Former student of Ansel Adams to lecture on photography as art

Howard Bond, a renowned photographer and former student of Ansel Adams, will give a free lecture at Syracuse University. The lecture, “Photography as Art: Trends Since 1839,” is Thursday, Sept. 10, at 5 p.m. in the Peter Graham Scholarly Commons on the first floor of Bird Library.

The event kicks off the SU Library Associates 2009-10 lecture series. It also comes near the beginning of the Syracuse Symposium lecture series and an exhibition titled “Luminous Construction: The Photography of Howard Bond” at Bird Library running Sept. 8- Jan. 14, 2010. For more information, contact Pamela McLaughlin at (315) 443-9788 or pwmclaug@syr.edu.

Free parking for the lecture is available in the Booth Garage, on the corner of Waverly and Comstock avenues. The event is followed by a reception, during which Bond will sign copies of his exhibition catalog. Lecture sponsors include the SU Humanities Center, the SU Library and the library’s Special Collections Research Center.

Suzanne Thorin, dean of the library and executive director of the Library Associates’ Board of Trustees, says Bond’s presentation focuses on an interesting piece of scholarship. “Ever since early experimentation with photographic processes in the mid-19th century, people have used photography to create art,” she says. “But there is one question that persists to this day: ‘Can an unaltered image produced with a camera be considered art, or must the image be altered by human intervention?’”

Bond will address both points of view with a richly illustrated lecture spanning more than 170 years of history. He will consider the early montages of O.J. Rejlander and Henry Peach Robinson; Peter Henry Emerson’s advocacy of un-retouched photos during the 1870s and 1880s; the Pictorialist movement at the turn of the 20th century; Modernism, as advocated by members of Group f/64 in the 1930s; the Post-Modernists of the 1970s; and recent digital techniques.

Since committing himself fully to photography in 1979, Bond has been regarded as a master of large-format film photography. His signature black and white photography has been featured in more than 60 single-artist and 40 group shows all over the world. He is the author of two books, “Light Motifs” (1984) and “White Motif: The Cyclades Islands of Greece” (1991), both published by Goodrich Press, and more than 100 articles for Photo Techniques magazine. In addition to Adams, Bond studied fine art photography with 20th-century masters Imogen Cunningham and Brett Weston. The Michigan-based artist has taught workshops on photographic techniques for more than three decades.

Recently, Bond’s photography was the subject of a generous donation to SU Library by Carl J. Armani ’60 and his wife, Marcy. The gift, which includes a set of 22 portfolios of dramatic landscapes and abstract close-ups taken between 1974 and 2005, is the subject of the aforementioned Bird Library exhibition. Curator Kelli Pennington ’10, an M.F.A. student in art photography, says Bond’s aesthetic echoes that of his mentors. “I see in Bond’s work a finely trained gaze, an ability to render the details and spaces that make up our world,” she says.

Syracuse Symposium is a semester-long festival celebrating the interdisciplinary humanities at SU. This year’s symposium explores the protean meaning of light in all its senses and myriad of forms, including music, art, dance, film, sciences, religion and philosophy. Also, it attempts to bring new meaning to light through a diverse array of lectures, performances, exhibits, symposia and other special events. Syracuse Symposium is organized and presented for The College of Arts and Sciences by the SU Humanities Center. More information is available at http://www.syracusehumanities.org/#/files/2412/4958/5954/5372073566.jpg.

The SU Library Associates is a society devoted to the enrichment of the University Library and the greater campus community. Members share an interest in books, learning and the preservation of knowledge. For more information, visit http://library.syr.edu/libraryassociates/.