Speaking of Photography

10/01/2015

Tonight at the CCA - Quentin Bajac.Register here for free: http://www.concordia.ca/content/shared/en/events/main/2015/10/01/reconsidering-postphotography.html

MoMA | Quentin Bajac

03/08/2015

Aaron Glass: In the Land of the Head Hunters
Friday, 13 March at 18:30 in EV-1.605
Concordia University

In the Land of the Head Hunters
Edward S. Curtis, director. 1914. 65 min.
Screening of the film In the Land of the Head Hunters will begin at 18:30

In 1914, the American photographer Edward S. Curtis released the first feature-length, silent, fiction film to star an entirely Indigenous cast. In the Land of the Head Hunters – an epic melodrama of pre-contact love, war, sorcery, and ritual – was made with the Kwakwaka'wakw (Kwakiutl) on location in British Columbia, and is the earliest extant feature film made in Canada. Its premiers in New York and Seattle were accompanied by an original musical score written for the film by John. J. Braham, best known for arranging Gilbert and Sullivan in the US. Though lost for decades, portions were discovered and re-edited (without the score) in the early 1970s; retitled In the Land of the War Canoes, it was anachronistically recast as a “documentary” by removing Curtis's narrative framing and inserting more ethnographically accurate title cards and soundtrack elements. A collaborative team of Kwakwaka'wakw and scholars has overseen a new restoration of the film that features its original title and inter-title cards, long-missing footage and color tinting, initial publicity graphics, and original musical score—the earliest for a feature-length film to survive. Returned to the intercultural history of modern cinema, the film’s centennial in 2014 was marked by an edited volume from the University of Washington Press and a DVD release by Milestone Films.

Aaron Glass is an Assistant Professor at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City. He specializes in First Nations art, material culture, media, and performance on the Northwest Coast, as well as the history of anthropology and museums. Glass recently worked with the U’mista Cultural Centre to document the large Kwakwaka’wakw collection at the Ethnological Museum Berlin in an innovative digital database, and to restore and present Edward Curtis’s 1914 silent feature film, “In the Land of the Head Hunters.” His books include The Totem Pole: An Intercultural History (with Aldona Jonaitis, 2010); Objects of Exchange: Social and Material Transformation on the Late Nineteenth-Century Northwest Coast (the catalogue for an exhibition he curated at the Bard Graduate Center in 2011); and Return to the Land of the Head Hunters: Edward S. Curtis, the Kwakwaka’wakw, and the Making of Modern Cinema (with Brad Evans, 2014).

03/08/2012

We regret to inform you that the last lecture in the Speaking of Photography series, which was scheduled to take place on Friday, 9 March, is cancelled. Shelley Rice's lecture will be rescheduled as part of the 2012-13 series. We are sorry for this inconvenience.

Yes, that's right! We'll be back next year with Constantinople in photochrom and other photographic delights. À la prochaine!

02/27/2012

Last talk of the season: Local Space/Global Visions: Archives, Networks, and Visual Geography Around 1900
Shelley Rice, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU
FRIDAY 9 March at 18:30 PM at Concordia, York Amphitheatre, EV-1.605

Visit website for more details:
http://speakingofphotography.concordia.ca/index.php/2011-12-series/local-spaceglobal-visions

01/30/2012

Deborah Willis, author of Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present, will present at Concordia Friday 10 February at 6:30 PM. See link for more details.

A Series of Lectures at Concordia University Speaking of Photography is an ongoing, annual series of public lectures on the history, theory, and practice of photography organized by the Department of Art History. Since 2007-08 we have welcomed photographic scholars from across Canada, the United ...

01/08/2012

Speaking of Photography Winter 2012

Exceptionally, the series continues on two FRIDAY evenings: 10 February and 9 March at 18:30 in EV-1.605

Deborah Willis
Professor, Department of Photography and Imaging, Tisch School of the Arts, and University Professor, Africana Studies, College of Arts and Sciences, NYU
Posing Beauty in African and African American Culture
Friday, 10 February 2012, at 18:30

Shelley Rice
Arts Professor, Department of Photography and Imaging, Tisch School of the Arts, and Department of Art History, College of Arts and Science, NYU
Local Space/Global Visions: Archives, Networks, and Visual Geography Around 1900
Friday, 9 March 2012, at 18:30

Speaking of Photography 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 Student Association; Ciel Variable magazine; and Château Versailles Hotel.

All lectures in the 2011-12 fall series are to be held in EV-1.605, the York Amphitheatre, on the ground floor of the Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts Complex, 1515 Ste-Catherine Street West. Metro Guy-Concordia (map).

Lectures are free and open to the public.

11/02/2011

Last lecture of 2011 next Tuesday at 6:30 PM

A Series of Lectures at Concordia University Speaking of Photography is an ongoing, annual series of public lectures on the history, theory, and practice of photography organized by the Department of Art History. Since 2007-08 we have welcomed photographic scholars from across Canada, the United ...