The upcoming Forum on Contemporary Photography is organized in conjunction with the publication of two highly anticipated volumes: Race Stories: Essays on the Power of Images, the first title in Aperture’s new Vision & Justice Series, and The Unseen Truth by Sarah Lewis. Race Stories anthologizes a collection of short essays that explore the intersections of photography, race, and visual culture by award-winning historian, curator, and critic Maurice Berger (1956–2020). In The Unseen Truth, Lewis offers a probing historical analysis of the fictions that have long secured our regime of racial hierarchy in the United States. Framed by Berger and Lewis’s ever urgent contributions to thinking about race and representation in the US, this Forum will consider the role of cultural criticism in the work of examining social justice, equity, and democracy.
For this convening we are delighted to be joined by a group of distinguished speakers:
Dawoud Bey, artist
Vinson Cunningham, Staff writer and cultural critic, The New Yorker
Aruna D’Souza, writer and curator
Ava DuVernay, filmmaker and screenwriter
Awol Erizku, artist
Marvin Heiferman, writer and curator
Sherrilyn Ifill, The Vernon L. Jordan, Jr. Chair in Civil Rights, Howard University
Sarah Lewis, Founder of Vision & Justice and John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities and Associate Professor of African and African American Studies, Harvard University
Siddhartha Mitter, writer and critic
Leigh Raiford, Professor of African American Studies, University of California, Berkeley
RaMell Ross, artist and filmmaker
Deborah Willis, University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University
Cofounded by curators Roxana Marcoci and Eva Respini on February 16, 2010, and conceived as an experimental platform for free-form critical discussions, MoMA’s forums on contemporary photography are designed to encourage debate about the perspectives and scope of still and moving images and other forms of picture-making among leading artists, curators, and theorists in the field. The creative process of today is not solitary but dynamic, evolving from countless partnerships. These forums offer an intellectual milieu that values the scholarly reassessment of pivotal ideas in art, innovative practices, and complex and competing visions of modern and contemporary art.
Roxana Marcoci, The David Dechman Senior Curator and Acting Chief Curator of Photography, The Robert B. Menschel Department of Photography, MoMA, begins each session with an introduction to the topic, providing context for the conversation. Four to seven featured speakers then present for five to 10 minutes each. The presentations are followed by a probing, critical Q&A session and a moderated discussion with all the guests.
Read an article about the Forums from Art in America.
This Forum on Contemporary Photography is organized by Sarah Lewis, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities and Associate Professor of African and African American Studies, Harvard University, and Roxana Marcoci, Acting Chief Curator and the David Dechman Senior Curator of Photography, MoMA, with Michael Famighetti, Editor-in-Chief, Aperture, and Caitlin Ryan, Assistant Curator, The Robert B. Menschel Department of Photography, MoMA.
The Forums on Contemporary Photography are made possible through the Peter C. Bunnell Fund.
Our thanks to MoMA’s Black Arts Council for graciously hosting the closing reception to celebrate this Forum.