www.hcponline.org Interim Executive Director Linda Shearer Director of Development Ashlyn Davis Director of Education Juliana Forero, Ph.D. Director of Exhibitions and Publications Caroline Docwra Director of Finance Sean Yarborough Exhibitions and Website Coordinator Jessi Bowman Outreach Coordinator Jamie Robertson Visitor Services and Membership Coordinator Joseph Roberts Digital Darkroom Manager Daniela Galindo Education Assistant Emilee Cooney Gallery Associate Mayra Mares Outreach Instructors Heather Fisher, Cecilia Norman, Stephanie Perkins, Thais Verissimo Spring 2016 Interns Katherine Miner, Nicola Park, Abbigail Vandersnick, Courtney Williams
HCP Benefactors The Brown Foundation Houston Arts Alliance Houston Endowment The Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation HCP Underwriters Artists’ Framing Resource Patricial Eifel and Jim Belli Jean Karotkin Larson-Juhl Antonio Manega Nena Marsh The Meyer Levy Charitable Foundation Fan and Peter Morris Texas Commission on the Arts HCP Platinum Sponsors Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation Patricial Eifel and Jim Belli The National Endowment for the Arts Poppi Massey Alexander and Muffy McLanahan Celia and Jay Munisteri QUE Imaging Texas Women for the Arts The Joan Hohlt and Roger Wich Foundation The Wortham Foundation HCP Silver Donors Julie and Drew Alexander Amegy Bank Cameron International Corporation Susan and Patrick Cook Catherine Couturer Gallery Krista and Mike Dumas Tom Flaherty Sherry and James Kempner Frazier King James Maloney HCP Green Circle Eddie and Chinhui Allen Joan and Stanford Alexander Elizabeth and Dave Anders Cara Barer The Beth Block Foundation Gay Block and Billie Parker Chalres Butt Shelley Calton and Stuart Nelson Jereann Chaney The Chaney Foundation Michael Deal Bevin and Dan Dubrowski Exxon Mobil Foundation James R. Fisher The Herzstein Foundation Betty Pecore and Howard Hilliard Carol Liffman The Mavis Kelsey Fund Anna B. McCullough Burt Nelson J. Andrew Nairn The Robertson-Finley Foundation Sue and Bob Schwartz Paul Smead Scott R. Sparvero Laura Torgerson Whole Foods Market spot is generously underwritten by Jean Karotkin and The Meyer Levy Charitable Foundation
cover, detail: Ben Alper, Background Noise #23, 2012 Courtesy of the artist
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from the editors At the onset of Houston Center for Photography’s 35th year, the staff has turned to our archives. In looking through our own institutional photo albums, old issues of spot, and digital records of the organization, it is impossible to discount the innovative spirit of HCP’s history. In October of 1981, Anne Wilkes Tucker, now Curator Emerita at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston gathered together a “clamorous horde of voracious photographers,” as cofounder John Hall described in the publication’s first issue, to discuss the founding of a photography center in Houston. In honor of their vision for the future of photography in Houston, we have created an expanded edition of spot, focused on the future of photography and photography curation. spot has gone through many iterations in concept, design, and this issue, collaboratively edited by Ashlyn Davis, HCP’s Director of Development and Caroline Docwra, HCP’s Director of Exhibitions and Programs, is yet another part of its evolution. It is fitting now, as HCP looks back on the past 35 years, to consider the future, not just of the organization, but also of photography—the rapidlyevolving medium that continues to surprise viewers in its ineffable ability to capture a fleeting moment, or its unprecedented way of challenging the nature of vision entirely. From a commercial gallery in New York City, to a museum in London, to an activist collective of graduate students in Austin, to Mexico in the 1920s, and of course, contributors from right here in Houston, this issue lends varying perspectives on photography, photography curation, the future accessibility of the photographic archive, and the future of the medium. Interestingly, many of the contributors, when given this task to consider the future, circled back to the medium’s history. By commenting on the early traditions of photography, they position readers to consider the future of the image, the archive, and photographic practice. Other contributors discuss the internet’s role in shaping and presenting photographs, the meaning of curatorial practice, and the importance of the photographic image in building community and creating social change. As HCP embarks on the next 35 years, there’s no telling how the organization may grow, or how the medium of photography will shape what we present—or how we present it. Thank you, readers, for your dedication to this special publication and organization. We look forward to seeing what the future holds together with you. — Ashlyn Davis and Caroline Docwra
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contributors Andy Adams
Andy Adams is an experienced producer with a passion for visual media and digital culture. Sasha Wolf
Allison Pappas
Yaelle S. Amir is Curator of exhibitions and public programs at Newspace Center for Photography in Portland, OR. Fernando Castro is a critic, curator, poet, and artist. Ashlyn Davis is HCP’s Director of Development. Dean Daderko is Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH).
Madeline Yale Preston
Tricia Hoffman
Julia Dolan
Caroline Docwra is HCP’s Director of Exhibitions and Programs. Julia Dolan is The Minor White Curator of Photography at the Portland Art Museum.
Jon Feinstein
Anne Wilkes Tucker
Fernando Castro
Jon Feinstein is a Seattle and New York City based curator, photographer, the co-founder of Humble Arts Foundation, and Strategic Partnerships Manager at Shutterstock. Tricia Hoffman is the Executive Director at Newspace Center for Photography.
Yaelle S. Amir
INGZ is a curatorial collective based in Austin, Texas composed of Uchenna Itam, Julia Neal, Rebecca Giordano and Natalie Zelt. Paula Kupfer is a writer and editor based in New York.
Paula Kupfer
Allison Pappas is the Assistant Curator of photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Anne Wilkes Tucker is Curator Emerita at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Marta Weiss
Caroline Docwra
Marta Weiss is Curator of Photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Sasha Wolf is the Director of Sasha Wolf Gallery in New York. Madeline Yale Preston is an independent curator and writer of photography.
INGZ
Ashlyn Davis
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H O U S T O N H O U S T O N
C E N T E R C E N T E R
F O R F O R
P H O T O G R A P H Y P H O T O G R A P H Y
Spring 2014
HOUSTON CENTER FOR PHOTOGRAPHY | VOLUME 28, NO. 2 | FALL 2010
Spring 2014
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Celebrating spot at 35
H o u s t o n
C e n t e r
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P H o t o g r a P H y
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Re-Vision:
ANNE WILKES TUCKER REFLECTS ON THE CURATORIAL ENDEAVOR W I T H A L L I S O N PA P PA S
Allison Pappas:
Anne Wilkes Tucker:
Preparing for this interview, I’ve been thinking about the
When I curated the very first HCP Members show in
idea of “re-vision.” With your retirement this summer,
1982, neither the organization nor I had enough name
there will be any number of occasions—and in fact
recognition to draw people from outside the local area.
they’ve already begun—where you’ll be called upon to
It was also a fairly small show, 11 artists. Quite a number
look back over your career and reflect on the work that
of them are people whose work the museum eventually
you have done, as well as hint at what comes next. But it
acquired, which is something that continued over time.
strikes me that this looking back is not new for you. In a
Even when I wasn’t the juror, we often acquired work out
basic sense, this is the work of the curator. Looking back
of the juried shows because the shows brought that work
at work from prior moments in history, looking back again
to our attention.
at the work of artists you have seen in earlier stages of their career or yours, looking back at work you have done
By the time I juried the 25th (in 2007) and 30th (2012)
to determine what you need to do next, whether filling
shows, there were definitely people who did not live in
gaps in a collection or shedding light on understudied
the local area, like Alejandro Cartagena, entering the
subjects.
competition. They were much larger, more diverse shows. Some photographers probably entered because
As a curator, it is common to engage with both
we had already acquired their work and entering was
individual artists and organizations such as HCP at
a way for me to see what they were doing now and to
various moments throughout the course of one’s career.
follow their careers, which is great. We acquired people
This summer HCP is having their 33rd Annual Juried
out of those shows, like Martin Gremm and Aaron Blum.
Membership Exhibition. You juried the 1st, 25th, and 30th Annual Exhibitions. What do you remember of those early years of HCP and what the membership was like then, and how did that change as you came back to the membership exhibition later? 8
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Anne Wilkes Tucker jurying an HCP membership exhibition. Courtesy Paul Hester
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AP: Has the way that you look at work and the way that you engage with artists while looking at work changed throughout the course of your career? Did you approach things differently early on than you do now? AWT: Well, one thing that you have to remember that’s very different is that probably for the first show I saw actual prints, probably for the 2007 show it was still slides, and certainly for the show in 2012 it was digital, and those are different ways of viewing things and different experiences. Another thing about a show like this is that I’m not engaging with the photographer one-on-one. They’re not there for me to ask questions. At the later stages I probably read statements, but not at the early stages. I try—and you’re almost forced—to view the work over time, so that when you first see work you might cut, something that you realize a couple of days later, you still remember. I always pay attention to images that stay in my head, so then maybe I go back and reconsider them. The process is a very organic one. I’ve always been, however, a quick decider. Over the years, I’ve come to realize that I might be quicker than other people. Clint Willour and I are very similar. We’ve juried things together before and we both make up our minds quickly, because we trust our intuition. AP: And you have from the beginning of your career. AWT: It’s always been a factor. I’m not interested in trends; I’m not interested in what other people think. From the beginning, I have asked two questions. When I’m not with the photographer I ask them in my head; when I am with the photographer I literally ask the questions: what do they want me to think, and what do they want me to feel? And then the next question is: are their craft decisions appropriate to what they want me to think and feel? Did they choose their materials effectively toward the purpose of how I understand the work?
“From the beginning, I have asked two questions...what do they want me to think, and what do they want me to feel?”
Alejandro Cartagena (Monterrey, Mexico), Carpoolers Courtesy of the artist and Kopeikin Gallery (Los Angeles, CA)
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AP: Have there been photographers of whom your opinion has changed drastically over the years? AWT: Oh, totally. I didn’t get Cindy Sherman. I didn’t get James Welling. In both cases I was lucky, because people whom I respected a great deal said I had to look at that work, and I paid attention. I have tremendous respect for Fredericka Hunter and her eye, and Ian Glennie, the two people that run Texas Gallery. So when Fredericka did a show of Cindy Sherman’s work I said, OK, I have to look at this. Luckily for the museum, we purchased something out of that first show. I certainly would not have, if it hadn’t been that show at Texas Gallery. Having been at the museum four decades, one of the things that I have come to realize is that the next generation away from me, and most certainly two generations away from me—which you are—are not going to look at pictures the same way I do. You don’t read the same books, you don’t go to the same movies, you don’t listen to the same music. You’re reading into them different information. There was a moment two years ago when we were trying to decide which Bruce Davidson to pick for an exhibition, and there were three of you standing there who were all the same age group and you all three oriented towards the same picture, which was away from a picture I was certain I was going to choose. And I ended up letting you make the decision because it was the voice of a different generation speaking. A good photographer who we all agreed was important, but you responded differently to his work. AP: We’ve been talking about this recently. There are so many different ways that the photograph has been used over time and [many different ways] that it can be studied as a result—visually, materially, theoretically, historically, socially. It seems that the content that is focused on (and what is ignored) says more about the period of scholarship than it necessarily does about the work that’s being studied—the interests and insecurities of a given moment draw out whatever history they deem most significant. AWT: You know, it does. We are far enough away now that we can look back at what was called the Humanist moment in France after World War II or The Family of Man* to know that after World War II, we needed sentimental (at worst) and sentiment-filled (which is not a bad thing) pictures because there had just been enough sadness and horror. It takes several generations before you can decide. If three generations respond to the work of an artist—even if it’s different pictures within that work—then that person has legs, and probably is going to stay in the history books, although for different reasons and in different contexts. That’s the measure. The enthusiasm of one generation does not a great artist make.
opposite: Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still, 1979 Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures
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“Having been at the museum four decades, one of the things that I have come to realize is that the next generation away from me, and most certainly two generations away from me—which you are—are not going to look at pictures the same way I do.”
