FotoFocus Symposium: Saturday, April 9 & Sunday, April 10, 2022
The FotoFocus Symposium returns for its sixth edition this spring, centered around the theme of Telephotography and held across two locations. World-renowned speakers from the fields of architecture, art, fashion, film, psychology, and media will speculate on the past, present, and future of sharing images over long distances—both physically and digitally, literally and figuratively—in a series of panel discussions, lectures, and film screenings.
The first day of programming, Saturday, April 9, held at Memorial Hall, will address a wide range of subjects, such as how nineteenth century scientists tried to capture electricity on film; the meteoric progression of press photography between the 1930s and 1970s; how architectural renderings and visualizations have changed in recent years; and the complex role of being a photojournalist in today’s world of rapid-fire news cycles.
The second day of the Symposium, Sunday, April 10, will be a Film Program held at The Garfield Theatre, featuring multiple film shorts and a screening of the film El actor principal (The Leading Actor). The day includes a panel discussion showcasing the diversity of Latin American cultures to North American audiences, while examining the ways in which media—photographic imagery in particular—creates and distorts understanding of foreign cultures.
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PROGRAM SCHEDULE
Saturday, April 9, 2022
Memorial Hall, 1225 Elm Street, Cincinnati, OH

9am
Breakfast

9:45am
Opening Remarks

10am

Panel: Electricity
Moderated by Corey Keller, Independent Curator and Scholar, Oakland, CA, with panelists: Jordan Bear, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada; and Chitra Ramalingam, Interdisciplinary Curator and Academic at Yale University, New Haven, CT
In the nineteenth century, harnessing the potential of electricity became a preoccupation of scientific investigation and also tantalized (and sometimes terrified) the public imagination. This panel will consider the close and complex relationship between photography and electricity: how the medium was deployed to both visualize and conceal this potent but invisible force, and how electrical impulses were translated into the first “telephotographs,” eclipsing space and time.

11am

Panel: Signal and Event: Early Press Photography and Its Distributions
Moderated by Jason Hill, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Delaware, Newark, DE, with panelists: Kim Beil, Art Historian based at Stanford University, Stanford, CA; Amy Scott, Executive Vice President of Research and Interpretation and Marilyn B. and Calvin B. Gross Curator of Visual Arts at the Autry Museum, Los Angeles, CA; and Mary Panzer, Independent Scholar and Consultant, New York, NY
Press photography is primarily concerned with the prompt transmission of information about world events, to be received, as a rule, by viewers at some remove in place and time. With a focus on press photography’s golden age, circa 1930s–1970s, this panel considers some of the technologies and sites of transmission—the photo morgue; the television set, the police radio tower; the art museum—and the powers of inflection each of these contain.

Noon

Panel: Remote Exhibiting
Moderated by Kevin Moore, FotoFocus Artistic Director and Curator, with panelists: Chandra Frank, Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center at the University of Cincinnati and Independent Curator, Cincinnati, OH; Mary Mattingly, Artist, Brooklyn, NY; and Kevin Schmidt, Artist, Toronto, Canada
As centers of power—both actual places and critical discourses—are increasingly questioned, the concept of remoteness holds a seductive promise as both a location and mindset outside conventional methods of thinking, making, and exhibiting. This panel examines how artists and curators are making use of technology to create and critique from afar.

1pm

Lunch Break

2pm

Artist Spotlight: Moyra Davey
Moyra Davey, Artist, New York, NY
Moyra Davey will speak about her folded/mailed photographs, a process initiated almost by accident in 2007 and to this day a staple of her artistic practice.

2:30pm

Panel: Designing for People?
Moderated by David van der Leer, Principal, DVDL, New York, NY, with panelists: Todd Levon Brown, Environmental Psychologist, Austin, TX, and Iwan Baan, Photographer, Amsterdam, Netherlands
For decades, architects and designers largely preferred representing their building and city designs as unpopulated as possible in order to highlight those designs. Today, visualizations of future spaces, and their documentation once built, have begun to include people but as a subordinate element to the designs. This panel explores how photography and visualizations can help us better understand how we are actually impacted by the architectural spaces we inhabit.

3:30pm

Panel: Breaking News
Moderated by Alice Gabriner, Independent Visual Editor, New York, NY, with panelists: Dieu-Nalio Chery, Associated Press Photojournalist, New York, NY, and Erin Schaff, New York Times Staff Photographer, Washington, D.C.
At media organizations, the pressures to produce images and stories faster and in greater volume have created evolving challenges for news photographers—and photo editors—in terms of both competition and in their ability to relay complex stories in such a fast moving landscape.

4:30pm

Break

5pm

Keynote Conversation: Sophie Hackett and Collier Schorr
Collier Schorr, Artist and Critic, New York, NY, and Sophie Hackett, Curator of Photography at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada
Collier Schorr and Sophie Hackett discuss the ways in which artists and curators are applying technologies to new patterns of globalism.

Sunday, April 10, 2022
The Garfield Theatre, 719 Race Street, Cincinnati, OH

2pm - 6:30pm

Film Program: CortoCircuito and El actor principal (The Leading Actor)
Curated by Diana Vargas, Artistic Director, Havana Film Festival New York
Beginning at 2pm, the Symposium Film Program includes film shorts from Latin America, a panel discussion, and a special feature film, El actor principal (The Leading Actor). This program presents the diversity of Latin American cultures while examining the ways in which media—and photographic imagery in particular—creates and distorts understanding of foreign cultures.

The FotoFocus Symposium and Film Program are free and open to the public. Seating is first come first serve and proof of vaccination is required. Memorial Hall requires masks for entry.