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Peggy Fox: Morality Tales

Abstracted collage image of figures and bicycle wheels in swirls of color and line
Peggy Fox, Bardo

Peggy Fox’s career as a photographer spans assignment-based work and her own fine art practice. For clients, she produced picture stories aimed at conveying a narrative within a single image. Meanwhile, her photographs recording street life in Baltimore, documenting the vanishing towns of Maryland’s Patapsco Valley, and chronicling her extensive travels across the globe provided opportunities to tell stories shaped by personal encounters and characterized by a strong sense of place. Fox’s experiments in collage expand the existing imagery of those photographs. Combined with transparencies, layered upon aluminum ground, and embellished with hand-worked details or digital manipulation, the resulting images engage the surrealist tendencies of collage to render reality into fantasy and to juxtapose subjects in new, unexpected ways. Certain motifs recur across the body of work, including enshrouded, falling, or diving figures; architectural features of arches, portals, and stairways; and references to religious iconography, mythology, and physics. This virtual presentation is structured around three groupings, intended as three possible unfolding paths that emphasize the inherent narrativity of the artist’s constructions. These sets of collages are not prescriptive, but are rather evocative of emotions, impressions, and symbols. Viewed as “morality tales,” the images conjure stories but remain ambiguous, their lessons open to multiple interpretations. 

* The images below will scroll automatically. They can also be advanced using the arrows at right and left. To pause the slideshow and to view titles, hold the cursor over the image.

The work begins with my black and white photographs. It grows out of a desire to personalize and elaborate on these initial images by joining them, collaging them, and painting on them to enlarge the story. The particular quality of the photographs is integral to, and is the dominant feature of, the images.

As an independent contract photographer I was part of a genre of “what makes a one shot, picture story?” There were parameters, there was an approach. There were stories to be told, in schools and hospitals. It was very traditional storytelling taken to the highest level. This work, while honoring that, is storytelling of a different nature.

Peggy Fox studied painting at Moore College of Art in Philadelphia. After relocating to Baltimore and serving as director of the art department at St. Paul’s School, she embarked on a career as an independent photographer,  balancing her time between assignment photography and fine art. 

Early in her career, Fox was featured in a one-person show at the Baltimore Museum of Art. From 1987 to 1996 she developed Lost in the Cosmos, a 10-by-200-foot mural executed in porcelain enamel on steel and commissioned by the Maryland Transit Administration for the Johns Hopkins Hospital Metro station. 

In 2009 her book with writer Alison Kahn, Patapsco: Life along Maryland’s Historic River Valley, was published by The Center for American Places at Columbia College Chicago. She also had a solo show at The Atlantic Gallery in New York City in 2012. She has received two Maryland Arts Council grants and her work has been exhibited nationally.

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Séance: Photographs by Shannon Taggart

Outstretched hands forming circle

August 31–December 17, 2021

For the past twenty years American artist Shannon Taggart (born 1975) has documented Spiritualist practices and communities in the United States, England, and Europe. The resulting body of work, Séance, examines the relationship of Spiritualism to human celebrity, its connections to art, science, and technology, and its intrinsic bond with the medium of photography. This exhibition presents forty-seven haunting images from the series, revealing the emotional, psychological, and physical dimensions of Spiritualism in the 21st century. 

Spiritualism is a religion born in nineteenth-century America whose adherents believe in communication with spirits, often transmitted through the figure of a medium who receives psychic messages from the dead. Not coincidentally, photography was invented at the same historical moment, when the new technology was revered for its ability to faithfully record reality. Photography thus became a preferred medium of scientific documentation capable of rendering invisible phenomena visible, such as in astronomical photography, X-Rays, and microscopy. For Spiritualists, photography was a tool for revealing the existence of spirits, but for non-believers the ghostly forms that materialized in spirit photographs proved nothing more than darkroom trickery. While this double-sided coin of belief and skepticism haunts the histories of both photography and Spiritualism, Taggart’s photographs do not take sides. The images that comprise Séance are characterized by open-mindedness and empathy toward their subjects, many of whom are brought to Spiritualism through grief and a desire to reconnect with lost loved ones.

