The Mother of Alabama Art Photography: Gay A. Burke Exhibition: October 5 – 26, 2018 Opening reception and reunion: October 5, 2018, 5:00-8:00 p.m. (First Friday) The Arts Council Gallery, Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center 620 Greensboro Avenue, Tuscaloosa, Alabama In many ways, Gay Burke is responsible for bringing art photography to Alabama and raising the profile of photography as an art form throughout the South. She is the “Mother of Alabama Art Photography.” –Wayne Sides, photographer and author Over four decades, photographer and professor of art Gay Burke developed a distinguished fine art photography program at The University of Alabama Department of Art and Art History, all the while creating her own photographic work. Out of this program came award-winning artists such as Miller Mobley, Janice Hathaway, Wayne Sides, Karen Graffeo, and many others. Burke’s innovative work has been exhibited in more than 80 national exhibitions including numerous solo exhibitions at venues such as the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; the University of California, Berkeley and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Burke studied under distinguished photographer and photomontage innovator Jerry Uelsmann at the University of Florida and worked with renowned documentary photographer Walker Evans. At UA, she was the first woman to achieve full professor status in the Department of Art and Art History. She died in May of 2017. This semi-retrospective exhibition showcases forty works by Gay Burke, some never shown before. Most of the photographs are multi-negative prints. To create them, Burke shot 35mm film photographs, developed the negatives in her darkroom, and then painstakingly combined two, three or four negative images in the darkroom to produce a new image. These photographs, with their often surreal juxtapositions of seemingly unrelated objects, are a result of careful and skillful manual manipulation, long before the days of "photoshopping." None have been digitally manipulated. Please join us on opening night, Friday October 5, 2018, for a celebration of Gay Burke and a reunion of her former students from 5:00-8:00 p.m. An exhibition of photos by some of her former students, Butterfly Effect: Honoring the Legacy of Gay Burke, will be held at the same time in The University of Alabama Gallery, also in the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center, sponsored by the Alabama State Council on the Arts. A one-time pop-up sale featuring hundreds of Gay Burke’s prints will immediately follow the opening reception, also in the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center. All proceeds from the sale of these photos will go to fund the annual Gay Burke Memorial Fellowship in Photographic Arts, administered by the Alabama State Council on the Arts. The Arts Council Gallery hours are 9 a.m.-noon and 1-4 p.m. on weekdays and noon-8 p.m. on First Fridays. The University of Alabama Gallery hours are 9 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays and noon-8 p.m. on First Fridays. Galleries are closed on weekends. Admission is free. The Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center is located at 620 Greensboro Avenue in Downtown Tuscaloosa. For more information about the CAC, The Arts Council or Bama Theatre, patrons should LIKE the Facebook page “The Arts Council – Bama Theatre – Cultural Arts Center” and follow tuscarts on Twitter. Call 205-758-5195 or visit tuscarts.org for further information.
Two Exhibitions In Memory of Professor Gay Burke
Over four decades, photographer and professor of art Gay Burke developed a distinguished art photography program in The University of Alabama’s Department of Art and Art History, all the while creating her own artwork. Burke died May 1, 2017. For the month of October, two exhibitions, of Burke's work and the work of her students, will be on display in the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center in downtown Tuscaloosa. A semi-retrospective exhibition, Gay Burke: The Mother of Alabama Art Photography, will be on display in The Arts Council Gallery. The Alabama State Council on the Arts is assisting with the curation and exhibition of Burke’s former students' works, Butterfly Effect, which will be held in The University of Alabama Gallery. An opening reception for both exhibitions will be held on First Friday, October 5, 5:30-8:00 p.m. The opening will be a homecoming and reunion for Gay Burke's students and colleagues. More details about both exhibitions will be forthcoming.
Photo Shoot Night at the Museum
Students in Associate Professor of Photography Christopher Jordan's intermediate and advanced photo classes (ART 318 and 418) have been staging production photographs around UA campus for the past several semesters. Below is an example of one that was produced in the Alabama Museum of Natural History in Smith Hall. The image is made in a “directorial mode,” similar to the style of contemporary photographer Gregory Crewdson, in which a fictional reality is established. In this image, a lone character resembling Indiana Jones "camps out" inside the Alabama Museum of Natural History. The “nighttime” lighting as well as the fact that an explorer sits in front of a fake fire inside a museum instead of out in the wild, lends a surreal atmosphere to the scene. Find out about the other "fictional reality" photo shoots students staged at the Gorgas House, on Woods Quad and at the ‘little round house’ (officially known as the Guard House, built in 1862).
