2009 Presenters
DORE BOWEN (workshop) interrogates the assumptions that inform visual practices while also participating in the act of cultural transmission. To this end she has curated a number of experimental exhibitions. In 2009 Bowen co-curated an art intervention titled “Early Man On a Modern Road” at the Musée de Préhistoire des Gorges du Verdon in France. Previous curatorial projects include the 2003 exhibition “Agitate: Negotiating the Photographic Process” at SF Camerawork, “Soit dit en passant” (2006) curated with Isabelle Massu at La Compagnie in Marseille, and the related exhibition “Not Given: Talking of and Around Photographs of Arab Women” (2007) at SF Camerawork. Recent essays include “This Bridge Called Imagination: On Reading the Arab Image Foundation and Its Collection” in the online journal Invisible Culture and “Imagine There’s No Image (It’s Easy If You Try): Appropriation in the Age of Digital Reproduction” in A Companion to Art History Since 1945, Blackwell Press. Forthcoming is her essay in the collection Adaptation Studies, published by Jan Van Eyck Press.
SARAH CHRISTIANSON (image maker) grew up on a four-generation, 1200 acre family farm near Cummings, North Dakota. Immersed in that vast expanse of the Great Plains, she developed a strong affinity for the landscape and the stories it contains. This experience has had a profound effect on her work, as she enjoys creating narratives about place and personal experience through time, historical research, and the landscape. Her work has been exhibited internationally and can be found in the collections of several institutions in the Midwest. She recently completed her MFA in photography at the University of Minnesota in May 2009 and has since moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. Christianson currently works as a freelance photographer and volunteers at RayKo Photo Center.
SHILOH BURTON: (Self Appointed Acting Director of the GIA) has been actively engaged in the practice of photography for 18 years. She has exhibited nationally since 2000, with many different bodies of work. One fundamental aspect informing all of her work and studio art practice, is collaboration. She “makes” rather than “takes” photographs of the people she frames with her camera. Currently she is pursuing her MFA at San Jose State University and teaching photography at Irvington High School. She is the Self-Appointed Acting Director of THE G.I.A.: Gender Intelligence Agency. The G.I.A. commits itself to showcasing and manifesting a world where fluctuating, contradictory, and stereotypically invisible identities become visible and viable. Therefore, the GIA unravels the confusing concept, commonly assumed to be concrete, and subconsciously or at times consciously constructed and performed by us all, the lived experience of gender.
DOUGLAS DERTINGER”S (image maker) research and creative work focus on issues of community and land use. His work is concerned with the intimate encounter of the unattended, of the tensions between public neglect and private attention and care. He has shown nationally and internationally, and is in the permanent collections of the Princeton University Art Museum and St. Mary’s University Art Gallery, Nova Scotia. Doug holds a BFA in Fine Arts from Colorado State University and an MFA in Fine and Media Arts from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and has taught at a variety of institutions across the U.S., joining the faculty of Photography at California State University in 2008.
STEVE DZERIGIAN (field trip) moved from a background in philosophy and film studies at U.C.L.A, to still photography under the instruction of Jerry McMillan. He instructed field workshops for the University of California, Santa Cruz Extension from 1977 through 2007. From 1984 to 1990, he was an assistant and one time director for The Ansel Adams Gallery Photography Workshop in Yosemite. In 2002, he served as a co-coordinator for the Ansel Adams Centennial Symposium in Yosemite, “Edges and Intersections: The Evolution of Change”. Devoted to facilitating art and education in Central California for the last thirty years, he has served as curator, juror, and consultant for many exhibitions, competitions, and media events, in addition to teaching photography full-time at Fresno City College. In 1979, he expanded the idea of a local gallery by instigating Spectrum Art Gallery, a non-profit, cooperative still providing valuable services to the community. He also was a founding member of Fresno’s “Corridor 2122”, an interdisciplinary art studio and gallery. In numerous one-person and group shows, Steve Dzerigian’s works have been exhibited throughout the United States.
ROBBERT FLICK (honored educator) was born in 1938 and grew up in Amersfoort, Holland. He received a BA from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver and both an MA and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. In addition to being a Getty Scholar, Flick is the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship (2000). In 2004 the Los Angeles County Museum of Art organized his first major retrospective, Trajectories: The Photographic Work of Robbert Flick. Other exhibitions of his work have been held at the International Center for Photography, New York; National Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona; and the Art Institute of Chicago. Other series include L.A. Diary (1967-72), Midwest Diary (1971-76), L.A. Doubles (1976-81), L.A. Documents (1990-2001), and Illinois Series begun in 2001. Flick is a Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California.
