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Society for Photographic Education The Multicultural Caucus’ purpose is to facilitate the investigation of multicultural imagemakers and image making in regional, national, and international contexts; to act as an arena for the discussion of particular cultural issues by people of diverse cultural backgrounds; to confront the visual, social and political issues that arise from these discussions, with integrity, honesty and justice. Everyone is welcome to attend. The Multicultural Caucus Member Gallery includes: |
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STEVE AISHMAN + BENJAMIN SLOAT |
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Photographing fellow half-Asian people looking more "Western," "Asian," and "Neutral" began as a way to confront issues of identity and its performance within a hybrid individual. Simultaneously, the manner of each portrait speaks to cultural ascriptions of the image. Ultimately we aim to create a visual community of persons where a physical community does not exist as well as provoke the viewer's notions of visual perception. Steve Aishman is a Professor of Photography at the Savannah College of Art and Design, and Benjamin Sloat currently teaches at Mass Art, Tufts and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The Half-Asian Photo Project has been shown extensively in the Northeast and has been reviewed in the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, and the New York Times. http://www.halfasian.net/ |
BYRON BRAUCHLI |
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Photographs from the project Cultural Refractions: Border Life en la tierra de nadie. This work focuses on the merging of modernity with tradition along the U.S.- Mexican border; it contrasts the North and the South; it establishes a visual dialectic between the two banks of the Rio Grande that narrates the coexistence and contrast of order and chaos, progress and its discontinuity; showing some ambiguities of our modern society. Byron Brauchli, a printmaker and photographer, specializes in alternate photographic processes and Mexican-U.S. visual studies. In 1996 he received a U.S.-Mexico Fund for Culture Grant (Rockefeller Foundation/Fonda Nacional para la Cultura y Artes) to conduct a bi-national project visually documenting the border region and in 1999 he was a Fulbright-Robles García Scholar collaborating with the Institute of Fine Arts at the University of Veracruz, where he is currently a research fellow. www.byronbrauchli.com |
CAROLA DREIDEMIE |
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My photographic research pursues the portrait form inquiring into issues of cultural and political marginality. This image belongs to a series of portraits of gay women generating visibility and fighting oppression in Buenos Aires. Carola Dreidemie is an Argentine artist that currently resides in the United States. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Photography and Digital Media at the University of Miami in Florida. (Image: Drag Kings, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2005.) |
| HANNAH FRIESER | |
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My recent work renegotiates ideas of identity and cross-cultural heritage from an autobiographical viewpoint. It explores the emotional ambiguity created by a mixed heritage background in a world of increasing global mobility. More and more children are born to parents of different cultural or ethnic backgrounds, different religions, race or nationality. These children often grow up with a sense of otherness. How much "otherness" is required until we all become the same again? Hannah Frieser is a photographer and book artist. She is formerly an SPE staff member, having worn many hats within the organization, including onsite conference coordinator and membership registrar. She now brings her expertise to SPE's Board of Directors. Hannah is Director of Light Work in Syracuse, NY. www.hannahfrieser.com (Image: "Different" from the Identity Series) |
| DEBORAH JACK | |
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The “imagined spaces” series deals with the construction of spaces out of memory as well as the ephemeral quality of memory when applied to a tangible object such as the landscape. It questions the notion that the land is a witness to all the atrocities and the triumphs of our history. The images are meant to evoke renewal and the rebirth that occurs after tragedy, and the sacredness and vibrancy of that transformation. They are are manifestations of blood-memories that are located in my imagined spaces. |
| LEENA JAYASWAL | |
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I use photography as a means to connect to India, a land I do not know but feel tied to by family and heritage. This series is from the Ms. India Washington, DC pageant that took place this August. It was the 10th Anniversary of the pageant, but I had only become familiar with it this year. I wanted to document how young Indian women kept parts of their heritage while maintaining life in America. I want to explore how other women endure this balancing act. |
| LAMIA KHORSHID | |
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I've been shooting and investigating a lot of issues in my work regarding women, how we're viewed, how we view ourselves, how we don't view ourselves, how we want to be viewed, and how we don't want to be viewed. My biggest fear might be wondering if there's a difference, if there's an answer, are we ever free of our inhibitions, or are we constantly living with them, and only free for small moments of time, and then in that freedom do we again find out that we are not free after all? It's a constant process of self-discovery. Are we ever to escape the ties that bind us? Lamia Khorshid was born in Cairo, Egypt, the first born of seven. She was raised in the Muslim Faith. The first eight years of her life were spent between the house of her (late) grandmother in Egypt and her family home in Zambia, Africa. In 1981, her dad accepted a one-year fellowship in Miami. It was their first trip to the United States. Her mother fell in love with the land of opportunity and freedom, and in 1985, the family moved to Miami. When her family grew, and her and her sisters started to blossom into young women in a somewhat less suppressive Western culture, conflicts in religious beliefs and traditional customs started to arise. www.miamiphotoacademy.com |
