Creative Director and Publisher of The PhotoBook Review, Aperture Foundation (USA)

Lesley Martin was talking briefly about Aperture, which was founded by 3 women in a collective of 6 individuals and have had strong women behind the scenes ever since in individuals like Nancy Newhall, Carole Kismaric, and Melissa Harris. She spoke a bit about the vigilance required to maintain an inclusive list of books, and about forthcoming projects, including a book and exhibition project in the works on Japanese women photographers from the 1990s.

Slide from Lesley Martin’s presentation

Lesley A. Martin is creative director and publisher of The PhotoBook Review, a newsprint journal dedicated to the evolving conversation surrounding the photobook. Her writing on photography has been published in Aperture, American Photo, FOAM, and Lay Flat, among other publications, and she has edited over seventy-five books of photography, including Reflex: A Vik Muniz Primer; On the Beach by Richard Misrach; Paris • New York • Shanghai by Hans Eijkelboom; Tokyo by Takashi Homma; Paul Strand in Mexico; Illuminance and Ametsuchi by Rinko Kawauchi; and Enclave by Richard Mosse. She has curated several exhibitions of photography, including The Ubiquitous Image, part of the inaugural New York Photo Festival in 2008;  the New York Times Magazine Photographs, cocurated with Kathy Ryan (2011); and in 2012, Aperture Remix, a commission-based exhibition celebrating Aperture’s sixtieth anniversary. In 2015, she was named a visiting critic to the Yale MFA Photography program.

Professor, Video and Television Production at the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre at Jamia Millia Islamia (India)

All ‘Dressed Up’:  Costume, Fashion and Identity in the Photographs of Homai Vyarawalla

“India’s first woman press photographer, Vyarawalla was largely known for her press photographs documenting important events and personalities in the 1950s and 1960s. In this speculative paper, I explore a section of Homai Vyarawalla’s negatives that feature middle and upper class women dressing up at social events. What would ‘Nehruvian India’ – a period mostly defined through post independence mainstream politics – look like if it were viewed through the lens of women’s fashion and other forms of masquerade? If ‘dressing up’ could be seen as different from ‘dressing’- a more utilitarian attitude towards clothes, what could Vyarwalla’s many pictures of fashion shows and costume contests tell us about gender, race and identity at this historical moment? And, what could these images that straddle photo- journalism as well as a form of fashion photography reveal about her practice?”

Image: from archive of Homai Vyarawalla

Sabeena Gadihoke is Professor, Video and Television Production at the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre at Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi. She is also a photo historian and has curated several shows on Indian photography the most recent of which is Lightworks: A Jitendra Arya Retrospective that opened at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai this month. She was a Fulbright Fellow at Syracuse University during 1995-6 and has received grants from India Foundation for the Arts, the Charles Wallace Trust and the Majlis Foundation for her research on photography. Her book on India’s first woman photo-journalist, Camera Chronicles of Homai Vyarawalla (Mapin/ Parzor Foundation) was published in 2006. Gadihoke has several years of experience as a documentary filmmaker and cameraperson. Her film Three Women and a Camera won awards at the Film South Asia at Kathmandu (1999) and at the Mumbai International Film Festival (2000). Her current research interests focus on the intersection of the moving and still image.

AKO Foundation Assistant Curator of Photography at the Roger Ballen Foundation Centre for Photography at Zeitz MOCAA (South Africa)

History and Memorialisation: The Absence of Black Women’s Bodies in Historical Archives.

The South African artists discussed in this presentation use the medium of photography as a tool of empowerment and to critique how it was previously a tool of epistemic violence. They rewrite the narrative of the historical archive and sites of memory, critique the narratives represented by colonial and apartheid historical monuments, reveal the contradictions inherent within a post-colonial culture, reclaim an ignored narrative from the history of slavery to create fictional narratives that represent an alternative notion of the archive, and which interrogates the archival form. The alternative archive is the space for subversion and an intervention to the prejudice and imperialist narrative that had prevailed in the past and still exist presently. These artists are re-constructing narratives of representation or evaluating a misrepresentation of the past.

