This page includes conversations, lectures, and symposia recorded by our community.
Conversations
Nadya Bair and Jason Hill on Robert Capa (Contributed by Jason Hill)
Andrés Zervigón and Jason Hill on John Heartfield (Contributed by Jason Hill)
Christopher Bonanos and Jason Hill talk Weegee (Contributed by Jason Hill)
Yale Photo (Contributed by Monica Bravo)
The Yale MFA program has started a pop-up lecture series. Recent guests include Catherine Opie, Jim Jarmusch, and Errol Morris. Many of the guests are interviewed by Yale’s Gregory Crewdson.
Monica Bravo and Jason Hill on Manuel Alvarez Bravo and Helen Levitt (Contributed by Jason Hill)
Please note: there is a photograph of a dead body, Manuel Alvarez Bravo’s Striking Worker, Assassinated, of 1934, from 24’40” to 28’20”.
Kim Beil, “Talking in the Library: Conversations on Photobooks” (Contributed by Kim Beil)
These are short conversations about photobooks. Kim Beil and a guest discuss the background, sequencing, and particular spreads within photographic books in this series of videos. Materials are 10 minutes or less. Guests have included Monica Bravo, Lucas Foglia, Tabatha Soren, and Adam Katseff.
Lectures & Talks
Handmade Photography Today
Handmade Photography Today is a virtual artist talk series that explores contemporary iterations of nineteenth-century photographic processes. The series is generously sponsored by the Bern Schwartz Family Foundation and co-hosted by the Photographic Resource Center. (Contributed by Carrie Cushma)
Symposia
Photo: Beth LaBerge
The Artist Initiative Symposium on Photography: Reprinting Color Photographs as a Preservation Strategy
The practice of reprinting damaged photographic artworks as a preservation strategy has increasingly become a topic of research in conservation, as well as a matter of debate amongst conservators, curators, and artists. SFMOMA’s Artist Initiative, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, aims to redefine the museum’s approach to reprinting, and more broadly to the acquisition, stewardship, and display of contemporary photography. In the first phase of the project, a cross-disciplinary team of curators, conservators, and art historians interviewed photographers who are interested in reprinting their work in SFMOMA’s collection. A second phase of the project saw the team travel to meet with colleagues in American and European art institutions to share our findings and learn about their experiences. At this public symposium we will share our research findings and invite artists, curators, conservators, and others from the field of photography to contribute and engage in an open discussion on this important subject.
Contributed by Monica Bravo
What is modern photography?
"What Is Modern Photography?" is the question posed at this symposium hosted by the Museum of Modern Art's Edward Steichen. An all-star panel of photographers, including Margaret Bourke-White, Walker Evans, Irving Penn, and Ben Shahn, give (or refuse to give) their individual, often contradictory, definitions of the controversial medium. The gathering provides a great snapshot of the state of the art in 1950.
Steichen, curator of MoMA's photography department, introduces the speakers (in alphabetical order), giving a brief history of their career and an appraisal of their work. The spectrum is impressively wide, ranging from advocates for the purely abstract and "poetic" to those photographers who work exclusively in fashion and journalism.
Contributed by Monica Bravo
Signs and Wonders: The Photographs of John Beasley Greene
This public symposium examines the context and legacy of John Beasley Greene’s 19th-century photographs of Egypt and Algeria. Employing the exhibition Signs and Wonders: The Photographs of John Beasley Greene as a jumping-off point, this symposium brings together scholars and artists from a range of disciplines to examine photography, archaeology, orientalism, and postcolonialism, and how the 19th century still resonates today.
Contributed by Liz Siegel