CAMTalk: Exhibition Series Life Magazine and the Power of Photography

Description

with Kristen Gresh, Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Senior Curator of Photographs at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 
CAM Auditorium, 27 Pleasant Street, Gloucester, MA 
Registration required for all attendees. Free for members, $10 for non-members 
Livestreamed on Vimeo and Facebook 

The Cape Ann Museum is pleased to welcome Kristen Gresh, Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Senior Curator of Photographs at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston for a CAMTalk on Life Magazine and the Power of Photography presented in conjunction with the current exhibition at the Cape Ann Museum, Above the Fold: The Photographers of the “Gloucester Daily Times,” 1973-2005. 

From the Great Depression to the Vietnam War, almost all of the photographs printed for consumption by the American public appeared in illustrated magazines. Among them, Life magazine—published weekly from 1936 to 1972—was both wildly popular and visually revolutionary, with photographs arranged in groundbreaking dramatic layouts known as photo-essays. Gresh will speak about the creation and impact of the carefully selected images found in the pages of Life—and the precisely crafted narratives told through these pictures—in order to reveal how the magazine shaped conversations about war, race, technology, national identity, and more in the 20th-century United States.  

The photographs capture some of the defining moments—celebratory and traumatic alike—of the last century, from the Birmingham civil rights demonstrations to the historic Apollo 11 moon landing. Far from simply nostalgic and laudatory, the research discussed critically reconsiders Life’s complex, and sometimes contradictory, approach to such stories through works by photographers from different backgrounds and perspectives who captured difficult images of ethnic discrimination and racialized violence, from the Holocaust to white supremacist terror of the 1960s. 

The Cape Ann Museum acknowledges the North of Boston Media Group and the Gloucester Daily Times for sponsoring and assisting in the creation of Above the Fold and The Clara E. and John H. Ware Jr. Foundation for their support of the CAM Photo Archives and the initiatives of the Library & Archives.