Sethembile Msezane, Chapungu-The Day Rhodes Fell, public performance, 2015

Gcotyelwa Mashiqa was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. Currently Mashiqa is the AKO Foundation Assistant Curator of Photography at the Roger Ballen Foundation Centre for Photography at Zeitz MOCAA (Cape Town, South Africa). Mashiqa has completed the Curatorial Training Programme at the Centre for Curatorial Excellence at Zeitz MOCAA. In July 2016, Mashiqa co-curated “Escape by Night” at the V&A Waterfront Amphitheatre (Cape Town, South Africa), a new media programme of contemporary video art by artists from Africa and its Diaspora. Mashiqa completed a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Curatorship at the Centre for Curating the Archive at Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town (Cape Town, South Africa). From 2013 to 2014, Mashiqa completed an internship at the Department of Arts and Culture in the Cultural Development Unit (Pretoria, South Africa). In 2011, Mashiqa obtained a Bachelor of Technology in Fine Art, Central University of Technology (Bloemfontein, South Africa). From 2004 to 2005, Mashiqa was a student at the Arts and Media Access Centre (AMAC) (Cape Town, South Africa). While a student at AMAC, Mashiqa’s photographic series “Through the Looking Hole” was included in a group exhibition curated by Gabi Ngcobo entitled “Women Spaces/Kvinniliga Rum/Imiba Yethu”. This exhibition included work by students at AMAC and Wik Folk High School (Uppsala, Sweden) and was showcased at AMAC and the Multicultural Centre of Botkyrka (Stockholm, Sweden). In her position at Zeitz MOCAA, Mashiqa currently assist the Director with the management of the Curatorial Training Programme. Including curating the exhibition that will inaugurate the Zeitz MOCAA Roger Ballen Foundation Centre for Photography. Furthermore, she’s assisting Azu Nwagbogu in curating Early-Career Retrospective of Kudzanai Chiurai.

Artist / Professor of Art at the University of Rhode Island and Director of the Center for the Humanities (USA)

Presentation on her own work and her interests of being transnational / Migration of Memory.

Matthew’s recent work is a striking blend of still and moving imagery that takes advantage of the uncertainty between the “reality” of a photograph and digital manipulation to prompt the viewer to reexamine and reconsider parallel identities and histories. “Open Wound – Stories of Partition – India & Pakistan” explores the powerful appeal of family photographs through ephemeral photo-animations combined with oral history, and how they shape identity and memory.

From series ‘An Indian from India’, Annu Palakunnathu Matthew

Annu Palakunnathu Matthew‘s photo-based artwork explores re-looking at cultural histories, identity, and memory. Her recent solo exhibitions include the Royal Ontario Museum, Nuit Blanche Toronto and sepiaEYE, NYC. Matthew has also exhibited her work at the RISD Museum, Newark Art Museum, Tang Museum, San Jose Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts (TX), Victoria & Albert Museum (London), Sharjah Art Museum (UAE), as well as at the Smithsonian. In addition, her work can be found in numerous permanent collections, such the George Eastman House, Harvard University Art Museum, Royal Ontario Museum, Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Center for Creative Photography (AZ) and the RISD Museum among others. Grants supporting her work include a Fulbright, John Guttman and Rhode Island Council for the Arts fellowships. Matthew is Professor of Art at the University of Rhode Island and Director of the Center for the Humanities and the 2015-17 Silvia Chandley Professor for Peace Studies and Non Violence.

Professor in the Visual Arts, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Brazil)

Games of Distance and Proximity

Patricia Azevedo talked about ‘collaboration’ in caring out specific projects that, in affinity with their artistic propositions, demand to build a field of action and critical debate using other strategies of fomentation, circulation and commercialization involving different media and cultural agents.

Slide from Particia Azevedo’s presentation

Patricia Azevedo, is a visual artist, graduated in Philosophy from the Université Paris VIII, France, with a Master’s degree in Political Philosophy (“Art and Action in Leon Battista Alberti”) and PhD in Visual Arts (“Games of Distance and Proximity: the construction of dialogic space in performative art” with CAPES Award for research at The Warburg Institute-Archive and LADA-Live Art Development Agency, London, under the co-orientation of Dr. Kiff Bamford, UK) both at the University Federal of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil, where she teaches Photography and Performance in the Visual Arts Course. She develops collaborative projects in different media, investigating relations of language, territory and power, working in the public space of the city or the media itself, a work marked by the relationships that are established between people and the communicative act. She participated in several exhibitions and residences in Brazil and abroad including the most recent such as: 21st Experimental Film Festival of Bogotá, Colombia (2017); No Quiet Place, curator Zoe Sawyer, The Tetley Center for Contemporary Art, UK, (2016); Family Album, curator Daniella Geo, Centro de Arte Hélio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro, BR (2015); 4th Bienalle of Lubumbachi, Curators Toma Muteba Luntumbue and Daniella Geo, Congo (2015); Digging the Future, curators Renata Marquez and Felipe Scovino, Belo Horizonte, BR (2014). She composes the curatorship team of the exhibitions of FIF BH – International Photography Festival of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. She is from Recife, lives and works in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