RACHEL HUBBARD(image maker) was born in Charleston, Illinois, daughter and granddaughter to avid, though amateur photographers. The camera became an extension of her arm at an early age and she continues to explore the world around her through the lens. After graduating with her BFA from the University of Illinois in 2004, Rachel taught at various high schools before the thirst to return to school was too much to quench. She is graduating in December with her MFA in photography at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. Her work offers insight into identity construction based on subconscious factors, connecting self-perceptions with self-worth. The work is extremely personal, yet universal as she transforms herself through self-portraiture. She enjoys working in all forms within the medium of photography. She was trained in traditional black and white darkroom processes, but has become excited with the never-ending potential of digital photography.
STEPHEN JOHNSON (workshop) is a landscape photographer, designer and teacher. He has been photographing since 1973. His work has been featured in Communication Arts, Life Magazine, American Photo, Outdoor Photographer, and ABC Discovery News, among many others. His books include At Mono Lake, the award winning and critically acclaimed The Great Central Valley: California’s Heartland, Making a Digital Book and the new Stephen Johnson on Digital Photography. Internationally recognized as a digital photography pioneer, Johnson’s photographs have been exhibited, published and collected in the United States, Europe, Mexico and Japan. In 1994 he embarked on With A New Eye, the ground breaking all digital photographic look at American national parks, to be published in due course. In 2003 he was inducted into the Photoshop Hall of Fame. Canon named him to their Explores of Light program in 2006. Stephen is well-known for his passionate lectures and love for the traditions of fine photography. From Photoshop features, to cameras, printers, and papers, Stephen’s consulting with high tech imaging companies have helped shape the very tools we all use today. His photography studios, galleries and education center are located in Pacifica, California.
KATE JORDAHL (teaching discussion) is a professor of Photography and Digital Imaging at Foothill College, Los Altos Hills, California. She has taught for over 25 years and still loves the process of teaching, sharing information and helping students grow. Kate enjoys teaching both on campus and online. Each has its own challenges and joys. She has developed a number of online photography classes and last year was a faculty mentor in online teaching. In 2004, Kate was the recipient of a Congressional Certificate of Recognition honoring leadership and contributions as a teacher and outstanding and invaluable service to the community. In 2008, she was editor of the award winning book, Searching for True North, published by Modernbook Editions and featuring the photographs of Geir Jordahl and the poetry of Norwegian poet, Rolf Jacobsen. Kate Jordahl’s photographs are is in numerous collections including the Bibliothéque Nationale de France, Paris, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California, University of Texas at Dallas, Texas and the Yosemite Museum, Yosemite. Her work is represented by Modernbook Gallery in Palo Alto.
AMANDA KELLER KONYA (image maker) Southern California native Amanda Keller Konya received an MFA from Otis College of Art and Design, a BFA from California Institute of the Arts and an MA from California State University, Northridge. Her practice is image based; she is dedicated to the investigation of the photographic medium, ideas about Photography and the Photographer him/herself. In addition to a constant and critical evaluation of Photography and its continuing state of flux, she takes on the sociopolitical within her work addressing issues such as toxicity, school closures, land use and public/private space. Keller Konya’s work has been exhibited regionally and internationally at a variety of cultural institutions including: The Houston Center for Photography, The Los Angeles International Airport and the Angkor Photography Festival in Siem Reap, Cambodia. She holds Adjunct appointments at Long Beach City College, The Julia Dean Photography Workshops, Cerritos College and Loyola Marymount University in addition to her Santa Monica based studio practice.
SANT KHALSA (workshop) is an artist, educator and activist. Her artworks develop from her inquiry into the nature of place and the many complex issues present and visible in the landscape of the American West. She is Art Department Chair and a Professor of Art (Photography and New Genres) at California State University, San Bernardino. She has practiced and taught Kundalini yoga and meditation since 1973 and has integrated eastern philosophy into her lifestyle, teaching art and art practice.
Khalsa’s artworks are internationally exhibited and acquired by museum collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Nevada Museum of Art, UCR/California Museum of Photography, and others in addition to private and corporate collections. Her artworks are widely published in books including Art in Action: Nature, Creativity and Our Collective Future (Natural World Museum and Earth Aware Editions, 2007) and The Altered Landscape (University of Nevada Press, 1999) and numerous periodicals such as Art in America, Art Ltd., European Photography, Afterimage, Exposure, and the Los Angeles Times. She has received fellowships, awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.
