The conference will run from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Ekstrom Library’s Chao Auditorium. UofL’s Center for Arts and Culture Partnerships is offering the community event.
The $20 registration includes lunch, a book-signing session and the opening reception for two of the photo exhibits at UofL’s Hite Art Institute, Schneider Hall. Registration is encouraged by Oct. 10 as seating is limited; to register, call 502-852-2247 or email janna@louisville.edu University students who register may attend free.
Keynote speakers will be Tom Rankin, director of Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, and Shelby Lee Adams, a photographer whose book “Salt & Truth” about eastern Kentucky is set for October publication.
Conference topics will include:
- “Photography and Community,” UofL College of Arts and Sciences Dean and photography book co-author Blaine Hudson, Andy Warhol Museum archivist Matt Wrbican and UofL Photographic Archives photo wrangler Bill Carner.
- “Photography and Conflict,” International Center for Photography photographer Ed Grazda, photographer-filmmaker Molly Bingham and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Lucian Perkins.
- “Historical Contexts,” UofL Photographic Archives curator Elizabeth Reilly, Kentucky Historical Society collections director Louise Jones and George Mason University associate professor Sue Wrbican.
Two exhibits that UofL’s Hite Art Institute is hosting in conjunction with the photo biennial will have opening events Oct. 14. They will be at the Hite Galleries in Schneider Hall on Belknap Campus:
- Patrick McDonogh: Grapplers and Fans, Oct. 6-Nov. 13. The exhibit examines good versus evil by photo documenting participants at the OVW professional wrestling school in Louisville. The exhibit’s opening reception will follow the 4:30 p.m. Documentary Photography Symposium, in which McDonogh will participate.
- Guy Mendes: 40/40: Forty Years, Forty Portraits, Oct. 14-Nov.13. The exhibit highlights photographs of people who have crossed paths with Mendes from the streets of New Orleans to the hills of Kentucky. They are from a book by the same name that Institute 193 in Lexington, Ky., published.
Also in conjunction with the photo biennial, the Hite is hosting:
- Mitch Eckert: Dialogue/Object, at the Cressman Center for Visual Art, Sept. 30-Oct. 29. Reception Sept. 30, 6 p.m.-9 p.m. The exhibit surveys 15 years of Eckert’s photographic work exploring the theme of still life.
- Anne Arden McDonald: Diana Series Photos, at Hite galleries, Oct. 3-Nov. 13. McDonald will give a lecture titled “Flying and Floating” Oct. 4 at 6 p.m. The opening reception will follow. “The Diana Series” is an overview of McDonald’s 20 years of exploration with the Diana camera, a 1950’s children’s camera with an uncoated plastic lens that produces fuzzy vignette images. The series is divided into two separate collections. The first is a visual poem about falling or floating in a dreamlike state. The second, the “Pillow Book,” is in collaboration with Radek Grosman. Together, the photographers worked in abandoned spaces to capture the tension between the attractiveness of the figure and the desolate nature of the spaces.
The Louisville Photo Biennial represents a cooperative effort among local museums, galleries, universities and other public venues to give people the opportunity to learn about and appreciate photography – its history and current state, local and global. It includes more than 30 photo exhibits, workshops, symposia and public discussions city-wide.
