Ashley Gilbertson: from Bedrooms of the Fallen

Picturing War: Ashley Gilbertson, Sebastiano Tomada Piccolomini and Jungeun Lee

Sunday, December 11, 6-8pm
Free and open to the public

Contemporary Arts Center
900 Camp Street
New Orleans, LA 70130

While many photographers cover conflict by showing scenes of action and carnage, the three photographers featured on this panel choose to focus on other ways that war can be interpreted through photography. Award winning photojournalist Ashley Gilbertson, 2010 PhotoNOLA Review Prize winner Jungeun Lee and emerging conflict photographer Sebastiano Tomada Piccolomini will each present individual slideshows of their work. A group discussion moderated by Pulitzer Prize winning photo editor Stella Kramer will follow. The juxtaposition between three unique viewpoints will provide an insightful conversation into war, humanity, and the role of photography in documenting and communicating the effects of conflicts and their aftermath.

Panelists’ Bios
Ashley Gilbertson is a photographer with the VII Network photo agency, and a principal at Shell Shock Pictures. Gilbertson’s photographs from Iraq where he worked from 2002 until 2008, gained him recognition from the Overseas Press Club who awarded Gilbertson the prestigious Robert Capa Gold Medal. His first book, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, was released in 2007. Since then, Gilbertson has been examining veterans issues including Post Traumatic Stress and suicide for Time Magazine, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Times. In 2007, he began working on Bedrooms Of The Fallen, a collection of photographs depicting the intact bedrooms of service members who died in Iraq and Afghanistan. That series was published by The New York Times Magazine, and went on to win the documentary photography National Magazine Award. It will be published in book form in 2012. He lives with his wife and child in New York City.

Jungeun Lee was born in South Korea and received a B.E. from Hoseo University in Korea and a MFA in Photography from University of North Texas. During her study at the University of North Texas, Jungeun discovered a piece of Korean history that she previously had not learned. This discovery led to the research and development of “Silenced Suffering: The Comfort Women Project”. She spent her entire 3 years of her graduate career researching and making work about this unknown history. This year, she completed her MFA exhibition, “Silenced Suffering”, at 500X Gallery in Dallas, Texas. Recently, Jungeun was awarded first place at the PhotoNOLA event in New Orleans, Louisiana. Currently, Jungeun lives and works in Dallas, Texas.

Sebastiano Tomada Piccolomini was born in Manhattan in 1986, and moved to Italy when he was four years old, where he lived between Udine and Florence, returning to New York after completing his Italian high school classical studies. In 2009 he graduated with a double major in Media Studies and Photography at the New School (Eugene Lang and Parsons) in New York City. Following his passion for documentary, Sebastiano has traveled extensively on assignment in some of today’s most volatile countries, including Afghanistan, Libya and Pakistan, as well as working on commercial, fashion and editorial projects. A young photographer, based between Manhattan, Italy, Los Angeles and the Middle East, Sebastiano has worked for Paris Match, The Atlantic Magazine, Vogue, TIME, LIFE, The International Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal and many others.

Moderator Stella Kramer is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo editor who has worked in the New York publishing industry for more than 15 years, for such major publications as The New York Times, People magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Sports Illustrated, Newsweek and Brill’s Content. Ms. Kramer worked on some of the major news events in recent history, serving as the photo editor for The New York Times series “Portraits of Grief” memorializing those who lost their lives in the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. She was a photo editor for LIFE magazine’s special issue series on the 1990 Gulf War, “LIFE In Time Of War”.

Ms. Kramer has a B.A. in journalism/political science from The Evergreen State College in Washington State. Her awards include the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography and the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service (both at The New York Times), and the 2002 Infinity Award for Public Service from the International Center of Photography. She regularly lectures, reviews portfolios and is the creator of In The Loupe, a web TV show showcasing photography, as well as consulting photographers on their portfolios, websites and careers.

The Angola Project

November 22 – December 31, 2010
Symposium: Saturday, Dec 4, 3–5pm

Mahalia Jackson Center
2405 Jackson Avenue
New Orleans, LA
504-359-6802
Hours: Mon – Fri 10am-5pm

The Angola Project consists of a series of programs exploring the social issues surrounding crime and the penal system through art, featuring work by Bruce Davenport, Jackie Sumell, Willie Birch and Lori Waselchuk and a free two-day public event with a performance by members of Resurrection After Exoneration.

The exhibition, installed in the Early Childhood & Family Learning Foundation premises on the second floor of Building C of the Mahalia Jackson Center, features Prospect New Orleans artists who have developed work in and about Angola State Penitentiary, presented alongside a selection of art by Angola prisoners.

Saturday, December 4, 2010 – Symposium
3pm – 5pm
Mahalia Jackson Center, Auditorium

Moderated by David Johnson of the Louisiana Endowment for Humanities, the panel will include artists Bruce Davenport, Jackie Sumell, Willie Birch and Lori Waselchuk; representatives from Innocence Project and RAE, and other community members who will address the difficult ethical, social and legal questions surrounding imprisonment, as well as how we treat the past, how we address the future, and what role art plays in dealing with these issues.

Produced by the Early Childhood & Family Learning Foundation and Prospect New Orleans

Contemporary Arts Center
900 Camp St.
Monday, Dec 6, 7-9pm
Free and open to the public

This moderated panel discussion will feature six photographers from various disciplines discussing their processes, influences, inspiration and work. The fifth in an ongoing series produced by the New Orleans Photo Alliance, the PhotoNOLA edition of Six Shooters will feature an accomplished mix of local and visiting photographers, each bringing a unique perspective to the table.