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Alejandro Cartagena (Monterrey, Mexico), Carpoolers Courtesy of the artist and Kopeikin Gallery (Los Angeles, CA)
“Photography constantly reinvents itself in a way that I think all mediums do, from an artistic perspective, but because of some of the technical, defining characteristics of photography, it is particularly apparent.” AP: When you say that there’s more that we still don’t know about the history of photography than we do know, that will continue to be the case. Photography constantly reinvents itself in a way that I think all mediums do, from an artistic perspective, but because of some of the technical, defining characteristics of photography, it is particularly apparent. AWT: Well, you and I were looking at a recommended reading list for the history of photography recently, and one of the things that stood out for both of us is that there were no books about history, the role of history. It was all theoretical, it was gender-based or race-based, it was politically based, but the setting within the context of history was not there. And that’s just part of the way discourse has been going. And I think that the best of the new generation of curators and historians will take an independent path. Will be looking, as you say, at the materiality. Which, I agree with you, is something that has been noted in passing but not recognized as a driving force. But I can tell you, when a group of photographers are sitting around the table, they are talking about materials. I was in a conversation in New York recently where I was the only curator and we spent maybe half an hour just devoted to various inkjet printers and inks and papers, which was perhaps a little more of that discussion than I needed, but I was fascinated by how critical it was to them. AP: And I think it is, at the most basic level, recognized in the history. A lot of attention is given to the dual inventions at photography’s beginning, and then to the shift with the handheld camera and how that changed the capabilities of photography to document historical events as they were happening, and the invention of color photography and what that changed, and now digital. I think the history acknowledges certain pinnacle moments of massive technological changes as spurring new types of work. But the everyday pervasiveness of that practical, material drive isn’t really explored. When you focus too narrowly on the theoretical implications, photography can become divorced from the artist. AWT: It distresses me that artists’ intentions are no longer part of many discussions. But another factor in all of this is that I am the last generation of curators who started as photographers. Whereas all the major curators before me—Beaumont Newhall, Nathan Lyons, John Szarkowski, Van Deren Coke, Fritz Gruber, Manuel Álvarez Bravo—were practicing photographers. 14
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AP: The interesting thing is that learning how to curate is still the same. You’re trained, whether technically or academically, and then you’re sort of thrown into the mix and you have to learn how to develop your eye and what it is that you’re actually doing in the museum. The work of curating is still learned on the job in the same way, it’s just coming to it with a very different background, which is interesting. AWT: Well, but you just nailed it when you mentioned the word eye. Because there are too many people who are writing about photography who have actually never held a print in their hands. And so it’s very different. You know, they’ve seen them on the wall but physically handling the work makes a difference in how you engage with it. The other tendency that scares me is that people don’t even dig to page 5 of the internet, much less get into or beyond books. I mean primary research, literally get into the magazines and the letters and the diaries and the artifacts of the time. I’m reading Sally Mann’s new biography and it’s an amazing reconstruction from the diaries and documents that she found in the attic. You have a theory and go into the internet or wherever you’re researching to look for what supports your theory, as opposed to looking at hundreds of objects and letting them give you the patterns and theory. And content. Those are huge shifts. And so, to go back to our jurying, if you have a theory and you’re looking for the photographs that are submitted that will support your theory, then you’re going to have a very different exhibition than if you look at all the pictures and ask what it is that they’re trying to tell you. That’s a completely different way to look at art. *The Family of Man, an exhibition organized by Edward Steichen, was composed of 503 photographs grouped thematically around subjects pertinent to all cultures, such as love, children, and death. After its initial showing at The Museum of Modern Art in 1955, the exhibition toured the world for eight years, making stops in thirty-seven countries on six continents. The photographs included in the exhibition focused on the commonalties that bind people and cultures around the world and the exhibition served as an expression of humanism in the decade following World War II. The accompanying exhibition catalogue is still available in the MoMA bookstore. (www.moma.org)
Anne Wilkes Tucker is Curator Emerita at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she founded the photography department in 1976. The museum’s collection now comprises 30,000 photographs made on all seven continents. She has curated more than forty exhibitions, including retrospectives of the work of Brassaï, Louis Faurer, Robert Frank, Georgve Krause, Ray K. Metzker, Chen Changfen, and Richard Misrach as well as important surveys including on the Czech Avant Garde, contemporary Korean Photography, a history of Japanese Photography and War/Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath. Most of these exhibitions were accompanied by publications. She has also published many articles and lectured throughout the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America. She has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Getty Center. She received an Alumnae Achievement Award from Randolph Macon Woman’s College and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Griffin Museum and the Houston Fine Arts Fair and in 2001. Time magazine listed her as America’s Best Curator.
Alejandro Cartagena (Monterrey, Mexico) Carpoolers, Courtesy of the artist and Kopeikin Gallery (Los Angeles, CA)
Allison Pappas is the Assistant Curator of photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Prior to coming to Houston, she held positions in the Department of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Williams College Museum of Art, and the Williamstown Art Conservation Center. Allison holds a BA from Brown University in the History of Art and Architecture and Anthropology with honors, and an MA from Williams College in History of Art, focusing on the history of photography.
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Julia Margaret Cameron, Hosanna, 1865 Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London 18
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C U R AT I N G
Imperfect THE
Madeline Yale Preston IN T ERV IEWS
Dr. Marta Weiss
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The subtitle “Photographs to electrify you with delight and startle the world” is an alluringly contemporary introduction to London’s Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition of 19th-century photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. Curated by the museum’s curator of photographs, Dr. Marta Weiss, the exhibition features highlights from the V&A’s collection of Cameron’s works and related ephemera and travels through 2016 to Moscow, Ghent, Sydney, London, Madrid and Tokyo. Madeline Yale Preston discusses the exhibition with Weiss in London.
MYP: I loved receiving a card from you last June that
MW: What I wanted to do in the exhibition was to
celebrated Julia Margaret Cameron’s 200th birthday. Can
celebrate these two events and also tell the story of
you tell me more about the significance of 2015?
her relationship with the V&A. We now have over 250 photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron in the collection
MW: Cameron is one of the most important and
and we also have five letters from Cameron to Henry
innovative photographers of the 19th century. The year
Cole, the founding director of the museum.
2015 marks the bicentenary of her birth and also the 150th anniversary of her first museum exhibition, and her
The exhibition is structured around four of those letters
only museum exhibition in here lifetime, held in 1865 here at
to Henry Cole. Each section of the exhibition starts with
the South Kensington Museum, which now the V&A.
one of the letters, and it worked out very nicely that I was able to keep them in chronological order so the exhibition
MYP: I understand the V&A played a pivotal role in the
gives a sense of her development as an artist.
development of her career. Cameron acquired her first camera in 1863 at the age of MW: Yes, the museum has a remarkable history with
48. She took the first photograph that she considered her
Cameron’s career, starting in 1865 when the V&A collected
first success in January of 1864, and then amazingly by
over 100 of her works. The V&A was the only museum in the
May of 1865, Henry Cole writes in his diary that he was
world to collect works by Cameron in depth during her lifetime.
photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron, “in her style”. It is remarkable that within 18 months she is already being
MYP: Can you tell me more about how you curated this
described as having a style of her own. Within a month
exhibition?
after that, the museum began to acquire her work.
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Julia Margaret Cameron, Whisper of the Muse, 1865 Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London spot |
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Julia Margaret Cameron, Julia Jackson, 1867 Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London 22
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MYP: She had an extraordinarily quick ascension to
MW: She also left traces of her process evident on her
photographic fame. How would you describe her style?
photographs. You see lots of imperfections that other
What makes her photography so remarkable?
photographers would dismiss as flaws, but she seemed to accept them at the very least, and possibly embrace; for
MW: Her photographs are larger and much, much closer
example, swirls where she didn’t apply the photographic
than typical portraits at the time. She pioneered the “close
chemicals evenly, she used impure chemicals, she got dust on
up” at a time when the dominant type of portraiture was
the negative, or she smudged it with her fingers on the prints.
the carte de visite, a small, calling card-sized photograph that generally showed either just a half length portrait or
MVP: It seems she was highly experimental relative to many
a full length portrait. She used a wet collodion process,
of her contemporaries. I’m aware that photographers like
working initially with a 12x10 inch negative and soon moved
Gustav Le Gray began experimenting with splicing together
to using a larger camera that held a 15x12 inch negative.
two negatives just before she did, like in Hosanna (1865),
She made contact prints from these glass negatives.
yet it seems she was concurrently using several different techniques that pushed many of the medium’s then-existing
Cameron was more-or-less the first person to take
boundaries.
photographs purposely out of focus. She focused it to the point that she thought made it beautiful—which meant she
MW: She was heavily criticized for the use of these
took photographs that were often slightly out of focus.
techniques at the time. The photographic press attacked her then for being an incompetent photographer and technician.
MYP: I find the differential focus in the portrait of Julia
She was a rule breaker and a pioneer, and it took a while for
Jackson (1867)—Cameron’s niece and the mother of
others to catch up with her ideas.
Virginia Woolf—quite captivating.
“CAMERON WAS MORE-OR-LESS THE FIRST PERSON TO TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS PURPOSELY OUT OF FOCUS. SHE FOCUSED IT TO THE POINT THAT SHE THOUGHT MADE IT BEAUTIFUL”.
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“SHE WAS A RULE BREAKER AND A PIONEER, AND IT TOOK A WHILE FOR OTHERS TO CATCH UP WITH HER IDEAS.”
MVP: I find it interesting that the literary press was far
MW: Though she was the first person to extensively
more forgiving of Cameron’s work then—some were even
make photographs out of focus, I wouldn’t argue that the
congratulatory—versus the photographic press in her
Pictorialist movement is owed to her. She died in 1879, and
lifetime.
shortly after that, the first photographer to really promote her was P.H. Emerson, who was extremely influential for
MW: Cameron moved in very artistic circles. She was
the Pictorialist movement. He then theorized the idea of
good friends and neighbors with G.F. Watts, an artist of
differential focus, arguing photography should imitate how
the day, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. I think she might have
we see.
had some of the influences in common with her artistic and literary peers. The people who initially supported
MVP: What has Cameron’s presence been at the V&A over
her were members of that literary elite. Her photographs
time?
weren’t so literal and left something to the imagination. They were described as being very poetic and were
MW: We almost always have something by Cameron from
compared to Old Master paintings, in particular ones
our permanent collection on display. The idea of organizing
from the early Renaissance. Some are quite literally based
an exhibition dedicated exclusively to her work was quite
on paintings by Raphael.
overdue.
She believed strongly in photography as art, at a time
MVP: How have you endeavored to make this exhibition
when photography’s status was being very much debated.
relevant for contemporary audiences?