The photographs on display explore the communities and phenomena associated with Spiritualism, including séance circles, mediumship, and the objects and technological devices used to aid communication with spirits. Among the most arresting images are those that chart the artist’s quest to capture ectoplasm, a supernatural substance that is paradoxically both spiritual and material. Often made in darkened rooms, the photographs are characterized by otherworldly blurs, chance flares and orbs, and entrancing portraits cast in glowing colors. Taking on the role of participant observer, Taggart bears witness with her camera to an unseen world of belief lying just beyond the fringes of everyday reality.

Man holding filmy glowing orb

Public Program

Artist’s Talk: Shannon Taggart

Thursday October 14, 2021

5:00 PM – 7:00 PM

Portrait of artist Shannon Taggart

Shannon Taggart is an artist and author based in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. Her photographs have been exhibited and featured internationally, including within the publications TIME, New York Times Magazine, Discover, and Newsweek. Her work has been recognized by Nikon, Magnum Photos and the Inge Morath Foundation, American Photography and the Alexia Foundation for World Peace. Taggart’s monograph, SÉANCE (Fulgur Press, 2019) was listed as one of TIME magazine’s ‘Best Photobooks of 2019.’

This exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Pensacola Museum of Art.

The exhibition is curated by Beth Saunders, Curator and Head of Special Collections at UMBC, and Anna Wall, Chief Curator of the Pensacola Museum of Art.  

The presentation of this exhibition at UMBC is supported by an arts program grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the State of Maryland and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support comes from the Libby Kuhn Endowment Fund, as well as individual contributions.

View exhibition prospectus here

Additional Venues:

Pensacola Museum of Art, Pensacola, FL, September 16–December 4, 2022

University of Northern Iowa Gallery of Art, Cedar Falls, IA, January 7-February 24, 2023

Categories

End of the Road

Black & white photo someone behind tree branches

Photographs by Brea Souders Selected poems by Lia Purpura

Souders began making the photographs that comprise End of the Road in March 2020 while living in rural upstate New York. The black-and-white photographs capture candid glimpses of visitors walking to the cul-de-sac at the end of a gravel road viewed through the mesh of a window screen or through curtains of leaves and branches. Her subjects variously walk, rest, hold hands, kiss, and stop to reflect, completing a series of ordinary actions during an extraordinary year. Photographing these strangers—who became unknowing companions—was an almost daily ritual for the artist, generating creative inspiration during a year spent sheltered in place.

The passage of time unfolds in these photographs through seasonal changes and through the contemplative perambulations of Souders’s subjects. Leaves sprout and sunlight casts bold shadows, while in turn, sweaters and mittens replace airy dresses and shorts. Some visitors return to the End of the Road repeatedly, while others make a momentary, but singular, impression. The photographs thus convey a heightened awareness to one’s surroundings and to nature that has become a common experience during the pandemic. In their intimacy, they express the longing for human connection that has defined our shared isolation. Each photograph is a chance encounter that sparks curiosity about the subject, what brought them to the End of the Road, and where they will go from here.

This virtual presentation features images from End of the Road alongside poems by UMBC writer-in-residence Lia Purpura from her book It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful (Penguin, 2015). Purpura has noted of this collection of poems, “I am interested in paying attention to the act of looking itself, an act which is almost always full of contradiction, surprise, and mystery.” This statement could equally describe Souders’s photographs, which, through their clandestine framing and sharp observation, elevate quotidian details to totems of coincidence. Likewise, Purpura’s attentive poems abound with incident, engendering expansive ideas from the brief container of their form. Here, photographs and poems, selected in collaboration between artist and author, walk together in tandem, illuminating shared themes and inviting additional connections and reflections.

*Images and text scroll automatically below. Hold your cursor over an image to pause scrolling and to move backwards and forwards in the sequence.

