Expanding the theme for this week, the 2:00 lectures examine the ethical lens of photography through which to see the issues that hold us accountable as humans for the quality of life among us and for our stewardship of the planet that we share as home. Ethical issues revealed by photography will include war and genocide, marketplace and commerce, technology, journalism, and religion -- and the power of photography to engender spiritual activism will also be explored.
Bio
Chris Mahoney
Christopher Mahoney is Senior Vice President in the Photograph Department of Sotheby's, New York City. He joined Sotheby's as Senior Cataloguer in 1995, after four years with Swann Galleries, where he was both Senior Cataloguer and an auctioneer. After Denise Bethel, Mr. Mahoney is the most senior expert in the world of American photographs auctions, with 15 years of solid experience in soliciting, estimating, researching and cataloguing photographs for auction sale. His wide-ranging knowledge and skills have been essential to the success of all of Sotheby's record sales in recent years, especially An Important Collection of Photographs by Eugene and Adalbert Cuvelier, and the David Feigenbaum Collection of Southworth & Hawes, for which he was the primary catalog author; the Stephen R. Anaya Collection of Gold Rush Daguerreotypes, where he again authored all of the catalog entries; Important Photographs from The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Photographs from the Collection of 7-Eleven; two sales of photographs from The Museum of Modern Art; and the auction of Berenice Abbott Photographs from the Museum of the City of New York. He has also contributed photographs entries for lots in other Sotheby's auctions, most notably the collection of photographs in the sale of works by Allen Ginsberg and his circle.
Mr. Mahoney earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in photography at New York University and holds a Master of Arts and Humanities Degree from the University of Buffalo. Trained as a photographer, Mr. Mahoney brings to his work not only the eye of a connoisseur, but also an in-depth understanding of photographic processes, papers, technical details and cameras. His work as a photographer has led him to experiment with both conventional and alternative photographic processes, and to pursue his interest in chronicling the work of contemporary daguerreotypists, on which he is an authority. He has written on various photographic subjects for 21st: The Journal of Contemporary Photography, the Daguerreian Annual and the PhotoArts website. He has lectured for a variety of institutions and groups, among them the Detroit Institute of Art, the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, the Springfield Art Museum of Massachusetts, The Philadelphia Art Alliance, Atlanta's High Museum of Art, and at other locations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, New Jersey, and the Bahamas.
Method of recording permanent images by the action of light projected by a lens in a camera onto a film or other light-sensitive material. It was developed in the 19th century through the artistic aspirations of two Frenchmen, Nicéphore Niepce and Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, whose combined discoveries led to the invention of the first commercially successful process, the daguerreotype (1837). In addition, two Englishmen, Thomas Wedgwood and William Henry Fox Talbot, patented the negative-positive calotype process (1839) that became the forerunner of modern photographic technique. Photography was initially used for portraiture and landscapes. In the 1850s and '60s, Mathew B. Brady and Roger Fenton pioneered war photography and photojournalism. From its inception, two views of photography predominated: one approach held that the camera and its resulting images truthfully document the real world, while the other considered the camera simply to be a tool, much like a paintbrush, with which to create artistic statements. The latter notion, known as Pictorialism, held sway from the late 1860s through the first decade of the 20th century, as photographers manipulated their negatives and prints to create hazy, elaborately staged images that resembled paintings. By the 1920s and '30s, a new, more realistic style of photography gained prominence, as photographers such as Paul Strand, Edward Weston, and Ansel Adams began to pursue sharply focused, detailed images. The Great Depression and two world wars inspired many photographers, including Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, to pursue documentary, often socially conscious photography. Inspired by such work, many photojournalists, including Alfred Eisenstaedt and Margaret Bourke-White, also emerged during this period. In the second half of the 20th century, the urban social scene became a subject of much interest to photographers, as did celebrity portraiture and fashion photography. At the turn of the 21st century, photographers took advantage of digital capabilities by experimenting with enormous formats and new manipulative techniques. As technological advances improve photographic equipment, materials, and techniques, the scope of photography continues to expand enormously. See alsodigital camera.
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