Get Our Extension
Select Wikiz in another Language
Settings
A
A
Text Highlights
Notes/Citations
Edit on Wikipedia

Share This Article

About Wikiz About Us Cookies Policy Terms & Services Privacy Policy Contact Contact us Enjoying Wikipedia Content? DONATE TO WIKIPEDIA
Enjoying Wikipedia Content? DONATE TO WIKIPEDIA

Visual Studies Workshop

From Wikipedia, in a visual modern way
Visual Studies Workshop
Visual-Studies-Workshop.jpg
Established1969
Location31 Prince Street
Rochester, New York 14607
Coordinates43°9′27″N 77°35′28″W / 43.15750°N 77.59111°W / 43.15750; -77.59111Coordinates: 43°9′27″N 77°35′28″W / 43.15750°N 77.59111°W / 43.15750; -77.59111
FounderNathan Lyons
DirectorJessica Johnston
Websitewww.vsw.org

Visual Studies Workshop (VSW) is a non-profit organization dedicated to art education based in Rochester, New York, in the Neighborhood of the Arts. VSW supports makers and interpreters of images through education, publications, exhibitions, and collections. VSW houses a bookstore, microcinema, exhibition gallery, and research center, and hosts artists-in-residence.

VSW was founded in 1969 by photographer, writer, curator and educator, Nathan Lyons.[1][2] VSW is artist-run and an educational and support center for photography, artist books, and other media art. VSW ran a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program through SUNY Buffalo until 1981, and then through State University of New York at Brockport until 2022.[3] Since its inception, VSW has had connections with regional artists and communities involved with early experimental video and media access, including Experimental Television Center, Steina and Woody Vasulka, the Videofreex, and in particular, Rochester's grassroots media access organization, Portable Channel.[4]

Discover more about Visual Studies Workshop related topics

Rochester, New York

Rochester, New York

Rochester is a city in the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, and Yonkers, with a population of 211,328 at the 2020 United States census. Located in Western New York, the city of Rochester forms the core of a larger metropolitan area with a population of 1 million people, across six counties. The city was one of the United States' first boomtowns, initially due to the fertile Genesee River Valley, which gave rise to numerous flour mills, and then as a manufacturing center, which spurred further rapid population growth.

Artist's book

Artist's book

Artists' books are works of art that utilize the form of the book. They are often published in small editions, though they are sometimes produced as one-of-a-kind objects.

Artist-in-residence

Artist-in-residence

Artist-in-residence, or artist residencies, encompass a wide spectrum of artistic programs which involve a collaboration between artists and hosting organisations, institutions, or communities. They are programs which provide artists with space and resources to support their artistic practice. Contemporary artist residencies are becoming increasingly thematic, with artists working together with their host in pursuit of a specific outcome related to a particular theme.

Nathan Lyons

Nathan Lyons

Nathan Lyons was an American photographer, curator, and educator. He exhibited his photographs from 1956 onwards, produced books of his own and edited those of others.

SUNY Brockport

SUNY Brockport

State University of New York Brockport is a public university in Brockport, New York. It is part of the State University of New York (SUNY).

Experimental Television Center

Experimental Television Center

The Experimental Television Center (ETC) (1969–2011) was a nonprofit electronic and media art center located in upstate New York.

Steina and Woody Vasulka

Steina and Woody Vasulka

Steina Vasulka and Woody Vasulka are early pioneers of video art, and have been producing work since the early 1960s. The couple met in the early 1960s and moved to New York City in 1965, where they began showing video art at the Whitney Museum and founded The Kitchen in 1971. Steina and Woody both became Guggenheim fellows: Steina in 1976, and Woody in 1979.

Videofreex

Videofreex

The Videofreex were a pioneering video collective who used the Sony Portapak for countercultural video projects from 1969 to 1978. They were founded in 1969 by David Cort, Mary Curtis Ratcliff and Parry Teasdale, after Cort and Teasdale met each other at the Woodstock Music Festival. Other early members include Skip Blumberg, Chuck Kennedy, Davidson Gigliotti, Bart Friedman, Carol Vontobel, Nancy Cain, and Ann Woodward, with dozens of additional collaborators participating in the group's cooperative projects.

