Lisa Kereszi

I had the good fortune to go to school with and get to know the lovely Pamela Pecchio, who now teaches photography at the University of Virginia, after a stint at Duke. She has just come out with a new limited edition book, entitled "509." Music industry veteran and publisher, Jefferson Holt of Daniel 13 Press, invited her into the home of his upbringing in Burlington, North Carolina two years after his Father passed away.

If you are in Vegas, please join in celebrating the start of Burlesque Hall of Fame Weekend 2010-and a thrilling new chapter in the Hall of Fame's history: the grand opening of the new E. Fremont mini-museum and gift shop. Photographs by yours truly and many others. As part of the Weekend's many exciting festivities and performances, on exhibit will be  "SEQUINS IN THE SAND: Celebrating 20 Years of Miss Exotic World," the inaugural exhibit iof the Burlesque hall of Fame at Emergency Arts, a downtown adaptive re-use of the former Fremont Medical Center. The center has plans to be an artists' collective with with artwork even in old exam rooms. From their facebook page: "The aim is to bring working artists, writers, photographers, clothing designers, musicians, film-makers, artisans, graphic designers, dancers, retailers, actors, and start-up non-profit organizations together to synergize as a creative collective or co-op.

On June 4th 2010, from 6-9pm, Helac & Wirth Art Advisory will be presenting the opening reception for the artwork from the Yale Photography MFA Thesis Show at the artist-run gallery space, 25CPW, located at 25 Central Park West at 62nd St., $5 suggested donation to support the gallery. Exhibit continues from June 2nd through June 14th, open 12-5pm. Rsvp by June 3rd to info@cpw.org.

The Yale MFA Photography program is directed by Tod Papageorge, and is taught by artists Gregory Crewdson and Richard Benson, along with Phillip Lorca diCorcia and Collier Schorr, and others. This year, the nine students graduating are: David Bush, Lucas Foglia, Kate Greene, Tatiana Grigorenko, Curran Hatleberg, Tiffani Hooper, Rory Mulligan, Hrvoje Slovenc and Monika Sziladi.

Discussion is in the air. Is photography dead? What is the state of photography today? Where have we been and where are we going? I had the opportunity to attend 2 of the 3 fairly recent, behind-closed-doors panel discussions about photography today at the Museum of Modern Art. The topics were the Definitions of Photography in the 21st Century and Influence. The third, which I did not attend, was Globalism. There were high points in the two I attended, but I largely felt like the panels in general seemed a bit choppy, as the participants didn’t seem to be speaking about enmeshed enough topics, or willing enough to open up to differing points-of-view, for a natural flow of discussion to really evolve and stay on point.