Video Archive

FotoFika – David Chickey – 10/20/21

David Chickey from the non-profit publisher Radius Books, joined Anne, Betsy and John on October 20th. We fell in love with his 2009 book “Beaumont’s Kitchen: Lessons on Food, Life and Photography with Beaumont Newhall” and invited him to talk about Radius’ book donation program, publishing and food.

This season FotoFika is working on a crowdsourced cookbook for photographers, educators and students featuring recipes for photographic chemistry, living a purposeful life, a killer meatloaf and plenty of beverage options.

FotoFika meetings are every 3rd Wednesday of the month at 4 pm Eastern!

https://www.radiusbooks.org

FotoFika – Rebecca Senf – 9/15/21

FotoFika is back every 3rd Wednesday of the month at 4 pm Eastern!

What do mini-marshmallows have to teach us about taking risks, building instinct, being vulnerable, and the way personal interests can influence professional practice? Join the Center for Creative Photography’s chief curator, Rebecca Senf, as she links personal learning and development of “soft skills” to her photo historical work and research.

Dr. Rebecca Senf is Chief Curator at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, in Tucson. Her B.A. in Art History is from the University of Arizona; her M.A. and Ph.D. were awarded by Boston University. In 2012, her book Reconstructing the View: The Grand Canyon Photographs of Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe was released by the University of California Press; in 2017, her book To Be Thirteen, showcasing the work of Betsy Schneider, was published by Radius Press and Phoenix Art Museum. Senf is an Ansel Adams scholar, and recently published a book on Adams’s early years, called Making a Photographer, co-published by the CCP and Yale University Press.

FotoFika – Final Episode Spring 2021 – 4/28/21

Join Anne, Betsy and John as they talk about the last year and a half with FotoFika and what our next steps forward are. And we talk about our new Photo Recipes project and John makes you a cup of coffee.

FotoFika – David Campany – 4/14/21

Just over a year ago the International Center of Photography initiated the hashtag #ICPConcerned. David Campany, reflects on how it became an exhibition and book that democratized the curatorial exchange between image maker and museum. With over 800 images from 70 countries, the project looked at devastation and hope in a time of pandemic and civil unrest. Join us to hear about this collective endeavour that occurred both online and in the museum at ICP.

https://icpconcerned.icp.org/

David Campany is a curator, writer and Managing Director of Programs at the International Center of Photography, New York. He has published over 200 essays and authored seventeen books including On Photographs (2020), and Art and Photography (2003). Last year he curated the six-museum Biennale für Aktuelle Fotografie.

FotoFika – Kim Beil – 03/31/21

Kim Beil joins FotoFika on Wednesday March 31, 2021.  In this talk, Kim Beil shared her Fotofika assignment, “Good Pictures Break the Rules,” with a visual tour of aesthetic rules that have been overturned in photography since the 20th century. She argues that breaking the rules can be a radical act: a rejection of the stylistic status quo can also suggest new ways of seeing and being seen as photographers.

Kim Beil teaches art history at Stanford University. Recently she’s written about  photography and climate change for the Atlantic,  the pre-history of  Zoom backgrounds for Aeon/Psyche , and pandemic bread photography for Literary Hub. Her book,  Good Pictures: A History of Popular Photography , was published in June 2020. You can find her ever-expanding collection of how-to books on Instagram.

FotoFika – Strange Fire Collective 03/17/21

On Wednesday 03/17/21 Rafael Soldi and Keavy Handley-Byrne from Strange Fire Collective spoke about their extensive collections of educational classroom resources

Strange Fire re-imagines how their archive can bring long-lasting change to the institutions educating the next generation of thinkers. They developed tools to utilize and interpret their archive in classroom settings, making it easier for educators to find the resources we need to diversify our curriculums.

Strange Fire: The Strange Fire artist collective is a group of interdisciplinary artists, curators, and writers focused on work that engages with current social and political forces. Strange Fire is a platform for work that critically questions the dominant social hierarchy, dedicated to highlighting work made by women, people of color, and queer and trans artists. Their collective practice is centered around increasing the visibility of meaningful work and creating dialogue and community through publications, exhibitions, and events. Strange Fire was formed in 2015 by Jess T. Dugan, Hamidah Glasgow, Zora J Murff, and Rafael Soldi.