Attacks in the photographic press came early in her career. When she died, there were obituaries in the photographic
MW: To a certain extent I haven’t worried about that too
press that praised her uniqueness and what she did for
much. I think there are a few things about Cameron’s images
photography.
that will hopefully appeal to contemporary audiences, such as presence of the artist’s hand and the fact that these are
MVP: Could we view Cameron as a forerunner for the
clearly not cold, machine-made images. These are hand-
Pictorialist movement?
made images that carry with them the traces of the artist’s
Julia Margaret Cameron, Charles Darwin, 1868, printed 1875 Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London 24
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Julia Margaret Cameron, The Passing of King Arthur, 1874 Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
process. I think that today people are starting to get a little
how the installation works in all these different spaces and
bit tired of perfect, Photoshopped, crisp images. And
refine it a little bit along the way.
of course there is the more general revival of analogue processes, and these images will appeal to that kind of
MVP: Have you made any discoveries in your research?
contemporary interest in photography. MW: We discovered that a group of approximately 70 When I was thinking about the design of the book and the
photographs in the collection had previously belonged to
design of the exhibition, I was keen to get the right balance
Cameron’s friend G.F. Watts. Many are extreme examples
between doing something that didn’t clash with Cameron’s
of Cameron’s experimental qualities. These are photographs
19th-century work and making it relevant to a contemporary
she sent to Watts to comment on; he said to her, “Send me
audience. I wanted to let the photographs speak for
your defective, unmounted impressions.”
themselves, but also give them a framing that makes them contemporary and not overly historicized and Victorian, and
The research that I’ve done in preparation to this exhibition
therefore perhaps inaccessible.
has led to a rethinking of the “flaw” in Cameron’s work. She wasn’t as accepting of these flaws as we have tended
MVP: What has been your experience of conceptualizing
to think. I believe that she was striving to overcome those
this show for different venues and audiences?
things more than we have given her credit for in the past. That story is present in the exhibition and I describe it more
MW: It has been enormously satisfying to travel our
extensively in the exhibition catalogue.
Cameron collection and to share it with so many different audiences. Each venue is a very different type of museum
MVP: The catalogue goes into great depth and also lists all
and it has been nice to see Cameron shown in relation to
of the V&A’s holdings of Cameron’s work.
other objects. In Moscow, it was exhibited in a museum of photography, whereas other museums are survey museums
MW: There’s a lot of scholarship that went into this
focused on fine art, which I think would have thrilled Julia
exhibition. With the exhibition itself, I wanted to make it
Margaret Cameron herself.
an enjoyable and digestible experience for people, but I was able to delve into her work much more deeply in the
Usually a show starts at the V&A and tours afterwards.
catalogue. Cameron’s photographs are among the stars of
Because of how the scheduling worked out, the V&A venue
our collection; it was time to give her that kind of treatment.
is in the middle of the tour. It has given me a chance to see
Madeline Yale Preston is an independent curator and writer of photography. She resides in Dubai and London, where she is pursuing her doctorate on the photographic art history of the Middle East. She is currently organizing an exhibition of works by Malick Sidibe. Marta Weiss is Curator of Photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. She joined the V&A in 2007 after two years in the
Department of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She holds a BA in the history of art from Harvard and an MA and PhD from Princeton in the same field, with a focus on the history of photography. She is the author of two books and numerous articles and catalogue essays on topics ranging from Victorian photocollage to Diane Arbus. She has curated exhibitions at the Princeton University Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the V&A, including Staying
Power: Photographs of Black British Experience 1950s-1990s (2015); Making It Up: Photographic Fictions (2013); and Light from the Middle East: New Photography (2012). She is the curator of the international touring exhibition Julia Margaret Cameron, and author of the accompanying catalogue, Julia Margaret Cameron: Photographs to electrify you with you delight and startle the world, published by the V&A and MACK.
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ON THE FUTURE OF PHOTOGRAPHY C U R AT I N G : An Interview with Sasha Wolf Judging by the frequent essays, articles, and roundtable discussions about the future of photography, it isn’t an issue with an easy or fast resolution. With its historically interdependent relationship with technology, the medium might be forever condemned to a state of flux. That doesn’t stop the conversation from rousing passionate souls. Sasha Wolf is undoubtedly one of them, an art dealer and gallerist deeply committed to the medium. At her eponymous gallery in New York’s Lower East Side, Wolf represents and exhibits the work of emerging and mid-career contemporary photographers. When we met in early June 2015, part of the gallery was under construction, a sign perhaps of greater things to come. —Paula Kupfer
SW: We’re under construction. We’re expanding the gallery. PK: That’s one way to think about it. The future of photography curating is about expansion. SW: We are constantly showing a lot of different artists to new people, and then they come down and they want to see the artists that they saw at the fair. They don’t care if the show is up. I mean... galleries are stores, and you can dress them up anyway you want, but they exist to sell things…It used to be that it was more like a salon or an atelier where there was a lot of different work. Instead, we’re sort of trying to elevate ourselves more to the level of museums, and we all know the ways in which galleries operate like museums: they introduce artists to the world...
PK: Often before museums do... SW: Right, most of the time…But I think that it’s an ideal that’s not sustainable. I put up shows all the time that I know I can’t sell, because I think the work is great. PK: So there’s a curatorial aspiration or intent that carries a certain currency, even if it goes counter to the business mentality. SW: Absolutely, that’s right: to balance this sort of curatorial exhibition part of the gallery with the need to sell, with the basic demands of doing business in New York City. PK: Do you see yourself as a curator too?
Mark Steinmetz, Renée, Athens, Georgia, (2000) (Image from South East, published by Nazraeli Press, 2008) Courtesy of the artist
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SW: Oh totally, yeah. I mean... my decisions are based on what I think is worth sharing…It’s not based on what I think I can sell. PK: Once you’ve decided what’s worth sharing, do you also consider any trends in photography? SW: No. I don’t care. I know what they are. I’m profoundly aware of what’s going on in the photography world, but it has no effect whatsoever on what I do. PK: Who is setting those parameters for approval or setting the trends? Is it curators? Is it galleries? Is it artist-driven? SW: I think—I have to be really careful here—I think that there’s a number of phenomena that go on in the art world that have contributed to the state that we’re in now, which is to say that like a lot of other mediums, we are extremely addicted to the phenomenon of new, and I think that that is a very dangerous place to be. PK: What do you mean? SW: The emphasis on new form is sort of all encompassing. So we really lose out on a lot of amazing, unique, authentic content, if the form looks too familiar. And I think that that’s really sad, because I think we all lose. There are a lot of people who will never see some of the greatest artists making work today, some of the most effective and some of the most unique, content-wise, because their form isn’t new. And not only is it a real loss for the viewers, it’s also a real loss for the artists to not get the support that they deserve. PK: And by art world, do you mean the commercial art world, the galleries? SW: The whole art world is one big monster. They’re just interdependent. So if museums are going to have shows that have “new” in the title, then galleries are going to feel they have to. It’s impossible to know what came first, the chicken or the egg. But they’re now in complete concert. I don’t think there’s any difference. I mean you have some galleries who just refuse to do that. I think I’m one of them, and I have colleagues who I think are too... And it doesn’t mean our program is old-timey. It just means that we’re not getting on the trend train. I call it the “tyranny of the new.” And why would I want to willingly live under that sort of structure? I don’t. PK: So do you see it as walking in the opposite direction? SW: Well, I feel forced to take the stand, because I feel like those of us who refuse get on board that, the new train… I feel like we are sort of by default taking a stand, so I think that I probably will take a more public stand on this topic, and what it means for straight photography…We talk about 30
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photography now as if we’re at a crossroads, leaving behind the old and moving forward with the new, which I would say has much to do with the computer, digital capture and whatever form. I actually think art does change the world, and I know for myself that certain photographers and their work has had very profound influence on who I am. One example I’ll give you: I feel like I really, fully understood, got to the point where I could really appreciate beauty by looking at Harry Callahan’s photographs of Eleanor. In looking at these photographs, I, as a person, grew. I started seeing people in my own life differently, my world widened. And if everyone grows, if everyone can expand a little bit, and we know for a fact that the more expansive people are, the less likely they are to hurt other people, right? So the more we can expand, the better a people we will be collectively. PK: I’m wondering about reframing the question: about the future of curating photography versus the future of photography. Who is steering the conversation? Can galleries or nonprofit institutions really have an influence? . SW: That’s my job. I feel like it’s up to me and all the other people who see tons of work to then present it... PK: How do you frame that responsibility? Do you see it as a responsibility? SW: I mean, I’m very dedicated to the kind of photography I love and I feel strongly about, which is straight photography. PK: How do you define that now? SW: Photographs of the material world…I think it’s about respect. I think if people really respected what photographers do when they go out into the world, and make pictures, they wouldn’t be so loose with vocabulary.… There’s a lot of people who just don’t have any idea how hard it is to go out and make great work with a camera. Everyone can go make a great photograph, but they don’t know how hard it is to go out and make art. PK: Do you think people see it as a sideline craft now, because the focus is elsewhere? SW: I think that’s true. I think there was a really brief period of time where straight photography was considered art, so brief. PK: But it’s interesting because the people who began doing straight photography, they’re revered now. SW: Right, there was sort of a certain amount of reverence. Robert Adams is still alive, and Frank. And Lee Friedlander
Harry Callahan, Eleanor, Chicago, 1949 ©The Estate of Harry Callahan courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York
“I actually think art does change the world, and I know for myself that certain photographers and their work has had very profound influence on who I am.” spot |
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“Everyone can go make a great photograph, but they don’t know how hard it is to go out and make art.”
is a great example; he’s still making work… I suspect that if Robert Adams and Lee Friedlander were in their thirties now, that they would be hard-pressed to find a gallery willing to represent them. PK: What about publishing, and photo-books and their role in promoting straight photography? SW: Well, this is going to really be a depressing… I sell books out of the gallery, so I certainly can sell a lot of books by photographers whose prints I can’t sell. So I think that there’s a way in which the art world has devalued straight photography to the point where the straighter it is, the less likely art collectors are to collect it. But they love it, and they have to have the book. They just can’t make that leap, and that’s the thing that concerns me the most. Everything that you and I are talking about today comes down to that. PK: Well, books are more accessible for more people, there’s that aspect too. SW: That’s a different thing, and that’s of course without question a big part of selling books, young people or people who don’t make a lot of money, but I sell plenty of books to people who have money. They’re just devalued to the point where they’re not going to buy the work to hang in their house even though they love it. And part of it is that it’s not decorative. They don’t think of it as decorative. 32
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Mark Steinmetz, Jessica, Athens, Georgia (1997) (Image from South East, published by Nazraeli Press, 2008) Courtesy of the artist
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Adam Katseff, River XI, (2015). Courtesy the artist and Sasha Wolf Gallery
PK: So are you speaking about photographers who’ve worked as photojournalists, who are documentarians, but who’ve also crossed over a little bit into the art world? SW: No, because I don’t work with anyone like that. I mean, my artists are... they’re not documentarians, they’re not photojournalists. My artists, even those who shoot assignments, if you talk to them about their artwork, they don’t think of it as documentary at all.
and so they’re riffs off of those people in their work, they’re nods and winks to those people, they’re shout outs to painters. That’s what post-documentary means to me, and that’s certainly very different from when we talk about a documentary photography or certainly photojournalism. PK: So, thinking again about the new tendencies in photography: you don’t think people will tire of this new aesthetic and there will be a backlash?
PK: Because they see it as a devaluing term? SW: No. Because they think that it’s dishonest, because they don’t want in any way to pretend that they were trying to be objective. I call that type of work that you and I are talking about “post-documentary,” which to me means straight photography, documentary being the jumping-off point, but then layered with the photographers’ overt expression of their inner life, their knowledge of everyone who came before them, 34
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SW: You know, I’m not against new. I want to see a new voice; I look for new voices. I just don’t need to always look for new forms. So often to me, when I see new forms, it’s at the expense of overall quality and really true deep and intelligent meaning, beyond the theoretical. PK: I’m thinking about that in the context of curating too. I wonder how these contemporary straight photographers will
Adam Katseff, River XII, (2015). Courtesy the artist and Sasha Wolf Gallery
be read in the future, as a continuation of a tradition or an anachronistic approach in midst of so-called new forms? And how much further can photography go, away from straight picture-making? SW: It can’t get any further away than it is now. We have photography shows by non-photographers, so that’s pretty far. But to me one of the most interesting things is when you see a show by a contemporary photographer, and in that same show is work by a photographer from whom that artist is clearly riffing off... I love those conversations. PK: Trans-temporal approaches. SW: Yeah. So, you know, for example, Adam Katseff is clearly riffing off of Ansel Adams, and Collier Schorr and Rineke Dijkstra nod to August Sander, and Elinor Carucci to Nan Goldin and Sally Mann.