Artist / Lecturer  / Network Facilitator at UCA (Estonia/UK)

An exhibition ‘Dream is Wonderful, Yet Unclear’: voices of women in her work

Maria presented her the most recent and the biggest so far exhibition Dream is Wonderful, Yet Unclear (Estonia, 2017) where she explores a social heritage of a closed textile mill back in her hometown in combination with her personal stories.

Cutbacks (2017), collage from found photograph, acrylic

Maria Kapajeva is Network Facilitator for the project ‘Fast Forward: Women in Photography’ and co-Editor of its online platform. She is a Fellow of HEA, teaches at UCA (Farnham). Maria Kapajeva is an Estonian artist who is based in London Her multicultural background informs her practice of mining a diverse spectrum of cultural identity and gender issues within historical and contemporary contexts. She works with stories and histories that grow out of the collection of vernacular photography that she finds in archives, old family albums, on the internet or in flea markets. Kapajeva appropriates and deconstructs these images while looking for stories that have been forgotten or are about to disappear. Working with video, installation and object-based art she embeds found objects and images into unique pieces using various printing and stitching techniques. In 2018 she won the Runner-Up Award at FOKUS Video Art Festival, Denmark and in 2016 she got a Gasworks & Triangle Network Fellowship to work at Kooshk Residency in Tehran. Her work was internationally exhibited including the most recent: RIBOCA Biennial (Latvia, 2018), Kaunas Photography Gallery (Lithuania, 2018), Narva Art Residency (Estonia, 2017), WOAK Gallery (Poland, 2017), Detroit Oloman Gallery (USA, 2017). Her video works participated at Luminocity Festival (Canada, 2018), NexT Film Festival (Romania, 2017) and Berlin Feminist Film Week (2016). Maria’s first artist book ‘You can call him another man’ was shortlisted for Aperture Photobook Award in 2018. www.mariakapajeva.com

Assistant Curator in the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art (USA)

An upcoming exhibition ‘Being: New Photography 2018’, which opens in March 2018

Lucy Gallun discussed some works and themes explored in an upcoming exhibition she is organizing, Being: New Photography 2018 (opens in March). The majority of the artists in the exhibition are women. The works respond to a range of issues and tactics including interrogations of traditional modes of portraiture in the history of photography, the use of surrogates or masks as replacements for the body, tensions between privacy and exposure, and the agency of the sitter and of the artist.

Lucy Gallun is Assistant Curator in the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. She has curated or co-curated several recent exhibitions at MoMA including Being: New Photography 2018 (upcoming); Unfinished Conversations: New Work from the Collection (2017); Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (2016-17); Ocean of Images: New Photography 2015 (2015-16); Soldier, Spectre, Shaman: The Figure and the Second World War (2015-16); and Art on Camera: Photographs by Shunk-Kender, 1960–1971 (2015). Gallun is also co-editor of Photography at MoMA, a three-volume history of photography at the Museum. Prior to joining the Department of Photography at MoMA, Gallun was the Whitney Lauder Curatorial Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Philadelphia, and she was a Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program (ISP).

Director of sepia EYE gallery (USA)

Esa Epstein presented her most recent project on the building of the Jodhpur Photography Museum and the oral history project particularly geared towards women who have worked with the palace.

Image from Esa Epstein’s presentation. The Jodhpur Photography Museum.

