Lecture Series: Kenneth Josephson at DAM Thursday

Anderman Photography Lecture Series: Kenneth Josephson
Thursday, April 30, 2015
7:00pm, Sharp Auditorium

Anderman Photography Lecture Series: Kenneth Josephson

Thursday, April 30, 2015 - 7:00pm – 8:30pm
Sharp Auditorium, Denver Art MuseumTicketed with member discount. Purchase tickets online or call 720-913-0130.

Photography itself is the primary subject of Kenneth Josephson’s work. From early in his career, he would raise questions about the history and theory of the medium that would later become predominant in cultural criticism. His interest in the ways the camera manipulates what we see—how it abstracts space, compresses three dimensions into two, divorces subjects from their context, and arrests time and motion—draws attention to the act of making a photograph and what that implies. Yet Josephson addresses these intellectual concerns through witty, visual puzzles that make clear the conundrum of the medium: while a photograph implies reality, what is presented in a picture is substantially different than the world around us.

Josephson’s photography is notable for the recurrence of several significant ideas and subjects throughout his work: an interest in found or constructed marks in the landscape, multiple images (whether through exposure, placement of pictures within pictures, or collaging), effects created by scale and camera placement, and his own intervention into the photograph. By acknowledging the world outside the edges of the photograph and revealing more than the eye can perceive, Josephson emphasizes that making a picture is both an intellectual and a creative act.

Born in 1932 in Detroit, Michigan, Josephson studied with Minor White and Beaumont Newhall at the Rochester Institute of Technology and Aaron Siskind and Harry Callahan at the Institute of Design. In 1961, he became the first professor of photography at the Art Institute of Chicago where he would continue an academic affiliation until 1997. He was instrumental in the founding of the Society of Photographic Education in 1963. A retrospective catalog of Josephson’s work is forthcoming from the University of Texas press in 2016.


Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Lecture tickets are $5 for students, $10 for DAM members and CPAC members, $15 for general admission.
For additional details, e-mail photography@denverartmuseum.org.

The Anderman Photography Lecture Series presents quarterly talks by the preeminent creators and thinkers in photography today. Series funding is generously provided by Evan and Elizabeth Anderman.

Image credit:  Kenneth Josephson, Stockholm, 1967. © Kenneth Josephson; Courtesy Stephen Daiter Gallery.


Upcoming Speakers:

Anderman Photography Lecture Series:
Alec Soth

Friday, June 5, 2015

Alec Soth studies the habits and rituals of ordinary Americans, finding moments of self-absorption and vulnerability that are specific to the people he photographs, yet somehow common to human experience. His photographs of ordinary citizens, familiar landscapes, and puzzling details of local culture offer an unromanticized, yet affectionate, view of the land and its people.Purchase tickets in advance.
 
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