The SPE Regional Conference programming kicks of today with some great events and speakers. Here’s the full schedule for your convenience!
Friday, November 4
9:00 – 6:00pm
Registration and Badge Pick-up
9:30 – 11:30am
Artist Book Workshop (pre-registration required) Bird Library
10:00 – 11:30am
Tours through Light Work and self-guided gallery tours to campus exhibitions (maps available)
Lunch
12:00 – 4:00pm
Portfolio Reviews in Schine Student Center, Room 304ABC
12:30 – 1:00pm
Opening Remarks
1:00 – 1:45pm
Colette Copeland
Publish or Perish—the artist as critic
2:00 – 2:45pm
Anne Whiston Spirn
The Power of a Book to Change Its Author: Dorothea Lange and An American Exodus
Coffee Break
3:15 – 4:00pm
Paula McCartney
Expanding My Audience (faster, cheaper, more!)
4:15 – 5:00pm
Featured Speaker Mary Virginia Swanson
To Be Published or Self-Publish? An Overview of Options for Artists
Dinner
Evening Events at Everson Museum of Art
6:00 – 6:45pm
Buses to Everson Museum of Art, leave from Sheraton Hotel
Opportunity to see exhibition From Here to There: Alec Soth’s America
7:00 – 7:30pm
Honored Educator Award to Doug DuBois
7:30 – 8:30pm
Keynote Speaker Alec Soth
From Here to There
8:30 – 9:00pm
Reception for exhibition, From Here to There: Alec Soth’s America
9:00 – 10:00pm
Buses back to Sheraton Hotel
Saturday, November 5
10:00 – 10:45am
Tate Shaw
Artist publications at Visual Studies Workshop
11:00 – 11:45am
Ken Schles
The Photographic Books of Ken Schles
Coffee Break
12:15 – 1:30pm
Suzanne Opton: Soldier
Lunch (Schine Student Center)
2:15 – 3:00pm
Members Meeting in Schine Student Center
3:30 – 4:15pm
W.M. Hunt
W.M. Hunt and “The Unseen Eye”
4:30– 5:45pm
Photo 2.0 — Online Photographic Thinking
(Panel discussion with Andy Adams (moderator), Molly Landreth, Amy Stein and Philip Toledano)
Dinner
7:30 – 8:30pm
Featured Speaker John Gossage
8:30 – 9:00pm
Buses to Spark Gallery from Light Work (continue to circle until 11:00p)
8:30 – 11:00pm
Closing Party at Spark Gallery
11:00pm
Last bus leaves to hotel
––
In addition to the blog, tune into Light Work’s Facebook and Twitter pages for updates throughout the conference.
Suzanne Opton on NPR: Seeing Veterans Up Close
/in NewsAn excellent feature by 2005 Artist-in-Residence Suzanne Opton was published on NPR today. Opton recently delivered a powerful talk about her work as part of the programming of the SPE Conference hosted by Light Work.
Take advantage of our 2012 Book Collector’s Offer and get signed copies of Suzanne Opton’s new book Soldier / Many Wars, Leon Borensztein’s American Portraits, as well as a subscription to Contact Sheet.
Photos of the SPE Regional Conference
/in NewsWe’re happy to report that the SPE Regional Conference was a great success on many levels. The cell phone snap above says it all: a crowded atrium at the Everson Museum of Art, as it began to fill up following Alec Soth‘s SOLD OUT keynote.
We’ve begun to assemble a collection of photographs from the conference for you to view in an album on the Light Work Facebook page. Please leave a comment on this post linking to any images you might have to share, or want to add to this album. We’re happy to do so!
We’ll be following up soon with the much anticipated video of both the “Photo 2.0” panel discussion with Andy Adams, Phillip Toledano, Amy Stein and Molly Landreth as well as the John Gossage talk that wrapped up the conference programming. Stay tuned!
The Daily Orange on Scott McCarney's "VisualBooks" Exhibition at Light Work
/in NewsThere’s a nice write-up about Scott McCarney’s “VisualBooks” exhibition in The Daily Orange.
The exhibition will remain on view in the Light Work gallery through December 16th.
Nov. 5 Live Stream of Photo 2.0 and John Gossage
/in NewsWe will be live streaming two fantastic talks from the SPE Regional Conference, both of which will be available to watch here on Saturday, November 5th.
4:30 – 5:45pm EST
Photo 2.0 — Online Photographic Thinking
Panel discussion with Andy Adams (moderator)
Molly Landreth, Amy Stein and Philip Toledano
7:30 – 8:30pm EST
Featured Speaker John Gossage
––
In addition to the blog, tune into Light Work’s Facebook and Twitter pages for updates throughout the conference.
