Past Events
Susan Meiselas: MINED IN CHINA and Other Collaborative Projects
Niu QuoZheng: Smoke No.038 (2006)
A lot of yellow smoke, SO2, gushes out of furnaces with outdated coking technique. Located in Henan.
When: Sunday, March 9 8:00pm - 9:30pm
As part of FOTOFEST2008-CHINA, Susan Meiselas will give a special presentation on her own work, from Carnival Strippers to Nicaragua, major curatorial projects she has done on Kurdistan, and, most recently, Mined in China. The presentation will be at DiverseWorks Artspace. Visual Studies is co-sponsoring this event with FotoFest, Diverseworks, and Houston Center for Photography.
Susan Meiselas is one of the world´s most respected photographers dealing with issues of war, political conflict and social issues. She is a member of Magnum Photo and a recipient of the MacArthur Genius Award. Meiselas´ China project is in concert with China expert Orville Schell, from the Asia Society NY, and Chinese photographer GAO Lei. Mined in China will be exhibited for FOTOFEST2008 at the Houston Center for Photography.
This lecture will be hosted at DiverseWorks, 1117 E. Freeway, Houston, TX 77002 -1108.
Event is free, but reservations are needed. Space is extremely limited.
Links:
A Conversation about Feminine Beauty and the work of Miwa Yanagi
When: Monday, February 18 at 6.30pm
(A reception follows the program.)
Where: Brown Auditorium, Museum of Fine Arts-Houston
Moderator: Anne Wilkes Tucker, The Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photography at the MFAH
Panelists: Elizabeth Gregory, Professor of English and Director of Women’s Studies, University of Houston
Tracy Xavia Karner, Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of Visual Studies, University of Houston (Listen to this presentation)
James Hollis, Director, The Jung Center, Houston
Peggy Orenstein, internationally recognized writer, editor, and speaker
During her career, Japanese photographer Miwa Yanagi has created three distinct series that confront and disrupt the traditional roles of women, both within the social context of her home country and as these perceptions are translated across cultures. In this conversation, panelists will address the range of subjects represented in Yanagi’s work, including gender, identity, body image, age, feminism, and beauty, and how these concerns resound in present-day consumer, media, professional, and social cultures.
This program is generously cosponsored by the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Photo Forum at the MFAH, the Jung Center Houston, and the Women’s Studies and the Visual Studies programs at the University of Houston, and is made possible in part by a grant from Humanities Texas, the state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Links:
- Miwa Yanagi Deutsche Bank Collection, on view at the MFAH from February 10 through May 4, 2008
- The Jung Center of Houston
- Women's Studies at University of Houston
- Visual Studies at University of Houston
- Event Flyer
Image credits: Top: Miwa Yanagi, Elevator
Girl House B4 from the
series Elevator Girls, 1998,
chromogenic photograph
mounted on Plexiglas, Deutsche
Bank Collection. © Miwa Yanagi
Lower: Miwa Yanagi, Snow White
from the series Fairy Tale,
2004, gelatin silver photograph,
Deutsche Bank Collection.© Miwa Yanagi
Listen to Tracy Xavia Karner's presentation 
John Chervinsky: An Experiment in Perspective
When: November 15, 2007, 7pm
(Light refreshments at 6:30pm)
Where: 232 Hoffman Hall (PGH), UH Main Campus
John Chervinsky’s background in physics, chemistry, and materials science is evident in his ongoing series of conceptual still-lifes. Inspired by predecessors such as John Pfahl, he set out to explore issues of visual perception and photography in his ongoing series, “An Experiment in Perspective.”
Links:
Materiality to Hyperreality: Appropriated Media in Contemporary Art
Peter Kennard and Cat Picton Phillipps
When: April 24th, 2007, 7pm
Where: Rockwell Pavilion, M.D. Anderson Library, UH Main Campus
Four artists and one curator join together for a free public panel discussion on the seductiveness of contemporary media images and their influence on contemporary values. This debate inaugurates HCP’s exhibition Antennae (27 April - 3 June) which offers an ambitious view of the diversity of ideas and methodologies applied to contemporary photography and related media, dealing with issues ranging from the human pain and violence of the Iraq war to the culture of youth and beauty.
