MEDIA CONTACT: Judy Moore at (847) 491-4819 or jkm229@northwestern.edu

March 2, 2004

Block Museum to Host Urban Photography Symposium

EVANSTON, Ill. --- The form and function of American urban photography -- from 19th century daguerreotypes to cutting-edge images found on today’s Internet -- will be explored during the “American Urban Photography Symposium” that will be held from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday, May 1, at Northwestern University’s Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, 40 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston campus.

The daylong symposium will include five half-hour talks by guest speakers that will be followed by question-and-answer sessions, a round-table discussion and an afternoon reception for the speakers and symposium attendees.

Guest speakers will include Colin Westerbeck, independent curator of photography; Pamela Bannos, photographer and senior lecturer of art theory and practice at Northwestern University; Peter Bacon Hales, professor of art history at the University of Illinois at Chicago; James Sanders, author, architect and director of the Center for Urban Experience in New York; and Maren Stange, professor of American studies at The Cooper Union in New York.

Drawing upon the work of the foremost scholars in the field, the May 1 symposium will focus on the broad issues regarding urban photography in America, such as the role of the photographer in mediating between the viewer and the urban environment, the relationship between urban photography and urban space, and the tenuous role of the photograph as a historical document.

The symposium will be held in conjunction with several exhibitions of American art on view at the Block Museum, including “American Expressionism: Art and SocialChange, 1920s-1950s,” a video installation by Charles Woodman, and Depression-era prints that focus on working conditions in urban industry. These exhibitions present art from the margins of society and art produced by artists who reflect upon or are themselves on the fringes of society.

This theme intersects the symposium as well. In American urban photography, artists often strive to be undetected by their subject and untraceable by the viewer. By omitting their own presence, they place themselves in the margin of their photographs.

The symposium is supported by the Myers Foundations, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, and Northwestern University’s departments of art history and art theory and practice.

Admission is free and open to the public. For more information, call the Block Museum at (847) 491-4000 or go to the museum’s Web site at www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu.