Aperture Foundation and the Photography Program at the School of Art, Media, and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design are pleased to present a lecture with artist Shirin Neshat, the Iranian born and New York-based photographer, filmmaker, and video artist, whose controversial work has received international acclaim for its exploration of the complex socio-political discourse surrounding the female experience in Iranian society.

Born in Qazvin, Iran before immigrating to the United States in 1974, Neshat has been called “artist of the decade” by G. Roger Denson of the Huffington Post “[because her work is] chronically relevant to an increasingly global culture,” exploring our “convergence and collision of values.” Often through the use of multi-channel video and sound installations, her exacting iconography turns to historical and contemporary sources to create technically beautiful and richly provocative portraits, often addressing the deep-rooted resilience and determination of women in Muslim societies.

Beginning in the nineties with the provocative portrait series Women of Allah (1993-1997)—“the stark photographs of Iranian women in chadors, some brandishing guns, others with skin covered by Persian script that few people outside Iran can read”— Neshat’s artistic practice has focused on the myriad dualities inherent in Iranian gender structures. She explains in an interview with Studio Banana, that the interrogation of such dualities is inherent to her work, both in the content and form.

Neshat’s 1998 Turbulent utilizes two opposing projections, two singers (one male, one female) to create a striking visual and audible metaphor for the complexity of gender and social power within the framework of ancient Persian music and poetry. Necessary viewing.

In conversation with Heyoka Magazine, Neshat remarks, that in order to properly analyze her body of work, a viewer must always consider both its personal and social context that always run parallel:

“My themes always seem to develop as a personal inquiry toward certain issues that I am faced with as an individual; for example my resentment and questions toward political powers or events such as the Islamic revolution (1979) that has determined the course of my life and so many other Iranians’. Consequently this path naturally has pulled me toward a larger cultural investigation.”

———

›› Neshat has most recently addressed the Arab Spring and the momentum of these uprisings in a photography and video installation at Gladstone Gallery (2012).

›› Released in 2009, Neshat’s feature-film debut, Women Without Men, is an “exquisitely crafted view of Iran in 1953, when a British- and American-backed coup removed the democratically elected government.”

Artist Talk: Shirin Neshat
Tuesday, May 1, 6:30PM
FREE
Aperture Gallery and Bookstore
New York, New York

Widely acclaimed artists Collier Schorr and Roe Etheridge, founders of Primary Information James Hoff and Miriam Katzeff will be featured on a panel this Wednesday to discuss and consider the future of the photograph in print, moderated by  artist, critic and founding editor of Influence Magazine, Gil blank .

The panel, entitled Open Cover Before Striking, Confounding Expectations is presented by Aperture, the photography department in the School of Art, Media and Technology at Parsons and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School. The question posed to the event’s participants will be: As print faces the encroachment of digital technology and the mainstreaming of online culture, what is the viability of printed and published forms of photography – monographic, serial, underground or otherwise – as a means of photographic production?

Open Cover Before Striking, Confounding Expectations Panel Discussion
Thursday, April 8, 7:00 PM

FREE

The New School
Tischman Auditorium
66 West 12th Street
New York, New York

Please join Aperture for some of our exciting upcoming events:

Copyright Barbara Probst

On Tuesday, March 23rd Aperture and the Photography Program in the School of Art, Media and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design will present an artist talk with Photographer Barbara Probst.

Probst is an internationally celebrated artist who lives and works in both Munich and New York and has exhibited at galleries and museums both in America and Europe. Her work examines the multiple simultaneous narratives of a single moment of exposure, triggering the shutter release of several cameras pointed at different perspectives on one scene with the use of a radio-controlled release system.

Artist Lecture with Barbara Probst
Tuesday, March 23, 6:30 pm

Aperture Gallery & Bookstore
547 West 27th Street, 4th floor
New York, New York

Additionally this coming Thursday at the SVA theater a screening  of Alfredo Jaar’s film “The Ashes of Pasolini” will be followed by a conversation, presented by the MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department at SVA in partnership with Aperture, between Alfredo Jaar and filmmaker, poet and critic David Levi Strauss.

Alfredo Jaar is an architect, artist and filmmaker who lives and works in New York City. He has created more than fifty “public interventions” around the world, and more than forty monographs have been published about his work. David Levi Strauss is the chair of the MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department at SVA.

The Ashes of Pasolini Screening and Conversation with Alfredo Jaar and David Levi Strauss
Thursday, MArch 25th, 7:00 pm

School of the Visual Arts
333 West 23rd Street
New York, New York

Next week Sarah Pickering and Susan Bright will be in conversation at Aperture on the occassion of Pickerings first monograph Explosions, Fires and Public Order (Aperture, April 2010).

As part of the Parsons Department of Photography at The New School Lecture Series, writer and critic Luc Sante gave a talk at Aperture Gallery last November on his new book, Folk Photography: The American Real-Photo Postcard, 1905–1930, which was recently excerpted in Aperture magazine, Issue 196. The full version of this talk is now available to view on our multimedia page divided in two parts.

This clip below is an excerpt from the event where Luc Sante explains how he started collecting postcards thirty years ago. He then reads the introduction to his book going through the development of photo postcards with the dissemination of pocket cameras in the first half of the 20th century and the particular style of this non-academic American vernacular art.

To watch the full version, click on these links below:

Part 1, Part 2

Sign up for our email newsletter to find about more compelling artist’s talks from this series and our upcoming events in 2010.

Join Aperture and the Parsons Department of Photography for an artist’s talk with Lorna Simpson at Aperture Gallery. Simpson is known for her use of the image of the African-American woman to examine the ways in which gender and culture shape the interactions, relationships, and experiences of our lives in contemporary, multi-racial America. Recently, she has turned her attention to moving images; in film and video works such as Call Waiting, Simpson presents individuals engaged in intimate and enigmatic elliptical conversations that elude easy interpretation while addressing the mysteries of both identity and desire. Her newest works include figurative drawings of characters from her video works and a collection of drawings of women’s heads, turned in profile to reveal their various hairstyles. Simpson is currently creating installations involving found vintage photographs accompanied by her own drawings and new photography.

Artist’s Talk with Lorna Simpson
Tuesday, October 27,  7:00 pm

FREE

Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
New York, New York
(212) 505-5555

Last April, photographer Todd Hido discussed his work, inspirations, and influences as part of an ongoing lecture series hosted by Aperture Foundation and presented by the department of photography, Parsons The New School for Design.

Click here to listen to a one-minute excerpt of Hido’s talk.

Listen to Hido’s talk in its entirety here

On view in the slide show above are photographs from his different series of work including anonymous models in motel rooms, interiors of abandoned houses, as well as outside views of homes at night. Born in Ohio in 1968, Hido’s work can be found in many prominent collections, including the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He has exhibited widely in galleries and museums across the country and he has published several monographs such as House Hunting (Nazraeli Press, 2001) and  Between the Two (Nazraeli Press, 2006). He recently published a limited-edition artist book Ohio as part of the Subscription Series, combining pictures he took as a child and recent photos taken with the same camera. He is also releasing a new monograph Witness No. 7 (Nazraeli Press) this spring on abandoned homes and the stories of previous lives they hold.

The Ancestor, 2001

Tina Barney

6:30 p.m.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
New York, New York
(212) 505-5555

FREE

As part of the ongoing lecture series hosted by Aperture and presented by the department of photography, Parsons The New School for Design, Tina Barney will discuss her work. Since 1975, Barney has been producing large-scale photographs of family and friends. Barney’s subjects are often seen in complex photographic compositions that invite intimate study of the behavior, social class, and notions of privilege suggested by the clothing, picturesque environments, and luxurious settings they inhabit. Barney’s photographs have appeared in the acclaimed books Tina Barney: Theater of Manners (Scalo), and in The Europeans (Steidl). Her work has been widely exhibited in galleries and museums around the world.