Rafael Soldi, Co-Founder: Rafael Soldi is a Peruvian­-born, Seattle-based artist and curator. He holds a BFA in Photography & Curatorial Studies from the Maryland Institute College of Art. His practice centers on how queerness and masculinity intersect with larger topics of our time such as immigration, memory, and loss. He has exhibited internationally at the Frye Art Museum, American University Museum, Griffin Museum of Photography, ClampArt, The Print Center, Museo MATE, Filter Space, and Burrard Arts Foundation, among others. Rafael has received grants and awards from the Magenta Foundation, Puffin Foundation, smART Ventures, Artist Trust, 4Culture, the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, and Center Santa Fe. He has been awarded residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, PICTURE BERLIN, Oxbow Space, and the Bogliasco Foundation.

His first monograph, Imagined Futures, was published in 2020 by Candor Arts,

His work is in several permanent museum collections and has been reviewed on ARTFORUM, The Seattle Times, The Boston Globe, Photograph Magazine, The Seen, Art Nexus, and PDN. He is an SPE board member, co-founder of the Strange Fire Collective, and co-curator of the High Wall, a yearly outdoor video projection program that invites immigrant artists to intervene the facade of a former immigration center building in the heart of Seattle.

Keavy Handley-Byrne, Educational Resources Coordinator, Content Contributor: Keavy Handley-Byrne is a photographer and writer. Handley-Byrne holds an MFA in photography from Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA in photography from Purchase College, SUNY. Keavy’s work addresses issues of queer identity and gender, with a particular focus on finding joy in the wake of trauma and loss. Their work has been featured online with A New Nothing and StayAtHome.Photography, and has been exhibited across the United States. Keavy is currently working with both the Northeast Chapter of the Society for Photographic Education, as well as the LGBTQ+ Caucus as their Northeast Chapter representative, and is pursuing collegiate teaching as a profession. They are currently based on Lenape and Canarsie land (Brooklyn, NY).

 

2020 FotoFika All Stars Launch w/ Mike Mandel & Becky Senf!

Mike Mandel’s Iconic Baseball-Photographer Cards re-boot recognizes the Class of 2020 photo students; join the FotoFika Kickstarter to send a deck to every student. FotoFika 2020 All Stars Trading Card Project (2020Allstars.org) includes images from 380 photography students. We invited all photo students from the Class of 2020 across the globe to submit a single image and a statement about their work. We’ve welcomed the work of all graduating students in photography regardless of degree type. We’ve been sharing the work and promoting the project on Instagram and on our sites (including fotofika.org). There was no cost to the students to participate.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spenational/fotofika-2020-all-stars-trading-card-project

FotoFika – 2/17/21 – Marianna Chiokan

On Wednesday 2/17/21, Marianna Chiokan, MA, LMHC, NCC, CGT, joined us to address the stigma around mental health, differentiating mental health practices, distinguishing modalities, and where to get support for yourself and your students.

Marianna Chiokan is an energetic, empathetic, and direct psychotherapist and mental health educator based in New York City. She is skilled in a wide range of therapeutic modalities and works primarily with adults. Marianna approaches each individual with warmth, respect, and curiosity. Before establishing her practice, Marianna gained extensive experience working in a wide variety of clinical settings, including College counseling centers, inpatient and outpatient psychiatric and substance abuse programs, and community-based clinics. She is a licensed mental health counselor, a nationally certified counselor, and a certified gestalt therapist.

 

FotoFika 2/3/2021 – Annu Palakunnathu Matthew and Max Kandhola

On February 3rd, Annu Palakunnathu Matthew and Max Kandhola shared their thoughts on shifting and expanding the canon of photography in our classrooms and institutions. They asked our audience bring examples to share of sites, publications, and resources you might already be using toward this initiative so that we might all benefit from the wealth of knowledge that’s already out there. They shared strategies and observations from both the perspective of faculty and students.

Read more about Annu’s accomplishments and view her work on her website: https://www.annumatthew.com/

Read more about Max’s accomplishments on his academic site: https://www.ntu.ac.uk/staff-profiles/art-design/max-kandhola

FotoFika 01/20/2021 – Studioless Lighting – Geoff Delanoy, Lindsay Metivier, B. Proud, E. Brady Robinson and Elena Volkova

On Jan 20, 2021, Geoff Delanoy, Lindsay Metivier, B. Proud, E. Brady Robinson, and Elena Volkova shared their strategies for teaching studio lighting photography in our virtual classrooms. Similar to last week, we used the meeting more as an open forum/workshop. Each of our guests shared their thoughts on teaching studio lighting virtually.

FotoFika 01/06/2021 – Darkroom/Online/Hybrid w/Tom Leininger

We Hosted a FotoFika Workshop on January 6, 2021 and talked to Tom Leininger talk about teaching darkroom photography with reduced, distanced or non-existent class darkroom time.