SEAN MCFARLAND (image maker) Sean McFarland is an American-born artist and educator who lives and works in San Francisco, CA. His images explore the relationships between the process of image making, artifice, photographic truth, and the representation of landscape. He is interested in making pictures of the ways in which humans have altered and transformed the natural environment, and in doing so, making pictures of us. McFarland has exhibited his work both internationally and in the United States. He has had solo exhibitions at White Columns, New York City, Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco, CA, and San Francisco Camerawork. His work has been included in shows at the San Jose Museum of Art and the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Headlands Center for the Arts. He is recipient of 2004 fellowship to the National Photography Institute at Columbia University, the 2005 Phelan Award in Photography, a 2009 fellowship and residency at the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, and the 2009 Baum Award for Emerging American Photographers. He earned a BS at Humboldt State University in 2002 and an MFA from the California College of the Arts in 2004.
DIANE MEYER (image maker) uses photography as her primary medium to explore American mythos and forgotten remnants of history. Her work is often inspired by her environs and her most recent work is an exploration of transportation issues in Los Angeles which came about after she got rid of her car to become a full time bicycle and mass transit commuting Angelino. Her work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at the 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica, AIR Gallery, NYC and The Society for Contemporary Photography, Kansas City; as well as numerous group shows in the United States and Canada including The Center for Photography at Woodstock, NY; The Helsinki Biennale; CUE Art Foundation, NYC; NEXT Art Fair, Chicago; The Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids; The Seaport Cultural Center, NYC; Cuchifritos Gallery, NYC; Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, NYC; Lennox Contemporary, Toronto; Rotunda Gallery, NYC; Jen Bekman Gallery, NYC; Spaces Gallery, Cleveland; Jessica Murray Projects, NYC; Arthouse, Austin; and the Holter Museum of Art, Helena amongst other places. She has been an artist in residence with the 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica; the CUE Art Foundation, NYC; Smack Mellon, NYC; and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Residency in the Woolworth Building. Grants include those from the California Council for the Humanities California Stories Fund (2008) and the Durfee Foundation (2005). She received a BFA in Photography from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts and an MFA in Visual Arts from The University of California, San Diego. She is currently as Assistant Professor of Photography at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
KIMBERLY MOBRAY (image maker) Born in Richmond, CA 1980 Kimberly Mowbray has spent the last ten years exploring her world through photography. She recently graduated from the Academy of Art University with her MFA in Photography. Currently she is based in Pacifica, CA. Working primarily in self portraiture, Kimberly exposes the most intimate sides of herself through her photography. By incorporating her figure into landscapes, she is able to express real, honest and raw emotions. She is drawn to alternative processes to more fully communicate the mood of her imagery. Her most current body of work is presented in traditional wet plate collodion.
CATHERINE OPIE (keynote) is an American artist specializing in issues within documentary photography. Throughout her work she has investigated aspects of community, making portraits of many groups including LGBT community; surfers; and most recently high school football players. She’s also interested in how identities are shaped by our surrounding architecture. She is currently a professor of Photography at University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Her works are displayed in both museums and galleries internationally. She has numerous catalogues from museum exhibitions which include, Freeways published by MOCA, Los Angeles, Skyways and Ice Houses, published by The Walker Art Center, 1999/In and Around Home published by the Aldrich Museum, and Chicago by the MCA in Chicago.
She obtained a Master’s degree from California Institute of the Arts School of Art in 1988. Opie was born in Sandusky, Ohio, and currently lives in Los Angeles.
Catherine Opie has won numerous awards which include the 1997 Citibank Private Bank Emerging Artist Award, 1999 Washington University Freund Fellowship, 2003 CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts, 2004 Larry Aldrich Award, San Francisco Art Institute President’s Award for Excellence, and 2006 United States Artist Fellowship.
Her work is featured in a mid-career survey at the Guggenheim Museum in New York from September 26, 2008 till January 7, 2009 curated by Jennifer Blessing. It includes an encyclopedic exhibition catalogue of all of Opie’s almost 200 works since 1988, which are loosely divided into two sections: portraits and landscapes. Her works balance personal and political. Her assertive portraits bring queers to a forefront that is normally silenced by societal norms.
She has photographed high school football players throughout America and creating both landscapes and portraits. This body of work is a continuing look at American identity through iconic images and a redefinition of landscape in a photographic practice.
Catherine Opie is represented by Regen Projects, in Los Angeles, CA , Gladstone Gallery in New York, NY, Stephen Friedman Gallery in London, England and Studio Guenzani in Milan, Italy.
