Thursday March 31
6:30pm – 8:00pm
Contemporary Calgary
Atrium + Auditorium
Free for Members
Free with $10 Admission
Join Dona Schwartz for a tour of her exhibition and artist talk. Discussion will encompass the project’s motivation, it’s conceptual and logistical challenges, and the rewards of doing socially engaged and collaborative photographic work. Schwartz will share stories behind the photographs, providing a glimpse of her photographic process. The event will allow plenty of time for audience Q&A and discussion of the many issues the exhibition raises.
About the Artist
Dona Schwartz is a photographic artist based in Calgary, Alberta. She received her PhD from the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania with a focus on photography and ethnography. Through her photographic work she examines definitions of family, evolving identity, social bonds and boundaries. Proceeding from her perspective as a visual ethnographer, her investigations involve long-term engagement with subjects, resulting in richly layered photographic series and narratives. Inspired as a teenager by the work of André Kertész, she approaches photography with insight, wit, and humour.
Her award-winning photographs have been exhibited and published internationally. She has authored four books: Waucoma Twilight: Generations of the Farm (Smithsonian,1992), Contesting the Super Bowl (Routledge, 1997), In the Kitchen (Kehrer, 2009) and On the Nest (Kehrer, 2015). Her work is included in the collections of the United States Library of Congress; the Museum of Fine Arts Houston; the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne; the George Eastman Museum; the Center for Creative Photography; the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas-Austin; the Portland Art Museum; and the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University. Schwartz is Professor, Department of Art, University of Calgary. She is represented by Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto.