Tag Archive for photography

Wesleyan in the News

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NewsIn this recurring feature in The Wesleyan Connection, we highlight some of the latest news stories about Wesleyan and our alumni.

Wesleyan in the News

1. The Washington Post: “How One College Is Helping Students Get Engaged in Elections—and, No, It’s Not Political”

President Michael Roth writes about Wesleyan’s initiative to engage students meaningfully in work in the public sphere ahead of the 2020 elections, and calls on other colleges and universities to do the same. He writes: “Now is the time for higher education leaders to commit their institutions to find their own paths for promoting student involvement in the 2020 elections. This kind of direct participation in civic life provides an educational benefit that will help students develop skills for lifelong active citizenship; participants will gain organizational skills, learn to engage productively with others with whom they disagree and learn about themselves.”

2. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education: “Nicole Stanton Will Be the Next Provost at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut”

Professor of Dance Nicole Stanton will begin her new role as Wesleyan’s 12th provost and vice president for academic affairs on May 15. She joined Wesleyan in 2007 as associate professor of dance, and currently serves as dean of the Arts and Humanities.

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Students Share Global Experiences through Photography

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Delila Flores '19 won Best Photo of Daily Life for her image titled “Machete Abuela," taken in San Vincente, Puebla, México. "This is my bisabuela walking through the campo, the fields, where she uses her machete for her livelihood. She uses it to cut the weeds, to protect herself from the snakes, and as a walking stick. Despite being 92 years old, she is still a strong woman who has defended her land and taught her daughters, my abuela and my mamá to do the same," Flores said.

Delila Flores ’19 won Best Photo of Daily Life for her image titled “Machete Abuela,” taken in San Vicente, Puebla, México. “This is my bisabuela walking through the campo, the fields, where she uses her machete for her livelihood. She uses it to cut the weeds, to protect herself from the snakes, and as a walking stick. Despite being 92 years old, she is still a strong woman who has defended her land and taught her daughters, my abuela and my mamá to do the same,” Flores said.

This year, students shared global stories about humanity in 51 cities across 24 countries through the third annual Wes in the World photo contest.

Sponsored by the Fries Center for Global Studies, the contest is open to Wesleyan students who have had any global experience over the previous summer and/or previous semester. This includes study abroad returnees, international students, exchange students, fellowship recipients, and foreign language teaching assistants.

More than 200 students, staff, faculty, and alumni voted on the submissions within five categories: Contemporary Issues, Daily Life, Landscape, People, and Sport and Play.

“Our hope with these categories is to allow students to reflect on ways in which their global experience transcends borders by working towards peace and human rights, recognizing different realities of daily living, appreciating the wonderful landscapes of the earth, raising awareness about peoples and cultures outside of their ethnocentric lens, and connecting with others universally through sports and play,” said Kia Lor, assistant director of language and intercultural learning. “Students are not required to be professional photographers to participate. In fact, we are more interested in the stories behind the photographs than the camera or photo-editing software they used.”

Winners were announced during a ceremony at the Fries Center on Oct. 30.

Delila Flores ’19 won Best Photo of Daily Life; Romina Beltran ’22 won Best Photo of Contemporary Issues; Grant Hill ’20 won Best Photo of Landscape; Shariis Jeffrey ’19 won Best Photo of People; and Alice Ghislaine Musabe ’22 won Best Photo of Sport and Play.

The photo contest is held in conjunction with the Fries Center’s International Education Week celebration, held Nov. 11-17. The theme this year is “Transcending Borders” and events explore the complexities of “belonging” and how our sense of belongs transcends borders.

Romina Beltran '22 won Best Photo of Contemporary Issues for her image titled “In the streets of Kalkota," taken in Kolkata, India. "This photo represents an urban scenario in a capitalistic society in contrast with the elements of both nature and poverty," Beltran explained.

Romina Beltran ’22 won Best Photo of Contemporary Issues for her image titled “In the streets of Kolkata,” taken in Kolkata, India. “This photo represents an urban scenario in a capitalistic society in contrast with the elements of both nature and poverty,” Beltran explained.

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Winners of the Wes in the World Photo Contest Announced

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On Nov. 13, the Fries Center for Global Studies announced the winners of the 2017-18 Wes in the World Photo Contest. More than 200 Wesleyan students, staff, faculty and alumni voted on 56 images in five different categories, including landscape, people, contemporary issues, daily life and sports.

Photographs were submitted by international students and U.S. students who studied abroad.

View the winners below. View the honorable mentions online here.

“Cinque Terre Town” by Natalie Strassheim, ‘18 / Manarola, Italy “I was ready to capture some of my own awesome photos by embarking on a solo trip. I remember, in Pompeii, saying farewell to my study abroad friends. I boarded the train, heading off to my next stop in Italy. This was the beginning to feeling independent. This was the start to feeding my wanderlust.”

BEST PHOTO OF LANDSCAPE: “Cinque Terre Town” by Natalie Strassheim ‘18, Manarola, Italy. “I was ready to capture some of my own awesome photos by embarking on a solo trip. I remember, in Pompeii, saying farewell to my study-abroad friends. I boarded the train, heading off to my next stop in Italy. This was the beginning to feeling independent. This was the start to feeding my wanderlust,” she said.

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Photographs by Albert MALS ’94 Exhibited in Olin Library

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Hillcrest Orchards © 2016 Nancy Ottmann Albert

Hillcrest Orchards © 2016 Nancy Ottmann AlbertNancy Ottmann Albert’s (MALS ’94) evocative photographs of vanishing New England structures and landscapes will be featured in “Documents in Black and White,” a new exhibition opening in Olin Library on Oct. 5, 2016. The show is being presented in conjunction with the formal announcement of Albert’s gift of her papers to the library’s Special Collections & Archives (SC&A).

Nancy Ottmann Albert’s (MALS ’94) evocative photographs of vanishing New England structures and landscapes will be featured in “Documents in Black and White,” a new exhibition opening in Olin Library on Oct. 5, 2016. The show is being presented in conjunction with the formal announcement of Albert’s gift of her papers to the library’s Special Collections & Archives (SC&A).

Albert will speak about her work at 7 p.m. Oct. 28 in the library’s Develin Room.

Selected by the artist, the works span the 30 years she spent documenting New England’s built environment. Inspired by Walker Evans and the 1930s Farm Security Administration photographers, she began to photograph textile mills and industrial sites throughout New England in 1981. Shooting black and white film in a medium format camera, she returned over the years to record the buildings’ decline and disappearance.

Further exploration led her to seek out other endangered structures and landscapes. These include mental institutions emptied by changing philosophies of treatment and a commissioned study of Long River Village, Middletown’s oldest housing project, prior to its demolition.
The exhibition also contains images of roadside and urban vernacular architecture, barns and abandoned homesteads, filling stations, and drive-in theaters. All of the work, which includes gelatin silver photographs, was printed by the artist.

In 2014, Albert donated her papers to SC&A. Her papers include images taken in New England, France, Cuba, Portugal, Spain, London, Italy, Eastern Europe, Vienna, Barcelona, Bosnia, Slovenia, Croatia and Berlin, along with her research notes. The papers are now freely available for research and are described in an online finding aid. The gift will be formally acknowledged prior to her Oct 28. talk.

“Documents in Black and White” will be on view from Oct. 5 through Dec. 16, 2016, in the SC&A exhibition cases on the first floor of Olin Library during normal library hours. For more information, call 860-685-3863 or e-mail sca@wesleyan.edu.

‘Photographing Ina’: Exhibition by Trager ’56 Opens at the Davison Art Center

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Photographing Ina, an exhibition of work by Phil Trager ’56 and based on one of his two news books, opened at the Davison Art Center on March 24. It will run through May 22.

“Philip Trager: Photographing Ina,” an exhibition of work by Phil Trager ’56, Hon. ’08, P’81, GP’11, and based on his new book, opened at the Davison Art Center on March 24. It will run through May 22. Pictured are Ina and Philip Trager.

The exhibition, like the book, has two parts. The first is a series of immaculately composed black-and-white photographs taken in the 1980s, after 25 years of marriage. The second part, taken in the last decade after 50 years of marriage, reveals Trager's new color photography—an unexpected and tender meditation on the act of photographing, on perception, color, and light.

The exhibition, like the book, has two parts. The first is a series of immaculately composed black-and-white photographs taken in the 1980s, after 25 years of marriage. The second part, taken in the last decade after 50 years of marriage, reveals Trager’s new color photography—an unexpected and tender meditation on the act of photographing, on perception, color, and light.

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Haverford Hosts Belanger’s “Rift/Fault” Photography Series

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Marion Belanger, an instructor in Graduate Liberal Studies, is currently displaying her photography series “Rift/Fault” at Haverford College. The series is two dozen photography pairings of the North American continental plate, which stretches from California to Iceland. In an intersection of geology and art, the display walks a viewer through images of plate tectonics and the stories that they tell.

