AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHY INSTITUTE
National Graduate Seminar
May 24 - June 15, 1991

ABSTRACTS OF PRESENTATIONS

KEYNOTE ADDRESS:
Why Do Human Beings Make Art?
James Carse

The normal mode of looking at the world is to look for something. What we see is therefore largely determined by a prior interest. Art draws our attention to something we have not been looking for. Powerful art can even transform the prior interest that guide our circumspection. It can lead us into a new vision of the world with unsettling social and political consequences since most institutions can remain stable only if the old vision remains unchallenged.

LECTURE:
Matters of Taste: An Aesthetic of Photography?
Rod Slemmons

The notion of the "floating world" where the perceptions and identification of the individual become blurred with both environment and collective humanity has produced a variety of artistic responses over the past 130 years, all of which are pertinent to what we call art today. It has, in other words, contributed a large percentage to the whole of what has been acceptable during that time as salable and usable aesthetic values. This lineage has not been fully discussed in the current discourse surrounding the deconstruction of both photographic representation and photographic art.

LECTURE:
Many Voices, Many Sources
Rod Slemmons

Review of the current tremendously diverse practice in photography with an emphasis on combining text and image. The analysis will begin outside of photography with William Blake, Cubism, and Surrealism and move forward to the work of Robert Heinecken, Barbara Kruger, Clarissa Sligh, Barbara DeGenevieve, Paul Berger and others.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:
Emmet Gowin

"When Feeling is Lucid, Structure is Art." (Frederick Sommer) It seems to me that young people, especially sensitive and intelligent young artists, are in a struggle to either form a union with ideas, values, and meanings which seem to make their lives come alive, or to separate themselves from the seemingly empty forms or habits which deprive us of the deeper meanings we feel are possible. I want to talk about the nature of influence and identity and the power of art to inform our growth from within our feelings and experiences.

As my life ripened and my work matured I came to understand that a new family of artistic parents had become my guides, sources and influences, and had in most ways replaced my natural parents in supplying the clues and examples that I necessarily desired. In time, and in spite of deep feelings of difference, I also came to love all of my parents for what they had truly been— as strongly committed to their values and intelligence as I was hopeful of becoming to my own.

PANEL:

Contemporary Concerns for the History of Photography
Moderator: Rod Slemmons
Panelists: Maren Stange

Deborah Willis
Bonnie Yochelson
Diane Neumaier

Rod Slemmons - (Introduction) I will review classic and currently published "History of Photography" texts comparing advantages, noting short comings, problems and concerns.

Rod Slemmons - I will review my discovers made during recent exhibition of the works of E. S. Curtis: Shadowy Evidence.

Maren Stange - A useful approach for creating a more responsive and inclusive history of photography may be to consider it a kind of cultural history, concerned with the implicit yet inescapable webs of conventions and expectations shared and practiced by the makers, the presenters and the viewers of photography, each of whom participates in creating the meaning of an image. Such an emphasis on the discourses which make photography meaningful allows us better to understand its myriad social and cultural uses for both its makers and its viewers and to focus on viewers' varied responses to images. Such an approach offers a variety of perspectives that challenge monolithic notions of canon, culture, or aesthetics.

Deborah Willis - Almost from the origin of the beginning of photography African Americans have figured prominently in its history as documentarians, studio and art photographers as well as "the subject of choice". My discussion will focus on a "call for action" among students, educators and historians to encourage a more inclusive history/survey of photographers working outside the parameters of the "established" photographic circles. Photographers who have made significant (social or artistic) contributions to the field and to their communities must be re-evaluated and placed in context with their contemporaries.

Bonnie Yochelson - I will address the issue of photographs produced on commission versus photographs produced as works of art. Photography's questionable art status has haunted the medium from its invention, and each generation rephrases the issue in a slightly different way. My understanding of the recent historical debate, my work with historic collections, and my contact with students and working photographers have made the issue central to my own (inconclusive) thoughts about photography.

