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George Eastman House, located in Rochester, New York, is steeped in the history of photography as well as embracing today's latest technology—with an award-winning website, traveling exhibits, and educational partnerships. We interviewed Anthony Bannon, Director of the Eastman House, about its current exhibits, website, and what this venerable museum continues to offer. Our staff at Photoworkshop.com has also been working with Eliza Kozlowski, Director of Visitor Services and Communication at the Eastman House to present a series of podcasts, which are currently available on Photoworkshop.com. "It's a great operation that has provided a wonderful service for years now," Bannon says of Photoworkshop.com, "and we're honored to work with them." Going forward, images will be selected on a regular basis by Bannon and displayed in the George Eastman House area on Photoworkshop.com. As a benefit of membership in the Showcase level of Photoworkshop.com, you have the opportunity to have your images chosen for this honor. Show us your best work in your Photoworkshop.com portfolio, and you may be able to share it with the world. Originally established in 1947, and after opening its doors in 1949, George Eastman House became the first museum of photography and film in the world. "For a long time," Anthony Bannon explains, "It focused on the connoisseurship of the image; what the image signifies as an object within culture, and as an object within art." The museum's strength had been in the declaration of the aesthetic virtue of films and photographs, he points out. During its early years, photography wasn't widely merited as an art form. "Some people had accepted both photography and film as objects of art, and of high cultural consideration," he says. So the presence of this museum was really important to that declaration.
The Eastman House has developed centers for the preservation of photographs and films. "Now, we're looking at where photographs and films can take us," says Bannon. "They are vehicles that will carry us as the photographs and films mediate our experience with other things. Regardless of what our destination might be—intellectual, emotional, spiritual, social or political—photographs and films can take us there." So, mindful of this, he continues, the Eastman House is doing a series of exhibitions dealing with the issues of loss and hope. "When you lose something, whether it's civil rights or economic opportunity, land or dignity, you're in trouble. And often surrounding those losses are conflicts. Yet emerging from the loss will be hope," Bannon explains.
The current exhibit, entitled "Loss/Hope," contains several components. The first of these are the photographs of Larry Towell, President of the Magnum Photo Agency. His work has been widely published in books that deal with the experience of the Mennonite people who have lost their land. A community of Mennonites working in Ontario, Canada, has struggled to retain their land as farmers, and being unable to hold onto it, now find themselves in the position of having to work other people's land as migrant farmers. Towell followed them. Towell also examined the land loss and rights loss issues in Central America, particularly in El Salvador, says Bannon. Additionally, Towell has examined the conflicts between Israel and Palestine, in Lebanon, and post-Hurricane Katrina. "He has been an influential and nearly always present witness to some extraordinary circumstances," Bannon explains. "Very often, itï's about the loss of land. Towell also depicts the hope that emerges." He centers his examination on his own experience of the precious farmland that he owns and maintains in Ontario, Bannon adds. This exhibition closes on June 15. Another show (which closed on June 1) is called "Conscience: The Ultimate Weapon," a reprieve of a 1968 Eastman House exhibition of work by Ben Fernandez, a photojournalist who worked with Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, and who covered the protest of the war in Vietnam. Fernandez donated his work to the Eastman House collection, and the museum will show his work in a 25-minute episode of projected slides dealing with these issues. These images are set to the sound of speeches by MLK, Robert Kennedy, and Ted Kennedy, as well as music from the period. "Whether it's in music or in speech, this presentation deals with the issues of that year," Bannon says. It's interesting to look back at 1968 now in 2008 and see how things are the same and how they're different for us."
Going Forward There are some extraordinary exhibits coming up in the future, as well. The museum will feature Phyllis Galemboï's images from Africa, which Bannon describes as "a very beautiful examination of the culture through the fabrics with which people adorn themselves." Photographer Ed Kashi's images take a look at oil in the Niger Delta, "in the rapacious oil business in that region, and how there can be such wealth in that industry in the face of the extreme poverty of the people who bring the oil from the earth. The show also looks at the defilement of the land and pollution of the waters.ï" Kashi's documentation is "painfully beautiful,ï" according to Bannon. The Eastman House will also feature images from its vast collection, depicting the sub-Sahara in Africa from photographs of that period, including safaris from the early part of the 20th century. "And through that, we hope to engage continued conversation about the hope and the loss that occurs within that continent," he says.
In addition to its physical presence, the Eastman House also has an award-winning website. "More and more, you can access George Eastman House over the Internet," Bannon comments. "People can obtain reproductions of nearly 300 images from our site." Visitors to the web can view nearly 150,000 images that are in the collection at the Eastman House. This website has recently won some statewide awards, he adds. "This is very gratifying because we're just in the midst of redesigning it, and it's great to know that the old design that we want to upgrade is still commanding attention." The podcasts on the Eastman House website are produced by Ross Whitaker, who is also a very accomplished photographer. Current podcasts include "Preserving the World of Burton Holmes" and "Pete Turner: Empowered by Color." These podcasts are easy to find via an icon on the Eastman House homepage, and are also available on YouTube and iTunes. There are also staff blogs, including some by Bannon. The museum shares curriculum, called Discovery Kits, which are very well received by teachers around the world. Visitors to the website can also take a virtual tour of the historic Eastman House, as well as viewing its beautiful gardens.
"This is a fascinating time for George Eastman House, because it's a venerable, wonderful, historic institution," Bannon declares, adding that its collections number over four million objects. "Rather than being a big old ship that moves slowly through the water, I think we are nimbly changing while retaining the necessary services that we must continue to provide." In honoring their strengths from the past, the museum has also just received a generous five million dollars from the Mellon Foundation that will help preserve photographs and educate people, as well as establishing a center for the legacy of the photographs, says Bannon. "This is a center that will investigate the material nature of the image with respect to the connoisseurship of the image." They will also examine the physical aspects of the image, as well as the fiber of the paper. "We'll look at this information and document it in a microscopic manner. "This way, we'll understand the molecular basis of the papers and the emulsions," he says. "We'll share this information on a Wiki, which we're building right now." "Going forward, you'll find our enhanced commitment to higher education through the schools that we operate," he says. The Eastman House is committed to a world presence via 20 traveling exhibitions, as well as its collaboration with partners such as the International Center for Photography in New York and the Vancouver Art Museum in Vancouver, British Columbia. "We're paying attention to the old traditions of photography, and getting better at it via digital means," notes Bannon, "while paying attention to our responsibility to be present going forward, with a commitment to higher education." Visit George Eastman House at www.eastmanhouse.org CLICK HERE TO SEE A GALLERY OF IMAGES FROM THE GEORGE EASTMAN HOUSE EXHIBITION © Copyright 2002 by Photoworkshop.com |
