Affiliated Activities

Includes exhibition Barry Andersen: Sky, Earth, and Sea Selections from 30 years of Landscape Photography, reception and Spirit of Light Award Ceremony for Barry Andersen.
Go to Exhibition Venues/Main FOTO/Notre Dame Academy · Frances Kathryn Carlisle Performing Arts Center and Gallery

Exhibition Reception follows lecture October 6, 5:00-8:00 pm

Lecture for The Good River: What Divides and Connects Us · A History of the Ohio River by Enquirer Photojournalists     

Cliff Radel bats left and throws left. As a storyteller, columnist, reporter, and music critic for The Cincinnati Enquirer, his award-winning stories capture what makes his hometown tick and what ticks off the people who live there. He is the author of two books, the first edition of CINCINNATI MOMENTS, a Celebration of Photographs from The Cincinnati Enquirer (1999) and the BIG RED MACNINE EDITION OF CINCINNATI MOMENTS(2000). During his career, his work has received top honors in competitions hosted by the Press Club of Cleveland, the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists, and the Associated Press as well as Gannett newspapers. A native West Sider, he has deep Cincinnati roots. His Irish ancestors helped settle Westwood, worked on Union Terminal, and joined his hard-headed German ancestors who never failed to put in a good day's work and never put on airs. A graduate of the University of Cincinnati, he received a bachelor's degree in psychology, a master's in social psychology and has completed course work for a Ph.D. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and The Washington Post. He lives on the West Side with his wife, Debbie. See Main FOTO/Eva G. Farris Gallery at Thomas More College    

Reception, Contemporary Arts Center Lobby, 7:30 PM

Collectors’ Roundtable with photography collectors, Akron, OH-based Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell, Asheville, NC-based David Raymond, San Francisco, CA-based Trevor Traina, and moderator James Crump, presented by the FOTOFOCUS 2012 Lecture Series 

James Crump, FOTOFOCUS co-chair and Chief Curator, Cincinnati Art Museum, moderates a conversation with a panel of collectors whose eye is shaping some of the most influential photography collections of our time.

Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell began collecting photography in 1991, the year theymarried. They have since amassed a highly personal catalog of contemporary artby European and North American artists using photography in their work.Laura Ruth began her career as an artistwith a painting major from the Universityof Akron and, after a career as agraphic designer, now works on photography,video and on-demand bookprojects. After graduating from OberlinCollege with an art history major,Fred worked as a commercial photographerbefore moving into advertising.Today he is the Executive Chairmanof the advertising agency JWT/Ogilvy Action.Both Fred and Laura Ruth have been highly involved in supporting the work of artistsand arts organizations. Laura Ruth was the founding curator of Summit ArtSpace Galleryin Akron, OH and Fred is the board President of the Akron Art Museum and isa Trustee of the Cleveland Museum of Art. In 2011, Fred and Laura Ruth establishedthe Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell Foundation to support creativity and innovation through the arts. In January 2013, the Bidwell Foundation opens the Transformer Station, a new arts and exhibition space in the Ohio City neighborhood of Cleveland. The Bidwell Foundation will operate the facility in a unique collaboration with the Cleveland Museum of Art. The opening show in the new facility will feature selections from the Bidwell’s collection of contemporary photography.

The work of David Raymond, a collector for over twenty years of contemporary and vintage photographic work, spans the world of film, photography, art, and interactive media. A force in the international art community, David served as an advisor to the Getty Museum from 2000-2004, and assisted the Museum in amassing its Dorothea Lange and Manuel Alvarez Bravo collections. In 2006, he served as the Artistic Director for Magnum Photo’s Paris Photo presence. He was a portfolio reviewer and lecturer at the 2008 Festival de la Luz in Buenos Aires and at Fotofest 2010 in Houston. David is a board member emeritus of Performa, which produces New York’s performance art biennial and he is on the advisory board for the Manuel Alvarez Bravo Foundation. Numerous publications, including Art and Antiques and the Art Market Guide have named him as a top-100 American collector, and in 2008, Worth profiled his collecting habits.

