Public Talks
Upcoming presentation:
PHOTO CREDIT: Dorothea Lange Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California (a.k.a., Migrant Mother), March 1936. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2017762891/>
HOSTED (IN-PERSON) BY: Pacific Northwest College of Art (PCNW)
LOCATED AT: 511 NW Broadway, Portland, Oregon
SPONSORED BY: Oregon Alliance for the National Museum of Women in the Arts
DATE / TIME: Sunday November 16, 2025, at 2:00 p.m. — free and open to the public.
PRESENTATION DESCRIPTION:
By 1941, Dorothea Lange’s photograph of Florence Owens Thompson, and her children, had been reproduced in thousands of newspapers, magazines and Sunday supplements. First published in the San Francisco News in March of 1936, the image prompted two back-to-back stories: The first centered around the plight of migrant workers in California; and the second a profile on Mrs. Thompson herself, titled “What Does the ‘New Deal’ Mean to This Mother and Her Children?” Now commonly known as “Migrant Mother,” Lange’s image of a Pea Picker’s wife during the Dust Bowl Era is a defining image of the Great Depression and one of the most iconic photographs in American history.
This presentation will illustrate Dorothea Lange’s remarkable career as a professional photographer in the early 20th century. By the end of the 1920s, Lange had a successful portrait studio in San Francisco, photographing some of the city’s most affluent residents. Like the rest of the country, however, the Bay Area was hard hit by the Great Depression. In addition to the impact on her own business, Lange saw an extraordinary number of the city’s homeless and unemployed who gravitated to the soup kitchens in the Mission District, not far from her studio. Shocked to see men sleeping on the sidewalks, Lange was moved take her camera onto the streets — to use it as a vehicle to convey the current hardship among the working class. It was this act, her interest in the welfare of her neighbors, her community, and her country, that would define her career going forward. Dorothea Lange would subsequently document skid row, union strikes, migrant workers and internment camps, working for state and federal agencies, as well freelance. Her documentary photographs would be exhibited and published regularly in newspapers, periodicals, and books, in addition to illustrating agency reports.
In 1940, Dorothea Lange was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to document rural communities throughout the US and remained relatively active with assignment work and teaching until the end of her life. The Museum of Modern Art opened its retrospective of her work just three months after her death, in 1965. Curated by John Szarkowski, it was the museum’s first retrospective solo exhibition of a female photographer.
PAST PRESENTATIONs:
Alchemical: The Rise of the Fine Art Photography Market & What We’re Seeing Today
HOSTED BY: Los Angeles Center of Photography (LACP)
DATE / TIME: Saturday November 23, 2024 – 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET (This presentation will not be recorded.)
TO REGISTER: Visit the LACP website / $45 LACP Members; $55 Non-members (All proceeds from the presentation benefit the LACP, a non-profit organization.)
PRESENTATION DESCRIPTION:
Photography was a pursuit of entrepreneurial inventors and businessmen long before the process of fixing an image had even been resolved. Once the Daguerreotype entered the public realm, a new industry was born and, with it, an array of possibilities relating to science, business, politics, advertising and art.
In this beautifully illustrated presentation, certified photography appraiser and photo historian Jennifer Stoots, AAA, will provide a succinct review of the evolution of the fine art photography market in the United States. Stoots will start the webinar off with a brief overview of the evolution of the art market in Europe, plus the motivations of invention and the birth of the photo industry. From there she will: Highlight the influential people, galleries and institutions in the U.S. that championed photography in the early 20th century; cover key collectors and factors that fostered exponential growth from the 1970s to the end of the 1990s; analyze the top selling photographers and photographs; and finish with commentary centered around international photo fairs and the internet’s impact on the photography market in the last two decades.
Market for Japanese Photography
A short history of the Japanese fine art photography market and its significance in the US art market.
PRESENTATION DESCRIPTION:
Japan was the first non-Western country to establish a photography industry. The first daguerreotype camera was imported in 1848 by the daimyō Shimazu Nariakira, who was an avid advocate of education and, like his grandfather, fascinated by Western culture and technology. The “opening” of Japan under the rule of Emperor Meiji not only facilitated trade, if fueled industry and tourism. By the time of Japan’s inaugural participation in a World’s Fair in 1867 (the Exposition Universelle in Paris), Europe was primed for the “Japonisme” craze. In addition to the albums of hand-colored albumen prints that tourists brought back from Japan, and commercial goods imported over the previous decade, exhibitions of Japanese art were being organized in London and Paris as early as 1854.
The interest in modern and contemporary Japanese photography in the US was concurrent with the flourish of fine art photography market in the 1970s. In that decade, we start to see established photographers in Japan being invited to exhibit at major institutions, including MoMA, the ICP (International Center for Photography), and the Smithsonian. Subsequently, established photography dealers and prominent galleries began exhibiting their work and surveys of post-war Japanese photography were being published by American scholars. This presentation will provide a survey of the evolution of Japanese photography in the US market and, with the insight of New York gallerist Miyako Yoshinaga, we will discuss the current scope and nuances of that market today.
Magnificent Mentors: Luminaries of photographic education and their extraordinary students.
LECTURE DESCRIPTION:
A compliment. A constructive critique. Encouragement. Insight. These are the gifts of a mentor; a teacher extraordinaire who is generous with their time and knowledge, and is considerate of who you are and what you’re trying to say or accomplish. The photo history presentation “Magnificent Mentors” will showcase a handful of the more extraordinary photographers in the U.S. who fostered the careers of some of the most recognized photographers today, historic to contemporary. In the course of this beautifully illustrated lecture, certified photography appraiser and photo historian, Jennifer Stoots will examine the philosophy and practice of several photo luminaries and the programs the orchestrated, as well as explore the paths of student success.
Magnificent Mentors will focus on the instructors and curriculum at the Clarence H. White School of Photography, Alexey Brodovitch’s “Design Laboratory,” The New York Photo League, and The New Bauhaus, along with brief overviews of the photo programs CalArts & CCA, PCNW, the San Francisco Institute of Fine Arts, UCLA, University of New Mexico and Yale University. Noteworthy alum will include: Eve Arnold, Richard Avedon, Uta Barth, Dawoud Bey, Jo Ann Callis, Lois Conner, Robert Frank, Hiro, Masood Kamandy, Dorothea Lange, An-My Lê, Da-ka-xeen Mehner, Patrick Nagatani, Catherine Opie, Irving Penn, Georgina Reskala, Doris Ulmann, Carrie Mae Weems, Hank Willis Thomas, Will Wilson, and Max Yavno, among many many others.
Magnificent Mentors was made possible by the generous support of the Griffin Museum of Photography. Public presentations of this lecture have been hosted by: The Griffin Museum of Photography; Photographic Arts Council of Los Angeles (PACLA); and Photographic Center Northwest (PCNW).