Full Description
As a curator, theorist, educator, artist, and powerful advocate, Nathan Lyons has played a central role in the expansion of photography over the last five decades. After producing seminal exhibitions and publications as curator at George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, in the 1960s, he founded the Visual Studies Workshop, an independent arts organization where his innovative programs trained a new generation of photographers, critics, curators, and historians. Nathan Lyons: Selected Essays, Lectures, and Interviews provides the first comprehensive overview of Lyons's career as one of the most important voices in American photography.
Of primary importance in this volume are Lyons's own writings, gathered here for the first time. These include essays and articles formulated while Lyons was a young curator, as well as early statements about his own artistic practice and his emerging philosophy of photographic education. Important unpublished lectures are presented here, most significantly "Photography and the Picture Experience," Lyons's groundbreaking lecture on the snapshot, and "Sequential Considerations," addressing photographic sequence and visual books. Lyons's recent projects bring this volume up to the present.
Contributions from other scholars include essays by James Borcoman, Joel Eisinger, Vicki Goldberg, Keith Smith, Anne Wilkes Tucker, and Adam D. Weinberg. Also featured are interviews with Lyons by Maria Antonella Pelizzari, Thomas Dugan, Bob Rogers, and Robert Hirsch, and a newly translated interview by Joan Fontcuberta. Two selections in this volume are drawn from rare unpublished audio recordings made by Lyons in the 1960s: the first, a 1965 interview with Paul Strand on the subject of photographic books, and the second, an extensive discussion with photographers Simpson Kalisher and Garry Winogrand recorded in 1966.
Contents
Foreword by David Coleman
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Persistence of Vision
Part I: Artist
Nathan Lyons
"Comment" in Under the Sun: The Abstract Art of Camera Vision, 1960
Nathan Lyons
Statement in Notations in Passing, 1970: Photographs by Nathan Lyons from the Collection of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1971
James Borcoman
Introduction to Notations in Passing, 1970: Photographs by Nathan Lyons from the Collection of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1971
Penny Cousineau
From a review of Notations in Passing: Visualized by Nathan Lyons, 1976
Thomas Dugan
From "Nathan Lyons", 1979
Bob Rogers
From "Messages in a Bottle", 1986
Adam D. Weinberg
Preface to Riding 1st Class on the Titanic! Photographs by Nathan Lyons, 1999
Vicki Goldberg
"Subtle Juxtapositions from a Diffident Force for Change", 2000
Keith A. Smith
"Homage to Nathan", 2003
Leroy F. Searle
"Concerning the Power of the Preposition: The Photographs of Nathan Lyons", 2004
Marvin Bell
"The Book of the Dead Man (Sign Language)", 2011
Part II: Curator, Critic, Theorist
Nathan Lyons
"To the Spirit of a Time: In Consideration", 1960
Nathan Lyons
Foreword to Photography '63: An International Exhibition, 1963
Nathan Lyons
Foreword to Photography '64: An Invitational Exhibition, 1964
Nathan Lyons
Introduction to Aaron Siskind: Photographer, 1965
Nathan Lyons
From an unpublished interview with Paul Strand, 1965
Nathan Lyons
"Critic's Choice: 'Meaning Must Come from the Picture Itself'", 1965
Nathan Lyons
From an unpublished conversation with Garry Winogrand and Simpson Kalisher, 1966
Nathan Lyons
Introduction to Photographers on Photography: A Critical Anthology, 1966
Nathan Lyons
Introduction to Toward a Social Landscape, 1966
Nathan Lyons
"Photography and the Picture Experience", 1967
Nathan Lyons
Introduction to Photography in the Twentieth Century, 1967
Nathan Lyons
Introduction to The Persistence of Vision, 1967
William D. Tammeus
"Focused on Protest", 1968
Nathan Lyons
Introduction to Vision and Expression, 1969
Nathan Lyons
"Collecting Photographs as Picture Resources for Research", 1975
Nathan Lyons
"Sequential Considerations", 1975
Nathan Lyons
"Les Krims", 1976
Nathan Lyons
"The Photographic Sequence", 1980
Candida Finkel
From "Photography as Modern Art: The Influence of Nathan Lyons and John Szarkowski on the Public's Acceptance of Photography as Fine Art", 1981
Robert Hirsch
From "Nathan Lyons on the Snapshot", 1992
Joel Eisinger
From Trace and Transformation: American Criticism of Photography in the Modernist Period, 1995
Anne Wilkes Tucker
From "Lyons, Szarkowski, and the Perception of Photography", 2007
Part III: Educator
Nathan Lyons
From "The Workshop Idea in Photography", 1961
Nathan Lyons
"A Joint Program in Photographic Studies / State University of New York at Buffalo & George Eastman House", 1968
Barbara Confino
From "'Photography Is Not an Art: It Is a Model of Perception'", 1973
Nathan Lyons
"Triangulating Misology: '. . . To Mistake the Trappings of Intellectual Authority for Its Substance'", 1979
Joan Fontcuberta
From "Interview with Nathan Lyons", 1990
Maria Antonella Pelizzari
From "Nathan Lyons: An Interview", 1997
Anne Wilkes Tucker, Willis Hartshorn, Mark Klett, and James Borcoman
From "Testimonials from Students of the Visual Studies Workshop", 1999
Nathan Lyons: Chronology
Selected Bibliography
Index
