Visual Learning Conference

Saturday, September 29, 2012
10:30 AM-12:00 PM, Weitz Center Cinema

Stan Honda
Staff Photographer, Agence France-Presse

How do we 'read' a photograph? Do we understand if a photo is propaganda? As a photographer taking many of the photos seen in the news media, Stan Honda talked about the content of images and how they can be interpreted in different ways. Honda spoke on how he photographs various subjects that want to use the media to manipulate the general public and events that are staged to achieve the same effect.

Stan Honda is a staff photographer for Agence France-Presse, the French wire service, based in New York City. He covers news, politics, business, sports and human interest stories in the US and abroad. Past stories include the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, the earthquake in Haiti, 2010 World Cup Soccer, and the 2008 US presidential campaign. Honda was born in San Diego, California and has lived in New York since 1989.

David Lefkowitz '85
Associate Professor of Art, Carleton College

Most of the time we stumble around our perceptual field treating pictures as if they are more or less autonomous - meaning is embedded in an image whether you see it in a frame on a museum wall, in a book, or on a computer screen. But to what extent is this really the case? How much does the context of presentation of an image or object contribute to its authority, wield its power of persuasion over us?…and is this an esoteric, philosophical question about the nature of art, or a more urgent question about the nature of cognition and perception?

David Lefkowitz (Carleton Class of 1985) is a visual artist and Associate Professor of Art at Carleton College. He teaches Painting, Drawing, Field Drawing, and the Junior Studio Seminar: Critical Issues in Contemporary Art. Lefkowitz's work in painting, installation, and mixed media addresses the blurry boundary between the human-built environment and the natural world. Recent solo exhibits include 'Other Positioning Systems' at the Rochester Art Center, and 'Facilities and Grounds' at the Carrie Secrist Gallery in Chicago. His work was also prominently hidden around the Walker Art Center as part of 'Lifelike' in the Spring of 2012. His work is represented in several collections, including the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Langen Foundation in Neuss, Germany, and the Miami Art Museum in Miami, FL. His work is represented by Carrie Secrist Gallery in Chicago. Click here to watch an interview with David Lefkowitz. Degrees: Carleton College, B.A.; University of Illinois at Chicago, M.F.A.

Beauvais Lyons
Chancellor's Professor and James R. Cox Professor of Art, University of Tennessee

We live in a world in which producing and consuming culture, scholarship, and ideas are often conflated. Much of what we understand as original involves various forms of appropriation and recycling. When this is done with intelligence in the visual arts or literature, we call it parody, or intertextuality. When it is done with less intelligence or by force, we might call it theft. While we live in a culture of the copies, is creativity or scholarship always a question of taking from and remixing the past? While we expect a research paper to include proper citations, we also anticipate these sources are to be used in support of an original argument.

Beauvais Lyons is a Chancellor's Professor and James R. Cox Professor of Art at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville where he has taught printmaking since 1985. See Lyons' website for information on his mock-academic projects through the Hokes Archives. Lyons' one-person exhibitions have been presented at over 60 museums and galleries in the United States and abroad. His prints are in numerous public collections including the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art; and the Philadelphia Museum of American Art. In 2002 he received a Fulbright Fellowship to teach at the Fine Arts Academy in Poznañ, Poland. Watch Beauvais Lyons' video profile or read more about him in this Torchbearer article. Degrees: University of Wisconsin-Madison, B.F.A.; Arizona State University, M.F.A.

Moderator:

Fred Hagstrom
Rae Schupack Nathan Professor of Art, Carleton College

Fred Hagstrom teaches printmaking, drawing and book arts at Carleton College, where he is the Rae Nathan Schupack Professor of Art.  He has led an off campus program to the South Pacific every other year since 1996. He has published articles in various journals related to printmaking and book arts.  His work is included in collections such as the Walker Art Center, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.  His artist’s books are in many special collections, including those at the University of California Los Angeles, Smith College, Wellesely College, The University of Iowa, The University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Scripps College, Stanford University, and Arizona State University.