PK: Are there other artists who are still straight shooters but able to enter the conversation? SW: I think people like David Benjamin Sherry or Chris McCaw feel relevant but... I mean it’s not straight photography, so that’s probably a terrible example. PK: So you do like some things outside the strictly straight field, so to say... SW: Oh no, I love process work! Again, there’s no list of commandments here, thou shalt not do this or that. I think you know what I’m pushing back against. I think it can open up a lot, and there can be a lot of really fun conversations happening. One of my favorite photographers is Mark Steinmetz, who is certainly making work in a long established form, but Mark makes some of the most incredible pictures... this guy should be famous! I mean he’s so true to his voice. spot |
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“I think probably some great, great photographers we’ll never know because they gave up, because they couldn’t get anyone to pay any attention.” PK: Do you think it is that people are so used to looking at pictures now that they react more to photographs that look less like traditional photographs? SW: The big thing to me is that the art world doesn’t hold up as exemplary that type of work because the form is old. Certainly because it’s a form that people are really familiar with, they don’t stop and look, but I am 100% certain that if you stop and look you will be so rewarded. I mean... you have to stop and look. It doesn’t scream at you. It’s quiet. PK: Does it need that validation? Does it need that art world validation? SW: Does it need it? No. But would we all be better off for it? Yeah, because it would mean that more people would get the attention and support they deserve, which means that they have a better chance of making a living and making work. So I think probably some great, great photographers we’ll never know because they gave up, because they couldn’t get anyone to pay any attention. PK: So are you optimistic or pessimistic? SW: In my corner of the world I’m optimistic because we’ve continued to grow, and I’m still able to find great artists and my artists are continuing to make great work.
Elinor Carucci, Eran and I, (1998). Courtesy the artist and Sasha Wolf Gallery
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Paula Kupfer is a writer and editor based in New York. She works as photo editor for The California Sunday Magazine, and was previously the managing editor of Aperture magazine. Kupfer has BA in journalism and Latin American studies from NYU and is currently an MA candidate in Art History at Hunter College. Sasha Wolf opened her Gallery in the summer of 2007 after spending a number of years as a private photography dealer. Prior to her work in the fine art photography world she was a writer, director and producer in the film and television industries and an award winning
short filmmaker. Her last film, Joe, was nominated for the Palme d’Or du court mÊtrage at Cannes and has screened all over the world. Sasha Wolf Gallery specializes in contemporary photography and represents emerging and mid-career artists. All of the gallery artists are in important private and institutional collections including The New York Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the de Cordova, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to name just a few. The gallery is a member of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD), the leading art photography accredited association.
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5 FOR 5 Social, political, and cultural issues are at the heart of curatorial projects by Dean Daderko, Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, and the Austin-based INGZ Collective—Uchenna Itam, Julia Neal, Rebecca Giordano, and Natalie Zelt. The following exchange—in which Daderko and INGZ each pose five questions to the other—reveals how these issues are manifested in their work.
Dean Daderko with INGZ
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Dean Daderko: The four of you met during a shared course of study, and your interests led you to initiate a project together outside that classroom as INGZ. What drew you to each other? How do your individual backgrounds in Art History and American Studies manifest themselves in your collaboration?
As a collective, we formed INGZ in response to an open call for exhibition proposals by the Visual Arts Center here on UT’s campus. As we had built a fairly close and dynamic bond, it felt natural that we might work together to present a rigorous and complex exhibition, what would become LaToya Ruby Frazier: Riveted. We get to share the burden of the work and the pleasures of curating, while also being able to marshal the different knowledge bases and bounce ideas
INGZ Collective: Meeting in a classroom setting meant that we got to know each other through the process of discovery and growth. Sharing ideas and building knowledge together, disagreeing and editing each other’s work has been part of how we have interacted from the start. The space of a seminar afforded us the perspective of seeing how we each think and what we bring to the table intellectually. And sometimes it has been about sharing excitement and interests. For instance, working with LaToya Ruby Frazier came about because Natalie Zelt—the “Z” of INGZ—was writing her master’s report on Frazier. One of the many exciting things about LaToya’s work is that it gracefully ties together so many themes and concerns. We each found a point of entry that resonated with larger concerns while still being excited by the importance others found in Frazier’s artistic practice.
off each other. DD: INGZ follows a consensus-based decision-making process. Do you have set goals? How does your process accommodate the tensions that arise when different paths to a shared objective are recognized? INGZ: We use “curating” and “collective” with an awareness that they are employed in various ways today. For us, being a collective functions based on respect and trust and is inherently political. Consensus-based models move slowly but they also grant the opportunity to think through why decisions are being made. Our goals include working in a way that resists oppressive power structures, including in our own working. We aim to be transparent about our commitments in both the content of programs and our group functioning and curatorial practices. DD: INGZ organized the multi-part project Riveted with the artist LaToya Ruby Frazier. Can you address the relevance and impact of this project on your collective and your community? INGZ: We are so thrilled to have gotten to know and work with LaToya. Part of what was so compelling to us doing Riveted was engaging her and her work long-term. We thought long and hard about the meaning and choices we could make in bringing LaToya’s work to Austin and to UT’s campus where all of the events and exhibitions were spot |
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LaToya Ruby Frazier Self Portrait Lying on a Pile of Rubble, 2007 Silver gelatin print Courtesy the artist and Galerie Michel Rein, Paris
“We get to share the burden of the work and the pleasures of curating, while also being able to marshal the different knowledge bases and bounce ideas off each other. “
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held. We put together two very different exhibitions that
literally part of Riveted continues here on campus. We
showcased her lithographs, video and brand new large
also donated several hundred poster-pamphlets we made
color digital works as well as the black and white silver
discussing LaToya’s work along with one of her famous
gelatin prints for which she is known. Frazier came to UT’s
images, Huxtables, Mom and Me, to BreakthroughAustin,
campus for two residencies—one in the Fall and one in the
a nonprofit that supports low income students who will
Spring—which featured a narrative performance, lecture,
go on to be first-generation college attendees. It was a
monograph workshop, student portfolio reviews and a
real pleasure to see those posters hung on walls of middle
discussion between the artist and Dr. Cherise Smith. A
school classrooms and hear young students discuss these
year-long engagement with an artist with such a complex
photographs and the meaning of self-representation.
practice—a recent recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship—enables real, in-depth discussion and this kind
DD: What questions, ideas, problems, and interests are
of repeated and ongoing exposure is an appropriate and
currently motivating your work, both individually and as a
useful model for curating on a university campus.
collective? Has your collective work influenced the way you approach personal projects? How?
We believe that thinking about the audiences and communities we serve and speaking to and with them
INGZ: We are all in process of getting our doctorates.
is very important. We were very explicit in our writings
So, lots of our ideas and interests are being funneled into
and curatorial choices that we wanted to think about
academic work.
the similarities between the Rust, Belt abandonment in Braddock, where LaToya is from and the site and subject
Itam: I am fortunate to collaborate with, and be supported
of all of her work, and the current tech boom of Austin.
by, such creative, industrious and intelligent colleagues
We talked about it in terms of bookends of single-industry
as these three women. Working with the curatorial
economic booms. There was a moment when steel was
collective enriches my research, writing and professional
king and Braddock exploded like Austin. Now, it is a place
skills, requiring me to think more deeply, critically and
with a shriveling economy, few services, and environmental
imaginatively about general issues in visual culture as well
pollution that disproportionately affects poor residents.
as my own project. I am researching phenomenological
We wanted to highlight how intersections of race, class,
approaches to visualizing identity constructs such as race,
and gender play out under these conditions—which
gender and nationality in embodiment-based mixed media
LaToya’s work does so powerfully—in light of the current
contemporary art. My upcoming doctoral qualifying exams
wave of gentrification of Austin. We were also influenced
are my current motivation!
by the work UT professor, Dr. Eric Tang, on the massive and rapid dislocation of Austin’s black community in the
Neal: I can depend on INGZ to continually challenge my
last ten years. The timing of so many anniversaries of
beliefs and investments about art and politics. For the better,
major Civil Rights events, the Blanton Museum of Art’s
this relationship demands that I do not grow comfortable
exhibition WITNESS: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties,
in assumptions or perspectives. This is particularly useful
student organizing and direction to remove statues of
for me to develop a flexible approach for the future,
Confederate generals from prominent places on campus,
pedagogically and professionally. How one strikes a balance
and the concurrent Black Lives Matter movement, created
between foregrounding art and the cultural work it produces
an important confluence of conversations we were eager
with how sociopolitical and economic dynamics influence
to join. We believe exhibitions to be a practice, to produce
perspectives is an art, in and of itself. This inevitable tension
knowledge and manifest discourse. Given this power, we
frames my research into 20th-century art, the work of Black
wanted to be specific in our intent.
artists and the contours of US politics.
Materially, there are some resonances: two of the photographs we exhibited, Self-Portrait Lying in a Pile of Rubble and Fifth Street Tavern and UPMC Braddock Hospital on Braddock Avenue are now in the collection of the Harry Ransom Center in a partnership with the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies so, quite 42
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Jackie Ormes Patty-Jo’n’Ginger, October 8, 1955. The Pittsburgh Courier. Image courtesy of Nancy Goldstein.
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“We believe exhibitions to be a practice, to produce knowledge and manifest discourse.”
Giordano: Working in this collective in particular has changed the range of things that I think are possible. Really, it made me step up my game. Working this closely, I developed such admiration for the way my colleagues work. It made me realize what my particular strengths are in curating and where I can really benefit from the expertise of others. I have lots of ideas, but sometimes forget the mechanics. Zelt: These women challenge any staid notions of what curatorial practice and the study of photography can make possible. Together we push each other and the ways we conceive of the field and the scholarly and radical potential it harbors. There are these moments in our meetings when suddenly I look around the room and much to my surprise, realize that I am the traditionalist here, and with a little nudge from my colleagues, the boundaries of what a curatorial project can do broaden. Currently, I am grappling with the ways that questions about identity raised in photography or by photographers press on other media, our everyday lives, and how we all work to define ourselves. Being a member of this group, this community, has offered a new angle from which to see these questions work outside of the frame. DD: What projects are next for INGZ? If you had to choose a dream project...? INGZ: Rebecca just curated In Heartbeats: The Comic Art of Jackie Ormes on behalf of INGZ, which is the first solo exhibition for the African American woman cartoonist. In a career spanning more than twenty years and four comic series, Ormes got her start in 1937 in the Pittsburgh Courier. The show is up through December 7, 2015 at the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at UT. Funny you should ask about dream projects! We are actually in the process of putting one together. We are still hammering out the details, so we can’t share too much; but we can say that we are very much looking forward to producing a performance series this coming spring. 44
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Group shot of INGZ during the installation of Riveted. Photo courtesy of Lily Brooks
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INGZ: We consider individuals from MFA programs our colleagues, though none of us have formal art school training. Working as a collective, we get to see how our different backgrounds affect each of our approaches in sort of a microcosm. How has your training as a sculptor influenced your approach to curatorial work and exhibition strategies?