Featured panelists are:
Dave Anderson, Little Rock, AR
Letitia Huckaby, Fort Worth, TX
Donna Pinckley, Little Rock, AR
Zack Smith, New Orleans, LA
Gordon Stettinius, Richmond, VA
Jennifer Zdon, New Orleans, LA

Dan Cameron, founding Director and Chief Curator of Prospect New Orleans and Director of Visual Arts for the CAC will serve as moderator. The program will include a slideshow with examples of each photographer’s work and allow for time at the end for questions from the audience.

Please join us for a lively insightful and informative group discussion.

Bios:

Dave Anderson’s work as both a photographer and filmmaker has been celebrated in the United States and abroad. He has been recognized as “one of the shooting stars of the American photo scene” by Germany’s fotoMAGAZIN and named a “Rising Star” by Photo District News. Vince Aletti of the New Yorker has called Anderson’s work “as clear-eyed and unsentimental as it is soulful and sympathetic.”

Dave’s project Rough Beauty was the winner of the 2005 National Project Competition from the Santa Fe Center for Photography and became the focus of his first book, which was published in three languages with an essay and interview by Anne Wilkes Tucker. His latest monograph, One Block: A New Orleans Neighborhood Rebuilds, was published in 2010 by Aperture Books and featured on Good Morning America and CNN as well as in the New York Times and Time.

Dave’s unique talents extend not only to still photography but also into the realms of television production and the written word. A former MTV producer and director of television production in the Clinton White House, Dave’s video work has also been singled out for recognition. His new video series “SoLost,” created for the Oxford American magazine, was a finalist for Best Video Series at the 2010 National Magazine Awards. Dave’s writing has appeared in magazines like American Photo and a short story of his was featured in a best-selling anthology edited by noted author Paul Auster.

Anderson’s work can be found in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the Corcoran Gallery and in the pages of Esquire, Stern and ESPN among others.

Letitia Huckaby began her artistic career at the age of four, when here parents started her in dance classes. She studied Ballet, Tap, Jazz, and Modern until the age of eighteen, and was selected to participate in the prestigious Oklahoma Arts Institute two years in a row. It was this exposure to a variety of other art forms that led her to photography. After gaining a degree in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma, she went on to obtain a second degree from the Art Institute of Boston in photography, and recently acquired her Master’s degree in photography at the University of North Texas in Denton.

She has a body of work on permanent display in a historic jazz club in Boston called Wally’s, one public art piece along the Trinity river in Fort Worth at the 4th street trailhead site, and a second public art piece at the new Ella Mae Shamblee branch library in Fort Worth. She has exhibited at the Dallas Contemporary, the Galveston Arts Center, Project Row Houses in Houston and the Renaissance Fine Art Gallery in Harlem. Huckaby is married to nationally recognized artist Sedrick Huckaby and the couple reside in Fort Worth, Texas with their five year old son, Rising Sun and a two year old daughter named Halle Lujah.

Donna Pinckley, a native of Alexandria, Louisiana, received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography from Louisiana Tech University in 1984 and a Master of Fine Arts in photography from University of Texas at Austin in 1990. She has received Visual Artist Fellowships from the Mid-America Arts Alliance/NEA and the Arkansas Arts Council. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in over 150 solo/juried shows and also included in several public collections, such as the University of Vera Cruz at Xalapa, Vera Cruz, Mexico, the Photographic Collection at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, Alexandria Museum of Art and McNeese State University. She has been published in Black and White Magazine, Photo Review Magazine, Photography Quarterly, and VOA Magazine. She is currently Associate Professor at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, Arkansas.

Zack Smith is a fine art editorial photographer and has been documenting the social landscapes that surround him for the past 12 years, and since 2000, has focused his energies on New Orleans and Southwestern Louisiana, the place of his birth. Smith specializes in environmental portraiture, performance, and street documentary photography.

Smith is a photography instructor at The New Orleans Academy of Fine Art and an active member in the New Orleans Photo Alliance. For three years, Smith was shooting assistant for world-renowned photographer Herman Leonard. He is currently the exhibition curator at The CANARY Gallery in the New Orleans Arts District. Smith maintains a large client base in New Orleans and the U.S. His work is featured in numerous books, and has been shown in galleries across the South.

Gordon Stettinius is a photographer and artist living and working in Richmond, Virginia. A 2009 recipient of the Theresa Pollak Award for Excellence in the Arts, Gordon, over the years, has split his time between fine art and commercial photography and, most recently, has taken time off from his teaching position at Virginia Commonwealth University to found and promote an independent publishing company, dedicated to producing fine art photography books. The first release from his imprint, Candela Books, was released in September of 2010.

Jennifer Zdon is a documentary and editorial photographer whose passion is to portray moments that often go unnoticed, giving readers a peek behind closed doors, with a warm and compassionate touch. She is drawn to show the quirky and whimsical sides of a community, using photography to highlight the trials and joys of life. She has covered stories in South America, Europe and across the American South and contributed to the photo books “America 24/7,” “Louisiana 24/7” and “America at Home.” She was also a member of the staff at The Times-Picayune that won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for Hurricane Katrina coverage. Zdon has been a photographer for the newspaper since 1995.