Center for Creative Photography - University of Arizona
photo by John Hazeltine
Tucson, AZ
520-621-7968
http://www.creativephotography.org
Lorie Novak: Photographs, 1983-2000
The Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona presents two exhibitions of work by Lorie Novak from February 17 through April 29, 2001: Lorie Novak: Photographs, 1983-2000, a career survey of prints recently acquired by CCP; and Collected Visions: An Installation by Lorie Novak, a multimedia project that questions how family photographs shape our memories and relationships.
Novak
has long explored the nature of the snapshot and has created innovative
and engaging ways to look at family photographs as representations of both
personal and collective memory. Lorie Novak: Photographs, 1983-2000,
organized by the Center for Creative Photography, surveys nearly two decades
of the searching, resonant imagery of artist Lorie Novak. Her signature
use of projected imagery to combine and challenge the role of photography
in constructions of reality, memory and the self is showcased in this selection
of over thirty large-scale color prints recently acquired by CCP. In
Lorie Novak: Photographs, 1983-2000, she repeatedly mines her family's
own photographic history, transforming images from her childhood and related
signifiers by projecting them into three-dimensional settings-from sylvan
landscapes to stark interiors. (left: Photo by Lorie Novak, Identities,
1998, Incorporated color coupler print, 36 x 29 inches, © 1998 Lorie
Novak, Collection Center for Creative Photography, the University of Arizona)
"This exhibition celebrates the establishment of the largest public collection of the artist's work and offers a defining overview of her influential contributions to American photography," said Trudy Wilner Stack, Curator of Exhibitions and Collections at the Center for Creative Photography. "In addition, all of Novak's art reveals the importance and complexity of photography's role in family life."
Collected Visions: An Installation by Lorie Novak
Collected Visions: An Installation by Lorie Novak presents hundreds of family snapshots collected since 1992 from
over
350 people in a new multi-media exploration of this culturally significant
photography that shapes both memory and identity. The images are juxtaposed
with one another and combined with overlapping spoken word and music in
a dreamlike environment of dissolving projected images. The experience conveys
the psychological and emotional power of photographs and explores their
contemporary role in our everyday lives. (left: Collected Visions:
An Installation by Lorie Novak, 2000, computer-based installation, Projected
images 8.5 x 11 feet each, Coutrtesy of the artist, © 2000 Lorie Novak,
Center for Creative Photography, the University of Arizona)
Two computer-driven, floor-to-ceiling, simultaneous 17-minute sequences use high-resolution digital projectors and a new high-quality streaming media system created specifically for the project by Jonathan Meyer. Elizabeth Brown's original music is mixed with recorded voices of people speaking about their family photographs. Novak said, "What I see in these photographs are the dreams, disappointments, joys, tensions, stereotypes, and myths of modern culture." Novak encourages visitors to participate in Collected Visions on the Web and during three Collecting Days at CCP when visitors can add to the project by scanning snapshots and/or writing stories about their photographs. The website has over 2,000 snapshots in a searchable database and 150 stories posted in a virtual gallery and museum. Collected Visions on the Web will also be accessible at a computer station in the CCP gallery.
Lorie Novak's work has been presented
in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad since
1980 at such venues as the International Center of Photography; the Museum
of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Smithsonian Institution; The Museum of
Modern Art, NY; The Houston Center for Photography; The Art Institute of
Chicago;The Southeast Museum of Photography; the Addison Gallery of American
Art; The Jewish Museum, NY; SF Camerawork, and Breda Fotografica in the
Netherlands. She has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the
Arts Fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and Tiffany
Grant, and residencies at The MacDowell Colony, Rockeller Foundation's Bellagio
Center, Yaddo, and Djerrassi. Her photographs are found in the collections
of numerous American and European museums. Novak is currently Chair of The
Department of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts, New York
University (NYU), where she is co-director of Urban Ensemble, a program
where Tisch students engage in community-based arts projects. She is also
affiliated faculty at the NYU Center for Advanced Technology
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This page was originally published in Resource Library Magazine. Please see Resource Library's Overview section for more information. rev. 5/23/11
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