INGZ: When you first arrived in Houston there was a bit of buzz around your commitment to “up and coming” artists. How does that impact or help mold the way that you approach your work as a curator? Where does that commitment come from, and how does it affect larger discourses? DD: I’m drawn to work that is unfamiliar, because I recognize its offering of new ways of apprehending the world around us. And if many of the artists I’ve worked
DD: Though I’m not a practicing artist anymore, I used to be one. In my curatorial work, my studio practice informs my respect for process, materiality, and the way objects occupy space. My studies at Tyler School of Art were led by three incredible women—Amy Hauft, Winifred Lutz, and Jude Tallichet—who all influenced the development of my feminist curatorial practice.
with could be characterized as “up and coming,” I think it’s because there’s visionary substance in the form and content of their work. Trends gloss the connections underlying various works, and I’m committed to engaging with art in deeper, more focused, present, and substantive ways. A good idea or work will remain so, whether we’re encountering it today, or months or years on. I value the privilege of being in a position to share work
My trajectory from artist to curator has been a smooth and
that excites me with CAMH’s audiences, who I find
natural one. I don’t miss having a studio practice. In fact, I find
to be truly sophisticated. Houston is a city with deep
I use the similar faculties and creative energies in my work as a
commitments to artistic philanthropy–organizations
curator, even if they are directed toward different ends.
like the Menil have led this charge. And Houston has a wealth of cultural institutions which, for the most
My appreciation for practice and process has led me to
part, welcome visitors free of charge. This creates a
close collaborations and the creation of commissions
culture of engagement with the arts that’s inclusive of
with artists like Jérôme Bel, Claire Fontaine, Joan Jonas,
audiences from varied economic and cultural backgrounds
Klara Lidén, MPA, Wu Tsang and Hague Yang. Working
and experiences—the value of ideas is powerful and
closely with such visionary artists has been an honor and a
incalculable. Creating exhibitions that speak to—especially
privilege, and I hope I’ve produced memorable results both
with these audiences is totally energizing.
for them and for CAMH’s audiences. INGZ: Can you talk a little bit about your experience as In a more nuanced way, I’ve come to understand that the
an independent curator? How does institutional affiliation
spatial constellation of works can help or hinder the way
contrast and compare with your independent work? Does
viewers read them. Temporal aspects of exhibitions are as
being part of an institution require new personal and
important to me as spatial experiences: in thinking about
professional boundaries and expectations? How does the
the pace of an exhibition—how a viewer moves through
labor of curating vary?
a show and what type of attention particular works in it may require—I imagine narratives of how constellations
DD: The support and input offered by my colleagues
of works and experiences will influence viewers’ overall
at CAMH definitely strengthens my curatorial efforts.
perceptions. Strategic placement can draw out new,
While my prior independent curatorial work required me
unexpected sensations and experiences with art and the
to multitask and wear many hats, at CAMH the diverse
ideas it generates.
experiences and expertise of our staff allows me to step
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LaToya Ruby Frazier Riveted, Visual Arts Center (installation view), 2014. Photo courtesy of Sandy Carson
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back and see the bigger picture; and on a micro-level, their valued input helps me to perceive new ways to approach exhibition-making more successfully. It’s exciting! Because I don’t always approach exhibition-making in traditional ways, my colleagues’ suggestions on the calculated risks we’re taking together with artists are invaluable; they often identify blind spots I wouldn’t have anticipated, and we work out solutions together. It can be challenging, but the risks we take have regularly produced dynamic, exciting results. I’m thankful to work with such a great team! Overall, my position at CAMH has allowed me to think bigger, publish extensively, support artists in deeper ways, and be more ambitious in the work I’m doing. Given this larger stage, the positive responses from our audiences to the programs we’re working together to create is truly rewarding. INGZ: From your experience, how have alternative structures for art-making, curatorial practice and display changed since you’ve began as a curator? As a missionbased collective, we are certainly part of a wave that is trying to develop approaches that reflect growing and changing needs, discourses, and audiences. What other trends and strategies do you see emerging in the postrecession art world? DD: Thinking about my work in a cumulative way, each of the projects I’ve engaged in teach me lessons that I can move forward with. Curatorial work is ultimately responsive to the ideas that artists are generating, given our present cultural moment, and it’s exciting to work at an institution that supports artists who are on the vanguard of envisioning and communicating these new perceptions. As a curator who has always been invested in experimental and performative work, I enjoy talking with colleagues nationally and internationally who are engaging with artists to explore ways to present and contextualize advances in artistic practice. INGZ: You have curated shows internationally in Lithuania, France, and Argentina. You are now at a prominent institution in an extremely important city for the arts. How does the location and audience of your different exhibitions shape the shows you mount? How do you conceptualize your ethical responsibility today as US-based curator to artists, audiences and institutions nationally and internationally?
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Paul Ramirez Jonas The Commons, 2011 Cork, pushpins, and notes contributed by the public Courtesy the artist
Dean Daderko is Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum
speaks extensively in conjunction with his exhibitions, and his writing
Houston (CAMH). Previously working as an independent curator
has been published in catalogues by CAMH, The Studio Museum
based in New York, Daderko has mounted curatorial projects in
in Harlem, El Museo del Barrio, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, The
Buenos Aires, Argentina; Montreal, Canada; and Vilnius, Lithuania,
Americas’ Society, and Rutgers University.
among other locations. He has been a graduate seminar instructor at Yale University School of Art where he led the course Queer
INGZ Collective is composed of Uchenna Itam, Julia Neal, Rebecca
Strategies, and a visiting curator at Centro de Investigaciones
Giordano and Natalie Zelt. With an ethical and fluid approach to
Artisticas in Buenos Aires; Cooper Union School of the Arts in New
curatorial practice, INGZ collaborates on public interventions that
York; the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris; M.I.T.
foster new ways of engaging the visual and political. To learn more
in Cambridge, MA; and the University of Houston. He writes and
about past, present and future projects visit ingzcollective.org. spot |
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Prison Obscura installation at The New School, New York. Courtesy of Pete Brook and The Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery at Haverford College, Haverford, PA.
CURATING PHOTOGRAPHY, CREATING COMMUNITY TH: Each of you holds the role of “Curator” at your respective institutions. Although the term “Curate” has become ubiquitously applied to any process of selecting, what does it mean to each of you?
WITH JULIA DOLAN, YAELLE S. AMIR AND TRICIA HOFFMAN
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JD: Selecting is only one part of my job. It’s an important part….but because I work at an institution that collects art objects one of the most important things I can do is bring photographs into the collection where they will be cared for. The term curate relates to the concept of caring for. Part of the institution’s mission is to care for those objects for hundreds of years into the future. Many generations after ours will be able to access art objects that were created during our time and during the history of photography and they will be accessible. For me that’s the most important thing. Whenever I think about accessioning work for the collection I think about the future of the city, the population of the city, and the future of other institutions—whether what we’re bringing in and caring for will be useful for the future community. I might be a little more traditional in that way. I understand why people use the word curate so often, but I do want to believe in the idea of caring for works— because artists make objects and they exist in time and space. I take caring for those objects for future generations very seriously.
YSA: For me, the selection happens more at the level of the artist. It comes from looking at what contemporary artists are doing and responding to at the moment, narrowing it down to a certain concept, and then honing in on a body of work. Specific works are important for their visual quality, but in certain ways what they represent is even more crucial. My selections occur in relation to what’s currently taking place in society, outside the gallery walls—the works then become the starting point for the discussion of these matters. JD: I think that’s why it’s so important that communities have places like a museum that collect for now and the future, as well as organizations that can move more quickly and really get the pulse of the time—you need that kind of balance. You need the ability to show what’s happening right now and then you need the place to harbor that expression as time moves forward. A rich, healthy community will be able to both of those things: The immediate reaction plus its legacy. It’s often hard for a single institution to do both of those things at the same time. Some do it incredibly well, but often it’s best to share the responsibility among institutions. spot |
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Image of a dam, made in response to a description provided by a prisoner in Richmond County Jail, Virginia. Photo: Mark Strandquist.
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YSA: But we also shouldn’t forget that there’s no contemporary art without art history! This can’t be overlooked even at smaller, “on-the-ground” institutions. TH: What course of study did each of you undertake in order to achieve the title of “Curator” and how/why did you choose this profession? YSA: I have a BA in Art History from Tel Aviv University and an MA in Art History and Curatorial Studies from Columbia University. My first “art job” was in Israel, where I worked at a non-collecting contemporary art nonprofit that really informed my interests. It presented large group exhibitions about topics that were very relevant to what was happening in the country at the time, which in 2000–2003 was a lot. When I moved to New York, I did a curatorial internship at the Museum of Arts and Design and got a full-time job at a commercial art gallery. Sometimes I feel that working at the commercial art gallery was the best education I could have gotten on the art world; more than the academic degrees, in some ways. The three years I spent in the commercial art world taught me that I don’t want to work in the commercial art world! But I also felt I was being educated on exactly how this field functioned—who are the main players and how one communicated. Then I did a fellowship at MoMA, which taught me that I want to focus on smaller institutions for the time being. I later worked at the International Center of Photography, which is aligned perfectly with my interests in social movements and contemporary art. Over the past decade I’ve also done a lot of independent curating, which was ultimately how I found my own voice. spot |
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JD: I have a BFA in photography and an MA and a PhD in art history. I’ve loved photography since I was young and thought that I really wanted to be an artist. I loved art school but when I graduated I realized that I didn’t have the kind of guts that it takes to be a fine artist. I think we all have guts but our guts are different. I thought about it for a few years and then realized I could still be with photographs and think about photographs as a curator. I thought about teaching, but I didn’t like being removed from the objects. So that’s what pushed me to pursue first an MA and then after the masters I thought ‘I really need to know more; I’m not ready to be a curator yet.’ So I went on to the PhD and worked at different museums of different sizes. I learned about how they each worked and how a show is put together and how collections are made. This is my first position after my PhD as a full curator in the discipline. YSA: I trace my passion for image-based work to my strong interest in media. It’s how I learn about what’s happening in the world. I’ve always been a hyper news consumer and images were usually my entry point to how what was happening. It is how I connect with a particular issue beyond the information I’ve read in the article. It’s usually the image that has the most piercing affect on me. TH: Would you each speak to the goals and uses of the exhibitions that you curate for your respective organizations? How is it potentially different or the same at a museum vs a nonprofit space? JD: As I mentioned before I love that in a diverse community we can have a space like Newspace that is able to be closer to the ground and do things quickly and maybe find things that I’m not able to find right away. I also come from an institution where there are six other curators who have their own needs so we all share space and ideas. So it takes a little longer to get exhibitions on the walls. What I love about creating exhibitions, and this might sound very selfish, but I learn so much. I want other people to learn; I really do. But I love the fact that I get to learn about an issue or an idea through the photographs and then I get to transmit that information to a larger audience. I feel like I have a bullhorn because I am the person who is given the wall space to use as that bullhorn. I hope it is good for the artists and they feel that their ideas are being recognized, respected, and amplified on the walls of my museum. YSA: This relates to the first question where I mentioned that the photographs on the wall are the opening bell for the discussion that can and should follow. It serves as a communication tool or platform to have a discussion about what and why people care about the topic embodied by the works on view. I see the role of the contemporary art curator these days manifest itself a lot in the public 54
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Incarcerated girls at Remann Hall, Tacoma, Washington, reenact restraint techniques in a pinhole camera workshop, 2002. Photo: Anonymous, courtesy of Steve Davis
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programming around exhibitions. The artwork is the starting point for deeper engagement through public programs. I think that you can do that in an art museum, but because of its scale and bureaucracy it’s hard to respond to more immediate concerns. That’s the potential in smaller institutions, where you can change the schedule within a few months’ notice to hang an exhibition about something that people are talking about right now. That’s how I view my role. JD: I love that you can often be a little more experimental than we can be. I love the way that you say that it’s a jumping off point and it’s a spark. Because that’s so true. YSA: I feel strongly that the work shouldn’t end with its production and presentation. It is also a tool that artists can use to develop the conversation around the issue that their work addresses. JD: There’s such a range at a museum—I’ll reach back to 1845 and I’ll reach forward to 2014, which is a luxury I have that perhaps other nonprofits don’t. I do feel a responsibility to those artists who have made exceptional work during exceptional times. For example, the Vera Prášilova Scott exhibition. These photographs sat in her basement for years and then made their way to our storage because of the prescience of a good curator and then I suddenly had a window of opportunity to put them on the wall. Many people told me they didn’t know that studio portraits could be so beautiful. It might only be 300 or 400 people who really responded to that work, but those three or four hundred people are going to think about the 1930s a little bit differently. When they see a television show or a moment on the street they’re going to recall this exhibition and these beautiful photographs that sat in a basement for 40 years. That’s the wonderful part of looking back. I always want to look forward into what photography will be doing today and into the future but we need to also understand who our forbears were and what they were accomplishing in their own times. And I think that’s what I’ve loved about photography so much.
