January and February at the Center for Creative Photography
1030 North Olive Road, Tucson, Arizona, 85721 (520) 621-7968
www.creativephotography.org

>From the Director
Welcome to the New Year! December was a very busy month here at the Center. I am delighted to let you know that we received a gift to establish an endowment fund for conservation that will be used to hire a new permanent full-time senior position, the Arthur Joel Bell Conservator. The Center has never had a photography conservator on staff, so we are particularly grateful for the gift from the Arthur J. Bell Trust. I anticipate that we will be able to post the position this Spring, and we will advertise it nationally.

Two new exhibits curated by Becky Senf, the Norton Family Curator opened in late December: Face to Face: 150 Years of Photographic Portraiture and Ansel Adams: Arizona and the West. They were a big hit over the holiday season, attracting over 200 visitors in one day alone. Drawn mainly from the Center’s collections, the two exhibits will be run through May 15.
I will have other exciting news to share with you in the coming months. It has been very gratifying to hear from readers of On Center. Thank you for your interest.

Katharine Martinez, Director
martinezk@ccp.library.arizona.edu
Current exhibitions
Face to Face: 150 Years of Photographic Portraiture
December 28, 2010 - May 15, 2011
An exploration of the photographic portrait - the stories portraits can tell, the ways photographers convey the essence of their subjects and the impact of the relationship between photographer and subject. Including over 70 portraits from the Center for Creative Photography, this exhibition will include work by some of the greatest portraitists and photographic image-makers of the 19th, 20th, and 21st century: Southworth and Hawes, Gertrude Kasebier, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, W. Eugene Smith, Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus, Yousuf Karsh and Richard Avedon.

Ansel Adams: Arizona and the West
December 28, 2010 - May 15, 2011
Ansel Adams had a special connection to Arizona, the most significant being his 1975 decision to co-found the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, and place his entire photographic collection and archive in the care of this new institution.
Ansel Adams: Arizona and the West includes nearly forty works pulled from the Ansel Adams Archive at the Center representing the entire course of Adams’s prolific career. These images show the wide range of work Adams produced in Arizona and throughout the American West. From quiet studies of natural details to the awe-inspiring grandeur of massive mountains under cloud-filled skies, Adams chronicled the land with passion fueled by a deep appreciation of the transformative power of the wilderness.

Upcoming events
John Schaefer Remembers Ansel Adams
Thursday, January 20, 5:30 p.m.
Taking as his starting point his portrait of Ansel Adams, former University of Arizona President, John Schaefer will discuss his special relationship with the famous photographer.  Schaefer and Adams co-founded the Center for Creative Photography in 1975 and worked together on a number of projects over the next decade.

Looking Ahead – Save these Dates
Lecture: The Famous, The Infamous, The Anonymous: A History of Portraiture in Photography
Thursday, February 3, 5:30 p.m.
Lorraine Anne Davis, curator and photography appraiser, will discuss a number of exhibition images as part of a broader consideration of the portraiture genre. Ms. Davis graduated from the University of Wisconsin with an MA and an MFA in photography. She served as former Assistant Director of the Paul Strand Archive and Kuratorin of the Pfeifer Collection, Zürich - the only private collection of Classical American Photography in Europe. She has written for multiple academic publications including the UK quarterly, The History of Photography, and is currently revising Lee Witkin and Barbara London’s 1979 classic The Photograph Collector’s Guide.

Artist’s Talk: Emmet Gowin
Thursday, February 24, 5:30 p.m.
Emmet Gowin received an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design where he studied with Harry Callahan, a lifelong mentor and great influence.  Throughout his career he has made loving and poetic observations of his family and the essentiality of his wife, Edith, to his life. Gowin has received numerous honors, including Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University in 1997.

Lecture: Photography and Power
Monday, February 28, 5:30 p.m.
John Tagg, Professor of Art History and Comparative Literature at Binghamton University, has taught widely in Britain and the United States and has directed programs in art history and critical theory for more than thirty years. His writing and teaching cross a number of disciplines, including Art History, Comparative Literature, Philosophy, Interpretation, and Culture. Tagg regularly contributes to television broadcasts, conferences, and lectures at universities and museums in Europe and North America. His books, which often focus on the relationship between photography and power, include The Burden of Representation: Essays of Photographies and Histories, Grounds of Dispute: Art History, Cultural Politics and the Discursive Field, and The Disciplinary Frame: Photographic Regimens and the Capture of Meaning. This program is co-sponsored by the School of Art, The University of Arizona.

The Curatorial Perspective
Friday, April 8, 5:30 p.m.
Rebecca Senf, Norton Family Curator of Photography will discuss her image choices for the exhibition, several key photographs in relation to their close variants, alternate croppings, related paintings, and the expansion of the exhibition for the Center for Creative Photography galleries.

Center News
2011 Ansel Adams Research Fellowship Recipients Selected
Each year the Center invites proposals for the Ansel Adams Research Fellowship program, which is  designed to promote new knowledge about photography and the history of photography and support extensive research in the Center’s archive and photograph collections. Fellowships are made possible through a generous endowment created by the Polaroid Corporation. This year thirty-one applications were submitted from scholars in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, Africa, and Asia.

We are pleased to announce the 2011 fellowship recipients:

Carol McCusker, Ph.D., independent curator, writer, and educator, from San Diego, California will conduct research to support her book project: Boom! 1963-1983: Two Decades of Change in American Photography.  From 1963 to 1983, the American photography scene exploded with an unparalleled energy that transformed the medium. A history of this period remains to be written that includes the voices of those who created it. Some have passed away, while others still contribute to the discourse. Yet through archives, interviews and recollections, the book will include the dominant voices defining the era’s aesthetics, purpose, and success, and will address what artists, writers, curators, gallerists, collectors and educators think about their efforts 40 years ago, and if they would have done anything differently.

Jessica McDonald, doctoral student at the University of Rochester, will conduct research to support her dissertation: a historiographical study of the period immediately leading up to and including the “photo boom” of the 1960s and ‘70s. She will work towards identifying early efforts to gain institutional acceptance for the field and to implement structures that would allow for the field’s explosive expansion. She intends to complicate the widely perceived notion that the legitimization of photography during that era is principally due to the activities of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, arguing that such a view ignores the contributions of other key centers of activity, such as the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, and ultimately limits our understanding of the history of photography.


January and February at the Doris and John Norton Gallery, Phoenix Art Museum
www.PhxArt.org

Current exhibition

Brett Weston and Sonya Noskowiak: Inspired Vision
Norton Photography Gallery, Phoenix Art Museum
December 4, 2010 – March 15, 2011

In the early decades of the 20th century, young artists Brett Weston (1911-1993) and Sonya Noskowiak (1900-1975) rejected the accepted mode for art photography and embraced the cutting edge: modernism. Both seriously pursued the medium on the encouragement of Edward Weston - father to Brett, and mentor and lover to Sonya. The elder Weston's influence is apparent in Brett's and Sonya's early photography. However, both had extended careers that allowed for distinctive departures from their initial explorations.

Brett Weston and Sonya Noskowiak: Inspired Vision features 40 works by each photographer, allowing for comparisons between their landscapes, nature studies and portraits. This exhibition was organized by the Center for Creative Photography and Phoenix Art Museum.