Diane Neumaier - The practice of photography did not originate in a vacuum; rather it is firmly rooted in significant social, political, technological and cultural developments of the 19th-century. I will discuss the teaching of the invention and early uses of photography with the larger, interdependent, historical contexts of the French Revolution, the industrial Revolution and colonization.

LECTURE:
Cultural Clashes Overlook in the History of Photography
Yeshayahu Nir

The established History of Photography seems to have over looked the significance of the cultural clash between Western photographers and their subjects in the "colonies". At the very least it has been presented as undeserved animosity directed toward a harmless device. In fact the industrial world provided the maker of pictures with a technology that enhanced his paternalistic mentality. 20th-century historiography and aesthetics of photography were to follow the same path. The photographer's perception of Third World landscape and population involve a interaction that is paradigmatic in the history of photography. This paradigm has to find its due place in any serious and rigorous discourse on the history of photography.

LECTURE:
Essential Differences - Photographs of Mexican Women
Coco Fusco

The presentation will begin with slides and a discussion of some of the conceptual problems relating to the current definition of "otherness," and to the attempts to analyze all work by artists of color under this paradigm. Following will be a slide presentation of photographs by three Mexican women photographers--Graciela Hurbide, Lourdes Grobet and Yolanda Andride--to understand how they deal with issues of gender, cultural difference and otherness, in the context of a photographic practice that has historically been informed by nationalist romanticism.

LECTURE:
The History of Photographic Criticism
Andy Grundberg/Allan Sekula

Each lecturer will offer a version of the history of photographic criticism.

LECTURE:
Feminist Criticism
Jan Zita Grover

There's no such thing as 'feminist criticism' because there is no one feminism. Some feminists, for example, are prudish and anti-porn; some are pro-sex; some favor censorship, others are opposed to it.

What all feminists do seem to support (in theory, if not in fact) is an insistence that theory start in personal experience, that it bear personal meaning and usefulness--that, to use that now-old phrase, "the personal is political."

I will be discussing those feminist theories and practices that seem to have been most often employed in criticism of photography and speculate on why they have been the chosen "canon" of photographic feminism. I will also discuss some feminist theory that has been ignored in photographic writings and speculate on what it could bring to criticism of photographs.

LECTURE:
Structures for Critical Analysis: More on the Traffic in Photographs
Allan Sekula

This lecture will turn on three theoretical constructs: 1) The model of the archive as the crucial structural pre-condition for photographic meaning. This model seeks to solve the problem and exploit the promise of the sheer overwhelming quantity of photographic images. 2) The notion that photographs are semantically mobile and indeterminate, subject to a ceaseless traffic from one discursive context to another. More than other arts, photography is subject to a perpetual crisis of instability. 3) The historical-materialist insight that labor is a peculiarly vexing problem for theories of photographic representation.

PANEL:
Issues of Contemporary Critical Concern
Moderator: Andy Grundberg

Panelists: Carol Squiers
A. D. Coleman
Jan Zita Grover
Allan Sekula

Carol Squiers - The history and criticism of photography has been written mainly from a technical or formal point of view. Now its history must be expanded to acknowledge the many discourses--advertising, fashion, politics, business, etc., across which photography cuts. How is photography enlisted to tell a story, sell a product, promote an idea or peddle a personality?

A. D. Coleman - Two issues that I will raise are (a) the importance of, and problems with, clear definition of the "body of work" in photography and the imperative of redaction; (b) the curious notion promulgated by some of my colleagues that criticism is an autonomous, independent form of art in itself, and the less directly it addresses specific works of art, the better it is.

Andy Grundberg - I want to discuss how we think about photography in the photography world as opposed to how we think about photography in the art world. Do the concepts of avant- guarde and pluralism have any meaning in today's practice?