In 2007, the Cleveland Museum of Art acquired and was gifted a portion of his surrealist and modernist photography collection. A 2014 travelling exhibition and catalogue of the collection is planned. A photographer and a video maker in his own right, his work has been shown in New York, Paris, Berlin, Los Angeles, Miami, and Buenos Aires. A primary focus has been producing films with a socially conscious message. His most recent U.S. film, Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America, directed by Tony Stone, premiered at the 2007 Los Angeles Independent Film Festival and won the jury prize at the 2007 Leeds Film Festival. Greeted with widespread critical acclaim upon its theatrical release the film has become a cult classic. A print of The ToeTactic, directed by Emily Hubley, was purchased for the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. His film, Restless City, premiered at Sundance in January 2011 to much attention and was recently released theatrically. His last film, Graceland, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2012. David currently serves as producer and executive producer on two Argentine films: Los Dioses de Lata, directed by Juan Antin, and La Macarena, co-produced with Nicolas Ferrero. In 2012 he directed his first short, The Leaf. He will have his directorial debut with a film in development in Argentina.

A San Francisco-based technology entrepreneur, Trevor Traina began his career as a brand manager at Seagram’s, where serendipitously he also discovered his interest in collecting photography. When Traina learned the works from the corporate collection that had adorned his office and nearby hall space were being auctioned, he purchased the artwork and found himself “bitten by the bug to acquire.” His collection began in earnest with vintage prints of iconic images by Diane Arbus, William Eggleston, and some early Robert Frank works. The acquisition of such canonical prints provided Traina with a foundation that emboldened the young collector to pursue more adventurous work.  Photographs by such masters as Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand, Stephen Shore, Cindy Sherman, and Andreas Gursky followed. His recent interest focuses on conceptual photographers such as Roe Ethridge, Christopher Williams, and Ryan McGinley. Describing his drive to collect as “equal parts intellectual curiosity and narcissism,” Traina believes “…photography is a young medium. It’s an American medium, and many of the masterpieces are still available.” A graduate of Princeton University with postgraduate degrees from Oxford and Berkeley, Traina developed and sold companies to Microsoft and Intuit. His latest project, Driverside.com, provides helpful tools and data for car and truck owners and lessees. He serves on four corporate boards and six non-profit boards, including the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Real to Real: Photographs from the Traina Collection, curated by Julian Cox, was on view earlier in 2012 at San Francisco’s de Young Museum. The exhibition examined different historical understandings of realism and its changing definitions over time. Photo: Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell collection: Jordan Tate, installation view Work # 141, 10 framed Pigment Prints, each 16 x 20 inches, Courtesy of the Artist and Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell

Admission: free and open to the public.
Parking available in the Welcome Center Garage for those without NKU Parking Permit. 
Includes a reception for Reporting Back: A Survey of Documentary Photography following the lecture. 

Ashley Gilbertson Keynote Speaker for Continuum: 2012 Midwest Society of Photographic Education Regional Conference

Award-winning photographer Ashley Gilbertson is best known for his images of the Iraq war, the Bedrooms of Fallen project, and a four-year project on the economy including Wall Street and Occupy Wall Street.  Born in 1978, in Melbourne, Australia, he began his career at age thirteen taking pictures of skateboarders. Gilbertson’s mentors include Filipino photographer Emmanuel Santos in Melbourne, and Masao Endo in the Japanese highlands.

In 2002, Gilbertson travelled to the Kurdish enclave formerly within Northwestern Iraq. He returned the following year in the wake of the American invasion. His trip yielded -among others-an image of a soldier sliding down a banister in one of Saddam Hussein's palaces; a shot included in Time Magazine's Pictures of the Year montage. In 2004 Gilbertson won the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award for exceptional courage from the Overseas Press Club for his imbedded reportage on the 1/8 Marines as they fought their way through Fallujah. Gilbertson spent another four years in Iraq, covering the war for The New York Times.

In the fall of 2007, the University of Chicago Press published WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT, a photographic memoir with accompanying narrative by Gilbertson. Gilbertson received a 2011 National Magazine Award for his series Bedrooms of The Fallen, depicting preserved bedrooms of American and European service members killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Intended as a memorial to the fallen, the images are meant to render the fallen soldiers as brothers and sisters, sons and daughters. That work will be published in book form in 2012. See Main FOTO / Northern Kentucky University Visual Arts Galleries. Photo: Ashley Gilbertson, CPL. Christopher G. Scherer, 21, was killed by a sniper on July 21, 2007, in Karmah, Iraq. He was from East Northport, New York, (detail), 2010, digital print, 17 x 45 inches, Courtesy of the Aritst

SPE is a nonprofit, national membership organization dedicated to providing a forum for the understanding of photographic processes as a means of expressing creativity and cultural insight. See Affiliated Activities / Conferences