Vera Prášilova (American, born Czech Republic, 1899-1996), Jackeline Logan, 1924, gelatin silver print. Portland Art Museum: Gift of Nadja S. Lilly, Dascha S. Tursi, and K.S. Voeller, M.D., © Estate of Vera Prášilova Scott
“I always want to look forward into what photography will be doing today and into the future but we need to also understand who our forbears were and what they were accomplishing in their own times.”
TH: Can you also speak to the types of exhibitions that you’re curating—historic vs contemporary, from public and private collections vs from artists and dealers, group vs solo? I’m looking for general overview—nonprofits spaces traditionally working directly with living artists and work produced recently vs the museum exhibiting far larger percentage of the work from the collection and artwork loans. Nonprofit spaces can do some of that but it’s a huge limitation in terms of our facilities and what we’re able to accommodate. YSA: For the remainder of 2015, we’re going to show a combination of contemporary shows (in the main gallery) that will be balanced out, to a certain degree, with historical photography collections that came about via a collaboration with the Oregon Historical Society. In 2016, we will have a range of solo and group exhibition that are both guest curated and organized by yours truly. JD: The museum has very specific facilities requirements. When people entrust their artwork to us, often times by donation, we then move that artwork to a new standard. It may have been stored in the basement before but now we are charged with caring for it and we want it to be here 300 years from now. Longevity is our main goal. At the same time, we are thinking about how kind our donors are when they donate work to us, so we do like to honor them by getting the work that they on view within a few years of them donating it. Because that is such a gift to us. We are nothing without our collection. We also borrow great work when possible, working with the collection we have and augmenting it with wonderful, important work that we cannot accession. spot |
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right: Vera Prášilova (American, born Czech Republic, 1899-1996), Audrey Randolph, 1932, gelatin silver print. Portland Art Museum: Gift of Nadja S. Lilly, Dascha S. Tursi, and K.S. Voeller, M.D., © Estate of Vera Prášilova Scott
left: Vera Prášilova (American, born Czech Republic, 1899-1997), Joanne Hill Cromaris, 1934, gelatin silver print, Gift of Nadja S. Lilly, Dascha S. Tursi, and K.S. Voeller, M.D. © Estate of Vera Prášilova Scott, 2000.91.9
YSA: And for us, it’s all that just with artists rather than collection works. Especially at Newspace, I’m looking to find artists who have not gotten the exposure that I believe they deserve. I believe in organizing group exhibitions that allow for everyone to have space and in-depth look at their work. I usually include less works overall so not to crowd the space and create visual noise. And if it’s a solo exhibition then it’s focused on a really tight concept, or it’s a real departure for the institution. Ultimately, the decision of what to show is the relevance of the work to discussions occurring in the broader community, not just the art/photo community. TH: What is one upcoming curatorial project about which you’re really especially excited? JD: One’s a secret because it hasn’t been signed sealed and delivered yet. I’m incredibly excited that a small exhibition is coming out of my rabid desire to bring Emmet Gown to the museum to speak as our Newman Distinguished Lecturer in Photography. He’s such a magnificent human being and means a lot to many people. Originally, I was just going to have him come out to speak, but my director asked if I could also curate a small exhibition and I thought “Oh dear.” And then I thought “Oh yes, I definitely can fit that into 58
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my schedule.” It has been such a pleasure getting to know Emmet even better and working to express ideas that he has on our walls. That is very special for me. I may do a lot of historical work but I also do get to meet with artists that are working today and I’m able to make some of their ideas happen. So like you, Yaelle, I sometimes get to do that and it means a lot to me because their ideas live not only in their images but in their voices and in their personal experience. YSA: The programming for 2016 as a whole is very exciting to me, since it is the first year in which I will have devised a cohesive plan for Newspace from start to finish. The projects we will be showing address some of our most pressing societal concerns—environmental justice, the prison industrial complex, labor practices, to name a few —as seen through image-based practices. The exhibitions will serve as an inspiration and a prompt for an expanded conversation about the core issue they reflect. I am very interested in the image as a communication tool that both starts and expands a discussion, but also allows for a reflective experience. One project I’m particularly excited about is an open call for proposals we put out over the summer for an artist or collective to develop a project around gentrification and displacement. The idea for
this came to me when I was researching the issue as a potential group exhibition, looking for local artists who address this topic and realizing there isn’t a critical mass of artworks being made about it. Since this is an issue that is very much on the minds of Portland residents at the moment, I was surprised and decided to turn over the program budget to the development and exhibition of one image-based project. We have devised a residency program in partnership with another local art organization, c3:initiative, to assist in the production of the work and will be selecting the project from a pool of proposals in late fall 2015. Starting January 2016 the selected artists will develop the project and employ Newspace and c3’s facilities, culminating in an exhibition at Newspace in August – September 2016. As part of the proposal we have asked the applicants to identify several local organizations/community groups working on issues of displacement and land use that they plan to incorporate into the project through collaboration and/or programming during the exhibition. I’m very excited to be able to facilitate the development and actualization of a project on an issue that is so pertinent to Portlanders. It will hopefully fulfill the vision of Newspace as a hub for engagement around the image.
Julia Dolan is The Minor White Curator of Photography at the Portland Art Museum where she oversees the research, documentation, and exhibition of the permanent collection of more than 7,500 photographs. Dr. Dolan received a B.F.A. in Photography from the Maryland Institute College of Art, an M.A. in Art History from Pennsylvania State University, and a Ph.D. in Art History from Boston University. She has worked with the photography collections at institutions including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Fogg Art Museum, and the Palmer Museum of Art. Dr. Dolan has curated and co-curated more than twenty photography exhibitions at the Portland Art Museum including Subject/Object: Modernist Photography from the Bluff Collection (2015), Richard Mosse: The Enclave (2014), and Blue Sky: The Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts at 40 (2014). She has published essays in multiple publications including Geolocation: Nate Larson and Marni Shindelman (2015), Blue Sky: The Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts at 40 (2014), The Question of Hope: Robert Adams in Western Oregon (2013), and Bobby Abrahamson: North Portland Polaroids (Ampersand, 2012). Yaelle S. Amir is Curator of exhibitions and public programs at Newspace Center for Photography in Portland, OR. Amir’s research focuses primarily on photography, video, and installation practices that supplement the initiatives of existing social movements, with a strong focus on community engagement. She has held curatorial and research positions at major institutions including the International Center of Photography, Museum of Modern Art, and New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, and her independent curatorial projects have taken place in non-profit institutions around the country. Tricia Hoffman is the Executive Director at Newspace Center for Photography. She has worked in non-profit management for over 10 years, including at Blue Sky Gallery and Photolucida. She has also served as the Development Director at Mid-America Arts Alliance and Curatorial Assistant at ExhibitsUSA. She holds a BS in Psychology from Baldwin Wallace University and an MFA in Photography from the University of Hartford, Hartford Art School. spot |
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HUMBLE
O R I G I N S ANDY ADAMS with
JON FEINSTEIN
Viewing, sharing, editing, curating, and making photography online today is a magical, many-headed beast. In a little over a decade, now regarded as light years in internet time, photography’s online representation has evolved from a handful of academic bloggers, blogging communities, and bare-bones magazines to hundreds, if not thousands of applications and “content” engines for disseminating “shareable” photographic work to massive audiences. Before 2003, the primary experience of viewing photography-as-art was largely confined to brick and mortar galleries and institutions, and the concept of mass exposure for one’s work was still often limited to those who could view it in print and in the gallery. As “the internet” changed nearly everything about how we experience the world virtually, photography’s viewership potential for wider engagement naturally evolved with it, expanding who could make and appreciate work originally destined for the walls while championing legions of “amateurs” to consider themselves serious practitioners. At the roots of much of the early online conversation were Andy Adams (FlakPhoto)— and Jon Feinstein (Humble Arts Foundation), two online curators that established digital platforms for showing new photography. HCP asked them to reflect on ten years of their work and the evolving nature of the internet/photo experience.
Ben Alper, Background Noise #12, 2011 Courtesy of the artist 60
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Andy Adams: Tell me about Humble—how’d that begin? JF: It actually started when [Humble Arts Foundation codirector] Amani Olu and I met while working at Shutterstock in early 2005. Shutterstock’s CEO, Jon Oringer introduced us —from the beginning, he was very supportive of our outside projects. The work we were doing at Shutterstock at that time focused on commercial, editorial and stock photography but we both had passions for “Art Photography” and put our heads together for this project. AA: Art Photography! JF: I can’t remember when I decided that saying Art Photography sounded more legit than Fine Art Photography… I still laugh at myself when I say it, but I stand by it. I may have Susan Bright to thank for that. AA: I’ve always bristled at Fine Art Photography—I like the simple, keyword style of Art Photography. Sets it apart from everything else. I learned that from you two. JF: Awesome. I’m flattered. JF: Amani came at me with the idea of showing work online, mimicking the traditional brick and mortar gallery exhibition, but “virtually,” through a desire to create something accessible, with a longer shelf life that still had a certain rigor, without the distance we found in many physical galleries. AA: So, your idea was always to do something like a traditional organization—but on the Internet. Was that motivated by budgetary constraints or something else? JF: We both had growing networks of photographers who were mostly a few years out of school and still perplexed about how to get their work seen. During my senior year, in one of our crits, a team of professional gallerists came to visit and they painted a very grim picture of “the art world”—one where market forces dictated what was shown and one where photographers had no control over their destiny. AA: And your idea was to do something different? Something purer? Motivated by a different ethos? JF: We wanted to create an opportunity for work to be seen simply because it was strong, engaging, and challenging. So Amani learned HTML and we launched “Group Show.” AA: Alec always seemed up for anything. He was an early FlakPhoto contributor too. JF: Alec Soth was the most approachable, the antithesis of the guarded “art world” I feared.
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“We wanted to create an opportunity for work to be seen simply because it was strong, engaging, and challenging.”
above: Ben Alper, Background Noise #23, 2012 Courtesy of the artist
left: Ben Alper, Background Noise #23, 2012 Courtesy of the artist spot |
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AA: It’s funny how the Internet flattens everything—it’s really as easy as sending someone an email. Most of the time, a passionate photographer will participate. I’ve always loved that about the Web. JF: After a while, the photographers we featured shared the show with friends, word spread, and we started getting tons of emails and submissions. AA: Wasn’t that fun? JF: It was amazing! AA: I’ll never forget the thrill of those first submissions— getting emails from strangers on the other side of the world. That was incredible then. I take it for granted these days, but it used to be really magical. AA: How old were you then? JF: I think I was 24 at the time. AA: Young man! “Group Show” was huge for me—that was the first time I’d seen anything like it. How did it initially work? JF: The premise was simple: 24 photographs, one per photographer, each month. No overarching theme, but finding ways to create relationships from images that on the surface might seem discordant. Ultimately, we wanted to elevate the work of our peers.
Ben Alper, B ackground Noise #4, 2011 Courtesy of the artist
AA: One of the early realizations I made with FlakPhoto was that the Web was a global community with enormous possibilities for discovery. So, from the beginning, I put out open calls to the public and that’s how I sourced the work I showed on the site. Did you do the same with Humble? JF: The first call came mostly from invites but actually also from Craigslist ads. We also took some chances and invited “famous” photographers to participate. AA: Famous—like who? JF: The biggest name was Alec Soth, who contributed to “Group Show #2.”
