WAFAA BILAL presented his book Shoot an Iraqi at lectures and book signings throughout the spring at the Israeli Center for Digital Art, Holon, the Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, the City Lights Bookstore in San Franciso, the College Art Association, the University of Knoxville, and was a panelist on “The Tangiality of Digital Media” at the LA Convention Center and Levantine Center, the Powerhouse Arena in Brooklyn, where “Its Darkest Places” was exhibited, a show including Bilal, artists Zoriah Miller, Jane Hammond, Steve McCurry, and David Opdyke. Bilal lectured at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC, the Barnes & Noble in Boca Raton, FL, at DIWAN 2009: A Forum for the Arts at the Arab American Museum in Dearborn, MI, at the Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy NY. “Virtual Jihadi” was exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in West Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
TERRY BODDIE’S work was included in a two-person exhibition Perpetual Motion at John Jay College with Diego Medina, and a group exhibition Kreyol Factory at Parc la Villette in Paris which features the work of artist from the Caribbean, Europe and the United States. Boddie is currently completing a residency as a 2009 Center for Book Arts Fellow. An excerpt from his series The Residue of Memory was published in the literary journal, “Small Axe 28, Visual Memory in the Caribbean” (February 2009). Boddie curated the exhibition Uncharted Territory in Orange, New Jersey, bringing together 20 artists who use photography, paintings, sculpture, video and performing art to examine the idea of the contemporary political and financial moment as uncharted territory.
ISOLDE BRIELMAIER had Knox Robinson, former editor of Fader Magazine, music producer and manager of BLKJKS from South Africa, speak to her class about photography in Africa (vernacular and commercial) as well as his work with Nigerian photographer Andrew Dosunmu.
MARK BUSSELL spent the early part of 2009 working in Egypt for Providence Pictures and NOVA on a documentary, with the working title, “Saving the Sphinx,” about the various efforts underway to preserve the Sphinx. He has had photographs this year in thenewyorker.com, New York Magazine, nymag.com, newsweek.com, The New York Times, nytimes.com, theberkshirereview.net, curbed.com, remag.com, batiactu.com, porthuronproject.net, marktribe.net, artsjournal.com, non-profittimes.com, contexttravel.com, photographie.com, lincolncenter.org, Lincoln Center Annual Report, chambermusicsociety.org, metropolitanopera.biz, and the Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt website, drhawass.com
ERICA DEVRIES and the students of her Senior Directed Projects class hosted a group of
young Iranian artists touring US arts institutions with the organization ARTSBRIDGE. The visit included exchanged critique and discussion of each other's work, a tour of the 1968:Then and Now exhibition, as well as a lunch gathering with department faculty. deVries also hosted Sina Najafi, Editor in Chief at Cabinet Magazine, Carla Repice and Tyrell Smith from Dreamyard's ACTION project, Lisa Lepson, MBA for resume workshop, Kay Takeda at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council for a grants writing workshop, and the artist Melora Kuhn in her classroom.
deVries participated in the Peoples of The Press portfolio of “8 Brooklyn Women Artist's,” sponsored by the Brooklyn Arts Council, and exhibited work at 222 Gallery in Santa Fe, NM, Superfine in Brooklyn, NY and the Brooklyn Waldorf Arts Benefit at the Gaines/Peyton Gallery, NY. deVries has an upcoming exhibition Your Mother's In The Basement in the fall of 2009 at the LaSalle University Art Museum. She collaborated with husband Marc Lepson on the site design photography for www.brooklynwaldorf.org, which launched in February of 2009 and is currently assisting Mary Adams on all photography and imagery for her upcoming book reviewing and celebrating the history of her couture dressmaking.
TOM DRYSDALE’S work was included in Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris: September-January, retrospective survey of important American Photography: 1970-1980. He documented WWII site excavation at Manzanar Japanese American Relocation Center in Owen’s Valley, California. Drysdale also hosted artist Sylvia Plachy, cinematographer/photographer Ron Gray, Pierre-Yves Mahe, Director of SPEOS and the Niepce Museum in Paris, and alumni Will Steacy and Anthony Accardi in his classroom.
NICHOLE FROCHEUR taught a weekend workshop in January 2009 at the International Center of Photography called Into the Ether: An Introduction to Wet-Collodion. The workshop taught students the nineteeth-century photographic process of making negative and positive images on glass.
MARK JENKINSON shot feature stories, reports and a cover for various magazines. His work will be included in a group show called "Glitterati" in May 2009. His work is also included in a publication Art at Lincoln Center by Charles A. Riley II. On the publication day, lincolncenter.org will feature his photographs of their 50th birthday celebration. Jenkinson hosted commercial still life photographer, Adam Chinitz, and photographers Aaron Cobbet and Charles Nesbit in his classroom. He also shot the campaign for Parkour athletes, a freestyle running company.
PETER LUCAS was featured in an exhibition Ephemeral Places Arpoador: Sunday Evenings in Rio de Janiero at The Skybridge Art and Sound Space at the New School from September 10 to October 2.
EDITHA MESINA’S work was featured in FIRE (Filipinas for Rights and Empowerment): Diwang Pinay Event and Exhibition at the Judson Memorial Church in April. She hosted photographer and filmmaker Nikki S. Lee, photographer Jonathan Singer, photographer and performance artist Barbara DeGenevieve and photographer O Zhang, who is currently the artist in residence at the Queens Museum.