Public Program

Virtual Artist’s Talk: Brea Souders and Lia Purpura in Conversation
12:00pm (noon EST)
April 22, 2021

Register here (via Webex)

Black and white photo of man in overalls walking down dirt roadBlack and white photo of person in a white dress holding a glass, partially obscured by tree limbBlack and white photo of person walking behind foliageBlack and white photo of person jogging along dirt roadBlack and white photo of young man holding an animal to his chestPoem: Probability Most coincidences are not miraculous, but way more common than we think – it’s the shiver of noticing being central in a sequence of events that makes so much seem wild and rare – because what if it wasn’t? Astonishment’s nothing without your consent.Black and white photo of a man carrying a ladder in natureBlack and white photo of couple kissing viewed through tree limbsBlack and white photo of woman with face obscured by foliageBlack and white photo os silhouette of a figure holding a dog leashBlack and white photo of woman in shorts walking alone on a gravel road; she grasps her arm with her handPoem: Sunday Signs come. For what I don’t know. To be one in a vastness without meaning, except for making something of it, except for it being a conversationBlack and white photo of two women walking down the road; one wears a shirt that says Black and white photo of a group of youthsBlack and white photo of a man walking, wearing american flag print shortsBlack and white phot of a woman walking in shadows of trees and leavesBlack and white photo of two men walking through foliagePoem: Relativity Shade can chill or relieve and sun comfort or oppress, depending on what you need to shed or retain, which is nothing as simple as sin being dark, and grace, light. Filaments in a web can be both invisible and bright. Each thing’s its own partner, each always both, depending on where you stand, not so central, not so always commanding.Black and white photo of a woman standing amidst foliageBlack and white photo of a woman obscured by leavesBlack and white photo of a couple holding hands and walking in natureBlack and white photo of two figures standing on the road looking into natureBlack and white photo of person bent over to look at something in the roadPoem: Red Leaf It’s precious little warmth the trees are giving, muddled with last greens, addled with vines and that red, a new cry at dusk – oh mind where all things freshly darkened meet.Black and white photo of man walking alone in natureBlack and white photograph of man walking on snowy roadBlack and white photograph of two men walking on snowy roadBlack and white photograph of two men walking on snowy roadBlack and white photograph of two girls walking on snowy gravel roadPoem: Future Perfect Where you were before you were born, and where you are when you’re not anymore might be very close. Might be the same place, though neither is as slippery as being here but imagining where you will have been – that point where things land, are finished, over, and gone but not yet.

Brea Souders is a visual artist working primarily with photography. She has exhibited in the US and internationally, including solo exhibitions with Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York, Bruce Silverstein Gallery and Abrons Art Center in New York. She has received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, a residency with the Millay Colony and a fellowship with the National Arts Club. Features on her work have been published in the New Yorker, ARTnews, the Jeu de Paume Magazine, and New York Times. Souders’ work is included in many survey publications, including The Photograph as Contemporary Art, Thames & Hudson; Feelings: Soft Art, Rizzoli and Photography is Magic, Aperture.

Lia Purpura is the author of nine collections (essays, poems, translations.) A National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, she is a Guggenheim, NEA, and Fulbright Fellow, and has been awarded four Pushcart Prizes, among others. Her work appears in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Orion, The Paris Review, The Georgia Review, Agni, Emergence, and elsewhere. She is the Writer in Residence at UMBC, and has taught at conferences, workshops, prisons, and in communities and MFA programs throughout the country. It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful (poems) and All the Fierce Tethers (essays) are her latest collections.

End of the Road/ Hope

To celebrate the online exhibit of End of the Road and the collaboration between artist and poet, the AOK Library Gallery has produced a limited edition booklet, End of the Road/ Hope. Designed by Peggy Re, the publication features a selection of images from Souders’s series along with a poem by Purpura.

Register here to receive a free copy of End of the Road/ Hope. Booklets will be produced in a limited edition of 500 copies and mailed in May 2021.

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Press for Shae McCoy: West Baltimore Ruins

Follow the links below to listen and to read more about West Baltimore Ruins.

https://omny.fm/shows/on-the-record-1/capturing-west-baltimore-ruins

‘West Baltimore Ruins’ preserves the memory of neglected neighborhoods before they’re lost to gentrification
See West Baltimore Right with Shae McCoy
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Shae McCoy: West Baltimore Ruins

View of row houses from the street
Shae McCoy, From the series, West Baltimore Ruins, 2018-2020.

As described by the artist, West Baltimore Ruins is “a visual story told by West Baltimore’s daughter.” McCoy created the series between 2018 and 2020 as a means of documenting the architectural landscape of the neighborhood in which she was raised, where an estimated one third of buildings are now abandoned. In addition to her digital camera, McCoy also used a cell phone camera to record her impressions, noting that its mobility and discretion enables photographs to be made easily while on the move. The resulting images take the viewer on a walk through the neighborhoods of West Baltimore as viewed through McCoy’s observant eyes,  capturing the vibrant colors of empty row house facades, the charm of the area’s neglected historical architecture, unruly vegetation reclaiming empty houses, and signs of encroaching gentrification.  