Panelists:
Jim Harithas, Station Museum of Contemporary Art
Peter Kennard and Cat Picton Phillipps
Sally Mann to Keynote Visual Studies' Inaugural Conference
When: March 23, 2007, 7pm
Where: Architecture Auditorium, Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture
One of the most critically and commercially successful photographers of our time, Sally Mann has been anointed by Time Magazine as America's best photographer. Her photographs, imbued with a haunting poignancy, capture the intricacies of childhood, family intimacy, mortality, memory, loss, and landscape.
Working largely in black-and-white with nineteenth-century view cameras, with crude glass lenses and black, accordion-like hoods (the very kind used by Mathew Brady and his team during the Civil War), she produces, in the words of The Washington Post, "poetic, haunting images of extraordinary clarity and breadth that suggest both immediacy and a time long past."
Cathy Stein Greenblat named 2007 McGovern Lecturer
Holding On, Letting Go, Remembering:
Reflections on Photography, Illness and Dying
When: March 6, 2007, 6:30pm Reception, 7pm Lecture
Where: Brown Auditorium, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
A Professor Emerita of Rutgers University, Cathy Stein Greenblat is both a visual sociologist and a documentary photographer who has explored, with extraordinary insight and compassion, the world of dementia, as experienced by family members, caregivers, and those who undergo the painful emotional and physical trials of Alzheimer's disease.
Her book, Alive with Alzheimer's (University of Chicago Press), combines photography and narrative to demonstrate, in the words of the medical journal Lancet, that this disease "does not inevitably mean a living death and the annihilation of self. The skilled and loving attention of carers who are not put off by odd behaviour, lack of recognition, or an "unpleasing" appearance can help the patient live as fully as possible and reconstitute a self, albeit a simpler, more visceral one."
The John P. McGovern Annual Award Lecture is an annual lecture series in family, health, and human values. The series is endowed by John P. McGovern, M.D., an authority on the body's responses to disease and one of the nation's most generous philanthropists, and himself the author or co-author of 252 publications, including 26 books.
Dave Anderson Public Lecture
Dave Anderson Photography
When: February 19, 2007, 6:30pm
Where: Kiva Room, Farish Hall, UH main campus
Dave Anderson will talk about his work Rough Beauty, a photographic study of Vidor, Texas. Described as "one of the shooting stars of the American photo scene" by Germany's fotoMAGAZIN, Anderson's work can be found in major public and private collections including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the Worcester Art Museum and the George Eastman House. Anderson also photographed for Esquire, Stern and ESPN magazines.
Dave Anderson's lecture is co-sponsored with Watermark Gallery and TLC2.
Maps and Parking Information
John Paul Caponigro Public Lecture
Enlarge poster in new window »
When: January 17, 2007
Where: Rockwell Pavilion, M.D. Anderson Library, University of Houston
John Paul Caponigro is an internationally renowned artist, respected as an authority on creativity and fine digital printing. John Paul will share his experiences with, and thoughts on, photography during a time when the medium is undergoing extraordinary changes. He will share highlights from his series on water, one of the planet's most precious resources. His social concerns include not only environmental issues, but the uses, abuses, and influences of visual media. A Canon Explorer of Light and an Epson Stylus Pro, his clients include Adobe, Apple, and Kodak. Author of Adobe Photoshop Master Class, he is a contributing editor for Camera Arts and a columnist for Digital Photo Pro magazines and apple.com.
John Paul Caponigro’s talk is sponsored by Canon.
For location information see, http://www.uh.edu/campus_map/buildings/L.html or for parking information see, http://www.uh.edu/cgi-bin/campusmap?LOT1B
