Engaging the Local and the Global: Photography as Collaboration

A Conversation with Wendy Ewald and Frédéric Brenner Moderated by Ashley Kistler

Event Description

The University of Virginia hosted two internationally acclaimed photographers for a series of public conversations and a student workshop. The theme of photography as a collaborative practice that can shape and empower communities connects the work of Wendy Ewald and Frédéric Brenner, both of whom have used photography as a practice not only of documentation but of mutual participation. The photographer’s complex relationship with others is at the center of the public conversations with the artists.

The first panel of the residency was entitled, "Engaging the Global as the Local: Photography as Collaboration." The moderator, Ashley Kistler, engageed the artists in a conversation that will include topics about visual representation and civic discourse, difference, and inclusion.

Co-sponsors for the residency include the Departments of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures, Religious Studies, and German, the Center for European Studies and the Center for German Studies, with additional support from the Page-Barbour Fund, the Dean’s Office of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the Vice Provost for the Arts.

For more information on the photography residency, please see the residency website.

Event Participants

Wendy Ewald is a US American photographer best known for her collaborative projects with women, children, families, workers, and teachers in the United States as well as in Labrador, Colombia, India, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Holland, Mexico, and Tanzania. Among her projects are Portraits and Dreams: Photographs and Stories by Children of the Appalachians (1976 to present), Retratos y Sueños (Mexico,1991), Black Self / White Self (1994-1997), American Alphabets (1997-2005), Towards a Promised Land (Margate, 2003-2006), and This is Where I Live (Israel/Palestine, 2010-2013).

French-born, Berlin-based photographer Frédéric Brenner is best known for his two-volume collection Diaspora: Homelands in Exile, which won a National Jewish Book in 2004. Other works include Jerusalem, Instants d'Eternité (1984), Jews/America/A Representation (1996), Exile at Home. With a poem by Yehuda Amichai (1998), and An Archeology of Fear and Desire (2014). Brenner’s most recent project, Zerheilt: Healed to Pieces (2021) is a portrait of reemerging Jewish life in Germany’s thriving capital.

Ashley Kistler has been an integral part of the Richmond arts community with a curatorial career spanning over 35 years. She has served as Director of VCUarts Anderson Gallery, Curator of the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, and Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Kistler has organized dozens of exhibitions featuring work by regional, national, and international artists, as well as artists’ residencies and commissions, public art projects, lectures and symposia, film series, and performing arts events. She has also authored and/or edited numerous exhibition catalogues, as well as the books Anderson Gallery: 45 Years of Art on the Edge and Nancy Blum: Drawing, Sculpture, and Public Works. She currently works as an independent curator and writer and chairs the city’s Public Art Commission.