As physical remains of the past, ruins are typically associated with disuse and decay. McCoy’s photographs point toward the causes behind this deterioration in West Baltimore: housing discrimination, urban blight, voucher programs that have relocated residents rather than reinvigorated neighborhoods, and lack of investment in commercial renewal that has benefitted other parts of the city. By turning attention—and her camera—to this landscape, McCoy also enlivens it. Her connections to the area and interviews with residents that helped shape the project invest the photographs with a personal perspective, preserving the memories and histories embedded in the vanishing architectural structures of West Baltimore.

This virtual presentation displays a selection of images and interviews from the project. Photographs from the series have been presented both in black and white and color on the artist’s Instagram and the entire series is published in McCoy’s 2021 book West Baltimore Ruins.  

Public Program

Virtual Artist’s Talk: Shae McCoy in Conversation with Dr. Ashley Minner (UMBC)
12:00 noon
March 11, 2021

Register here (via Webex)

West Baltimore Ruins

West Baltimore has aggressively opened my eyes to the irresponsibility and disservice of city officials done to urban black communities. Ironically, these communities once thrived with culture and now they decay as new developments await.

Shae McCoy, West Baltimore Ruins (2021)
City street with apartment buildings
Stop work notice affixed to door
Cranes and new constructions in Lexington Market, Baltimore
Framed picture, hat, and frisbee leaning against curb
Interior of Baltimore's Lexington Market
Private property sign attached to fence in front of building

This project is an in-your-face first account of what Baltimore residents in these mentioned communities experience everyday. It is an artistic call-out for city officials to see the cause of their neglect.

Shae McCoy, West Baltimore Ruins (2021)
Abandoned building
Street with moving truck and construction equipment in front of multi-colored row houses
Three abandoned rowhouses
Abandoned building
Interior of abandoned barber shop
Stuffed bear and candles on sidewalk

In 2018, then mayor of Baltimore Catherine Pugh targeted corner stores in West Baltimore as sites of drug dealing and crime that did little to benefit the community. However, corner stores and convenience stores often provide basic necessities to residents in areas defined as food deserts and where commercial service establishments are otherwise lacking. McCoy notes that the first sign of gentrification in her neighborhood was the closure of the corner stores.

Vacant corner store
Empty storefront
Storefront
Two men standing outside boarded up storefront
Liquor store
Street corner with graffiti on empty building

In the 1950s and 60s, Sandtown was known as “Baltimore’s Harlem” where musicians like Diana Ross and Billie Holiday performed and where jazz legend Cab Calloway was born. After riots in 1968, the population began to decline and now one third of buildings in the neighborhood stand vacant. The neighborhood was locus for the 2015 Baltimore Uprising in response to the arrest and death of Freddie Gray while in police custody. Residents of the area report feeling harassed by police presence. 

Two doorways side-by-side, one abandoned, one in use
Trash piled in vacant entryway
Dilapidated building
Red brick building
Abandoned brick buildings with boarded windows
Colorful block of rowhouses

I am no stranger to vacant houses. As a matter of fact, I still live next door to one in my current neighborhood of Park Heights. Many of the vacant houses in my old neighborhood of Sandtown served as playgrounds and meeting places for my friends and I as children.

West Baltimore Resident Otis Eldridge in Shae McCoy, West Baltimore Ruins (2021)
Vacant house with boarded windows
Two payphones
Street lined with houses
Dilapidated white house
Vacant row houses
Dilapidated row house window in overgrowth

*Click images in galleries above to enlarge

Black and white portrait of Shae McCoy

Shae McCoy is a photographer based in Baltimore, Maryland. Her work has been featured in major publications such as Teen Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Essence, Baltimore Magazine, and BMore Art and displayed on the Baltimore Museum of Art website and in the Joan Hisaoka Gallery in Washington DC. Shae is founder of the cultural blog Uncommonrealist.com and has interviewed actors, activists, community leaders, and politicians to creating a spotlight for local artists. Uncommonrealist was nominated for The Inaugural Southern Blogger Impact Awards in 2016 and featured on local platforms such as Docs Castle Media, and Undaground Radar Magazine. In 2018, the blog won an award for Best Entertainment Website.