Education

In the Winter 1961 issue of Aperture, Nathan Lyons described the very first photography workshops he led that would eventually lead to the formation of Visual Studies Workshop.[5] These workshops began in 1959 and centered around "discussion concerning 'creative photography'" and the texts of György Kepes and László Moholy-Nagy.[6] In 1968, Lyons proposed a program in Photographic Studies to Eric Larrabee, the provost of SUNY Buffalo. The proposal included Lyons, Beaumont Newhall, and John Wood as instructors. This led to a pilot program at the George Eastman Museum, where Lyons was curator, and following Lyons' resignation from the museum, the founding of VSW in 1969.[7]

The word "art" is seldom mentioned at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York. There's plenty of talk, however, about "perception" and "process." The director of the workshop is Nathan Lyons, who founded it all in a dingy Rochester factory loft four years ago. Today, a group of seven faculty members and eighty students are working in an environment they hope may eventually serve as "a model of possibilities" for society at large. Their "community" is concerned with the relevance of the visual in our lives and the ways in which visual insights can be used.[8]

— Barbara Confino, "Photography is Not an Art: It Is a Model of Perception" (1973)

Starting in 1969, Visual Studies Workshop offered a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree through SUNY Buffalo, a program with a focus on expanding the potential for photography, books, and media arts. American photographer Charles H. Traub described VSW as the "first school to stimulate curatorial interest in photography."[9] This environment differed from a traditional arts-academic setting, with students from a range of backgrounds that were not exclusive to visual arts. The MFA program was interdisciplinary, with Lyons describing it as "a more collective activity."[10] Later, the MFA program was transferred to SUNY Brockport, where it accepted new students until 2022.[11]

A diverse range of artists have taught at, published through, and stayed in-residence at VSW, including Jacki Apple, Ulises Carrión, Robert Frank,[12] Nam June Paik, Keith A. Smith,[13] Buzz Spector, and many others.[4]

Discover more about Education related topics

Aperture (magazine)

Aperture (magazine)

Aperture magazine, based in New York City, is an international quarterly journal specializing in photography. Founded in 1952, Aperture magazine is the flagship publication of Aperture Foundation.

György Kepes

György Kepes

György Kepes [ˈɟøɾɟ ˈkɛpɛʃ] was a Hungarian-born painter, photographer, designer, educator, and art theorist. After immigrating to the U.S. in 1937, he taught design at the New Bauhaus in Chicago. In 1967 he founded the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he taught until his retirement in 1974.

László Moholy-Nagy

László Moholy-Nagy

László Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as a professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the integration of technology and industry into the arts. The art critic Peter Schjeldahl called him "relentlessly experimental" because of his pioneering work in painting, drawing, photography, collage, sculpture, film, theater, and writing.

Beaumont Newhall

Beaumont Newhall

Beaumont Newhall was an American curator, art historian, writer, photographer, and the second director of the George Eastman Museum. His book The History of Photography remains one of the most significant accounts in the field and has become a classic photographic history textbook. Newhall was the recipient of numerous awards and accolades for his accomplishments in the study of photo history.

John Wood (photographer)

John Wood (photographer)

John Wood was the U.S. government's first official photographer. He took the photograph of Lincoln's First Inauguration as well as the inauguration of James Buchanan in 1857, thought to be the first known photograph of a Presidential inauguration. Wood made the 1857 exposure in four seconds.

George Eastman Museum

George Eastman Museum

The George Eastman Museum, also referred to as George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film, the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in Rochester, New York.

Charles H. Traub

Charles H. Traub

Charles H. Traub is an American photographer and educator, known for his ironic real world witness color photography. He was chair of the photography department at Columbia College Chicago, where he established its Museum of Contemporary Photography (MOCP) in 1976, and became a director of New York's Light Gallery in 1977. Traub founded the MFA program in Photography, Video, and Related Media at the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 1987, which was the first program of its kind to fully embrace digital photographic practice. He has been Chairperson of the program since. Traub has published many books of his photographs and writings on photography and media.

SUNY Brockport

SUNY Brockport

State University of New York Brockport is a public university in Brockport, New York. It is part of the State University of New York (SUNY).

Jacki Apple

Jacki Apple

Jacki Apple (1941-2022) was an American artist, writer, composer, producer and educator based in New York City. She worked in multiple disciplines such as performance art and installation art. As well as art making, Apple was also a writer, penning around 200 reviews and critical essays on topics such as performance art, media arts, installation art and dance. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Performing Arts Journal, Public Art Review and The Drama Review.