RENEE PECK (image maker) works primarily in self-portraiture, investigating identity, transitional states, and the search for self. She is drawn to photograph the figure in the landscape, often utilizing movement and long exposures to communicate emotion and mood. Her current series is an exploration of fragility and emotional states during times of upheaval and change. Currently working with a 4×5 camera, Renee has worked with many different cameras and photographic processes while pursuing her Masters in Photography from the Academy of Art University. Scheduled to graduate within the year, Renee also holds a BFA in Fine Art with an emphasis in photography from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Renee Peck was born in San Luis Obispo, CA in 1983.
NIGEL POOR (image maker) For the last several years Nigel Poor has been working on a large series called And CountingS that presents various projects that are meant to be viewed and considered as a whole. The series is based on the idea of collecting, counting and asserting control. These projects are a way of investigating what matters, what counts in life and how we attempt to make a mark. One dilemma we have as humans is the need to find meaning and to assert control over what may be a random and chaotic universe. This series explores various ways we do this. It is an attempt to assert a statement of being and to trace the connection between what things are and what they become. This idea is explored through the use of humble materials such as lint, dirt, hair, dead insects, discarded object, written words and fingerprints.
Nigel Poor¹s work has been shown in various venues including: San Jose Museum of Art, Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, Friends of
Photography, SF Camerawork, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. and the Haines Gallery in San Francisco. Her work can be found in the collections of the SFMOMA, the M.H. deYoung Museum, The San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. She has received several nationally recognized awards, including a SF Arts Council Grant, and a Polaroid Artist Support Grant. She was the 2007 artist in residence at the San Francisco Center for the Book.
She received her BA from Bennington College in Vermont and her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. Currently she is an Associate Professor at CSU Sacramento.
PATRICIA RUSSOTTI (workshop) is an artist, educator, and international presenter. She is a Professor in the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences, College of Imaging Arts & Sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology. She is an active digital and photographic imaging artist producing a wide range of work for corporations, public service organizations, museums, individual artistic commissions, funded projects, and public exhibitions. She has done extensive consulting for in-house graphic service departments, ad agencies, and photography studios. These endeavors focus on assessing and refining existing workflows, creating new workflows, establishing best practices, and providing training programs. Patti is also committed to providing Best Practices, Industry Standards, technology and software training and updates to faculty in colleges and universities assisting with their integration into the curriculum. Patti has been training and presenting on Adobe Photoshop since the first version of the application. She develops and presents technical and creative corporate seminars, workshops, and training programs. Patti’s career has a breadth and depth of experience and skill in workflow, image making (analog, digital, alternative, and historic processes), the creative process, design, and education. Patti holds M.S. and Ed.S. Degrees from Indiana University.
JULIA SCHLOSSER (image maker) is a Los Angeles based artist and writer. Her artwork seeks to elucidate the complicated and multilayered relationships formed between people and their pets. Recent photographs and videos were seen in the exhibitions Tier-Perspektiven (Animal Perspectives) at the Souterrain Gallery, Berlin, Germany and Animal Magnetism at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art. Her exhibition reviews have been published in THE Magazine, Los Angeles. She completed her M.F.A. in photography at CSU, Fullerton and her M.A. in art history at CSU, Northridge. Schlosser teaches photography and the history of photography at various Southern California institutions.
LIENA VAYZMAN (workshop) is a photographer, scholar, and curator. She earned a PhD in History of Art at Yale University, completing a dissertation on the relationship between photographic strategies and the politics of queer self-representation in the work of Claude Cahun. Her research on avant-garde and postmodern photography led to an expanded vision of lens-based and politically engaged art practice today. Liena Vayzman curated “HOME: The Aesthetics and Politics of Home in Contemporary Art” (Root Division, San Francisco), “Tim Thompson: Captured Accidents: Valencia Street Live” and “Maria the Korean Bride” (Artists Television Access Window, San Francisco), and co-curated “Chance Operations” and “Night Light: An Evening of Luminous Environments” at the Climate Theater, SF. She has written on Richard Prince, Alice Austen, Maya Deren, and the Societe Anonyme (Katherine Dreier and Marcel Duchamp). After completing the international fine arts postgraduate program in Nantes, France, her photographs have been exhibited internationally at Glassbox, Paris; Duchess Anne Hotel, Nantes; Root Division, RayKo and ATA, San Francisco; Wartburg College Art Gallery, Iowa; the Baltimore Erotic Arts Festival; Athens Institute of Contemporary Art, Georgia; and Grunert Gasser, New York. She has taught courses on contemporary and historical issues in photography at Rhode Island School of Design, the New School, and San Jose State University. Her new research on food and gardening as sustainability activism will be presented in the “Artist as Citizen” session at the 2010 College Art Association conference. http://www.lienavayzman.com