LORIE NOVAK completed a residency at the Liguria Study Center at the Bogliasco Foundation in Bogliasco Italy during September and October 2008. Novak created http://fommachiapas.org for FOMMA (Fortaleza de la Mujer Maya) – a collective of Mayan women who use theater as a tool for education and community building. She also participated in “Performance and Visual Culture in Chiapas.” Novak was a visiting fellow at the Center for the Critical Analysis of Social Difference, the Engendering the Archive research group, a participant in the Imagining America Regional Conference at NYU in February 2009, and a board member of WSQ (Women’s Studies Quarterly), the Feminist Press, a CUNY publication.
PAUL OWEN’S work was featured in Day/Night at the Drew Deane Gallery in Brevard, NC. The photographs exhibited were long exposures of architecture at night, focusing on texture and tonal value. Owen has an ongoing installation entitled “Open Doors” on display on the 8th floor of 721 Broadway.
SHELLY RICE was the consultant and a co-author of the catalogue for Role Models: Feminine Identity in Contemporary American Photography at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. Role Models was highlighted as part of the Obama Inauguration Cultural Festivities in January 2009. Rice published two pieces in Aperture magazine, on archives and a big survey of the history of Pacific Rim photography curated by Gael Newton at the National Museum of Australia. Rice gave the Keynote Lecture at the conference New Photographies, New Histories organized by the University of Australia, as well as a lecture in Perth. She is working on a book with the papers from the New Photographies, New Histories conference.
Rice published several articles in Denmark including one on Lartigue and the changing nature of photography history in Katalog magazine and another on Candida Hofer in Filter Magazine. The book Candida Hofer: In Portugal, with essays by Rice and Jose Saramago, was reprinted early in 2009 by Schirmer-Mosel publishers. In the New York area, Rice has lectured at Christie's, the Bruce Museum, and at NYU, which includes the ALBA seminar at Tamiment Library and the Visuality Conference hosted by Diana Taylor and the King Juan Carlos Center. Rice’s essay on the influence of George Kubler's book The Shape of Time on the work of the art critic Lawrence Alloway in the 1970s is slated for publication in CAA's Art Journal this coming year.
Rice has been invited by Roger Ballen Foundation to do a series of lectures and artist interviews at the Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa as well as a day-long seminar at the Wits University on Art Writing, with writer Colin Richards and others. Rice plans to lecture next fall at the University of Zurich on Stieglitz, Steichen and Changing Technologies in the years 1900 and 2000 that radically altered ideas about photography and geography. The lectures from the series will be published in Switzerland. Rice also plans a presentation on non-institutional exhibitions of global photography with New Delhi photographer and curator Partiv Shah for the November 2009 Oracle conference in France. Rice hosted performance artist and photographer Shigeyuki Kihara, Mellon Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Pittsburgh, Terry Smith, as well as NYU Fine Arts Professors Ulrich Baer and Pepe Karmel in her classroom.
FRED RITCHIN released his new book After Photography (WW Norton & Co.) in January 2009, which considers and explores the perils and possibilities of photography in age of digital imaging.
JOSEPH RODRIGUEZ had a book talk and slide show at the PowerHouse Arena to mark the publication of Still Here: Photos After Katrina (PowerHouse Books, 2008) in October 2008. Rodriguez was also reviewed in The Magazine of and for the Arts, Los Angeles; the review can be found here.
JEFFREY H. SCALES produced a multimedia piece entitled “Through The Eyes Of Richard Avedon” for The New York Times online.
DEBORAH WILLIS was presented the Griffin Museum Lifetime Achievement Award for her work as a curator, author, educator, historian and photographer. She was also awarded a Faculty Award from the Center for Multicultural Education and Programs at NYU.
Willis was the opening speaker and a participating photographer in Double Exposure at the DePaul University Museum this spring. Double Exposure presents historic early photographs side by side with photo-based works by contemporary African American artists. Willis also participated in the Alain LeRoy Locke Lectures in October 2008 at Harvard University’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, lecturing on concepts of beauty. She also lectured on “Beauty Matters or Posing Beauty in the Academy” at the Rutgers Ivory Tower Conference at Rutgers University in March 2009. Also in March, Willis presented the inaugural University Professorship Lecture on Posing Beauty, which explored contemporary understandings of beauty by framing the notion of aesthetics, race, class and gender within art, popular culture, and political contexts.
Willis organized, curated, and hosted 1968: Then and Now, which was on exhibit at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and the Nathan Cummings Foundation concurrently during the fall of 2008. She also curated the exhibition Obama: The Historic Campaign in Photographs and published the accompanying book with Amistad/HarperCollins. The exhibit was on display this fall at the Leica Gallery in New York and traveled to the Schomburg Center. Through 150 striking color photographs Obama: The Historic Campaign in Photographs charted the road to Barack Obama's nomination as the first African American to lead the presidential ticket of a major party. Willis presented the book at lectures and book-signings throughout the fall, winter and spring, along with a number of radio, internet, and television interviews. In addition, Willis co-curated One Shot with Ronald K. Brown, which featured photos of Charles “Teenie” Harris: Rhapsody in Black and White, the inspiration for Brown's dance piece. She also provided a public lecture about the work of Charles “Teenie” Harris at Downtown Initiative for the Visual Arts (DIVA).
Willis participated in Four Women at Jackson Fine Art, in Atlanta, which featured works by Kianga Ford, Jessica Ingram, and Carrie Mae Weems. The exhibition investigated their perspectives on the complex relationship between family and race--specifically its ongoing evolution in the South. Her works, a series called Mother Wit, reflected notions of pregnancy and the dispensation of wry intergenerational wisdom. Willis also participated in the Women’s Group Show, which also featured MaryAnn Miller, Michelle Manley, Lynn Marshall-Linnemeier, and Karima Muyaes at SoHo Creative, which ran March through April 2009. She was also a panelist at the Gordon Parks, Renaissance Man panel discussion at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University in May 2009.