“Ultimately, we wanted to elevate the work of our peers.”
JF: I still think it’s got magic. I’m still floored when a stranger has “heard of” me, but when that first started happening, it was absolutely mind-boggling.
Ben Alper, Background Noise #16, 2011 Courtesy of the artist spot |
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AA: Was anybody else doing this? Were you the first? JF: There were a few online projects at the time… blogs like Joerg Colberg’s Conscientious and JPG magazine existed as a print zine/online magazine. I also really loved Tim Barber’s Tiny Vices and its no-frills approach: simple, straightforward, to the point, with a great eye. AA: Yes! I remember JPG. Blueeyes Magazine was an early inspiration for me. And Photoblogs.org. Tiny Vices was fantastic. Tim had a vision. I learned a lot from that site.
AA: The concept of sharing, of social media didn’t enter my lexicon until 2008 or so. I have a distinct memory of reading about social media around that time. I’d been doing social things with FlakPhoto but didn’t realize that’s what was happening. For me, it was always about engaging with my peers online, which is an inherently social practice. It’s funny, how we’ve all embraced these technologies to do things differently, all of us learning together, simultaneously. Engaging the online audience has always been such a key part of my projects—it was only a matter of time before I embraced social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook to promote the photographers I admired.
JF: Amani and I wanted to create a white-wall gallery aesthetic with a simple, clean way of viewing work and learning about new photographers. Ours was more online exhibition than online magazine. AA: How have things changed? JF: “Shareability” wasn’t something people talked about in the same way then.
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Ben Alper, Background Noise #10, 2011 Courtesy of the artist
JF: In the past couple years, specifically with your brick and mortar exhibitions and your development of FlakPhoto Digest, you’ve embraced the curator title with much more enthusiasm. What do you think prompted that evolution and your original hesitancy? AA: I created FlakPhoto out of a curiosity for photography and to teach myself how I could use the Web to promote the image-makers I admired. And, to burden that practice —a genuine, personal, creative practice—with this loaded word was problematic for me. I’m not sure the titles matter. Am I an editor? A curator? A producer? A publisher? What matters is that I’m a person who cares about photography —about its past, present and future—and that I’m engaging with it on daily basis.
by the creative impulses that drive me. I have curated a handful of exhibitions, large-scale projects, some of them commissioned by museums. Those projects taught me a lot about how exhibition photography functions. There’s substantially more involved in producing an exhibition experience than there is in publishing a blog. Digital exhibitions are unique experiences and they’re as significant as analog exhibitions. I’m doing photography differently than it’s been done previously so I sometimes wonder if the old terms apply. Maybe we need a new title. JF: I think so much of the backlash/negative associations also come from a feeling of defending one’s territory.
JF: But isn’t the level of energy and self-education you’ve put into it worthy of the same respect? Haven’t you earned it despite not having a PhD or MFA? AA: At this point, I consider myself an independent curator. My projects are born of my own energies, mostly inspired
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Ben Alper, Background Noise #25, 2012 Courtesy of the artist
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AA: That might be true. And I’ve never been particularly compelled to claim ownership over what I do as being official or significant or important. Edit, organize, curate, present—each of these activities is related. But, and here’s where it’s interesting—because we’ve spent the past decade experimenting with the Internet, publishing on the Web, participating in the online photo community experience—we’ve developed a new way of doing things. We’re part of moving photography forward. JF: What is the most substantial contribution online publishing has added to how people experience and engage with photography? AA: Twenty first-century digital literacy enables anyone who understands the Web to express themselves publicly on a global level, and that changes the hierarchical structure of photographic communication. So each of us, independent of our place in the photo world, has the potential to connect our work to an online audience. That’s huge. JF: Do you think it’s eliminated the concept of the gatekeeper?
Jon Feinstein is a Seattle and New York City based curator, photographer, the co-founder of Humble Arts Foundation, and Strategic Partnerships Manager at Shutterstock. Jon has curated numerous exhibitions, including Radical Color at Newspace Center for Photography, in Portland, Oregon; Another New York for Art-Bridge at The Barclays Arena in Brooklyn, NY; the internet-acclaimed New Cats in Art Photography; Aneta Bartos’ Boys at the Carlton Arms Hotel in NYC, and 31 Women in Art Photography at Hasted Kraetleur in NYC. His various projects have received high praise by The New York Times, The New Republic, BBC, VICE, Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, American Photo, Art Info, and FoxNews; and his writing has appeared in TIME, Slate, Daylight, GOOD, and Whitewall Magazines. Find him shamelessly on Instagram and Twitter @jonfeinstein
AA: It depends how we define that Gatekeeper, but, sure. Because you and I and our online colleagues have developed platforms that, to my mind, didn’t exist prior to 2000. Of course, I’ve been called a gatekeeper. And I’ve been taken to task for not recognizing the impact my online decision-making represents. Which is... nuts. Everything is relative. JF: I think online curation has opened up who those audiences are, how they can engage with art/photography, and in many ways, can help to shape it. AA: If you think of it this way, that engaging with photographic peers online using social media is a kind of creative, communicative exchange, then it’s not so much an act of curation or marketing or promotion, as an act of human expression. My expression manifests itself in a variety of ways: my website, on Instagram, my tweets, in the FlakPhoto Network, in my weekly email newsletter. They’re all creative outlets for exploring and understanding the photo/visual culture that surrounds us. Because of how the Web works, my personal experience is a public experience. And that publicness means it can impact other people. And that’s wonderful.
Andy Adams is an experienced producer with a passion for visual media and digital culture. Since 2004, he has consulted cultural institutions that use the Internet to engage, inspire, and educate the public. Adams is a pioneer in the field of online arts exhibition and has collaborated with the RISD Museum of Art, the Australian Centre for Photography, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and numerous other organizations. He is an evangelist for the Web’s potential to inspire communities and regularly speaks about the opportunities digital media provide creators to connect with their audiences and each other online. In his spare time, he hosts the FlakPhoto Network, a 13,000-member online community focused on conversations about visual culture. Find him on Twitter @FlakPhoto.
Ben Alper’s series Background Noise addresses the analog photograph’s shifting presence within contemporary culture and raises questions about the materiality of photographs in the digital age. Alper uses various imaging tools to create intentional digital mistakes and ruptures to scans of old family photos, essentially “hacking” the visual representation of his ancestry and personal history. He sees these results as “scars” that mirror the process of transference gone amiss. While this may read as pessimistic on some level, we find Background Noise to aptly parallel our conversation towards how digital technology and the internet have democratized photographic opportunity and created their own rupture in how we think about photography and exchange ideas.
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Six Edward Weston Portraits of
Esperanza Velásquez Bringas (1896-1980) by Fernando Castro In the late nineties, the Center for Creative
made portraits as academic painters would:
or profession of the person; in other words,
Photography in Arizona, which possesses
full-bodied or complete trunk. But these six
they are extremely decontextualized. What
the most important Edward Weston archive
portraits are framed in a divergent way used
gives this type of portrait its identity is the
and collection, acquired from María Luisa
by Weston and Margrethe Mather (who was
character of the subject, and his or her
de Gortari, a Houston resident, six 8x10-
also his collaborator, model and lover) circa
facial features. Its particularity comes from
inch negatives. The negatives were portraits
1920. They focus on the mass of a person’s
the position of the head, its vantage point,
that Weston made of Esperanza Velásquez
head as if it were an object: a nautilus shell,
its focus, its lighting, and not its passing
Bringas, a very important Mexican essayist,
a book, or a bell pepper. For better or worse,
expression, but its personal demeanor.
feminist and human rights activist of the
to regard the head and the face (the most
1920s. When Esperanza died in 1980, Mrs.
significant parts of a person’s body) as objects
Who was Esperanza Velásquez Bringas?
de Gortari became her only heir. Given the
is a thoroughly modern approach; fortunately,
When Weston and Modotti moved to México
vast estate of Esperanza, Mrs. de Gortari did
it is not the only modern approach. As in a
in 1923, the country had been in the throes
not realize, until years later, that she had also
passport photo or a Faiyum funeral portrait,
of political and cultural upheaval since the
inherited vintage prints signed by Edward
there is little space left between the head
start of its civil war in 1910. The year of the
Weston of those very same portraits. (1)
and the edge of the picture. In Weston’s
portraits, 1924, is when Esperanza Velásquez
portraits the object like treatment of the head
Bringas became director of the newly-
Except for one, five of the portraits frame the
is further underscored by the empty neutral
established national libraries. By then she
head and upper torso in a way that spells out
background that isolates the face from all
had already forged a prestigious reputation
a break with Pictorialism. Up to that time
distractors, circumstances, and accidental
as a journalist, educator, and advocate of
(1924) most Pictorialist studio photographers
features. They offer no clue as to the vocation
women causes. At eighteen, she had started writing for El Universal, a newspaper founded in 1916 to voice the principles of the Mexican Revolution. She was put in charge of the women and children section of the newspaper. Under anybody else’s command that section could have been trivial and inconsequential, but Velásquez Bringas had strong revolutionary beliefs about women’s rights, childrearing, motherhood, pre-natal care, birth-control, education, nutrition, eugenics, and civism. She can rightly be called “a first-wave feminist.” Esperanza fought against the idea promoted by the Porfiriato of the woman as “angel of the home” and promoted that of “the modern
Window case of bookstore displaying one of Edward Weston’s portraits of Esperanza Velasquez Bringas, promoting the sale of her book Lecturas Populares, 1926
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(From right to left) Esperanza Velásquez Bringas, Diego Rivera, Unknown Gentleman, and a man presumed to be Edward Weston, Mexico, c. 1925
woman.” She was an unmarried working
a large format camera on his shoulder who
woman herself with no children, fashionably
looks like Weston. Did Esperanza bestow
dressed, and very outspoken in political and
favors on Weston through her government or
intellectual circles. Her gift as an orator is
journalistic connections? Weston destroyed
evidenced by the fact that on the occasion
his early journals, so there is no evidence
of Charles Lindbergh’s visit to Mexico in
about the exact nature of the relationship
1927, president Elías Calles asked her to
between Esperanza and him. Nevertheless, it
give a welcoming speech. Her ideas filled a
is a telling fact that he made six 8x10 portraits
void in the ideology of the Revolution and
of her and let her keep the negatives. Weston
her charismatic personality endeared her to
returned to California in 1927.
its leaders. She often wrote and voiced the
profile of the Mexican regime for internal
As for Esperanza, she continued living
and external consumption.
freely, productively, and dangerously. Her
popularity increased as the host of a radio
But how did Weston’s path cross hers?
show called “The National Hour.” As a
Was it simply from being part of the same
journalist, she pioneered the interview, that
bohemian and revolutionary milieu? Weston
genre that years later would be made famous
had two very successful exhibitions at Aztec
by the likes of Oriana Fallaci and Barbara
Land thanks to which his prestige as an
Walters. As a lawyer, Esperanza was a public
artist and his clientele grew rapidly. Did
defender in criminal trials. After thirty
Esperanza commission the portraits after
years of service, she received a Gold Medal
attending one of these exhibitions? Finally,
of Excellence from the Supreme Court
both Weston and Esperanza published their
of Justice. Her bibliography describes the
work in the El Universal daily, where she
gamut of interests along her life: politics, law,
had been writing for years. Was a friendship
literature, women’s issues, education, and
established through this newspaper? Or
the world at large. That is who the person in
was that friendship achieved through their
these six Weston portraits was.*
mutual friend Diego Rivera? There is a photograph, in which she is standing next to Diego Rivera, and there is a man holding
—Fernando Castro
Fernando Castro is a critic, curator, poet, and artist. He recently lectured at the University of Cambridge about his photographic works titled “Elian” (2000). In 2015, the poem “The Sphere,” written collaboratively with his wife, the poet Teresa Bordona, became the first poem in Spanish in orbit on the skin of the satellite Ulises I. In 2014, he gave a workshop on curatorship during the Encuentros Abiertos festival in Buenos Aires. His most recent curatorial projects are “Prime Years: an exhibition about aging” (2009) and “The States of Pedro Meyer” (2008). In 1997 his own photographic work took a political turn under the title “Reasons of State.” His exhibit “The Ideology of Color” (2004) is an on-line exhibition at the Lehigh University website. His photographic works are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The Dancing Bear Collection (New York), Lehigh University (Pennsylvania), Museo de Arte de Lima, the Harry Ransom Collection (Austin), the Nolden Collection (Chicago), etc. He is photography curator of Sicardi Gallery, and part of the international body of consultants of Aperture magazine, a member of the art board of Fotofest, and of the advisory board of the Houston Center for Photography. Castro is a regular contributor of Spot, Artnexus and Literal magazines.