More information about the gallery, including dates and hours of operation, can be found here.  Samples of her photography are below:

One of Belanger's photo pairings in her "Rift/Fault" series.

belanger-rift-fault-2

One of Belanger's photo pairings in her "Rift/Fault" series.

Photography by McDonald ’88 in 2 Group Shows

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Anne Arden McDonald '88

Anne Arden McDonald ’88

Photographer and sculptor Anne Arden McDonald ’88  has self portraits included in a group show, The Mind’s Eye: Sight and Insight, at the Hewitt Gallery of Art, Marymount Manhattan College (221 East 71st Street), in New York City. The show runs through December 5. The artists in this exhibition have a special relationship to their creative process both through the neurological (perception/sight) and the psychological (interpretation/insight).  Information on exhibition

Her work also appears in another group show, Mad Hatters to Pixel Pushers, at the Projective Eye Gallery of the UNC Charlotte College of Arts + Architecture, UNC Charlotte City Center, in Charlotte, NC, that runs through next week. The exhibit focuses on contemporary photographers from the southeast and beyond who use alternative processes, gelatin silver photography, digital imaging, and photo sculpture with the “constructed image. Information on exhibition

McDonald is one of the artists included in the Critical Mass top 50, a competition run by Photo Lucida.

Her work has appeared this year in the books Eyemazing: The New Collectible Art Photography (Thames and Hudson) and Jill Enfield’s Guide to Alternative Processes (Focal Press). She also was one of the 14 finalists for the Clarence John Laughlin Award, given by the New Orleans Photo Alliance.

McDonald’s web site

Untitled Self Portrait #25 by Anne McDonald

Untitled Self Portrait #25 by Anne McDonald

Cells by Anne Arden McDonald, 2007, 69 x 50 ins. silver gelatin print

Cells by Anne Arden McDonald, 2007, 69 x 50 ins. silver gelatin print

Yamashita ’71 Travels to Tibet for a New Photo Collection

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Michael Yamashita ’71

Acclaimed National Geographic photographer Michael Yamashita ’71 has just published a new book of photographs Shangri-La: Along the Tea Road to Lhasa (White Star Publishers). His latest photography collection is a rare, intimate look into the Tibet’s changing world—both ancient and modern, sacred and commonplace, the rarefied and the gritty—before the legends and mysteries of the Chamagudao, the Tea Horse Road, disappear into the Tibetan mist.

Book by Michael Yamashita ’71

Yamashita captures stunning images of the Tea Horse Road, which winds through dizzying mountain passes, across famed rivers like the Mekong and the Yangtze, and past monasteries and meadows in a circuitous route from Sichuan and Yunnan provinces in western China to the Tibetan capital city of Lhasa. As modern-day Chinese culture merges with and even absorbs Tibetan traditions, the Tea Horse Road is a relic of a vastly different time. The Chinese are rapidly paving dirt roads to make highways for cars and trucks. Soon there will be little evidence of this once vital trade route.

Yamashita recently talked about his book at the Asia Society in New York City. You can hear his talk here and see a slide show of his work here.

Read more on Yamashita’s blog.

Sumzanling Monastery in today’s Shangri-La. Photo by Michael Yamashita ’71

Photography Book of Civil Rights Movement Has Text by Dickson ’61

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Book by Jim Wallace and Paul Dickson '61

Courage in the Moment: The Civil Rights Struggle, 1961–1964 (Dover Publications) is a remarkable book of photographs by Jim Wallace, accompanied by a written narrative by Paul Dickson ’61. While many mainstream Southern newspapers ignored the burgeoning civil rights movement in the early 1960s, student journalists from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill bravely ventured out every day to document protest marches and other demonstrations in their town. Jim Wallace was one of these students, and he took memorable photographs primarily during the watershed year of 1963.

His pictures contain powerful scenes from a new American revolution, ranging from peaceful sit-ins and protest marches to dramatic confrontations with the authorities, to disturbing images from a Ku Klux Klan rally. Wallace was astute enough to photograph the pivotal 1963 March on Washington, and images from that memorable event are also included here.

In this moving account, Wallace recalls those dramatic days in detail and offers insightful reflections on his photographs and his memories of the people and events he captured. Many of these pictures have never been seen before. The text by Dickson and the images combine to create a vibrant document of the American civil rights movement.

Jim Wallace is a former director/curator of imaging and photographic services at the Smithsonian Institution, where he worked for three decades. His photographs have appeared in publications serviced by United Press International as well as in the Charlotte Observer and Newsweek. Paul Dickson has written more than 60 books, many of them concentrating on writing about the American language, baseball, and 20th-century American history.