Art School Photo Lecture Series
Art School is proud to present the Photography Lecture Series, a monthly program inviting the public to engage with emerging photographic artists who generously share their work in an intimate setting
Upcoming Lecture
<< Last Thursday of Every Month >>
Image Title: Self Portrait, John Ford Point, 2018
Image Description: A black and white photograph of an expansive, barren, rocky landscape, featuring a small silhouetted figure in the distance.
Johnnie Chatman
May 27
6:30-7:30pm, Online, Pay what you wish
Johnnie Chatman is a Californian lens-based artist currently residing in New York. He holds an MFA in Photography, Video & Related Media from the School of Visual Arts in New York.
Chatman's work has been featured in exhibitions across the United States including at Fraenkel Gallery, HereArts, and SF Camerawork. His work can be found in many private and public collections including at the Figge Art Museum and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 2020, he was announced as a recipient of the En Foco Photography Fellowship. His work has been featured in publications including Dear Dave, Nueva Luz, and Zoetrope All-Story. He is also the founder and curator of Terms & Conditions, an avant-garde film screening series.
His solo exhibition I forgot where we were... is on view at Blue Sky, the Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts until May 29th, 2021. Recent exhibitions include I'm Not The Only One at Fraenkel Gallery; See How Beautiful I Am at SF Camerawork; and Magnetic West: Enduring Allure of the American West at Figge Art Museum and Sioux Art Center.
PAST LECTURES
© Jessica Chou, Untitled - From the series Suburban Chinatown. 2019.
Jessica Chou
Last Thursday of Every Month >>
April 29
6:30-7:30pm, Online, Pay what you wish
Jessica Chou was born in Taipei, Taiwan, and raised in the San Gabriel Valley, in the suburbs of Los Angeles. She graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a degree in history with an emphasis on the Middle East. In her photographic work, she is interested in capturing the subtle nuances in our characters and our daily lives that reflect who we are. She regularly contributes to publications such as the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and Bloomberg Businessweek, among others. In 2020, she was a Runner-Up for Aperture's 2020 Portfolio Prize. Her work is represented by Anastasia Photo Gallery in New York and it can also be found in the permanent collection of the Tweed Museum of Art, Duluth,
Minnesota. She currently lives and works between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
© Carly Cram, In the Weeds
Carly Cram
Last Thursday of Every Month >> March 25
6:30-7:30pm, Online, Pay what you wish
Carly Cram (She Her) is a photographer based in San Francisco. She studied art in Southern California before moving to the Bay Area to attend the San Francisco Art Institute.
Before discovering her love of photography, her area of focus was ceramics, which continues to inform her process and contributes to her unique photographic style.
This method, a form of compositing, involves capturing 20-50 images taken in a grid-like format and seamlessly assembling them like a puzzle. While Cram photographs with a digital camera, her photographic process is in many ways similar to the process of large format photography and often requires an intimate collaboration with each subject in order to hold their pose. This photographic style results in vibrant color, hyper-realistic detail, and a nostalgic glow.
Cram's work seeks to explore memory and the many fragments we reassemble to tell our stories. And, much like memory, when examined closely you can locate the imperfections of the assembling process.
© Wesaam Al-Badry, 2020
Wesaam Al-Badry
Last Thursday of Every Month >> February 25
6:30-8:30pm, Online, Pay what you wish
The program kicks off with documentary and fine art photographer Wesaam Al-Badry who will talk about how his identity as a war refugee informs how he approaches his work with displaced communities today.
Wesaam Al-Badry was born in 1984 in Nasiriyah, Iraq. When Al-Badry was seven years old, at the outset of what became known as the Gulf War, Al-Badry’s mother fled on foot with her five children, including his six-day-old sister, as artillery shells fell around them. After hiking for three days, sometimes through knee-deep mud, they arrived at a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia.
In late 1994, Al-Badry and his family were relocated to Lincoln, Nebraska after spending four-and-a-half years in a refugee camp. As a young man growing up in middle America, Al-Badry fiercely felt the disconnect between his experiences in Iraq and the refugee camps and his new home.
Bearing witness to the aftermath of the Iraq-Iran war that shaped the contemporary human condition into one of paranoia and distrust and his first-hand experiences living through Desert Storm and in refugee camps has sculpted Al-Badry’s work, which focuses on capturing the dispossessed, and ultimately, human dignity.
Al-Badry has worked for global media outlets, including CNN and Al-Jazeera America. His photographs have been featured in campaigns for the UNHCR, the ACLU, and other global organizations.
While his work focuses on photo reportage and documentary, Al-Badry also creates multimedia art that challenges and investigates social norms and representation, The Iraqi diaspora and textile. He is represented by Jenkins Johnson Gallery in San Francisco, CA. Al-Badry currently resides in Berkeley.
He received a BFA in photography from San Francisco Art Institute in 2018 and an MA in Journalism - New Media from UC Berkeley in 2020.