All Past Events

John Divola (1949, Los Angeles) works primarily with photography and digital imaging. While he has approached a broad range of subjects, Divola is currently moving through the landscape looking for the oscillating edge between the abstract and the specific.

Shelby Lee Adams was born and raised in Eastern Kentucky. An American environmental portrait photographer and artist, he is best known for his images of Appalachian family life, photographing Appalachian families since the mid-1970s.

This Photo Friday will feature Marion Palfi’s photographs of segregation and victims of racism in the South, a selection of portraits of The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by Benedict Fernandez, and Danny Lyon’s poignant images of grief-stricken funeral mourners in Birmingham as well as non-violent protests and violent arrests.

Anticipating Digital features the prescient work of Center for Creative Photography archive artist Todd Walker (1917-1998). The exhibition examines three decades of Walker’s work, highlighting his early use of computers to digitize images, and features examples of Walker’s use of alternate printing methods including offset lithos, silkscreens, Collotypes, self-published artist books and portfolios.

Artists from Latin America have long embraced photography as a means to capture their surroundings, document social injustice and political upheaval, and create images of national identity. In this lecture, Dr. Davidson will explore photographs with potent political undertones that convey a sense of place that is crucial to their meanings. She will provide an historical overview of the development of photographic practices in Latin America, and will also touch upon the main themes of the recent Phoenix Art Museum exhibition, The Politics of Place: Latin American Photography, Past and Present.

In the pre-digital age of photography, practitioners explored the concept of illusion by staging scenes and darkroom manipulation as well as by careful positioning of their subjects and their cameras. This selection of images includes work by Richard Avedon, Lotte Beese, Karl Blossfeldt, André Kertész, Arthur Tress, Ruth Hollos, Erich Consemüller, Minor White, Louise Dahl-Wolfe and Emmanuel Rudnitsky.

The exhibition will open on Friday, March 29 from 4:30 to 5:30pm for a special preview before the lecture. Guest curators Rachael Arauz and Adriana Zavala will discuss the development of the exhibition and the ways in which, together, the CCP Archive and the González Rendón Archive of Lola’s work enrich what we know about the career of this great photographer.

The exhibition will open on Friday, March 29 from 4:30 to 5:30pm for a special preview before the lecture "Lola Alvarez Bravo, Rethinking the Archive."

Lola Alvarez Bravo and the Photography of an Era sheds new light on one of Mexico’s most important photographers. Featuring both iconic and lesser-known images by Lola Alvarez Bravo, as well as photographs by her former husband Manuel Alvarez Bravo, and by her students, this presentation will inspire fresh insights into this fascinating photographer’s rich contributions to modern art.

A screening of "Different Drummers." This film follows several Israeli peacemakers who provoke others to join their voices for peace and justice. The film is co-presented by the Honors College and the Center for Creative Photography as part of the Honors College reading theme: Human Rights: Beyond Borders.

Faith: The belief in gods or religious doctrines and their presence in our lives has been fertile ground for photographers who have interpreted people, objects, rituals and places of devotion and worship. This viewing includes work by Graciela Iturbide, Aaron Siskind, Nubar Alexanian, Kozo Miyoshi, Henri Cartier- Bresson, Felix Bonfils, Mark Klett, Yoshiyasu Suzuka and Gail Skoff.

Since 2002, Sam Stephenson has been the director of The Jazz Loft Project (JLP) at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. He has studied the life and work of photographer W. Eugene Smith since 1997. He is currently at work on his third book on W. Eugene Smith, a biography entitled "Gene Smith’s Sink."

As a curator, theorist, educator, artist, and advocate, Nathan Lyons has played a central role in the expansion of photography over the last five decades. Jessica McDonald, Chief Curator of Photography at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin will interview Lyons.

Sy Johnson is a Jazz Arranger, Orchestrator, Pianist, Writer and Photographer. During the 50s and 60s, he played with and also photographed many of the musicians in the Jazz Loft at 821 Sixth Avenue in New York’s Flower District made famous by the photographs and audio tapes of W. Eugene Smith.

This investigation of enclosed spaces, objects, people, light and shadow offers a range of images from the intimate to the psychologically charged. It includes work by Jeff Wall, Sonia Noskowiak, Minor White, Max Yavno, Lee Friedlander, Jack Welpott, James Welling, Imogen Cunningham, Danny Lyon, and Jo Ann Callis.

In March 1975, Harold Jones was appointed first Director of the Center for Creative Photography. Using news clippings, snapshots, and his own recollections, Jones will present his account of the first years at the Center for Creative Photography.

Joel-Peter Witkin is a photographer whose images of the human condition are undeniably powerful. His focus is spirituality and how it impacts our physical world. Finding beauty within the grotesque, Witkin pursues this complex issue through people most often cast aside by society. His works confront our sense of normalcy and decency, while examining the teachings handed down through Christianity.

Suburbia: to some a utopia of homogeneity and manicured lawns; to others a nightmare of boring uniformity and residential sprawl.

In 1957, W. Eugene Smith, a former photographer at Life magazine, moved into a dilapidated, five-story loft building in New York City. It was a late-night haunt of musicians, including some of the biggest names in jazz as well as countless fascinating, underground characters. The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957-1965 is an exhibition of photographs and audio recordings of an extraordinary chapter in American jazz history and the climate in which it occurred.

December’s Photo Friday presents work by three master photographers who have created extraordinary images of places that inspired them.

Norton Family Curator Rebecca Senf leads collaborative artists Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe in a discussion of their working process, their recent Grand Canyon project and book, and what’s on their horizon.