Robert Frank

Robert Frank

Robert Frank was a Swiss photographer and documentary filmmaker, who became an American binational. His most notable work, the 1958 book titled The Americans, earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de Tocqueville for his fresh and nuanced outsider's view of American society. Critic Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian in 2014, said The Americans "changed the nature of photography, what it could say and how it could say it. [ ... ] it remains perhaps the most influential photography book of the 20th century." Frank later expanded into film and video and experimented with manipulating photographs and photomontage.

Nam June Paik

Nam June Paik

Nam June Paik was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super highway" to describe the future of telecommunications.

Keith A. Smith

Keith A. Smith

Keith A. Smith is an American artist and author. He has taught at the Visual Studies Workshop, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the University of Illinois. He is a recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships, a National Endowment of the Arts grant and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant. Smith creates books as works of art, as well as instructional texts on how to make books. Permanent collections which hold works by Smith include the National Gallery of Art, Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Center for Creative Photography.

Collections

VSW maintains both archival and research collections of photography, independent film and video, electronic imaging, visual books and the publication arts. The Research Center hosts the Independent Press Archive which is one of the largest collections of artists’ books in the northeast with around 27,000 prints from 19th century vernacular images to contemporary experimental works. The Soibelman Picture Agency Archives is also present with around 40,000 international press images from the 1920s and 30s. The collection also contains Joseph Selle’s Fox Movie Flash Archive with an estimated 800,000 images of people on the streets of San Francisco in the 1940s to the 1960s. VSW also holds the archives of Lejaren à Hiller who was an American illustrator and photographer and who is widely known for American photographic illustration.

VSW holds the Portable Channel tape archive, over 900 magnetic tapes chronicling Rochester's history of grassroots activism and protest in the 1970s.[14][15]

Afterimage

Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism was founded in 1972 by Nathan Lyons.[16] From its inaugural issue, the magazine aimed to pose "a challenge to existing centres of practice and education" as well as "to institutional hierarchies, widening the remit of art criticism and theoretical debate and engaging directly with context, community and issues of accountability."[17]

Afterimage is a bi-monthly publication that was produced by Visual Studies Workshop from 1972 through 2018 and is currently published by the University of California Press.[18][19] The publication includes visual arts, photography, independent film, and video, new media and alternative publishing. It covers topics of issues and debates within art history, visual and cultural studies, and related fields. Afterimage also includes articles, conference and festival reports, book and exhibition reviews, artist’s books, and exhibition catalogs.

Discover more about Afterimage related topics

Afterimage (magazine)

Afterimage (magazine)

Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism is a bimonthly journal of contemporary art, culture, and politics. It publishes features, essays, local and international reportage, exhibition reviews, and book reviews with an emphasis on social dialogue, politically engaged artistic practices, and the role of the artist as cultural critic and curator.

Accountability

Accountability

Accountability, in terms of ethics and governance, is equated with answerability, blameworthiness, liability, and the expectation of account-giving. As in an aspect of governance, it has been central to discussions related to problems in the public sector, nonprofit and private (corporate) and individual contexts. In leadership roles, accountability is the acknowledgment and assumption of responsibility for actions, products, decisions, and policies including the administration, governance, and implementation within the scope of the role or employment position and encompassing the obligation to report, explain and be answerable for resulting consequences.

University of California Press

University of California Press

The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by faculty of the University of California, established 25 years earlier in 1868, and has been officially headquartered at the university's flagship campus in Berkeley, California, since its inception.

VSW Press

VSW Press was founded by Joan Lyons in 1971.[20][21] In 1984, Lyons edited the first anthology of critical essays and sources for the field of artists' books, Artists' books : a critical anthology and sourcebook.[22] In the beginning, VSW first provided printing presses for artists to experiment with. VSW then began employing professionals to run a Heidelberg offset press to produce publications that artists, staff, and students had constructed. The process of publication was then switched to digital means with the addition of a computer lab. Many artists-in-residence that have come through VSW have published through VSW Press.[4][23]

Notable alumni

Main category: Visual Studies Workshop alumni

Source: "Visual Studies Workshop", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, February 6th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Studies_Workshop.

Enjoying Wikiz?

Enjoying Wikiz?

Get our FREE extension now!