Interviews

McCoy interviewed current and former residents of West Baltimore during the making of this project. Their words and recollections appear in her book, creating a dialogue between her images and the community that calls these neighborhoods home.

Unique Mical Robinson, 31, Woodland Park Apartments.
Score Swayze, 29, 1411 Division Street.

About the book

Filmed by Shae McCoy. Edited by David Sebastiao. Music by Zadia.

West Baltimore Ruins is available to purchase here.

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Artist’s Talk with Zachary Z. Handler/ ERRANDS in UMBC Magazine

UMBC Magazine features ERRANDS, the first in a series of online exhibits offered by the Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery this spring. The artist, Zachary Z. Handler, will give a virtual artist’s talk for the public at noon on February 18. Read the article.

Virtual Artist’s Talk: Zachary Z. Handler
12:00 noon
February 18, 2021

Register here (via Webex)

Sign language interpreter will be provided
Sign language interpreter will be provided
Still life of flower in vase, iPhone with woman on screen, and projected image
Zachary Z. Handler, Abhilasha. Delhi, India. 2020, from series ERRANDS
Categories

Zachary Z. Handler: ERRANDS

A woman looking at the viewer from a cellphone screen in a dark space

In response to stay-at-home orders issued by the State of Maryland on March 30, 2020, Baltimore-based photographer Zachary Z. Handler created ERRANDS, a portrait series documenting the shared shelter-in-place experiences of people around the globe.

Handler conducts portrait sessions remotely via FaceTime, and motivated by a desire to provide care while maintaining connections, every session begins with a conversation. Handler then places the iPhone on which his subject appears in unique tableaux created within the confines of his home using everyday objects and materials close at hand. The resulting photographs capture the joy realized through discovering something remarkable in an ordinary place and through connecting with others despite social distancing. Each ERRANDS portrait depicts more than one person:

in addition to the sitter, the artist’s presence is reflected in the objects and environment in which he stages the photographs. Handler has, to date, photographed 275 people from locations near and far: from Baltimore to San Francisco, from Germany to India. Like the pandemic, the project is still unfolding.

Inspired by the mobile phones on which the series depends and the improvisational aspect of the sessions, this presentation references the children’s game of ‘telephone,’ in which a message is whispered from one participant to the next. Each photograph in this presentation is related to the one preceding and following it in some way, whether through color palette, subject’s gesture, or an object that repeats across frames. This chain of association invites the viewer to participate in the search for connections.

Public Program

Virtual Artist’s Talk: Zachary Z. Handler
12:00 noon
February 18, 2021

Register here (via Webex)

