(Bloomington, Indiana, January 26, 2021) -The Gayle Karch Cook Center celebrates its opening with the exhibition Photographic Occurrences, an exhibition featuring the work of over twenty artists. The work highlights the history of Fine Art photographic experimentation at Indiana University Bloomington. An online opening reception will take place on Facebook live on Friday, February 5 at 5pm.
Henry Holmes Smith taught photography at Indiana University from 1947-1977, founding one of the first graduate programs in photography in the world. He is also the co-founder of the Society of Photographic Education and his contribution to photography in higher education is well known. What is less well known is that he was also an avid experimenter in the darkroom and broke new ground in the creation of cameraless photographic images. Smith’s oeuvre and his teaching demanded photography be taken seriously as an artistic medium that challenged photography’s representational underpinnings, resurrected “dead” 19th century processes, and expanded the physicality of the photographic print with unconventional materials. Photographic Occurrences will celebrate Smith’s legacy of experimentation at Indiana University by exhibiting Smith’s seminal cameraless photographs; his students Jerry Uelsmann, Betty Hahn, and Robert Fichter; current and emeritus Eskenazi. School faculty that carry this legacy; and IU MFA alumni. The inspiration for this exhibition came in the aftermath of the cancellation of renowned contemporary Daguerrotypist Takashi Arai’s visit to Indiana University due to COVID. The resulting exhibition is a historic retrospective of IU’s legacy of photographic experimentation. Multiple connections to Smith’s creative experimentation can be seen through the group exhibition, which will feature the work of over twenty artists. While some of the artists make lens-based images and create prints with the antique processes that Smith championed, others craft cameraless, nonobjective photographs, and others are combine mixed media to create photo-objects.
EXHIBITION SPONSORS
This exhibition is supported by Indiana University’s Office of the Vice Provost for Research, Indiana University’s Arts and Humanities Council. We would also like to thank the artists involved for making this exhibition possible.
ABOUT THE GAYLE KARCH COOK CENTER
The Gayle Karch Cook Center for Public Arts & Humanities is a multidisciplinary hub for research and creative activity on the IU Bloomington campus, as well as a space for exhibitions, performances, conferences, and more. The Center houses several complementary units on the Bloomington campus, including the IU Arts and Humanities Council, the College Arts and Humanities Institute, Traditional Arts Indiana, Platform: An Arts and Humanities Research Laboratory, and IU’s new BookLab. The Cook Center seeks to make transformative experiences in the arts and humanities accessible to all people on campus, in the city of Bloomington, and throughout Indiana.
VISITOR INFORMATION
The Cook Center is open Tuesday-Friday 10:00pm – 4:00pm, and is open extended hours on Thursdays, until 7pm. The Center is closed weekends. Class visits and groups should contact. Gerard Pannekoek, Program and Operations Coordinator, IU Arts & Humanities Council, cooksched@iu.edu to schedule a tour or appointment. The Cook Center is accessible to people with disabilities.
For more information on the Cook Center at Indiana University, please visit https://artsandhumanities.indiana.edu/cook-center/index.html