Download Extension

Further Reading

Bruce Davidson (photographer)

Mario Giacomelli

Johanna Drucker

Barbara Rosenthal

Anne Wilkes Tucker

Afterimage (magazine)

Rose Marasco

Kei Ito
See also
References
  1. ^ Grimes, William (1 September 2016). "Nathan Lyons, Influential Photographer and Advocate of the Art, Dies at 86". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-05-16.
  2. ^ Tucker, Anne Wilkes (15 January 2019). "Nathan Lyons: An Irresistible Passion for Photography". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-05-16.
  3. ^ Murphy, Justin (16 June 2022). "Visual Studies Workshop to lose MFA program in Rochester NY". Democrat and Chronicle. Retrieved 2023-01-17.
  4. ^ a b c Pellizzari, Maria Antonella (1999). Nathan Lyons: Visual Studies Workshop 1969-1999. Lubrina Editore. ISBN 88-7766-204-2.
  5. ^ Lyons, Nathan (Winter 1961). "The Workshop Ideas in Photography". Aperture. Aperture Foundation. Retrieved 2023-01-13.
  6. ^ Lyons, Nathan (2012). "The Workshops Idea in Photography". In McDonald, Jessica (ed.). Nathan Lyons. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-292-73771-6.
  7. ^ Lyons, Nathan (2012). "A Joint Program in Photographic Studies/State University of New York at Buffalo and George Eastman House". In McDonald, Jessica (ed.). Nathan Lyons. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-292-73771-6.
  8. ^ Confino, Barbara (2012). "Photography is Not an Art: It Is a Model of Perception". In McDonald, Jessica (ed.). Nathan Lyons. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-292-73771-6.
  9. ^ Traub, Charles H. (2006). "Up from the basement". In Sander, Gloria Williams (ed.). The Collectible Moment. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-12100-8.
  10. ^ Pelizzari, Maria-Antonella (2012). "Nathan Lyons: An Interview". In McDonald, Jessica (ed.). Nathan Lyons. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-292-73771-6.
  11. ^ Rafferty, Rebecca (2022-06-22). "Brockport ends MFA program through VSW". Rochester City. Retrieved 2023-01-17.
  12. ^ Rafferty, Rebecca (2019-05-28). "VSW celebrates 50th anniversary". Rochester City. Retrieved 2023-01-17.
  13. ^ "Workshops - New York". Popular Photography. Ziff-Davis Publishing. May 1984. Retrieved 2023-01-18.
  14. ^ Spevak, Jeff (2020-07-29). "VSW mirrors the moment with 'The Power of Protest'". Rochester City. Retrieved 2023-01-17.
  15. ^ Lubitow, Adam (2019-09-17). "Film preview: 'Projecting Our Voices'". Rochester City. Retrieved 2023-01-17.
  16. ^ Kester, Grant H. (1998). Art, Activism, and Oppositionality: Essays from Afterimage. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-8223-2081-4. Retrieved 2023-01-13.
  17. ^ Vance, Ann (Summer 1999). "Review of Art Activism and Oppositionality: Essays From Afterimage". Variant. No. 8. Variant. Retrieved April 5, 2012.
  18. ^ Goldberg, Vicki (12 May 2000). "PHOTOGRAPHY REVIEW; Subtle Juxtapositions From a Diffident Force for Change". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-05-16.
  19. ^ "Afterimage - About". ucpress.edu. Retrieved 2023-01-13.
  20. ^ Anton, Veronica (January 1982). "Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Arts & Politics, vol. 4, no. 2 (14), Jan. 1982". Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Arts & Politics. Retrieved 2023-01-17.
  21. ^ Artists' books : Visual Studies Workshop Press, 1971-2008. Lyons, Joan, 1937-. Rochester, N.Y.: Visual Studies Workshop Press. 2009. ISBN 978-0898221268. OCLC 278980825.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  22. ^ Artists' books : a critical anthology and sourcebook. Lyons, Joan, 1937-. Rochester, N.Y.: Visual Studies Workshop Press. 1985. ISBN 9780898220414. OCLC 11727030.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  23. ^ Pelizzari, Maria-Antonella (2012). "Nathan Lyons: An Interview". In McDonald, Jessica (ed.). Nathan Lyons. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-292-73771-6.
External links
Categories

The content of this page is based on the Wikipedia article written by contributors..
The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence & the media files are available under their respective licenses; additional terms may apply.
By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use & Privacy Policy.
Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization & is not affiliated to WikiZ.com.