Jan Zita Grover - Photography criticism, unlike much literary, film, and art criticism, still lingers in the faints of the personal: Critics offer subjective 'readings' of photographs whose authority is institutionally (e.g., the New York Times), class- (e.g., the New York Times), gender-and-race-(e.g., the New York Times) guaranteed. But photographs only mean written highly specific historic formations; the particular guarantees that lend authority to a Times reviewer/critic probably mean little to anyone from a different position. I want to talk about reading photographs, about a critical approach to photographs that is not premised in institutional, class, gender, and racial authorizations but which instead makes acknowledgement of these authorizations--the basis for another way of looking at photographs--one that puts our many different subject-positions at the heart of our critical inquiry.

Allan Sekula - For the most part, photographic culture has two sides now: a third rate simulationism and an enervated neo-symbolism. A weak cynicism competes with a weak romanticism. Is there a way out of this bind?

ARTIST PRESENTATION:
Clarissa Sligh

My work is an attempt to represent the ever-present connection of what has already happened to a kind of continuous present. I often begin with an old photograph, a creation of time and light. Against it I juxtapose other photographs, marks, or words. I connect to who I was. From this place a direction flows for what I do. I reshoot and reprint, write and rewrite. I work to reconstruct a self.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:
Allan Sekula — "Zombie Realism"

Since 1971 I've been pursuing a hybrid art of writing and photography in hopes of reinventing the rather discredited genre of documentary, which has been vitiated by formalism on the one hand and a sentimental and increasingly discredited liberalism on the other. My current concerns are topical, both regional and global, and predicated on the insight that economics, the "dismal science," constitutes a grave embarrassment for the art of photography, which seeks to ignore its industrial origins. How is an "imaginary economy" structured into our experience of social space? How is this "imaginary economy" a function of deluded notions of the power of vision to grasp abstractions? How can photography and writing be used--despite these delusions--to invent a new critical poetics of geography? The answers can only be found in a tricky process of working through and against the conventions of photographic modernism.

PANEL:
The Role of Criticism in the Art Community and Its Implications for the Individual Artist

Moderator: Andy Grundberg

Panelists: A. D. Coleman
Jan Zita Grover
Allan Sekula
Carol Squiers

A. D. Coleman - Two issues I will raise are (a) the inherently destructive nature of the critical act; (b) the conflicts of interest that arise when critics become involved in the merchandising of art.

Jan Zita Grover - I edit a regional arts publication; before that, I was briefly involved in editing a lesbian/gay journal. Both are publications "on the margins." I want to talk here about several things: the burden/responsibility of representation for artists/audiences who are chronically under-/un-/mis-/represented; the complication role of "positive images" in such communities; and the role of the critic in responding to these communities' demands for greater exposure.

Andy Grundberg - I will discuss "why criticism is the artist's best friend."

Allan Sekula - The first problem is to examine the largely mythic concept of the "art community." The second is to consider the role of criticism in positioning photography within that mythic terrain. Is criticism, especially everyday practical journalistic criticism, a form of access control, policing and regulation? Can more liberating notions of criticism be sustained within an art system of unprecedented shallowness and venality?

Carol Squiers - Art criticism, at its most basic, is used to integrate art into the flow of art discourse, drawing distinctions between "worthy" and "unworthy" styles and artists. Since the art explosion of the '80s, however, art criticism has seemed ever more narrow, rigid and inadequate. Until both art and its criticism begin a more wide-ranging and generous interaction with other forms of culture--including film and TV--both will continue to be ghettoized as a precious commodity that speaks mainly to the economic marketplace.

Artist Presentation:
Sylvia Plachy

Sylvia will present and discuss her work.

PANEL:
Issues for Artists

Moderator: Cheryl Younger

Panelists: Robert Heinecken
Susan Meiselas
Nan Goldin
Brian Weil

Susan Meiselas - Both appropriation of images and the media contribute to the distortion and re-interpretation of original meanings of documentary photographs. As a photojournalist, Susan Meiselas will share observations as to the use of her images--in the media, the cultures for which she has recorded, and the art community.

