Lecture

2015 Upcoming Public Programs

Lucas Blalock and John Lehr in Conversation with Curator Joshua Chuang

Thursday, September 10, 2015 - 5:30 pm

Presented as part of the Etherton Gallery Lecture Series. Artist websites: Lucas Blalock | John Lehr

Ralph Gibson (artist talk)

Friday, September 18, 2015 - 5:30 pm (details)

Louie Palu: Image Control in the Age of Terror

Thursday, October 6, 2015 - 5:30 pm (details)

Presented by the Etherton Gallery Distinguished Lecture Series, please join celebrated photographer Ralph Gibson (born 1939, Los Angeles, CA) as he speaks about his career from 1960 to today, as well as his new book. Free and open to the public.

Ralph Gibson has made a prolific career photographing since gaining prominence in the 1960s, winning numerous honors, grants, and fellowships, and exhibiting internationally. Gibson was recently appointed Chair of the Department of Contemporary Photography at the New York Film Academy. His most recent book, Political Abstraction (2015, Lustrum Press, distributed by the University of Texas Press), is a response to the search for visual identity in a digital age, featuring a series of color and black-and-white photographic diptychs portraying "simultaneous visual motions dealing with the migration of color and shape across seemingly simple imagery." Gibson will also be presenting a TEDx talk in Santa Monica on September 26, 2015: "Finding a Visual Identity in the Digital Age."

An upcoming CCP exhibition of Political Abstraction is being printed in collaboration with Tucson's Photographic Works, Inc. Political Abstraction is on view September 10 - October 31, 2015 at Mary Boone Gallery. Gibson's work can also be seen at Etherton Gallery in Light Motifs: Photographs by Ralph Gibson & Andy Summers, on view September 15 - November 7, 2015.

Documentary photographer and filmmaker Louie Palu examines the social-political issues involving war and human rights in his work. Palu's series of conceptual newspapers on the Mexican Drug War and the detention center in Guantanamo Bay look into the creation, use, control and censorship of photographs in the news. Additionally, he explores government and media message-shaping, how the public consumes photographs, and how photojournalism has shaped public perception in the post-9/11 age of terror. Palu's lecture will focus on the contemporary news landscape and how his work is situated within it, amid the conflict and violence. He will also discuss his new documentary film, Kandahar Journals, the thesis of which addresses the impossibility of photographs to convey the reality of war.

About the artist

Louie Palu is an award winning documentary photographer whose work has appeared in festivals, publications + exhibitions internationally. He is the recipient of numerous awards including a Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting Grant and is a 2011-12 Bernard L Schwartz Fellow with the New America Foundation. He is well known for his work which examines social political issues such as human rights, conflict and poverty. See more of his work here: www.louiepalu.com

Adam Block is a leading astrophotographer and the founder of the UA Science Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter stargazing programs; his work appears frequently on NASA’s “Astronomy Picture of the Day Website” and he writes a column on astrophotography for Astronomy magazine. During this public lecture he will speak about how modern images of the cosmos are made, how they influence the field of photography, and just what makes them so compelling.

On Thursday, March 26th in the CCP galleries Stephen Strom, Arizona-based photographer and former Associate Director of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, will host a tour of Astronomical: Photographs of Our Solar System and Beyond. Strom, one of the exhibition's co-organizers, will discuss the photographs on view from his unique perspective as an artist and astronomer. Works from his series "Celestial Siblings," which compares images of Earth with those taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, are featured in Astronomical.

Xavier Debeerst is a noted specialist in the field of historical astrophotography. Join us for this keynote lecture followed by a public opening reception for Astronomical: Photographs of Our Solar System and Beyond from 6:30 - 7:30 pm. Both events are free and open to the public.

Photographer Richard Renaldi, internationally exhibited and most recently acclaimed for his series Touching Strangers (monograph released by Aperture Foundation, spring 2014), will present and discuss his work. Visit www.renaldi.com to see more work.

About Richard Renaldi

Richard Renaldi received his BFA in photography from New York University in 1990. Exhibitions of his photographs have been mounted in galleries and museums throughout the United States, Asia, and Europe. In 2006 Renaldi's first monograph, Figure and Ground, was published by the Aperture Foundation. His second monograph, Fall River Boys, was released in 2009 by Charles Lane Press. Renaldi's most recent monograph Touching Strangers was released by the Aperture Foundation in the spring of 2014.

Brian Paul Clamp is the owner and director of ClampArt, a gallery in Chelsea in New York City specializing in modern and contemporary art with an emphasis on photography. ClampArt mounts ten to fifteen exhibitions per year featuring the work of emerging and mid-career artists. Mr. Clamp opened the gallery in 2000 after completing a Master of Arts degree in Critical Studies in Modern Art at Columbia University. For eight years prior to that Mr. Clamp served as the director of a gallery on Manhattan’s Upper East Side specializing in late 19th- and early 20th-century American paintings. Aside from exhibitions at his own gallery space, Clamp has curated numerous photography shows at various venues throughout the United States, and has reviewed photographers’ portfolios on dozens of panels over the past several years. Mr. Clamp is the author of numerous publications on American art to date, and also occasionally contributes written work to various art periodicals.

Douglas Nielsen is the collector behind the Center's current exhibition Performance: Contemporary Photography from the Douglas Nielsen Collection. A professor at the University of Arizona School of Dance, he has been collecting photography since the 1970s while simultaneously living an itinerate life-style as a performer, choreographer, and teacher of contemporary dance.

For the past two decades, Keith Carter and Kate Breakey have each created hauntingly poetic and evocative bodies of work from the stuff of the real world. In a conversation moderated by Chief Curator Joshua Chuang, both of these acclaimed photographers will discuss their current work, longstanding friendship, and ongoing belief in the medium of photography. This talk is part of The Etherton Gallery Distinguished Lecture Series, presented in conjunction with Without and Within: Keith Carter and Kate Breakey with Ed Musante opening at Etherton Gallery September 13, 2014.

Join Performance: Contemporary Photography from the Douglas Nielsen Collection artist Jo Ann Callis for a presentation of her work followed by a conversation with collector Doug Nielsen and CCP Chief Curator Joshua Chuang. For a preview of Callis's work visit joanncallis.com.

Immediately following the lecture, the CCP will host an opening reception in the gallery to celebrate Performance.