Online, Hybrid and Traditional all have their challenges and advantages and I am hopeful that once Covid no longer dictates our teaching we will emerge with more ways to teach than ever before. And while FotoFika began as a place s is help us develop coping strategies, we are hopeful that it can become a place where we all continue to grow as educators, students and artists.- Betsy Schneider

FotoFika 12/15/2021 – Jonathan Molina-Garcia

For our final FotoFika of 2020, Assistant Professor, Jonathan Molina-Garcia from VCUarts joined us. Molina-Garcia was already using hybrid teaching/critique strategies in his classroom even before COVID 19 and has since incorporated innovative remote teaching and student focused engagement at both the grad and undergraduate level.

Jonathan Molina-Garcia is an assistant professor of Photography + Film. He is a Salvadoran-American, photo-based media artist whose projects are committed to experiments in radical sharing, as a practice of both material exchanges and social communing. A citizen of the third world and an American DREAMER, his work examines various zones of conflict at the intersection of national and sexual identity, counterfeiting new criminal identities under the aegis of experimental technology and mechanical media. Heavily grounded in processes of collage, his mediums of interest also include time-based actions: performance art and video; book-making and labor crafts. His exhibitions include a solo presentation of the Bethesda Brotherhood at the Lawndale Art Center in Houston, and “Looms” at Sweet Pass Sculpture Park in Dallas. He is the recipient of the 2018 Nasher Microgrant and has been awarded various other developmental grants from organizations including the artist-run space Art Tooth, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation and the Dallas Museum of Art. He earned his MFA in photography from the California Institute of the Arts, and graduated with dual bachelor’s degrees in photography and art history from the University of North Texas.

FotoFika 12/02/20

On 12/2/2020 Ben Gest joined FotoFika to continue our conversation about critiques, he introduced a new critique software that he is developing and beta testing called Atget Studio.

Atget Studio provides a simple digital platform that makes a back-and-forth exchange between creator and teacher fast and effective. Ask questions, share your art and receive critical and clear feedback that helps you better communicate your ideas.

Gest is the Associate Chair of Part-Time Programs at the International Center of Photography (ICP), and has taught art at the School of Visual Arts (SVA), Barnard College and the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in NYC and Princeton University and Rutgers University in NJ and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia College Chicago. His work is in the permanent collections at The Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; LaSalle Bank, Chicago; Tweed Museum of art, Duluth and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City. His photographs have been exhibited in solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Museum, Baltimore; the Renaissance Society, Chicago; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Ben Gest is currently based in NYC.

FotoFika 11/18/20

In this episode of on FotoFika Anne, Betsy and John hosted Terry Barrett for “Interactive Crits” an informal discussion of rationales and strategies for studio critiques during troubled times. Terry Barrett is the author of books on criticism and aesthetics including Criticizing Photographs and CRITS. A new edition of Criticizing Photographs is being published later this month and is available for pre-order now (Routledge Press). CRITS is a manual written to and for students about studio critiques published (Bloomsbury, 2019).

FotoFika 10/28/20

This week we spoke Arthur Fields who was just elected to the SPE Board of Directors.

FotoFika 9/30/20

On September 30th FotoFika hosted Edgar Cardenas. Cardenas’ work operates in the space between art and science combining sustainability, social justice and photography. He discussed his class at Michigan State and how he and his students are dealing with teaching this semester and how the art/science dichotomy can perhaps present some solutions for the Covid moment. Edgar has a Phd in Sustainability from ASU and is currently a post-doc fellow at Michigan State University. His book, Between Two Pines addresses artists’ responsibility to participate in sustainability.

FotoFika 9/16/20

FotoFika #10 – 5/13/20

FotoFika #9 – 5/6/20

FotoFika #7 – 4/29/20

FotoFika #6 – 4/22/20

FotoFika #5 – 4/15/20

FotoFika #4 – 4/8/20

FotoFika #3 – 4/1/20

FotoFika #2 – 3/25/20

FotoFika is hosted by SPE. Last week we invited Rebekah Modrak –  artist, author of Reframing Photography and a professor at the University of Michigan (go Blue) to talk about her assignment Windows Serenade among other things. We also went over the FotoFika site and some of the questions posted last week specifically in relation to teaching darkroom classes.  All of those teaching visual art/photography or related subjects are welcome and you do not have to be an SPE member to attend. Please help pass this on to people who may not be on Facebook.

FotoFika #1 – 3/18/20

Here is an audio recording of the first FotoFika with Betsy Schneider and John Freyer, hosted by Anne Massoni and the Society for Photographic Education.  Due to privacy concerns the video version of the talk is only available to members of SPE.  But all future FotoFika conversations will be available on video as well.  We will inform all participants that we are recording video for distribution.  You should be able to follow along on the this site and see Betsy’s assignment ideas here.