SPE Regional Conference 2011
/in NewsThe SPE Regional Conference programming kicks of today with some great events and speakers. Here’s the full schedule for your convenience!
Friday, November 4
9:00 – 6:00pm
Registration and Badge Pick-up
9:30 – 11:30am
Artist Book Workshop (pre-registration required) Bird Library
10:00 – 11:30am
Tours through Light Work and self-guided gallery tours to campus exhibitions (maps available)
Lunch
12:00 – 4:00pm
Portfolio Reviews in Schine Student Center, Room 304ABC
12:30 – 1:00pm
Opening Remarks
1:00 – 1:45pm
Colette Copeland
Publish or Perish—the artist as critic
2:00 – 2:45pm
Anne Whiston Spirn
The Power of a Book to Change Its Author: Dorothea Lange and An American Exodus
Coffee Break
3:15 – 4:00pm
Paula McCartney
Expanding My Audience (faster, cheaper, more!)
4:15 – 5:00pm
Featured Speaker Mary Virginia Swanson
To Be Published or Self-Publish? An Overview of Options for Artists
Dinner
Evening Events at Everson Museum of Art
6:00 – 6:45pm
Buses to Everson Museum of Art, leave from Sheraton Hotel
Opportunity to see exhibition From Here to There: Alec Soth’s America
7:00 – 7:30pm
Honored Educator Award to Doug DuBois
7:30 – 8:30pm
Keynote Speaker Alec Soth
From Here to There
8:30 – 9:00pm
Reception for exhibition, From Here to There: Alec Soth’s America
9:00 – 10:00pm
Buses back to Sheraton Hotel
Saturday, November 5
10:00 – 10:45am
Tate Shaw
Artist publications at Visual Studies Workshop
11:00 – 11:45am
Ken Schles
The Photographic Books of Ken Schles
Coffee Break
12:15 – 1:30pm
Suzanne Opton: Soldier
Lunch (Schine Student Center)
2:15 – 3:00pm
Members Meeting in Schine Student Center
3:30 – 4:15pm
W.M. Hunt
W.M. Hunt and “The Unseen Eye”
4:30– 5:45pm
Photo 2.0 — Online Photographic Thinking
(Panel discussion with Andy Adams (moderator), Molly Landreth, Amy Stein and Philip Toledano)
Dinner
7:30 – 8:30pm
Featured Speaker John Gossage
8:30 – 9:00pm
Buses to Spark Gallery from Light Work (continue to circle until 11:00p)
8:30 – 11:00pm
Closing Party at Spark Gallery
11:00pm
Last bus leaves to hotel
––
In addition to the blog, tune into Light Work’s Facebook and Twitter pages for updates throughout the conference.
Thilde Jensen: Canaries
/in NewsAs I walk into Light Work today it is almost exactly a year since, for the first time, I was able to enter this or any building not wearing my respirator. For seven years before that, my life was restricted by my body and brain’s sudden inability to process the vast amounts of chemicals floating in the air surrounding us. A year into my struggle with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities I started documenting my own life and the lives of others with similar stories. My first contact with Light Work was in 2006 when I received the Light Work Grant based on some of these pictures. At the time I was living in a tent in the woods just starting to build a safe house. During the following years the house project took priority and it wasn’t until spring of 2010 that I again came into contact with Light Work. During a meeting with Jeffrey Hoone it was decided to work towards a future exhibition of the Canaries series. With the help of the intern program, and under the guidance of digital lab manager John Mannion, we started digitizing most of my negatives. For me this was a terrifying moment—I had lived in total avoidance of computers for six years due to the often severe pain following exposure to their emissions, and here I was working in a digital lab like a dinosaur misplaced in the future. Needless to say it was a slow and difficult process culminating not only with the creation of a powerful exhibition, but also with my return to life as a “normal,” unmasked being. Without the support of Light Work the Canaries series would never have made it as far as the New York Times, reaching millions of people with a story both personal and timely. Thank you Light Work.
Thilde Jensen
www.thildejensen.com
Scott McCarney: Visual Books
/in ExhibitionsLight Work is pleased to announce the exhibition VisualBooks, featuring work by Scott McCarney. This unique and beautiful exhibition explores the book as a sculptural object that employs a variety of image-making processes. McCarney’s carefully hand-bound editions and found-altered books incorporate photographic imagery and utilize the space of the gallery to explore reading as display (on pedestals and shelves, hanging from the ceiling, mounted on the wall).
McCarney creates his sculptural objects and photo-based editions as one-of-a-kind, hand-made pieces as well as small runs of print-on-demand books. According to Hannah Frieser, director of Light Work,”Scott McCarney rethinks the book form, considering books as a starting point rather than a mere vehicle for information and images.”