(1) The Center for Creative Photography’s Weston holdings include some 2,000 prints, nearly 10,000 negatives, original daybooks, correspondence, and an assortment of ephemera. CCP acquired the Weston Archive from Weston’s four sons in 1981. The actual portraits that are the topic of this essay could not be published with it because of the prohibitive prices CCP charges for publication. *A longer version of this essay that includes more historical context will soon be published at http://literalmagazine.com/
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Photographing the Unseeable: A review of Alejandro Cartagena’s Before the War by Ashlyn Davis There is much that cannot be seen or found
kidnapped or killed, their bodies never found.
The book itself is a reflection of what has
in Mexico. While the Mexican Drug War has
This estimate does not even begin to count
become a true golden age for photobook
taken a very visible toll on families and the
for the still thousands more killed in the war
production, in which the form becomes
cultural landscape across the country, there
on drugs. While people and property have
part of the content. It is delivered in a
exists a clandestine coalition of corrupt law
gone missing, Cartagena argues that evil is the
cardboard envelope that the reader must rip
enforcement and drug cartels that have created
most pernicious of the unseen. His photobook,
through in order to get to its pages. Opening
an invisible community often referred to as
Before the War (self-published, 2015), attempts
the book is a physical act that requires a
Mexico’s disappeared, or “los desaparecidos.”
to visualize its origins through a collection of
nearly violent desire to see what lies sealed
Over the past ten years, tens of thousands of
portraits, landscapes, and text that focus on the
within. The staple-bound black and white
people have vanished without a trace including
roots of violence in the state of Nuevo León in
photographs are printed on newsprint, as if
mothers, fathers, and school children who are
northeastern Mexico.
meant to be delivered on doorsteps or sold on
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previous page: cover and opening, Before the War. this page top: detail of spread center: detail of inserted spread bottom: detail of poster fold-out
newsstands—intended to be visible and circulated in the public. Cartagena writes that these photographs, “obsessively...look for signs of an evil that lay underneath but were [then] invisible to everyone´s eyes,” capturing what was palpable yet had not become manifestly apparent. Smaller newsprint photographs and texts emerge from the larger book like secrets, and many of the photographs frame obstructed views. A boy tucks his head under his shirt; trees cover up a bright sky; a portrait of a man is so pixelated his identity literally disappears into squares of ink. Within these larger poetic narratives are words from the community that appear to be ripped out of actual newspaper articles: an accordion fold-out of a suited middle-aged man includes the underlined words, “No my friend, this is not violence generated by my government; it is violence caused by criminal gangs who have tried to seize society and because of that attitude of yours or those being you, by telling us ‘government…” and the text is cut off. Another insert folds out into a poster-sized print of twenty-seven portraits aligned in a grid interspersed with squares of text that read, “The good and the bad”...“I told him I was afraid something bad would happen”...“Then the soldier shot him in the back of the head”...These seemingly found texts reflect the remnants of unheard voices. Before the War is a fragmented story in which what is seen or read is never fully complete, formally reiterating Cartagena’s frenetic photographic search for an origin of an evil that haunts the region yet never appears as a singular event. Cartagena and editor Fernando Gallegos have thoughtfully sequenced an archive of individual histories, which fade in and out of a landscape that itself becomes a central character; and, in which it is difficult to tell what may represent good, and what evil. The book exemplifies the innovative spirit of current photobook production, as well as the ability of the photograph to capture what at times cannot be seen.
Ashlyn is HCP’s Director of Development. Prior to moving to Houston, she worked with various arts and publishing organizations in New York City and Portland, Oregon. Ashlyn is also a writer, and she has co-edited a book of historic photographs of the American West, Islands of the Blest, which was published in 2014 by the Silas Finch Foundation. She holds a BA in Art History from Pratt Institute and an MA in American Studies with a focus on the history of photography from the University of Texas at Austin.
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spot light This year juror Maggie Blanchard, Director of Twin Palms Publishing, selected Eric Kayne for the 2016 Carol Crow Memorial Fellowship and Samantha Geballe for the 2016 HCP Fellowship. Eric and Samantha’s work will be on view in HCP’s galleries May 13 - July 10, 2016.
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Eric Kayne In the path of the Keystone XL pipeline are the hard working, all-American, downto-earth, real people of Nebraska. Eric Kayne photographs these people and their farms and communities with an eye for composition and aesthetics. His images weave color and form into a narrative that entices the viewer and furthers the story of Nebraskans’ singular resistance to the pipeline. Kayne’s beautiful images of dormant acreage make clear why devoted farmers would be alarmed that the pipeline could jeopardize America’s food security. His striking pictures of the twisting, turning rivers that thread their way through pastures elucidates ranchers’ feelings that they are stewards of hallowed land. Portraits of normal-looking, middle-income people show that it must not be easy to resist the added income the pipeline would bring, but the vibrant red, white and blue that punctuates these photographs suggests that these landowners are making a moral choice. Eric Kayne could have rested on his skill as an editorial and commercial photographer to document the story of the Keystone XL pipeline. Instead, he used his education as a visual artist to evoke emotion, and through emotion, concern for the people of Nebraska, who feel it is their responsibility to protect the water supply from the benefits of short-term gains and defend the land for long-term use. —Maggie Blanchard
opposite: Eric Kayne (Houston, TX) In The Pipeline’s Path 2016 Carol Crow Memorial Fellowship
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spot light
Samantha Geballe The impact of Samantha Geballe’s photographs lies not in the taboo subject or voyeuristic nature of her images but in their construction—the shadows that slash the frame in half, the flairs of light that stab at the figure, the contrast of veiled black backgrounds punctuated by vulnerable flesh, the twin arrangement of person and reflection suggesting image and inner-self. Her images are beautifully crafted, expertly composed and pregnant with symbolism. Geballe uses image-making as a tool for self-reflection, and through the process of creating photographs, exposes the functions of her obesity. “I hide behind my size, mask vulnerabilities, and create walls as a way to protect myself,” she writes. Aware of the impulse to shield herself, Geballe also uses self-portraiture as a sort of commitment device, sharing with the viewer her fear and determination to change. It is a human condition to sometimes be in conflict with one’s own best interests. It can be scary to examine the motivation underlying behaviors and disheartening that awareness does not make transformation easy. What helps is knowing we are not alone. Geballe lays herself bare not so we can look at her body but so we can see her interior and connect with her experience. In doing so, she takes a deeply personal story and makes it not so much about size but about the weight of self-destructive behaviors and the universal experience of concealing and confronting damaging and sometimes shameful aspects of ourselves. —Maggie Blanchard
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below: Samantha Geballe (San Francisco, CA), Back, 2015 Inkjet print, Courtesy of the artist
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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 48
DD: As you may know, Houston is the most ethnically diverse and fastest growing city in the United States, according to the last census. And according to projections, Houston is scheduled to become a majority Latino city in the next few years. As you can imagine, it’s a dynamic and cosmopolitan environment in which to work. I often think that the Houston of today is what much of the United States will soon look like. So it’s exciting to have a platform here from which to engage, respond, and reflect on these vibrant times. Recently, students from the photography magnet program at Jack Yates High School had the opportunity to deeply engage with the artist LaToya Ruby Frazier as she and I prepared her exhibition LaToya Ruby Frazier: WITNESS. Yates is located in a historically African American neighborhood here in Houston called the Third Ward, and it’s experiencing rapid gentrification that’s displacing longtime residents. Frazier’s work directly addresses her own experiences of redlining and environmental racism, and she and the young photographers at Yates worked together with CAMH’s education department to prepare an exhibition that considered the changes and growing pains their neighborhood is going through. Their interactions with Frazier informed an exhibition of documentary photography by these youth that was on view concurrent with Frazier’s show. It’s exciting to work with an institution where important issues like this are publicly embraced. I’m also currently working on a 25-year survey of the work of Paul Ramírez Jonas, who creates works that are often interactive and participatory. Ramírez Jonas often adapts traditional forms of public monuments—like bronze plaques, keys to the city, and monumental statuary–in novel and creative ways that demonstrate how these forms can act to catalyze publics around them. This exhibition will be the first survey of his work in The Americas, and I’m excited to have the opportunity to present it to our audiences here in Houston.
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Through the Learning Center, HCP offers over 300 workshops to the general public each year. HCP’s Educational Calendar is published three times annually and presents workshops for both film and digital photographers of all levels. Photographers can choose topics they are interested in or follow a curriculum guide to learn the basics of photography. Workshops and courses are held on-site at HCP in the critique room and digital darkroom as well as off-site in the field, at artist studios, or at the facility of one of our partner organizations. HCP members receive a discount to all classes and workshops. Members also enjoy the benefit of early registration each quarter. Registration is simple and easy through our website: www.hcponline.org
ACADEMIC CALENDAR Fall September, October, November and December Calendar is announced in August Spring January, February, March, April Calendar is announced in November Summer May, June, July and August Calendar is announced in April All Levels Critique Group Buying a Digital Camera Introductory Composition I: From Good to Great Flash Photography Introduction to Photoshop Elements Phoneography Lightroom I: Beginning Your Workflow Macro Photography Out of the Box: Using your Digital Camera Photography I: Learning the Basics Printing Your Photographs I: The Basics The Seeing, Not the Taking
Intermediate After Dark: Photographing at Night Alternative Printing: Transfer Architecture Photography: Shooting Space Bird and Wildlife Photography Composition II: Finding Your Vision Creating a Studio Finding Funding for Artists History of Photography 19th Century History of Photography 20th and 21st Centuries Landscape Photography Lenses and Focal Lengths Lighting in Photography Lightmeters and the Lies They Tell You Lightroom II: Sharing Your Photographs Natural Light Portraiture Photographing Families Photography II: Beyond the Basics Photoshop I: Getting Started Photoshop II: Working with Layers Playing with Toy Cameras Presenting Your Work: Building Your Portfolio Presenting Your Work: Framing and Matting Printing Your Photographs II: Getting the Color Right Studio Lighting Travel Photography: The World Through Your Lens Wilflower Workshop Words and Images
Advanced Alternative Printing: Callotypes Alternative Printing: Cyanotypes Alternative Printing: Wet Plate Collodion Presenting Your Work: Getting Your Work Out There High Dynamic Range Photography Presenting Your Work: Creating a Body of Work Photography III: Experimenting with Your Camera Photojournalism Photoshop III: Retouching Your Photographs Printing Your Photographs III: Print like a Pro Self Portraiture Self Publishing I: Design and Layout Self Publishing II: Printing and Publishing Self Publishing III: Using Adobe InDesign The Figure in Photography Using Photoshop for Video
For questions visit our website www.hcponline.org, email us at education@hcponline.org, or give us a call at 713.529.4755
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ZINA SARO-WIWA Did You Know We Taught Them How to Dance?
10am-5pm Tues-Sat 120 Fine Arts Building Free admission + parking
Through March 16
This exhibition is supported in part by a grant from the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance.
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Vintage Photographs
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