Esa Epstein has worked within the art and specifically photography field for the last twenty five years.  After completing her  graduate work in 1990, at NYU in Near East studies and museology, she has worked in educational institutions as well as commercial ventures.  During her tenure as the Executive Director and Curator of SEPIA International and The Alkazi Collection (1995-2009) a unique merger of a commercial gallery and a private archive located in New York, London and New Delhi , Epstein has been instrumental in building collections of photography from South Asia in leading museums internationally including Harvard Art Museums, Philadelphia Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Metropolitan Museum. Esa Epstein has published eight titles on modern and contemporary Asian photography (including:Atul Bhalla: Yamuna Walk (sepiaEYE & UW Press, 2011), Jungjin Lee: Wind (Aperture/SEPIA, 2009); Ketaki Sheth: Bombay Mix (Dewi Lewis/SEPIA, 2007); and Vivan Sundaram: Re-take of Amrita, (SEPIA, 2006). In her former position, Esa Epstein has helped build an impressive collection of Indian photography and continues to offer her expertise to both private and public collections. Esa Epstein continues to offer institutional planning and arts management through sepia EYE, a commercial gallery begun in 2009.

Artist / Professor of Photography & Imaging at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and Associate Faculty at The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics (USA)

 How can I, as an artist, intersect with this social moment?

ABOVE THE FOLD, installation in progress in Novak’s studio

Lorie Novak is an artist and Professor of Photography & Imaging at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and Associate Faculty at The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. Her photographs,  installations, and Internet projects explore issues of memory and transmission, the relationship between the intimate and the public, and the shifting cultural meanings of photographs.  In her ongoing Above The Fold project, she has saved the front page-sections of the New York Times from 1999 to the present and categorized them according to content of the photograph above the fold. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, and she is the recipient of a 2016 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Photography. She is also Director and Founder, Tisch Future Imagemakers, a participatory photography project offering free digital photography classes to NYC area high school students.  www.lorienovak.com

Professor of Contemporary Art and Photography and Director of the Fine Art & Photography Research Centre, UCA (UK)

Professor Jean Wainwrights talk concentrated on her international archive of interviews with female artists. Based on extracts from  conversations with women photographers from the last twenty years – she discussed the way that they  articulate their practice, the dynamics of the interview and very different conversations that emerge.

Slide from Jean Wainwright’s presentation

Jean Wainwright’s areas of expertise are in contemporary art and photography. As a writer and academic she has published extensively in the contemporary arts field. She had curated a number of international exhibitions both in the UK and in Europe. Wainwright’s practice as an art critic most prominently features interviews with international artists, photographers, filmmakers and curators. Her entire unedited Audio Arts interviews dating from 1996 was acquired in 2006 by the Tate Gallery. Her interviews take place in both the UK and internationally, at artists studios or in galleries, museums and alternative spaces. To date she has conducted over one thousand interviews and this continues to grow. Jean Wainwright is based in London. She is a Professor of Contemporary Art and Photography at the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) where she is Director of the Fine Art & Photography Research Centre.  jeanwainwright.com

Director of The Finnish Museum of Photography in Helsinki (Finland)

Women in Photography in Finland – The Gender Issue

Elina Heikka focused on photographers of different generations, Leena Saraste (born 1942), Ulla Jokisalo (born 1955)and Elina Brotherus (born 1972), reflecting their work in the historical context and from gender perspective. How it has been to study and work in photography in Finland as a woman since the 1950´s?

work by Ulla Jokisalo

Elina Heikka is Museum Director at The Finnish Museum of Photography in Helsinki since 2007. The Museum, founded in 1969, is the national special museum for photography and puts on exhibitions of Finnish and foreign contemporary photography, and presents the diverse history of photography.  Elina Heikka holds MA in art history. She was editor and editor-in-chief  in Valokuva – Finnish Photography magazine from 1994 to1998. After that she worked as a researcher at the Finnish Museum of Photography and as a special researcher at the National Gallery / Central Art Archives from 2001 to 2007.  She has published widely on contemporary photography, history of Finnish photography, contemporary art and visual culture. Since 1994 she has lectured extensively, for example as a guest lecturer at the University of Art and Design  (Aalto University since 2010), at Turku Art Academy and abroad. She has curatorial experience from photo gallery Workshop (Helsinki, Finland 1996-1998) and several museums in Helsinki.

Artist/ Co-Founder and Editor-in Chief of MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora

MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora: is bi-annual journal committed to establishing and representing a collective voice of women photographers of African descent. The inaugural issue of Mfon features 100 women photographers across the Diaspora. Our talk, during Fast Forward’s New York City presentation focused on the diverse range of photographers included within women photographers of the African diaspora. These women vary in genre, location, subject matter and approach to making work.  It was quite interesting to see that quite a few of the women that Fawundu spoke about use commercial photography to support their art practice as photographers. 