Robert Heinecken - No one can fully understand another person's experiences, or their particular responses to them. This is certainly heighten by differences in gender, race, age, religion and so on. As expressive artists, it one's own unique experiences and the relationships between these experiences which are most relevant. But only, of course, if we agree to admit to them. However, to curtail one's imagination, fantasy or curiosity about other peoples' experiences as source, subject or content for art is self defeating.

Brian Weil - I will discuss the role of one's intentions and motives in the picturemaking process in reference to my AIDs pictures. My approach is one of deep political and social concern and one of intimate involvement where picturemaking becomes a secondary motive.

Nan Goldin - I will discuss where I believe the photographer needs to be positioned in relation to his/her subject--who has a right to photograph what. Also, I will discuss how sharing my work with audiences ever since I first started has helped push me to work and stimulated my growth as an artist. I will show a few of my own photographs to illustrate various responses I have experienced to my work and to discuss my motivations.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:
Susan Meiselas

I will show a selection of my work from1972 - 1991 and look at how that work has been published in the international context; discussing the limitations of such publications and the alternate forms of books, exhibits and films for both collaboration and personal projects.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:
Brian Weil

In 1985 I helped create one of the first volunteer programs for services for women and children with AIDs. In 1987 I began work in a large city hospital with a population of 20 children with AIDs. In 1989 (with ACT-UP) we began New York City's only (still illegal) needle exchange program in the Bronx and Harlem. It is because of and through my political work that I have been able to make such an intimate view of this epidemic. It is a global document which encompasses not only in the U.S. but Haiti, Thailand and Africa. It has been the last six years of my work.

Previous to this I worked as a police photographer in Miami for three years photographing homicides. For several years during the late seventies I photographed in bordellos where I worked.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:
Nan Goldin

I will show a selection of my work from 1972-1991 and discuss the evolution and the motivations behind the work and how that has changed: issues of making the private public, my personal work and professional career, how I have supported herself, what success feels like, and what it is like to try out other roles like curating. I will also discuss the role of collaboration in the creation of my book and other projects.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:
Robert Heinecken

Robert Heinecken will present a selection of his work from the '60s to the present, which utilizes mass media images as source/subject/content.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:
Dorothy Imagire

Having lived my adult life in New England, I began to think of myself as white and forget who I was/am. Now that I know I am not white, do I abandon mainstream or try to change it? Who is my work addressed to and why? Do I stay close to "my own community?" Do they/we want to stay segregated? How does one interact with mainstream? Is it more interesting to interact crossculturally? crossmarginally? What are the similarities among feminist, the gay community, African Americans, and Sanseis? Are there enough similarities between Asian Americans for me to feel connected?

ARTIST PRESENTATION:
Moneta Sleet, Jr.

Moneta Sleet will present photographs, including those of the Civil Rights Movement and portraits of Martin Luther King, Jr. He will discuss his career as a photojournalist, e.g., his experiences that led to his Pulitzer Prize, what it is like to be a working photojournalist, and observations about how this field has evolved over the past thirty years.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:
Hiro

During the visit to his studio Hiro will share his work and discuss highlights and trials of his career.

LECTURE:
Special Problems of Photography Criticism
Donald Kuspit

Donald Kuspit will discuss the differences between a critical approach to photography and to other media.

LECTURE:
Lentil Soup
A. D. Coleman

The lens originated as a device for the control of light, developed into an aid to and extension of sight, and then evolved into an increasingly sophisticated technology for information management. As such a technology, the lens both shape and is shaped by the perceptual habits, spatial biases and philosophical assumptions of the cultures which develop and employ it. This lecture traces several aspects of that development, both technically and its broader relation to science, culture, philosophy and perception, in order to provide a framework for considering the impact on western culture of what has become, in J. David Bolter's term, a "defining technology."

