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, The Mother of Alabama Art Photography: Gay Burke, 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 which will be held in The University of Alabama Gallery. An opening reception for both exhibitions will be held on First Friday, October 5, 5:30-7:30 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.
Advanced Photo Students Design Reality on Woods Quad
Last spring Associate Professor Chris Jordan's Advanced Photography class did a production shoot at the Gorgas House. This fall, the current advanced class (ART 319/418/518/618) put together a photo shoot in Woods Quad. The theme was a "Clash of Eras,” depicting a 1950s-era couple on a picnic in period garb, enjoying the latest in current technology. This project required problem solving and creative solutions on many levels. This was an exercise in “directorial mode” photography where fictional realities are staged for the camera. Students developed characters based on period stereotypes, such as the “greaser” and “girl next door.” Props were carefully selected to reference the various eras, such as a picnic basket for the 1950s and a laptop computer for today. Special thanks goes to Todd Roberts, Costume Manager, Department of Theatre and Dance, who again helped develop the costume ideas and provided wardrobe from the theatre costume shop. Additional challenges were posed by photographing in Woods Quad at night. Supplemental lighting, was used to augment the ambient light of the Quad, added to the theatrical effect. Students were active in all aspects of the project: set design, choice of lenses, camera angles, lighting design and finally, the assembly of the finished images on the computer. Advanced Photography students involved were Sarah Austin (graduate student), Ashley Brown, Tanesha Childs, Lindsey Comas, Dana Cottone, Zach Koch, Celestia Morgan (graduate student), Chi Pan and Liam Ward (graduate student). The Female Character was played by Lindsey Comas and the Male Character was played by Zach Koch. These are the final photos produced by the students: View photos in Flickr.com. View photos on Facebook.