UA Students Create Fictional Reality in Photo Course
Associate Professor of Photography Christopher Jordan reported on some intriguing photo projects his students have been working on this past school year. "Over the past several semesters," he said, "in my intermediate and advanced photo classes (ART 318 and 418), my students and I have been staging production photographs around campus. You might recall the images from the Gorgas House, on Woods Quad, at the Museum of Natural History and now this semester, the 'little round house' (officially known as the Guard House, built in 1862)." After they obtained permission to use the space, the photo shoot of the Guard House took place early evening on April 18, 2016. Professor Jordan said that the image is made in a “directorial mode,” similar to the style of contemporary photographer Gregory Crewdson, in which a fictional reality is established. "In this image, a solitary dancer occupies the space lit in a way to create a dreamlike atmosphere. In one of the images, a passerby takes a closer look at the unusual event unfolding. The photo production employed various lighting strategies to support the illusion, including shooting at dusk with lights hidden strategically inside the little round house, just outside the frame." The students were Faith Barringer, Sydney Black, Morgan Hufnagel and Pierson Scarborough. The model was Olivia Zimmerman. Here are some of the photographs of students working on the production and and then photos taken by the students. Click on the thumbnails for larger versions. If you'd like to read more about the history of the Civil War-era Guard House, read Robert O. Mellown's The University of Alabama - A Guide to the Campus and Its Architecture (2013) or read this blog post from our friends at Alabama Heritage magazine.
UA Alumna Cofounded Innovative Photography Business
Image Credits
Mary Stephenson Mills cofounded "one of America's most significant twentieth-century portrait photography businesses" with her husband, Olan Mills, in Tuscaloosa in 1932. Mary Mills lent creative and technical expertise to the business she and her husband started together and built into one of the most innovative portrait photography businesses in the US until the Mills' family sold the company in 2011. Mary Eula Stephenson (1905-1974) majored in art at The University of Alabama and graduated in 1927. One of her early post-graduation jobs was as a finisher in her hometown of Selma in the studio of Jesse B. Williams, who took over Edgar Cayce's portrait photography business. Mary Stephenson married Olan Mills in 1930 and they opened a studio in Selma. A couple of years later the couple moved to Tuscaloosa where they established Olan Mills Studios, which remained a family-owned company until 2011. Among their early clients was The University of Alabama. The Millses were awarded a contract to take student portraits for the 1933 Corolla, "which provided cash flow in the business's first year and allowed them to expand their business," according to the Encyclopedia of Alabama. "By 1935, Mary Mills, who was experienced in art and in hand-finishing photographs, had created a distinctive, easily recognizable portrait style for Olan Mills Studio. This new style, an 8x10 duotone portrait lightly touched up with oils, replaced the old 8x10 black and white prints. Duotone printing produced tonally rich images that needed only a quick touch of handwork to create a suggestion of color. Mary Mills's new strategy resulted in quicker production because less handwork was required than in older hand-coloring methods." -- more at Encyclopedia of Alabama Sources: Frances Osborn Robb, "Olan Mills Studio in Alabama," Encyclopedia of Alabama Frances Osborn Robb, Shot in Alabama: A History of Photography, 1839–1941, and a List of Photographers, UA Press, 2017
Celestia Morgan Among Select Photographers in Mobile Show
Photographs by UA graduate student Celestia Morgan are featured in the new exhibition, Contemporary Alabama Photography, at the Mobile Museum of Art. Curated by Richard McCabe, Curator of Photography at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, the exhibition shows the work of eleven emerging, mid-career and established Alabama photographers who interpret Alabama's identity, culture and history in their images. Images from Morgan's MA exhibition, Passage, were chosen by McCabe to be in the show, which runs through August 27. Morgan said that she is honored to have her work featured among such great photographers, who include Pinky Bass, April Dobbins, Michael Meads and Jerry Siegel, among others, and is intended to complement the concurrent exhibition, CHRISTENBERRY: In Alabama. "It's a unique experience, and I say this because I know so many another artists who could have represented Contemporary Alabama Photography in this exhibition." Curator Richard McCade contacted Morgan to ask her to be in the exhibition. "This meant a lot to me. The fact that people are attracted visually and conceptually to my photographs makes me feel the work itself has accomplished what it was designed to do and my persistence is paying off. This year, I'm beginning to see my work develop a voice in the contemporary art world and people are listening, and this excites me." Also included in the exhibition is UA art alumna Jenny Fine. The Mobile Museum of Art’s concurrent exhibition on another UA art alumnus, CHRISTENBERRY: In Alabama, runs through June 4, 2017. Go to our website for more information about UA’s Department of Art and Art History’s degree programs.