LECTURE:
History and Implications of New Technologies
Fred Ritchin

We are in the midst of a fast-moving revolution in technology spearheaded by the widespread adoption of the computer. It has been said that just as the 1980s saw the extraordinary capacities of the computer unveiled vis-a-vis words, and previously for numbers, the 1990s will see new potentials for electronic imagery. This presentation will concentrate on radical ways we will have to think about photography. There are new questions relating to its veracity, including to what extent it will continue to function as a documentary and journalistic medium. There are, at the same time, new potentials for what might be called a "hyper-photography," a medium which is becoming as much conceptual as perceptual.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:
Joan Fontcuberta

I am interested in representational issues, and mainly in the problem of truth and falsehood. My work challenges photography's authority as evidence. Dealing with the conflict between the natural and the artificial (=cultural), I propose a critical approach to the medium's essence.

LECTURE:
State of the Art Photography in Spain
Joan Fontcuberta

Spanish art under democracy has experienced a flourishing development in most fields. On one hand, the atmosphere of freedom has deeply stimulated creativity. On the other, it has produced a young and active generation that is taking over the scene, and overcoming the limitations of the Francoist period, but they are losing some of their Spanish identity as they turn to international tendencies.

LECTURE:
Preserving Images: Black Photographers in America Since 1839
Deborah Willis

Since 1839, black photographers have documented and interpreted American life and culture. The slide-lecture offers anoverview of the contributions of African Americans to the history of photography and highlights the works of notables such as James Van Der Zee, Gordon Parks, Roy DeCarava, Moneta Sleet, Jr., Lorna Simpson, Clarissa Sligh, among others.

LECTURE:
Expanding the Photographic Aesthetic which Embraces Cultural References
Charles Biasiny-Rivera

Mr. Rivera will discuss expanding the American photographic aesthetic to acknowledge cultural references and the values inherent in the work of culturally diverse photographers. He will illustrate his talk with images by such practitioners, many of whom have been published in his organization's photographic journal, Nueva Luz.

LECTURE:
Selection of Works by Asian American Photographers
Robert Lee

Asian American photographers-their works and the issues they raise; from personal identity to transcendence, from community participation to political violence.

Artista to be discussed include: Albert Chong, Vinod Dave, Dorothy Imagire, Kazuko, Nina Kuo, Leo Kwan, Edith Mesina, Tetsu Okuhara, Kunie Sugiura and Toya Tsuchuya

LECTURE:
Latin American Women Photographers. The Practice of Freedom
Silvia Malagrino

Over the past quarter century, more than ever before, and perhaps more than in other parts of the world, Latin American artists and intellectuals have acknowledged how profoundly history and politics affect creativity.

In the heat of social, political and economical unrest the practice of photography is one of the many fronts inscribed in the struggle of transformation and freedom that is both personal and collective. Ms. Malagrino will address the issues and concerns in the work of Latin American colleagues and in her own.

PANEL:
Censorship

Moderator: Anne Tucker

Panelists: Walter Rosenblum
Carole Vance
Joan Fontcuberta
Silvia Malagrino

Anne Tucker - The Photo League was a volunteer membership organization of amateur and professional photographers who maintained a headquarters, ran a school, directed exhibitions, published a newsletter, sponsored lectures and symposia, produced documentary features, and preserved the Lewis W. Hine Memorial Collection. It existed in New York City between 1936 and 1951. In December 1947 it was included on a list of Attorney General Tom Clark's of "Totalitarian, Fascist, Communist, and Subversive Organizations." Although membership first rose in defense of the League, League membership and financial support dropped as the Cold War intensified. The presentation will focus on the League's goals, accomplishments, and fate.

Walter Rosenblum - On December 4th, 1947, the special board appointed by President Truman to examine the loyalty of Federal Government employees released to the press a list of "Totalitarian, Fascist, Communist or Subversive" groups prepared for its guidance by Attorney General Tom C. Clark. On this blacklist, together with the Communist Party, the Ku Klux Klan, and such organizations as the Civil Rights Congress, the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee and the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the Photo League was listed. The Photo League was ordered by the Attorney General to print on its letterhead, "The Photo League, A Subversive Organization."

