Light Work will present a special lecture and Q&A session with 2010 Light Work Artist-in-Residence, photographer Gerard H. Gaskin, Thursday, Oc. 26, at 10 a.m. in the Light Work Lab, located in the Robert B. Menschel Media Center at 316 Waverly Ave. The award-winning photographer will speak to attendees about his photographic practice, influences, artwork and career. The lecture is free and open to students and community members. This event was made possible in part by the generous support of the Department of Transmedia at Syracuse University.
Gerard Gaskin, Tez, Evisu Ball, Manhattan, NY, 2010
Gaskin’s radiant color and black-and-white photographs take viewers inside the culture of house balls, underground events where gay and transgender men and women, mostly African American and Latino, come together to see and be seen. At balls, high-spirited late-night pageants, members of particular “houses”—the House of Blahnik, the House of Xtravaganza—“walk,” competing for trophies in categories based on costume, attitude, dance moves, and “realness.” In this exuberant world of artistry and self-fashioning, people often marginalized for being who they are can flaunt and celebrate their most vibrant, spectacular selves.
Gaskin, a native of Trinidad and Tobago, now based in Syracuse, earned a B.A. from Hunter College in 1994 and is now a freelance photographer based in the greater New York City area. His photos have appeared in The New York Times, Newsday, Black Enterprise, OneWorld, Teen People, Caribbean Beat and DownBeat. Among his other clients are the record companies Island, Sony, Def Jam and Mercury. Gaskin’s photographs have been featured in solo and group exhibitions across the United States and abroad, and his work is held in the collections of such institutions as the Museum of the City of New York and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Gaskin has been awarded The New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fellowship for Photography and was part of the Gordon Parks’ 90, the bringing together of 90 black photographers from all over the United States to celebrate his 90th birthday. His work is also featured in the books “Inside the L.A. Riots” (1992), “New York: A State of Mind” (2000) and “Committed To The Image: Contemporary Black Photographers” (2001).
See more of Gaskin’s images at: http://lg.ht/GGaskin