Cover of the first issue MFON magazine

Adama Delphine Fawundu is a visual artist working in Brooklyn, NY with over 20 years experience in using photography as a visual language. She is the co-founder/Editor of MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora.  She is a 2016 awardee of the New York Foundation of the Arts Artist Fellowship. Delphine Fawundu’s works has been exhibited in institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum of Art, International Center of Photography, Rush Arts Gallery, the Lagos Photo Festival, Norton Museum of Art, Villa La Pietra (Italy) and the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago).   Her work is included in anthologies such as Africa Under the Prism: Contemporary African Photography from the Lagos Photo Festival, Black: A Celebration of Black Culture Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present.  She’s been awarded the New York Foundation of the Arts Artist Fellowship and Brooklyn Arts Council Grant. Her works can be found in the the collections at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Norton Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Historical Society and The Museum of Contemporary Art, University of São Paulo. www.delphinefawundu.com

Artist (USA)

Nona Faustine’s work in The White Shoes and Monument series.

Nona Faustine. From series ‘White Shoes’

Photographer and Visual artist Nona Faustine was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. She is a graduate of The School of Visual Arts and The International Center of Photography at Bard College MFA program in 2013. Her work focuses on identity, representation, and our collective relationship to history. Nona Faustine’s images have received world wide attention, and has been published in a variety of national and international media outlets such as the New York Times, Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, New Yorker, The Guardian, Elle Magazine, Artforum, among many others. Faustine’s work has been exhibited at the Schomburg Center for Black Research in Harlem, the International Center of Photography in New York, Mana Contemporary, the Studio Museum of Harlem, the Institute of Fine Art, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, St. Johns Divine Cathedral in NYC, College of Staten Island, University of Conneticut, and Boston University among many others. She had her first solo exhibition at Smack Mellon 2016, and her second solo exhibition at Baxter St. Camera Club NY in January 2017. Faustine’s work is in the permanent collection of the Studio Museum of Harlem and the David C Driskell Center at Maryland State University. nonafaustine.virb.com

Artist (USA)

Jesse Chun presented her art practice to explore the intersection of conceptual approaches in digital art, and issues of identity.

Image: Jess Chun

Jesse Chun is a visual artist based in New York. Her work has been exhibited at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Spencer Brownstone Gallery, Julie Saul Gallery, Fridman Gallery in New York, the Newspace Center for Photography in Portland, and ArtCenter/SouthFlorida in Miami. Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, Art21, the Wall Street Journal, and Art in America. She is a teaching artist at the Museum of Modern Art. www.jessechun.com

Artist (UK)

What he was thinking? 

‘What was he thinking?’ – London-based artist Carey Young gave an introduction to her lens-based work, including works currently on show in her solo show at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York such as the video Palais de Justice (2017) and the Before the Law series (2017), both of which explore the complex relations between law, lenses, gender and ideas of framing or being framed.

Carey Young, from series ‘Before the law’

In Carey Young’s cross-media work, photographs and video are often rooted in a conceptual schema situated within, and playfully critiquing globalised systems of law, rights and commerce. Her solo exhibitions include Dallas Museum of Art (2017), Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2013), Le Quartier, Quimper (2013), Eastside Projects, Birmingham and tour, (2010 – 2011), Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, and The Power Plant, Toronto (both 2009), Index, Stockholm (2003). As well as participating in numerous biennials, group exhibitions include Aspen Art Museum (2016), Henry Moore Institute (2016), Centre Pompidou (2015), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2012), the New Museum, New York (2011), MoMA/PS1, New York (2010), Tate Britain (2010), Hayward Gallery (2006) and Secession, Vienna (2002). Based in London, she is represented by Paula Cooper Gallery, New York and her photographic works are in the collections of the Tate, Arts Council England and Dallas Museum of Art as well as private collections. A monograph on her work, Subject to Contract, was published by JRP|Ringier in 2013. She has a solo exhibition, Palais de Justice, at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, from Sept 7 to 14 Oct 2017. www.careyyoung.com

Artist (USA)

Giving Away Our Secrets

A presentation of seven contemporary women photographers of color who have recorded and reimagined their own family (his)stories, willingly displaying what most keep private. These intimate works do not singularly define their visions but are instead the foundations for creative social critique.