I will discuss the effect of this listing on the history and development of the Photo League from the period of the listing until 1952 when the League officially dissolved.

Carole Vance - The attack on the NEA is part of a larger "war on culture," an effort by conservative and fundamentalist groups to shape the cultural and political climate. In these campaigns, visual imagery is both the contested ground and the mechanism used to foment public hysteria and outrage. The conservative attack on sexual, erotic, and "offensive" imagery is part of a much larger program to restore traditional arrangements concerning sexuality and gender.

Joan Fontcuberta - Art which did not fulfill the moral and political status quo of the Francoist dictatorship (1939-1975) was simply forbidden and even prosecuted. Some artist left as exiles, others attempted a subtle criticism then eventual reprisals, and a third group addressed an ironical discourse to avoid censorship.

During the Socialist Administration (after 1982) censorship has been abolished and Spaniards have taken advantage of a liberal regime, which like any other one probably favors those initiatives underlying its own ideological goals.

Silvia Malagrino - The culture of domination cannot survive without censorship and the manipulation of consciousness. What can be done? This presentation will be an exploration of the strategies of domination and of the strategies of the dissenting vision.

LECTURE:
Existing Collections
James Enyeart

Museums and public collections of photography are nearly as old as the history of the technology itself. The Cabinet des Estampes, founded in 1852, is generally considered the earliest example of formal public collecting. Since the inauguration of this collection, which is based on a public policy similar to that of the United States Library of Congress, the number of institutions with formal collections has expanded to more than three hundred worldwide. The reasons for public collecting have also grown to encompass a wide range of collection mandates, which mirror the diversity of photography itself.

The questions that arise within this context, which will be explored in this presentation, include the relationship of quantity to quality, philosophical vs. economic qualifiers, and the most immutable issue of all, contemporary vs. historical values attached to such collections.

An overview of museums considered to be the best will serve as the structural underpinning of the discussion.

PANEL:
Dynamics of Changing Patronage

Moderator: Thomas Drysdale

Panelists: Deborah Willis
Philip Gefter
Nathan Braulick

From the pharaohs to the Medicis, art has reflected the inclination and dispositions of its sponsors. During the last thirty years, as photography has established itself as a fully-enfranchised fine-art medium, various forms of patronage have developed which contribute to the definition of what is produced and what is exposed to the public.

Panelists will consider several forms of patronage. In addition to conventional support from the museum and gallery establishments, we will discuss commercial commissions, corporate collections and sponsorship, and government funding through state and federal agencies. Of special concern will be the indirect impact of this patronage and the manner in which the biases of respective patronage categories have influenced recent photographic art.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:
Lorie Novak

I am interested in the relationships between photographic imagery, memory and myth. My work is concerned with the combination and revisualization of photographic imagery. By projecting slides, I create installations that draw on images of different times, places and emotions. Contemporary interiors and landscapes overlap with historical, cultural and family imagery. I will show slides of my photographs, live slide installations, and collaborative slide/dance pieces.

PANEL:
Curators' Roles and Responsibilities

Moderator: Deborah Willis

Panelists: Peter Galassi
Howard Greenberg
Anne Tucker
Charles Biasiny-Rivera
Evelyne Daitz

Deborah Willis - Discussion will concentrate on the changing role of curators, the racial and gender balance in thematic exhibitions, collecting patterns in museums, and the abolishment of signifying terms such as "the other," "otherness," and "marginalized artists" which are commonly used when describing African American, Latino, Asian and Native American artists.

Peter Galassi - Peter Galassi will describe the Museum of Modern Art Collection and discuss the roles and responsibilities of curators to their local community and art world.

Anne Tucker - The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston has an established priority for the collection and exhibition of works which relate to the diverse populations of Houston. This priority and other museum programs will be discussed in the presentation.

Evelyne Daitz - "How Far Have We Come? Women, Photography and the Art Establishment."