| ANNU PALAKUNNATHU MATTHEW | |
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Annu Palakunnathu Matthew’s recent exhibitions include the Victoria & Albert Museum, London England, Light Work, Syracuse, NY, Sepia International, New York City, Museum of Modern Art in Moscow and the RISD Museum, Providence, RI. Matthew’s work is included in the book BLINK from Phaidon, that according to the publisher celebrates the quality and vision of today's 100 most exciting international contemporary photographers. Images of her work are also in the book Digital Art by Christiane Paul, curator of New Media Arts at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Annu Palakunnathu Matthew is Associate Professor of Art (Photography) at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, Rhode Island and is represented by Sepia International Inc., New York City. |
| TRISH SIMONITE | |
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This Herbaria Series is an extension of my earlier still life work. It is informed by my interest in wealthy English aristocrats who traveled to exotic locations around the world obsessively collecting unusual plants, animals and geological specimens. I have come to think of my camera as ‘collector.’ I am able to amass a virtual collection, rather than a physical one. From this collection I can appropriate and recombine images. Over time, I have evolved my own, peculiar process, transforming the original image through numerous steps into the final work of art. Trish Simonite was born in Norfolk, England and moved to Texas in 1968. Her photographs have been exhibited in solo and group shows from Texas to Thailand. Trish is an Assistant Professor at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, and currently serves as Vice-President - State, of Texas Photographic Society. |
| LEWIS WATTS | |
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My photography is an aesthetic response to the evidence of history and contemporary experience found in African American communities. I have documented ways that people consciously and unconsciously personalize their living spaces, institutions and places of business and the sense of improvisation that leaves traces of experience in the landscape. Coming from my own experience, I have compared and contrasted the connection between the rural south and urban north and west; customs and objects that were brought and adapted during the great migration in the mid 20th. Century. Lewis Watts is an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of California at Santa Cruz where he has been teaching since 2000. He has exhibited work at the Oakland Museum of California, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Neuberger Museum, Purchase NY, The Baton Rouge Gallery, Hampshire College among others. http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/watts |
| WENDEL A. WHITE | |
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I began making photographs of black schools during the very first weeks of my project, Small Towns, Black Lives. I was beginning to pay attention to the many buildings and sites that once operated as racially segregated schools in the northern United States. Schools for the Colored is the beginning of my effort to memorialize these sites. They are representative of the remaining artifacts of the racially segregated schools that once operated throughout the United States. Images of schools have always been part of my visual and personal engagement with black communities. Wendel A. White was born in Newark, New Jersey 1956 and grew up in New York City, Philadelphia, and New Jersey. White is currently Professor of Art at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. He has received various awards and fellowships including the New Jersey Council for the Arts Fellowship (1995) and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (2003.) http://blacktowns.org |
| VAGNER WHITEHEAD | |
 Serial Minimal (2006), 5 minutes looped (audio by Kris Reid), installation in Pontiac, MI, October 2007 |
Brazilian artist and educator Vagner Mendonça Whitehead works with time-based media. He employs original and researched texts (in Portuguese and English), photo-based imagery (found and created), their translations and his interpretations as allegorical devices that reframe trans-cultural experiences. Vagner has exhibited his work throughout the United States (AZ, CA, FL, GA, IL, KY, MA, MI, MN, NM, NY, OR, TX, WI), abroad (Canada, India, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland) and online, in solo and group exhibitions and in video and film festivals. He was an artist-in-residence at the Ragdale Foundation in 2002 and a fellow at the Center for Photography at Woodstock in 2006. That same year the series memorial was featured in the Nueva Luz Photographic Journal. In 2006 Vagner also received a creative grant from NALAC. In the fall of 2007 his series persoentage will be featured at the 12x12 series at the Museum of New Art in Pontiac, MI. Vagner earned a BFA (photography) from Savannah College of Art and Design in 1995 and an MFA (creative photography and electronic inter-media) from the University of Florida in 2000. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at Oakland University, where he heads its New Media specialization. He previously held an Assistant Professor of Photography position at SIUC. For more information please visit www.vagnerwhitehead.com |
All photographs courtesy of the artists.
