Collier Schorr

Artist lecture Tuesday, October 29, 2013 7PM
Timken Lecture Hall, California College of the Arts, San Francisco
Swedish Soldier (Poster), 1997-2001

American photographer Collier Schorr’s pictures are an experimentation in intimacy. Her enigmatic portraits – mostly of adolescents in the United States and Germany – conflate ideas of sexuality and desire, nationalism and history, identity and politics by blending stark realism with elements of fiction and youthful fantasy. Through her lens, high school and collegiate wrestlers homogenize into one emotional and physical type. Photographs of German youths dressed in German, Israeli, Weimer (Nazi) or American Vietnam-era military uniforms provoke intensely personal responses triggered by associations embedded in social and political histories. Often conceptually driven, Schorr has also used drawing, collage and performance to illustrate her emotional and critical perspective. Her monographs include Blumen (2009), There I Was (2009), Forest and Fields (2006), Jens F (2005) and Conquistadores (2003).

In addition to her practice as an artist, Schorr is an arts writer, contributing to publications such as Artforum, Frieze and Parkett. She has taught at Columbia University, School of Visual Arts and Sarah Lawrence College. In 2003, she was appointed to the Yale University faculty where she currently serves as a senior critic in photography.

One of the few photographers featured in the 2002 Whitney Biennial, Schorr’s work has been exhibited internationally, including a 2006 retrospective at Badischer Kunstverein, Germany and a solo exhibition at CoCA Kronika, Bytom, Poland in 2010. Her work is represented in collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Jewish Museum and Walker Art Center.


Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program

Pier 24 Photography is pleased to present the Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program in collaboration with California College of the Arts and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Each year, the Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program brings six photographers, writers, and curators to San Francisco to offer free and open lectures, and to work one-on-one with students at California College of the Arts.


Larry Sultan Photography Award


Jonathan Calm, Double Vision (Recording I), 2018

Jonathan Calm

Fall 2019 Residency
Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA

Click HERE for more information on the Larry Sultan Photography Award

Jonathan Calm is a visual artist who works in photography, video, installation, and performance. A central theme of his work is the relationship between photography and urban architecture, and the powerful role of images in the way architectural constructs shape the lives of individuals and communities.

In his most recent work, Calm explores the complex representation of African-American automobility from a historical and contemporary perspective, focusing and drawing on the importance and resonance of the Negro Motorist Green Book. Of this project, he explains, “the image of the infinite highway and the unbridled freedom to roam the land has always been considered a quintessential expression of the modern American spirit, but the black American experience of travel, which involves heightened subjectivity and exposure, has to this day proven a precarious privilege rather than an inalienable right.”

Calm’s art practice is international in scope and has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including Frequency at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2005); Role Play at the Tate Britain (2006); Black Is, Black Ain’t at the University of Chicago’s Renaissance Society (2008); Streetwise at the Reina Sophia Museum in Madrid (2008) and the Chelsea Art Museum (2011); deCordova Biennial at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (2013); and Rooted Movements at LMAKprojects in New York City (2014). Calm currently lives in Palo Alto, CA where he is a faculty member in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University.