Slide from Qiana Mestrich’s presentation

Qiana Mestrich is a mother, photographer, writer and digital marketing professional from Brooklyn, NY. She is the founder of Dodge & Burn: Decolonizing Photography History (est. 2007, dodgeburnphoto.com/), a blog that seeks to record a more inclusive history of photography. Mestrich is also co-editor of the book How We Do Both: Art and Motherhood (Secretary Press). Her work is represented by sepiaEYE Gallery in New York. She is a graduate of the ICP-Bard College MFA in Advanced Photographic practice.  www.qianamestrich.com

Artist / Professor of Photography, UCA (UK)

Survival in the Art Market and Living to tell the Tale.

Karen Knorr’s talked about how she survived the volatility of the photography art market over 30 years: from her first solo exhibition in Paris in 1980 to her solo exhibition sin London in Tate Britain in 2014 and her most recent exhibitions at Danziger and Jackson Fine Art.

Karen Knorr, from series ‘Ladies’

Karen Knorr  (USA / UK) was born in Germany and grew up in San Juan Puerto Rico in the 1960’s. She currently lives in London.  She is Professor of Photography at the University for the Creative Arts since 2010. Karen Knorr’s photography explores cultural heritage and its ideological underpinings. Questions concerning post colonialism and its relationship to aesthetics have permeated her photographic work since the 1980’s.  Karen Knorr won the V International Photography Pilar Citoler Prize in 2010. She has been nominated for the Deutsche Börse in 2011 and 2012 and Prix Pictet in 2012. She exhibited her work Belgravia andGentlemen  at Tate Britain in 2014- 2015 .She was recently awarded a Daiwa Foundation Grant to continue projects in Japan.  Knorr exhibits her work globally  and is included in collections including :Museum of London, Tate, Pompidou, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art , Folkwang Museum, Essen, Kyoto Museum of Modern  Art. She is currently represented by Tasveer Art(Bangalore) Augusta Edwards(U.K.) Fille du Calvaire (France) Danziger Gallery(New York) Slowtrack (Madrid)  karenknorr.com

Artist / Associate Professor of Photography at FIT NYC (USA)

Crystal Flowers: living with Florine Stettheimer

Allison Wade discussed her project Crystal Flowers, which delves into the metaphysical world by channeling and using shamanic communication with the spirit of Florine Stettheimer and her family.  Working with artists whose work echo Florine’s ethos, Crystal Flowers will host bi-monthly exhibitions, dinners, and salon gatherings that foster conversation and conjure the spirit of what occurred in the space 100 years ago.

Slide from Allison Wade’s presentation

Allison Wade received her MFA from Cornell University (2006) and her MA from the University of New Mexico (2004). Past exhibitions include Spell, Dillon + Lee Gallery, New York; Roger Ailes Memorial Show, Yours Mine and Ours Gallery New York; Reset, Garis & Hahn Gallery, New York;  It’s Not You, Rick Wester Fine Art, New York,  Dirtier Words, Guest Spot, Baltimore; Pulse Art Fair Miami; Southwestern Biennial, Albuquerque Museum of Art; Peekskill Project, The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art; and New American Talent, Austin Contemporary Museum. Wade lives and works in New York City and is an Associate Professor of Photography at FIT SUNY.  www.florinestettheimer.org

Artist (USA)

Lola Flash spoke to the beauty of marginalised people and the ways that stereotypes can often be tragic using samples from her own work.

Lola Flash, from series ‘(sur)passing’