MFA Exhibition Explores Adoptive Child’s Experience
UA graduate student in studio art Liam Ward will present his Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition, titled 24, at the Harrison Galleries, February 28-March 19, 2017. A First Friday reception for the artist will be Friday March 3 from 6-9 pm. In the images of 24, Ward, who is an adopted child with no information about his birth parents, explores an inner world where he combines fantasy and experience. In his exhibition statement, he writes, "The idea of having no knowledge of the most profound moment of my life, my own creation, is a terrifying and somewhat humorous experience. I am creating family history of a family I have no knowledge of, while at the same time projecting my own experiences from my adolescent years onto them." The images on exhibit are only an excerpt - "a single frame" - of Ward's imagined world. Because the viewer also has limited knowledge, Ward expects that the viewer will participate by filling in the parts we don't know with our own projections, much like Ward's own experience of his birth parents. In that way, he wants "to make the viewer aware of the fiction involved within these images and realize what it means to be a parent and a child." Liam Ward received the BFA in studio art from State University of New York at Plattsburgh in 2013, graduating with honors. Ward was a teaching assistant at the Maine Media Workshops, Camden, Maine, at SUNY Plattsburgh and at Shelton State Community College in Tuscaloosa. He participated in the SPE South Central Conference Exhibition in Oklahoma City, Okla., in 2015. Recent publications include American Spirit, BOAAT and in Photographers Forum , in which he was a finalist in their Best of Photography Contest in 2016. He is a member of the Society for Photographic Education (SPE) and serves as a graduate ambassador for UA’s Graduate School. This exhibition is in partial fulfillment of the Master of Fine Arts degree in the Department of Art and Art History at The University of Alabama. For more information on the graduate programs of the UA department of art and art history, visit this link: http://art.ua.edu/academics/graduate-programs/art-requirements/. Harrison Galleries hosts a First Friday jazz reception from 6-9 pm on the first Friday of the month in downtown Tuscaloosa. Harrison Galleries is located at 2315 University Boulevard and is open Monday through Friday, 12 noon to 5:00 pm, and by appointment: (205) 464-0054.
Acclaimed Photographer Deborah Luster to Speak at UA
Artist and photographer Deborah Luster will give a public lecture, "Archive of Lamentations," on Wednesday, February 22 in the Birmingham Room of the Bryant Conference Center at 6:30 p.m. Photography has done powerful things for Luster. Since the 1990s, she has used photography, installation and text to investigate her ongoing relationship with violence and its consequences. In 1988, her mother was murdered by a contract killer, and as a way of coping, Luster found herself looking through the lens. Luster is best known for the series, One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana, a collaborative work with poet C. D. Wright. The collection of photographic portraits portrays prisoners from three Louisiana prisons including the infamous Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. A short NPR video about Luster's work is here. Deborah Luster's work has been shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Whitney Museum of American Art; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago; Prospect.1, New Orleans; Jack Shainman Gallery, New York; Ballroom Marfa; David Winton Bell Gallery, Providence, RI; and Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, OR; among other venues. Luster’s awards include the Dorothea Lange—Paul Taylor Prize for Documentary Photography from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University (with C. D. Wright); Anonymous Was a Woman Award; among many others. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, New Orleans Museum of Art and other notable public and private collections. Deborah Luster's public lecture is sponsored by UA Department of Art and Art History, the Department of Art and Art History's Visiting Artist Committee, photography and digital media areas; the College of Arts & Sciences; the Summersell Center for the Study of the South; and the College of Continuing Studies.
Sarah Ann Austin Presents MFA Exhibition in Photography
Sarah Ann Austin (MFA 2016, photography) presented her thesis exhibition, After Eighteen Forty Two, at Harrison Galleries in May. Two of her photographs were accepted into the 2015 SPE Combined Caucus Juried Exhibition at the Society of Photographic Education Conference, Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans. More of her work is here.