Dawoud Bey, Fifth Avenue and East 125th Street, 2015, from Harlem Redux. Courtesy, Sean Kelly Gallery
Fault Lines: Photography, Memory, and Fragility
A DAY LONG EVENT: Saturday, October 22, 2022
The recuperation of marginalized and fractured histories through photography prompts us to re-interrogate the image and understand its narrative power. This conversation invites artists, curators, and scholars whose recent projects have demonstrated how photography can contribute to the excavation of forgotten histories and shed light on current issues of global migration and displacement. Our discussion pursues many venues, ranging from the scholarly reappraisal of an important history of Black photography through the Kamoinge Workshop, to contemporary curatorial practices that are investigating artists’ involvement with environmental fragility, to the spatial exploration of histories of migration and mourning in the African diaspora, to artworks that provoke us to make connections between memory and sociopolitical histories. The conversation is prompted by a recent Hunter College publication on Harlem’s 125th Street, which has studied photography as a form of belonging to place. We are aiming to foster a debate over the powerful significance of photography to memorialize histories that are brittle and sustain ongoing narratives that explain our relationship to place.
Organized by Antonella Pelizzari, Professor, Department of Art and Art History, Hunter College, with support from Noa Wesley, Lazarus Graduate Curatorial Fellow.
Schedule of Events
1:00-1:15 – Introduction
1:15-1:45 - Makeda Best, Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography, Harvard Art Museums
2:00-2:20 - Sarah Eckhardt, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Virginia Fine Arts Museum
2:20-3:00 - A conversation with Kamoinge photographers Beuford Smith and Shawn Walker, facilitated by Sarah Eckhardt
3:10-3:40 - Mabel O. Wilson, Nancy and George E. Rupp Professor of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Columbia University
3:50-4:20 - Leslie Hewitt, Associate Professor of Art, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
4:30-5pm - Panel Discussion
5-7pm - Reception at the Roosevelt House