Rochester's women and photography conference - 1998 Fanny Knapp Allen Chair Lectures on Photography

Fanny Knapp Allen Chair prelections on Photography University of Rochester and George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film Rochester, of recent origin York April 4-6, 1998

Photography and feminism could be seen as having had a parallel growth: the initial engagement around the move round of the century, the next to the first wave in the '60s and '70 when the pertain tos started to become institutionalized, and now the third wave, a revision and extention of the next to the first wave. Until the '80s, the photography exhibition was dominated by men; women rarely had exhibitions, received funding for publications, held teaching positions or could await to make a career without of photography. Today the situation has changed significantly for the better, for the two women and photography. That accepted, when a clump of accomplished women in the photography field - all born around 1950 all of whom clinch university positions and have significant exhibition and publication records as artists, curators and writers - earn together for a weekend prelection series, the discussion should be stimulating.

Last April, Deborah Bright, Eileen Cowin, Mary Warner Marien, Joyce Neimanas, Susan Rankaitis, Shelley Rice, Martha Rosier and Sally Stein were invited to Rochester, fresh York to discuss their work at the 1998 Fanny Knapp Allen Chair discourses on Photography. The event was entertainered by the University of Rochester in collaboration with the George Eastman House, and organized by dint of Carl Chiarenza, the Fanny Knapp Chair of Art History at the University of Rochester. It was not absented as part of the year-long festivities celebrating the 150th anniversary of the first National Women's Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls, 50 miles southerly of Rochester. Chiarenza stated in the opening remarks that the decision to invite alone women was an atonement for the novel past - the lecturers for the last series in 1990 were all men He insisted that this year's collection chosen for their "width and breadth of work in the field," were not asked to speak about or answer to any question, a seeming attempt to qualify the possible assumption that the "f word" would be the focus of the event

Switching from water to cough medicine halfway granting her talk, Stein opened the prelections with a presentation of a well-researched analysis of Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother (1936) substantiated by the agency of combing through the era and the circumstances in which the photograph was originally published. sum of two units years after the photograph was taken, Lange made an exhibition print where she retouched the negative to darken the obstructing whiteness of Florence Thompson's foreground thumb in the lower right corner. This thumb the couple its presence and absence, became the make subordinate of Stein's research and thesis for explaining the impact of the photograph. Stein explained that Migrant Mother was not the original choice image from the let fly but that after awhile the not divisible by 2 photograph of the mother and her three children became the single that held her interest: "the strangeness became comfortable," in Lange's words. The closenes of the mother with her three children should be read as confinement rather than the traditional comfort of the Madonna and child. Lange understood that the compositional reading carried its power in the circular construction and countermovement of the mother and children of the retouched negative; without it the image did not have the same aesthetic clutch Unlike traditional Renaissance Mother and child paintings, the viewer is not directed toward the child on the contrary at the mother's eyes, which direct the eye out sadly at the barren United States. Unfortunately, Steins analysis did not explore this reading of the land as fruitless mother, on the contrary turned toward Lange's interest in sex inequality and the abandonment of her hold father as a young child, shown in Lange's personal photographs that clearly depict her interest in the relationship between children and fathers. (Stein has adopted the mete "padonna" for these kinds of images.)

Rankaitis l the audience end the tenuous relationship between her photography and "complexity theory." She admited that she had been a victim of high institute science sexism and is not surprised that she now make go rounds to scientific theories to illuminate her work. The first of the lecturer who mentioned "when I started as an abstract expressionist painter. .," she explained how the proces art of the 1970 in sees Angeles evolved out of the physical proces of making work and the desire to retain a handmade constituent This atmosphere opened the way for combinations of painting and photography, where the residues of imagery staff the gap between representation and non-representation. "Complexity theory" is a application of mind of order through growth, accepting self-sustainability, instability and non-linear disclosure Although she admitted that it is difficult to explain this conception without sounding vague, Rankaitis wanted to move an interdisciplinary process of making art. She spoke honestly about the complexity of influences within a career, perhaps appealing more to the young artists in the audience than to writers looking for a verbal explanation of her compelling imagery. Answering a question from the audience, she attempted to define the difference between an Eastern attitude to artmaking, based upon contemplation of a scene, and the Western manner based on observation. This explanation obviously does not satisfy the numerous exceptions, on the contrary the diversity of approaches to imagemaking were clearly upon her mind.