Photography

Allan Trachtenberg is one of the most esteemed figures in contemporary photographic history and cultural studies. He received an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Emeritus Fellowship for his continuing work on Wright Morris. Other honors include fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation. Trachtenberg is the Neil Gray, Jr. Professor Emeritus of English and American studies at Yale University, where he taught for thirty-five years. 

Shot in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, this essay uses transportation, video, and photography to examine images circulating in a historically charged, and presently war-torn and divided, Middle East. From images of camels in the desert to images of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the video looks at states of mind in relation to actual geographies. The video pays tribute to an unformatted and open-ended documentary approach, and examines modes of access to information such as travel, television and the Internet, while carefully displaying the resulting iconography.

In 1998, Zaatari interviewed Egyptian photographer Van Leo in Cairo. In 2001 he made the video Her + Him Van Leo and based it on the story of a woman who once entered Studio Van Leo and asked the artist to take pictures of her naked. At the time, Zaatari had access to a few of the woman's twelve pictures. In 2010 Zaatari came across the entire series showing "Nadia" undressing in twelve poses and expanded the original work into this HD remastered version.

Nathan Lyons (b.1930) has contributed to the field of photography as a critic, author, curator, educator, and photographer. He has published several books and catalogs, including Photographers on Photography (1966), Photography in the 20th Century (1967), Towards a Social Landscape (1967), Persistence of Vision (1968), and Notations in Passing (1974).  His body of work consists primarily of photographs which focus on American culture.

John Tagg is a writer, educator, and a leading contributor to the development of art-historical and photographic theory, focusing on political analysis of institutionalized culture and interventions within it. He is a professor of art history at State University of New York-Binghamton and author of Grounds of Dispute: Art History, Cultural Politics and the Discursive Field (1992) and The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories (1988). Interview by James Hugunin.

A historical interview originally recorded in 1988.

Rudy Burckhardt (1914-1999) was best known as a photographer and filmmaker.  He moved to New York from his native Basel in 1935 at age 21. He shot portraits of many artists for Art News during the 1950s and early ’60s, capturing their work methods in candid and intimate photos. His films, frequently portraying cityscapes and urban life, include The Pursuit of Happiness (1940), Under the Brooklyn Bridge (1953), What Mozart Saw on Mulberry Street (1956), Square Times (1967), and Inside Dope (1971). 

From an isolated wooded cabin a trans man star gazes, scruff chats with guys, watches YouTube tutorials, takes drugs, and lies about taking drugs - feeling his way through a cosmology of embodiment. Relative to the immensity of longing, the bodily insides become both portal and lens through which to probe the porousness between interior and exterior, the micro and macro. Nudes and landscapes are equally erotic, as Eros is an issue of boundaries: When i desire you, a part of me is gone.

In okay bye-bye, so named for what Cambodian children shouted to the U.S. ambassador in 1975 as he took the last helicopter out of Phnom Phenh in advance of the Khmer Rouge, Rebecca Baron explores the relationship of history to memory.

Memory Palace is a short video grounded in the personal history of the artist. A discovery of a photo album activates memories of physical spaces, which in turn open doors to reminiscences of past family life. Inspired by the classical method of loci, the film presents a woman — singer/songwriter Alice Smith — at work in Los Angeles.

Alfredo Jaar is a politically motivated artist whose work includes installation, photography and film.  Born in Chile and now living in the U.S., Jaar’s socio-critical installations explore global political issues, frequently focusing on the Third World and the relationship between consumption and power.  A 1988 installation in a subway station in New York involved dramatic photographs of impoverished gold miners n Brazil interspersed with quotations of current gold prices, drawing an unexpected parallel between the material desires that motivate people in both poverty-stricken Br

A day in the life of a professional photographer (Wegman) and his eager student (Smith), this tape offers a humorous, at times surreal, how-to instructional course in photography. Filled with practical advice, the tape sardonically centers itself more on the need to cultivate an effective artistic persona than actually taking any photographs. Wegman asks: "Before you carve out your own niche, it’s important to ask yourself one tough question: do you have the aptitude?"

A portrait of a studio photographer, Her + Him VAN LEO also examines the photography of the 1940s and 50s from a critical perspective rather than a nostalgic one. This documentary utilizes traditional portrait photography and video in a dialogue between two media: crafted black and white print, and the electronically colored and manipulated screen. This dialog comments on the transformations in art practices and terminologies, and evokes some of the social/urban/political transformations that took place in Egypt over 50 years of its recent history.

Nocturne is a 5-minute film shot entirely at night in deserted streets of London. The film attempts to find images of the city that reveal the presence of the past, or the presence of the dead, hinting at a concealed history. The deserted streets around the east end of London and Docklands reflect an echoic city filled with shadows. Nocturne is composed of long static viewpoints, each shot slowly unfolding in time as though by looking long enough the city's secrets will be revealed.

Cindy Sherman received an MFA from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1976, where she studied photography. During this time she was also involved with HallWalls, an alternative gallery space in Buffalo. She is best known for her black and white Untitled Film Stills, which she made in the late 70s and early 80s. In carefully designed settings, Sherman placed herself, using costumes, wigs, and makeup, in various scenarios suggetive of B-movies from the 1950s.