Becky Senf
Description: Rebecca (Becky) Senf is the Chief Curator at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona. In this episode, she shares insights into the evolving role of photography in the art world, the nuances of curation, and the challenges of balancing institutional goals with community engagement. We also explore the relationship between photographers and subjects, the uniqueness of photographic prints, and the broader trends shaping contemporary photography.
Website:
Books:
Making A Photographer: The Early Work of Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams: In the Lane Collection
Resources:
Artists Mentioned
Show Notes:
Beaumont Newhall – A key figure in the history of photography in the U.S., curator at MoMA, and author of the first photographic history.
Alfred Stieglitz – A pioneering American photographer and modern art promoter.
Georgia O'Keeffe – Not a photographer but closely associated with Stieglitz, who photographed her extensively.
Paul Strand – An influential early modernist photographer.
Rebecca Strand – Paul Strand’s wife and an artist.
Kim Sichel – A photo historian at Boston University (not a photographer but influential in photography studies).
Chris McCaw – Known for one-of-a-kind photographic works.
Edward Curtis – Famous for his portraits of Native American subjects.
Victor Macieszva – A Native American photographer who depicted his own community.
Ansel Adams – Iconic American landscape photographer.
Edward Weston – Renowned for his modernist nude and landscape photography.
Dorothy Norman – Photographer and close associate of Stieglitz.
Mike Disfarmer – A small-town portrait photographer whose vernacular images became highly regarded in the art world.
Doug Rickard – Known for appropriating Google Street View images as art.
Dawoud Bey – Contemporary African-American photographer known for projects on Black history, including the Underground Railroad series.
Barbara Bosworth – A photographer known for landscape and environmental work.
Betsy Schneider – Created a portrait project on 13-year-olds using a large-format camera.
Kelli Connell – A contemporary photographer researching and reinterpreting historical photographic narratives.
Arno Minkkinen – Creates surreal self-portraits integrating the human body with landscapes.
Laura Aguilar – Chicana photographer known for self-portraits exploring body image and cultural identity.
Luis Carlos Bernal – A Chicano photographer focusing on his community.
David Emmett Adams – Works with historical and alternative photographic processes.
Claire Warden – Engages in alternative and handmade photographic methods.
[0:03] Introduction to Photography and Curating
[3:52] Path to Becoming a Curator
[6:54] The Role of Practical Experience
[9:12] Passion for Photography
[10:58] Building an Exhibition
[16:08] One-of-a-Kind Photographs
[18:22] Audience Relationships with Unique Works
[20:29] The Complexity of Prints
[23:10] Evolution of Exhibition Concepts
[31:03] Understanding Portraiture
[38:22] Navigating Tropes in Photography
[43:09] Curating for Different Audiences
[49:34] The Importance of Physical Space
[53:32] Curating as Hosting
[57:14] Geographic Audience Considerations
[58:42] Collaborating with Artists
[1:03:42] Shifting Curatorial Perspectives
[1:07:59] Curators as Gatekeepers
[1:12:54] The Responsibility of Representation
[1:16:01] Archiving for the Future
[1:19:04] Measuring Exhibition Success
[1:24:01] The Influence of Funding
[1:27:26] New Models in the Art World
[1:30:06] Technology's Impact on Art
[1:36:01] Embracing Analog in a Digital Age
[1:38:53] Nostalgia for the Unlived Past
[1:42:31] Dialogue with History in Art
[1:48:21] The Nature of Artistic Production
Unedited AI Generated Transcript:
Brent:
[0:00] Welcome, Chief Curator Becky Samph. Thank you for coming on today.
Becky:
[0:03] Yeah, thanks for coming all the way to Tucson to talk to me.
Keller:
[0:07] We'd love to start off by hearing what got you interested in photography, how you ended up at the U of A, and how you ended up at the Center for Creative Photography.
Becky:
[0:15] Sure. So I actually went to undergraduate school here. I grew up in Tucson and came to the U of A and started as an undecided major. And then remembered that I liked the art history session that I had in my high school French class. So I started taking art history classes. And at the University of Arizona is a research center called the Center for Creative Photography. And it has an amazing photography collection, but it also has a classroom building and a classroom in the building. So I took my art history classes in the CCP.
Becky:
[0:55] And because there's such a strong photography collection at this university, the way that photo history is taught is a little bit different. Most universities, if they offer any photo history class at all, it's a one-semester survey. But at the U of A, it's a three-semester survey. And I didn't realize that that was exceptional because that was the first exposure to it I'd had. But I can remember very distinctly, I was in that class, and my photo history professor was a person named Keith McElroy. And he had studied at the University of New Mexico with somebody named Beaumont Newhall. And Beaumont Newhall is like the godfather of photo history in the United States. He was a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, and he was the first person to curate a photographic museum show that happened in the early 20th century. So my professor had studied with Beaumont, and Beaumont was the one who basically wrote the first history, did the first show. And so the way that he taught photo history was very personal. It was like he was describing photographs.
Becky:
[2:10] People like Alfred Stieglitz or Georgia O'Keeffe or Paul Strand or Paul's wife, Rebecca, like they were people he knew. And it was because Beaumont had known those people. They were his friends and he did have social relationships. And so I can remember that class where we were learning about Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O'Keeffe and Paul and Rebecca Strand thinking this, this is what I want to do. And I didn't know what that meant.