The gallery reception on Nov. 3 (5-8 pm) celebrates the exhibition, and also serves as the kickoff event to the Society of Photographic Education (SPE) Northeast/Mid-Atlantic regional conference titledPhotographers + Publishing, which will be hosted by Light Work and Syracuse University. Light Work is publishing a special conference edition of the award-winning publication Contact Sheet in a run of 250, which will include original art by McCarney.
About the Artist
McCarney’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Center for Book Arts and Printed Matter Inc. in New York City; Tower Fine Arts Gallery in Brockport, NY; Minnesota Center for Book Arts in Minneapolis; University of the West of England, Bristol, UK; and other locations throughout the United States, the UK, Australia and more. He received his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA, and his MFA from SUNY Buffalo and Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester. He has received numerous awards, including the New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (printmaking/drawing book arts) and multiple Special Opportunity Stipends from NYFA/Rochester Arts & Cultural Council). McCarney’s work is featured in many permanent collections, including those of the Getty Center in Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; the Museum of Modern Art Library, New York; and the Photographic Resource Center in Boston, among many others.
Also on view at this time is 2011 Light Work Grants, an exhibition of work by the winners of the 2011 Light Work Grants in Photography Competition: Neil Chowdhury, Danielle Mericle and Ahndraya Parlato. In addition, bobCollignon:Outdoorsman is on view in the Community Darkrooms Gallery.
Gallery hours for these exhibitions are Sunday to Friday, 10am-6pm. (except school holidays), and by appointment. To schedule an appointment, please call 315-443-1300. Both the exhibition and reception are free and open to the public. Paid parking is available in Booth Parking Garage.
Light Work invites groups and individuals to schedule tours and gallery talks of the exhibition and facility. Light Work is a nonprofit, artist-run organization dedicated to the support of artists working in photography and electronic media. Light Work is a member of CMAC, the Coalition of Museum and Art Centers at Syracuse University.
For more information, please contact Jessica Reed at Light Work, 315-443-1300 or jhreed01@syr.edu.
En Foco/In Focus: Selected Works from the Permanent Collection
/in ExhibitionsLight Work is pleased to announce the exhibition EN FOCO/IN FOCUS: Selected Works from the Permanent Collection, featuring photographs from the permanent collection at En Foco. Since its founding in 1974, En Foco has been dedicated to promoting cultural diversity in the field of photography. It has nurtured and supported photographers of diverse cultures, beginning with Latinos in New York, eventually broadening its mission to embrace photographers of African, Asian and Native American heritage across the United States.
The exhibition features the earliest works in the collection, dating to the 1970s and 1980s, which reflect the documentary impulse that characterized photographic work produced during and in the aftermath of the Civil Rights era. The exhibition also traces En Foco’s mission as it broadened its scope beyond Latino photographers. In doing so, the organization reflected the multicultural discourse of the 1990s, one that pressed for the inclusion of many cultural and ethnic voices in the spheres of culture, politics or the media, and looked at photography as a medium to examine identity, otherness and social and cultural contexts that shape perspectives on the self. Finally, the exhibition looks at En Foco through the youngest photographers represented in the collection, who provide a glimpse into the contemporary art scene’s global landscape. Whether dealing with local or universal themes, photographers of the current generation approach photography with great freedom, drawing from multiple photographic traditions, cultural histories and creative modes. These artists have come of age as digital technologies matured and essentially replaced the old, analog processes, and as virtual realities and communities have assumed an influential role in the way we perceive the world.En Foco has become recognized in the field of photography for its publications, annual New Works fellowship program, workshops and exhibitions. Much less known is a collection it has amassed of works by many of the photographers who have taken part in its programs. It now numbers nearly 700 prints dating from the 1970s to the present day, encompassing not only a plurality of voices but also subject matter, photographic approaches and points of view. The images presented in this exhibition offer an introduction into this significant photographic collection.
In addition to Light Work, the EN FOCO/IN FOCUS exhibition is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, the Bronx Council on the Arts, Canson Infinity, Archival Methods, and Syracuse University’s Division of Student Affairs Co-curricular Fund.
Gallery hours for the Robert B. Menschel Photography Gallery in Schine Student Center are Sunday to Saturday, 10 a.m.–10 p.m., except school holidays. You can also view the exhibition by appointment—to schedule an appointment, please call 315-443-1300.
Light Work invites groups and individuals to schedule tours and gallery talks of the exhibition and facility. Light Work is a nonprofit, artist-run organization dedicated to the support of artists working in photography and electronic media. Light Work is a member of CMAC, the Coalition of Museum and Art Centers at Syracuse University.
For more information, please contact Jessica Reed at Light Work, 315-443-1300 or jhreed01@syr.edu.