Lola Flash uses photography to challenge stereotypes and offer new ways of seeing that explore, interrogate and transcend perceived gender, sexual, age and racial norms. She brings many years of experience as a teacher and photographer. Flash is a woman with a variety of diverse skills derived from engaging in high and low art, facilitating children, adolescents and adults from diverse cultural backgrounds, from traveling and enjoying life as such. Her eternal passion is for the medium of photography and its ability to visually allure while initiating change and progress.  Flash received her bachelor’s degree from Maryland Institute, College of Art and her Masters from The London College of Printing. She works primarily in portraiture with a 4×5 film camera. All of her projects are grounded in a global benevolence. A key consideration,  is to seek the differences and similarities of people and places around the world, directly engaging those who are often deemed invisible. Flash is particularly focused on the ways societies and unjust laws critically challenge our lives.  In 2008, she was a resident at Lightwork, and in 2011 was awarded an Art Matters grant, which allowed her to develop projects in Puerto Rico, Brazil and London. In 2015, she was Artist-in-Residence at Alice Yard in Trinidad. Her work is included in important public collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Flash is part of the award winning film Through a Lens Darkly and is also featured in the publication Posing Beauty, edited by Deb Willis, currently on exhibit across the US. In, 2016, she co-led a tour, with Sur Rodney Sur, at the AIDS Art in America exhibition in the Bronx Museum. Flash spoke to the glaring lack of women and people of color in the exhibit and shared images that she created as an ACT UP member during the height of the AIDS crisis in NYC. Most recently, she was invited to join Kamoinge, a collective of African-American photographers seeking artistic equality.  Flash’s work welcomes audiences who are willing to not only look but, more importantly, see. www.lolaflash.com

Artist / Professor of Fine Art / Head of Slade School of Fine Art at UCL (UK)

Susan Collins works across public, gallery and online spaces employing transmission, networking and time as primary materials. Most of her work is made in response to specific sites and situations.  Key works include the BAFTA nominated Tate in Space, Tate Online (2002); Transporting Skies (2002) which transported sky (and other phenomena) live between Newlyn Art Gallery, Penzance in Cornwall and Site Gallery Sheffield in Yorkshire; Fenlandia (2004) and Glenlandia (2005) – live year long pixel by pixel internet transmissions from remote landscapes; Seascape (2009) a solo show for the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea and short films including Love Brid (2009) for Animate Projects’ ‘Coastcards’ and Wild Life (2016) for Tintype Gallery’s ‘Essex Road III’. Public commissions include Underglow (2005-6), a network of illuminated drains for the Corporation of London and Brighter Later (2013), a site specific light installation for the Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford driven by live weather data. Recent works include Wembury & Woolacombe (2015), commissioned by the RAMM, Exeter in association with the National Trust, and LAND (2017), a live transmission from Jerusalem looking across the West Bank towards the Jordanian mountains. Susan Collins is Slade Professor and Director of the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL where she established the Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art (SCEMFA) in 1995. www.susan-collins.net

Photographer / Professor of Photography at UCA (UK)

Anna Fox is an acclaimed British photographer and Professor of Photography at University for the Creative Arts. Working in colour, Fox first gained attention for Work Stations(1988), a study of office culture in Thatcher’s Britain. She is best known for Zwarte Piet (1993-8), a series of portraits exploring Dutch black-face’ folk traditions. Other projects The Village (1992), a multi-media installation examines the experiences of rural women, and Friendly Fire, records paint-balling in war reportage style. Her publications includeCockroach Diary and My Mother’s Cupboards (2000), Anna Fox Photographs 1983 – 2007, published by Photoworks. Fox’s solo shows include Photographer’s Gallery, London, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago amongst others. Her work has been in international group shows including Centre of the Creative Universe: Liverpool and the Avant Garde at Tate Liverpool and How We Are: Photographing Britain at Tate Britain. She was shortlisted for the 2010 Deutsche Borse Prize. Fox has been awarded grants from UKIERI and PMI2 for collaborative work in India and in 2015 was lead organizer for the Fast Forward conference at Tate Modern. In  2016 she was awarded an International Network grant from the Leverhulme Foundation for the Fast Forward 2 project concerned with raising the profile of women in photography.  www.annafox.co.uk

Co-director of Dillon + Lee Gallery (USA)

Diana Seo Hyung Lee is a New York City based writer, translator, and partner of Dillon + Lee. Lee joined Dillon Gallery in 2012 and was instrumental in the new direction of the gallery and alongside Valerie Dillon has operated the international expansion and presence through art fairs and curated exhibitions. She became partner in the fall of 2016. Lee’s writing and translations have appeared in Flash Art, The Brooklyn Rail, ArtSlant, Degree Critical Blog, ArtAsiaPacific, and The Forgetory, an online publication she helped start, where she currently serves as a contributing editor. She received her MFA in Art Criticism and Writing from The School of Visual Arts in 2012 and BFA in Fine Art with a concentration in Sculpture and Printmaking from Cornell University in 2008.