View of the exhibition Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009.
The Shpilman Institute for Photography is pleased to invite you to a lecture by Rotem Rozental, “The Photographer as Collector: The Photographic Desires of Walker Evans and Martin Parr,” on Wednesday, August 6 at 6:30 p.m.
The merging of the positions of photographer and collector defines the drive of a certain kind of photographic work, for which the camera becomes a collecting device, accumulating a collection that speaks the subjectivity of its author — the photographer. There are, however, two impulses at work here: the photographer-as-collector and the collector-as-photographer. Both are present in the work of Martin Parr, who has openly admitted that he has “the collecting gene,” but also, somewhat earlier, in the work of Walker Evans whose obsession with collectibles and whose mode of photographic collecting provide a striking historical precedent for Parr’s compulsive practice. This lecture explores the collecting impulse that motivates these photographers and shapes a new mode of making photographs and cataloging social life that seems to escape established genre categories.
Rotem Rozental is a doctorate candidate at the Art History Department at Binghamton University. Her dissertation, written under the guidance of Prof. John Tagg, investigates the intersections of photographic archives, technologies and nationalism, focusing on Zionist archives. She is currently the online editorial director of the Jerusalem Season of Culture. Rotem completed her MA studies with honorary distinction at the Cohn Institute for History and Philosophy of Sciences and Ideas (Tel Aviv History). Her thesis, supervised by Prof. Hagi Kenann, conceptualized Jean-Luc Nancy’s understanding of memory in art. Rotem’s activity in the international art arena as curator and producer derives from her extensive experience as an editor, writer and consultant in various international publications, newspapers and websites.
Binghamton Art History 