Portrait depicting Carly on iPhone
Portrait depicting Sophia on iPhone
Portrait depicting Becky and Gilbert on iPhone
Portrait depicting Romeo and Jorrin on iPhone
Portrait depicting Sean on iPhone
Portrait depicting Julie on iPhone
Portrait depicting Deleana on iPhone
Portrait depicting Katie on iPhone
Portrait depicting Dylan on iPhone
Portrait depicting Beka on iPhone
Portrait depicting Dulcina on iPhone
Portrait depicting Mahsa on iPhone
Portrait depicting Gabrielle on iPhone
Portrait depicting Jordi on iPhone
Portrait depicting Donna on iPhone
Portrait depicting Magnolia on iPhone
Portrait depicting Anthony on iPhone
Portrait depicting Kira on iPhone
Portrait depicting Samuel on iPhone
Portrait depicting Jose on iPhone
Portrait depicting Robert on iPhone
Portrait depicting Alison on iPhone
Portrait depicting Leah on iPhone
Portrait depicting William on iPhone
Portrait depicting Dr. Hrabowski on iPhone
Portrait depicting Hayley on iPhone
Portrait depicting BABYSNOTALRIGHT on iPhone
Portrait depicting Ronique on iPhone
Portrait depicting Delaney on iPhone
Portrait depicting Shade on iPhone
Portrait depicting Mateo on iPhone
Portrait depicting Emma & Sean on iPhone
Portrait depicting Kyle on iPhone
Portrait depicting Astha on iPhone
Portrait depicting Arial on iPhone
Portrait depicting Eryn on iPhone
Portrait depicting Markus on iPhone
Portrait depicting Hershey on iPhone
Portrait depicting Khalid on iPhone
Portrait depicting Dibyash & Dibyasna on iPhone
Portrait depicting Dionne on iPhone
Portrait depicting Andy on iPhone
Portrait depicting Marie Claire on iPhone
Portrait depicting Phil, George & Matthew of the Queerona podcast on iPhone
Portrait depicting Ryan, Alex & Kevin on iPhone
Portrait depicting Yvonne on iPhone
Portrait depicting gEordi on iPhone
Portrait depicting Bonnie & J on iPhone
Portrait depicting Asher & Aubrey on iPhone
Portrait depicting Kunj on iPhone
Portrait depicting Matt & Margaret on iPhone
Portrait depicting Denise on iPhone
Portrait depicting Greg on iPhone
Portrait depicting Audris on iPhone
Portrait depicting Ari on iPhone
Portrait depicting Anne Marie & Amanda (& Bea & Carol) on iPhone
Portrait depicting Stan on iPhone
Portrait depicting Aniko on iPhone
Portrait depicting Emily Nomi Malone on iPhone
Portrait depicting Kiirstn on iPhone
Portrait depicting Elaine on iPhone
Portrait depicting Emma on iPhone
Portrait depicting Tere on iPhone
Portrait depicting Carlyn on iPhone
Portrait depicting John on iPhone
Portrait depicting Josh on iPhone
Portrait depicting Wayne on iPhone
Portrait depicting Rock, Raine, Rowena & Marylourdes on iPhone
Portrait depicting Natasha on iPhone
Portrait depicting Ryder on iPhone
Portrait depicting Alvaro on iPhone
Portrait depicting Moira on iPhone
Portrait depicting Abhilasha on iPhone
Portrait depicting Marta on iPhone
Portrait depicting Katie on iPhone

* Click images in gallery above to enlarge

Zachary Z. Handler is a photographer based in Baltimore, Maryland. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where he was a Linehan Artist Scholar, in 2003 and a Master of Arts Administration from Columbia University Teachers College in 2005. In addition to his work as a visual artist, he has constructed a career where the fields of healthcare and art education intersect to provide community and access programs to individuals who are D/deaf, Hard of Hearing, and Deaf-Blind. He has also taught arts education classes nationally and internationally to D/deaf and Hard of Hearing youth in foster care.

Behind the Scenes of ERRANDS

Portrait depicting Samuel on iPhone
View of slide projector in the dark
Detail of Samuel's set

Inspiration & details from the set of Samuel’s portrait, from the series ERRANDS

Inspiration for Samuel’s portrait came from a scene in the 1977 Italian horror film Suspiria. The artist projected onto the set a slide modified through collage.

White curtains illuminated by a square of light
Detail of Samuel's set
Illuminated ens of slide projector
Detail of Samuel's set
Detail of Samuel's set
A scene from the film Suspiria

Constructing the set of Andy’s portrait, from the series ERRANDS

Andy, seen on an iPhone, chats with Handler as the artist places a Big Mac, carton of french fries, and large drink around the iPhone on which Andy appears. In a nod to artist Boo Ritson, the McDonald’s meal is covered in wet, dripping white paint.

Portrait of Greg
Close up view of knit shirt

Outtakes from Greg’s portrait session, from the series ERRANDS

Portrait of Greg
Greg, as seen on iPhone
Portrait of Greg

The presentation of this exhibition and public programming is supported by an arts program grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the State of Maryland and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Charlesmead Initiative

In 2019, the Library Gallery received funding from UMBC’s Charlesmead Initiative to create an arts education program for K-8 Baltimore City youth. Curators began a collaborative project with museum educator Willa Banks to develop a curriculum emphasizing hands-on learning and engagement with original artworks through the gallery’s exhibition program and in the holdings of UMBC’s Special Collections.