Keliy Anderson-Staley: [hyphen] AMERICANS
/in ExhibitionsLight Work is pleased to announce the exhibition [hyphen] Americans, featuring stunning tintype portraits created by photographer Keliy Anderson-Staley. The exhibition title speaks to the multicultural character of American identities (Irish-American, African-American, etc.). Although a person’s heritage might be inferred by looking at their features and clothing, viewers of Anderson-Staley’s work are encouraged to, according to the artist, “suspend the kind of thinking that would traditionally assist in decoding these images in the context of American identity politics.”
According to the artist, “There are so many technical variables in the process, and there can be flaws and defects that enter the image at every stage of the process, and in many ways this makes it a perfect vehicle for portraits—it is truer to the reality of human imperfection. My images are titled only with the first name of the individual, and I very deliberately try not to draw attention to differences like race, because I want to challenge photography’s role in defining difference. At the same time, I want every person I photograph to stand out very sharply as an individual, to be defined as much as possible by the expression on their face.”Anderson-Staley makes portraits with the nineteenth-century wet-plate collodion process. She uses wooden view cameras, nineteenth-century brass lenses and chemicals she hand-mixes according to the traditional formulas. In this series she focuses on just one plane in the face—usually just the eyes. The exposures are long, lasting anywhere from ten to sixty seconds, so the images capture a full moment of thought. Because of these characteristics of the process, there is an introspective quality to each portrait, as if each person has been caught looking at him or herself in a mirror.
The portraits in the Light Work exhibition are mostly individuals from the broader Syracuse community photographed during Anderson-Staley’s residency in 2010. This collection of tintypes, numbering over one hundred, is thus as much a portrait of a diverse community as it is a series of individual portraits.
This exhibition is part of Syracuse Symposium™. Syracuse Symposium™ is presented by the Syracuse University Humanities Center for the College of Arts and Sciences, with a 2011 theme of Identity.
About the Artist
Keliy Anderson-Staley’s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions internationally and published widely in print and online. She has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and a Puffin Grant. Anderson-Staley has given artist talks at many colleges, universities, and organizations. She received her BA from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA and her BFA from Hunter College in New York, NY.
Also on view at this time is 2011 Light Work Grants, an exhibition of work by the winners of the 2011 Light Work Grants in Photography Competition: Neil Chowdhury, Danielle Mericle, and Ahndraya Parlato.
Gallery hours for these exhibitions are Sunday to Friday, 10am–6pm, and by appointment. To schedule an appointment, please call 315-443-1300. Both the exhibition and reception are free and open to the public. Paid parking is available in Booth Parking Garage.
Light Work invites groups and individuals to schedule tours and gallery talks of the exhibition and facility. Light Work is a non-profit, artist-run organization dedicated to the support of artists working in photography and electronic media. Light Work is a member of CMAC, the Coalition of Museum and Art Centers at Syracuse University.
For more information, please contact Jessica Reed at Light Work, 315-443-1300 or jhreed01@syr.edu.
Jeffrey Henson Scales on NYT Lens blog
/in ElsewhereToday’s New York Times Lens blog features the series That Year of Living by Jeffrey Henson Scales, whose exhibition of the same title will be on view in the Light Work Main Gallery until July 10. That Year of Living is comprised of images that were made in the year following Scales’ treatment for prostate cancer—what began as an exercise in the process of healing concluded in renewing his passion for engaging life on the street. The Lens has a great slide show of the work as well as an essay by Meg Henson Scales.
That Year of Living is also the subject of Contact Sheet 161.
Best of the Rest: Laura Heyman in The New Yorker
/in ElsewhereAbove: Blondine Herard, Polycarpe Racine, Mariot Herard, Daschmine Herard, December 2009
Civil War exhibition at George Eastman House
/in NewsThe online edition of The Wall Street Journal featured the Civil War exhibition at the George Eastman House, giving high praise for Light Work artist William Earle Williams: “Only William Earle Williams hits the right notes. His precise black-and-white photographs depict landscapes where black soldiers fought. Weeds have grown over these ditches and bulwarks where no plaque or monument was ever erected. But 150 years later the war is still visible in the scarred earth.” We love Willie’s work. We exhibited the images in a solo exhibition Unsung Heroes: African American Soldiers in the Civil War that started in Light Work’s Main Gallery in 2007 and went to multiple other venues from there. The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue, Contact Sheet 140.
William Earle Williams
Earthworks, Fort Pillow, Tennessee, 1999
The exhibition at the George Eastman House, titled Still Here: Contemporary Artists and the Civil War, will be on view through June 12, 2011. In addition to Willie Williams, the exhibition includes Light Work artist Oscar Palacio, who spent his residency refining some of the photographs now on view in Rochester. His image of a canon barrel (Untitled, from the series History Re-visited) makes quite an impression when visitors first enter the exhibition.