2025 SPE Annual Conference: Adaptations
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print this pageBeautiful Pig: Process and the Archive
Image Maker Presentation by Ben Schonberger
Friday, October 17 - 2:00PM to 3:00PM
Conrad A. Elvehjem Building, Room 160
During an investigation of Detroit, I acquired a series of photographs from a retired former Detroit Police officer, Marty Gaynor, whom I began to interview weekly over a course of two years. Among his thousands of photographs were images that he had taken of criminals. By cataloguing, arranging, and interpreting his work, I gave it the parameters of an archive. I arranged Marty's images to create documents in the format of a grid. Each grid was presented to Marty as a canvas for him to transcribe a narration for his images. I infiltrated and paired the grids with images I had taken during my investigation and interaction with Marty. My arrangements are designed to address the complexities of identity through narrative.
At the 2014 Midwest SPE Conference Ben Schonberger will address his work in context to the investigation of an archive. Ben will discuss his relationship with Sergeant Gaynor and their development of collaboration as process. This lecture will provide a critical breakdown of how an archive can be deconstructed to develop a narrative and examine the implications artist are faced when they begin to participate as a means to analyze. Ben will examine how an artist can infiltrate and redefine the context of images through a personal experience and explain how role playing functions as a tool to investigate.
The Conrad A. Elvehjem Building is located at 800 University Ave, Madison, WI 53706.
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Ben Schonberger
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