2025 SPE Annual Conference: Adaptations
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print this pageCommunity Darkrooms: Their Revival and Significance in the Digital Age
Panel Discussion
Saturday, October 19 - 4:00PM to 4:45PM
UNCC Center City Building // 204 Lecture Hall
This panel will discuss the revival, and survival, of community based public darkrooms as a place of creativity, support and inspiration for photographers.
Panel Members:
LAURIE SCHORR
Laurie Schorr is a photographic artist based in Charlotte, NC. Her work is inspired by place and memory, and is based within silver gelatin and alternative, experimental processes. Laurie teaches B&W Darkroom photography and works within several schools in Charlotte to build darkrooms and to integrate literacy skills with photography and creative writing techniques.
BRIDGET CONN
Bridget Conn earned her BFA in Photography from Tulane University in 2000, and her MFA from the University of Georgia in 2003, focusing in Photography, Mixed Media, and Installation. Throughout the 2000s she taught at numerous colleges in Georgia, and was a member of the Stillmoreroots artist collective based in Swainsboro. There she taught at East Georgia College and focused her efforts into arts education for rural areas, including programs with the regionally-renowned Gallery RFD. The mountains eventually called her to Asheville, North Carolina in the fall of 2009, where she currently spreads her time among teaching, arts writing, design, and creating art. Her main efforts are concentrated on The Asheville Darkroom, where she serves as Co-Director and instructor for this upcoming photographic arts center seeking to become a non-profit organization.
JASON CLEMENTS
Jason Clements is a photographic artist who resides in Asheville, North Carolina. He has been art-making in darkrooms for the past 8 years, pursuing ideas within the realms of character of light, quality of light, color, and installation/interactive art. Jason has studied at The Corcoran School of Art in Washington D.C, Warren Wilson College in Asheville, and The John Dugdale School of 19th Century Photography and Aesthetics in Stone Ridge, NY. He has shown work in West Palm Beach, Florida, Washington D.C, and Asheville. Jason joined on as co-director of The Asheville Darkroom in April of 2013.
JOHN BERRY
John Berry, a mixed media visual artist, studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art in Ohio before moving to Asheville, NC just over a year ago. Primarily working in photography and installation. Participation, play. and experimentation are key factors in his work, while staying grounded with conceptual roots in phenomenology, identity, and the human experience
JANE WILEY
JAWiley was born in Kittery, Maine and raised in North Carolina by a long line of avid amateur photographers, adventurous women and stable men. She'll use anything to make a photograph --- film, digital, plant matter... It all makes her happy.
"I've always been drawn to black and white photography because of the dream-like ethereal quality.... poetry without words. It's really an offshoot of my lifelong love affair with the language of film. But instead of moving, my images are frozen moments... like a single frame from a late-night classic movie on cable tv. My images are memories that take me to the moment when I snapped the shutter.... whether it was carefully planned or a swift, lucky convergence of the elements... the decisive moment."
speaker
Bridget Conn
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