During the spring 2019 semester, 90 students from Liberty Elementary and Frederick Elementary schools visited the gallery for an interactive tour of the exhibition Antonio McAfee: Through the Layers, Pt. 2 led by the gallery curators. Students enjoyed putting on 3D glasses to view McAfee’s work, saw rare nineteenth-century photographs from UMBC’s Special Collections that the artist manipulates in his digital photographs, and created collage portraits to take home with them. They shared what they learned over snacks, reflecting on what photographs can tell us about history and how portraits reveal (and conceal) personal identity.

Due to COVID-19, the final two class visits scheduled for March and April were canceled. Curators are now adapting the curriculum for the Spring 2021 semester.

Categories

Antonio McAfee : Through the Layers, Pt. 2

The Magician, 2019
Pigment print, 3D image with 3D glasses
© Antonio McAfee, Courtesy of the Artist

January 27–March 13, 2020

Since 2011, Antonio McAfee has been making work influenced by historical portraiture of African Americans in the The Exhibition of American Negroes. Organized for the 1900 Paris World Exposition by W.E.B. Du Bois, the display functioned as a legislative, economic, and photographic survey of middle-class African Americans living in Georgia from 1850–1899. This ‘counter archive’ challenged racist assumptions steeped in pseudo-science, presenting proof of the vitality and upward social mobility of southern blacks. For his exhibition at UMBC, McAfee builds upon his earlier work to curate a selection of photographs from our archives that will be displayed alongside new works inspired by the historical images found in UMBC’s Special Collections.

Antonio McAfee is a photographer raised and based in Baltimore, MD. He received his BFA in Fine Art Photography from the Corcoran College of Art and Design, an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Arts and Culture Management from the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa). Recent exhibition venues include University of Maryland, College Park’s Stamp Gallery, George Washington University’s Gallery 102 (Washington, DC), Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), and the Walters Art Museum (Baltimore, MD.)

The Gem, 2019
Pigment print, 3D image with 3D glasses
© Antonio McAfee, Courtesy of the Artist
Young Man and Dog, 2019
Pigment print, 3D image with 3D glasses
© Antonio McAfee, Courtesy of the Artist
Third (3), 2019
Pigment print, 3D image with 3D glasses
© Antonio McAfee, Courtesy of the Artist
Robert Smalls, 2019
Pigment print, 3D image with 3D glasses
© Antonio McAfee, Courtesy of the Artist

Public program:

Thursday, February 27, 2020
5:00 PM – 7:00 PM

Art, Race, and the Archive:
Antonio McAfee in Conversation with Shawn Michelle Smith

Installation views

  • UMBC Gallery view
  • UMBC Gallery

The presentation of this exhibition is supported by an arts program grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the State of Maryland and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support comes from the Libby Kuhn Endowment Fund, as well as individual contributions.

Categories

Experimentalist: The Art of Robert W. Fichter

Early Fitcher Drawing
Robert W. Fichter
Winged Flying Dog, 1979
Polaroid print
22 x 27 1/8 in.

August 28–December 18, 2019

Experimentalist: The Art of Robert W. Fichter presents the first retrospective of the artist’s career in over thirty years. Drawn from his archive at UMBC, the 55 works in this exhibition created between 1962 and 2006 highlight Fichter’s exploration of the human condition across photography, printmaking, and painting. Fichter employs shifting moods and mediums as well as wit, humor, and satire to deliver trenchant critiques of war, nuclear proliferation, and environmental disaster. Firmly rooting his expressive compositions in a strong sense of place—the surreal landscapes of his native Florida—Fichter presents a singular vision of humanity on the brink.

Medical Analysis, 1983 
Silver dye-bleach print 
Nature Returns, 1989 
Silver dye-bleach print 
Peace in the Kingdom, 1975 
Cyanotype, tempera, watercolor
Bones to Baby Gene Pool
“It’s just like life flashing before your eyes,” 1982  
Color lithograph
A New Photograph of a Successful Weapon of War, 1970 
Cyanotype, gum bichromate print 
Edward Teller Sez We Did It to Make the World Safe for Democracy! 
from the series Bones and Rock Garden Drawings, 1980  
Lithograph, watercolor 
View exhibit objects

Public Program

September 24, 5:00pm,

The Art of Robert W. Fichter:

Talks by Eileen Cowin, Adam Straus, and Tom Beck

The presentation of this exhibition is supported by an arts program grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the State of Maryland and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support comes from the Libby Kuhn Endowment Fund, as well as individual contributions.