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of the photograph as a historical document.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. |