David Levi Strauss
Timken Lecture Hall, California College of the Arts, San Francisco
David Levi Strauss is an award-winning critic and writer based in New York. His essays and reviews regularly appear in publications including Artforum, Aperture, Art in America and The Nation. He is the author of From Head to Hand: Art & the Manual (Oxford University Press, 2010), Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics (Aperture, 2003), and Between Dog & Wolf: Essays on Art and Politics (Autonomedia 1999), among many others.
Strauss studied photography at Goddard College and the Visual Studies Workshop. He moved to San Francisco in 1978, where he studied in the Poetics Program at New College of California under Robert Duncan. He also served as the editor and publisher of the literary journal ACTS: A Journal of New Writing until relocating to New York City in 1993. Strauss was the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship in 2003-2004 and the Infinity Award for Writing from the International Center of Photography in 2007. From 2000-2005, he was a faculty member at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. He is now Chair of the MFA program in art criticism & writing at the School of Visual Arts in New York.
This year, Aperture published Words Not Spent Today Buy Smaller Images Tomorrow, a series of Strauss’ essays that explore photography’s ever-changing role in contemporary culture and the issues and events altering the way we consider the medium.
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
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.