In the inaugural Speaking of Photography lecture, Anne Wilkes Tucker examines the major themes of her current curatorial project, War / Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath.
This unprecedented survey, which includes works from 280 photographers in 28 countries, looks at the ways in which war and photography have been connected since photography’s first decade in the 1840s to the Libyan conflict of 2011. While the exhibition includes iconic works of war photography from news agencies, Tucker and her colleagues also drew on the archives of military libraries and museums, photographers’ files, and the private collections of retired services personnel. By focusing on themes, the exhibition shows how photographs track the progression of war: from the acts that instigate armed conflict to “the fight;” images of victory and defeat; and photographs that memorialize a war, its combatants, and its victims.
War / Photography opened at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in November 2012 and will be touring to the Annenberg Space for Photography, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum in the course of 2013.
When: Friday, January 18, 2012, at 6:30 p.m.
Where: York Amphitheatre, Room EV 1.605, Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts Integrated Complex (1515 Ste-Catherine St. W.), Sir George Williams Campus
Admission is free of charge and open to the public.
Anne Wilkes Tucker is the Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she founded the photography department. Tucker has curated more than 40 exhibitions, contributed essays to monographs and catalogues, and has published numerous articles. She has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Getty Center, and she was the first recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Focus Award from the Griffin Museum of Photography in 2006. In addition to War / Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath (Yale, 2012), her many edited or co-edited exhibition catalogues include Sally Mann: The Flesh and the Spirit (Aperture, 2011), Chaotic Harmony: Contemporary Korean Photography (Yale, 2009), The History of Japanese Photography (Yale, 2003), Brassaï: The Eye of Paris (Abrams, 1999), Robert Frank: New York to Nova Scotia (Little, Brown, 1986), and The Woman's Eye (Knopf, 1973).
The Speaking of Photography lecture series is made possible by the generosity of an anonymous donor, with additional support from the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art; members of the Art History Graduate Students Association; Ciel Variable magazine; and Château Versailles Hotel. The Anne Wilkes Tucker lecture is also presented with the generous support of the Mary Ann Beckett-Baxter Memorial Fund.
Related links:
• Speaking of Photography
• Department of Art History
• The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
