A Conversation with Wendy Ewald and Frédéric Brenner
The University of Virginia is hosting 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.
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 is an independent curator and writer and chairs the Public Art Commission in Richmond, VA. 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. 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.
The events are sponsored by Virginia Center for the Study of Religion | Jewish Studies Program | Page Barbour Lecture Fund | Vice Provost for the Arts | Center for German Studies | Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures | Middle Eastern and South Asian languages and Cultures | European Studies Program
For more information on the photography residency, please see the residency website.