The long-awaited book of essays by photographer and long-time Director of the MFA Photography Program at the Yale School of Art will be celebrated Wednesday, June 29th at 6:30pm at Aperture. There will be a booksigning preceded by a discussion between Papageorge and video artist/photographer John Pilson, who is one of the artist's former students. The book grew out of his weekly lectures for his first-year students, familiarizing them with his particular point-of-view on the oeuvres of some great photographers: Atget, Brassai, Cartier-Bresson, Frank, Evans, Winogrand, Adams.... These classes, a "Core Curriculum", indeed, helped shape a generation of important photographers working today.
Poem from the essay, "Words for Pictures":
Mid-spring, mid-morning—into the park
and downtown through the shimmering air,
each flush and pulse of light flashing quicksilver
through a net of dust, leaf and pollen.
Step by step, a camera hanging from my neck
beats my heart.
Green like the incontrovertible season,
I move through the high, untended, tow-tipped grass,
supplicant, trainee, hunter, mule,
out here to photograph,
to call this intoxication to account
and press these lawns and palings
into pictures.
—from a notebook dated 1978, by Tod Papageorge
Aperture Gallery and Bookstore http://www.aperture.org/gallery>
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
New York, New York
(212) 505-5555