Becky:
[2:38] Maybe I wanted to teach it, But I just wanted to study it. And I wanted to have that same sense of these people and kind of know what they were like and what was important to them and not just what art they made, but who they were and how who they were impacted what they did. And part of what I learned through that class that made photo history so enticing is that photography was slow to be adopted as an art form or accepted as an art form. And so museums didn't show it. It wasn't collected. It doesn't sell for the same prices even now. And so it has this kind of underdog status, which means that there's a community. And people, the photographers, the curators, the scholars, really have a sense of a network and a community. And that was very appealing to me. I liked, it's almost like a romantic idea, right? That this group of people all believe in this thing and they work together to bring it forward and demonstrate its importance.
Becky:
[3:51] And that was very appealing to me too.
Brent:
[3:53] Yeah. So then after undergraduate, how did you progress and get into actually curating?
Becky:
[4:00] So I grew up, both of my parents had PhDs. So I always assumed I would get a PhD in something, but I didn't really, I didn't know what that meant. So after undergraduate school, I worked for a short time for a political nonprofit. And then I went back to graduate school to study photo history. And I only picked schools that had a photo historian on the art history faculty because my MA and PhD are in art history. There aren't very many places where you can get a PhD in photo history that specifically. But I went places where I could learn from somebody who was a photo historian. And so I ended up going to Boston University and working with a woman named Kim Sichel. I was part of a large cohort of other photo history students. And then the kind of linchpin experience was working at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. So I got an internship there and began working in their prints, drawings and photographs department. And so was getting real life experience. I was, shadowing the curators. I was working with the collection. I was getting to write labels for exhibitions. And that really opened up the world of being a photo curator and having, I like teaching and I think of curating as a form of teaching.
Becky:
[5:28] But once I'd had the opportunity to work with the actual art objects, the idea of being a professor who only talked about them and didn't get to live with them and work with them wasn't as interesting to me as being a curator.
Keller:
[5:45] And when you were going through that initial phase of your career, did you feel like doing photography yourself was an important aspect of that or not really so much as a means of understanding the art?
Becky:
[5:57] Yeah, that's a good question. So one of the things I liked about my undergraduate degree here at the University of Arizona is that I was required to do studio art classes. And so I did take photography classes. So I've shot film on a 35 millimeter camera. I've developed the film. I printed with an enlarger. And that did give me really valuable insight. Then when I was at the MFA Boston, one of the tasks, like kind of low level tasks I got assigned was cataloging their photography collection, which was relatively small at that time, 3,000 or 4,000 prints. And one of the things that they wanted me to do was identify the medium for each print. So mostly things are gelatin silver prints. That's the most basic kind of black and white photograph. But in order to know that something wasn't a gelatin silver print, I had to know about the other processes.
Becky:
[6:55] So I got assigned to work with one of the conservators who basically taught me how to identify the different processes. And I got to look through microscopes and see them under the microscope. And it gave me, it was like after that initial experience of printing things in a darkroom as a very like low level introductory, you know, I was a beginner. But then learning about the materiality of photographs deepened my interest in what the thing was. And then that combination of experiences meant that as I worked with artists.
Becky:
[7:37] And went on a, we call them studio visits, when you go and meet with an artist and learn about their practice, I knew enough to ask good questions about what they were doing technically. And I don't understand all the technical aspects, and I especially don't understand all the technical aspects in digital photography.
Becky:
[7:57] But I think being attuned to what the object could be, what the process was like, meant that I could ask better questions, and that allowed me to deepen my knowledge about the technical aspects. And so I feel like that has been a real advantage and it distinguishes me not only from other photo historians, but from some other curators who are thinking about the end product, but maybe don't understand as much about the process and how you get there.
Brent:
[8:27] Yeah. And then we're just curious if you had to kind of boil it down a little bit, like what about photography itself do you love?
Becky:
[8:36] Yeah um so there's that piece the underdog piece that's part of it um but the other thing about photography that's so great well there are a couple things one it's magic and magic is cool like the fact that you use a camera or you use your phone and it translates the world into a document according to certain rules. And if you understand what those rules are, you can make a better photograph or you can better understand what you're seeing. That feels super cool.
Becky:
[9:13] And I know, Brent, you've probably seen a photograph get developed in the darkroom.
Brent:
[9:17] Yeah, we have one of our houses.
Becky:
[9:18] Yeah. You know what it's like to like, and you see it still on movies or TV shows, the kind of rocking of the tray and then that latent image comes up.
Brent:
[9:27] It's magical.
Becky:
[9:28] It's really, it's pretty amazing. Then another piece of it that I think is really cool is that it's.
Brent:
[9:36] It's small.
Becky:
[9:37] It's a short history. Photography was invented in 1839. So it's still not yet 200 years old. So everything that's happened in this entire medium has happened in the last 200 years. And so it makes it, it's very modern. It's a very current technology. And it all has happened in the modern world. So, you know, something like sculpture, we can't really know what those Greek sculptures were to that culture. You know, we're piecing it together. It's much more of a mystery. Whereas photography is all kind of current. And I think that makes it really exciting, too. And then the other thing about it that I think is really important is it's super accessible. It's the medium that we all do. You know, most of us have not carved marble, but all of us have taken a picture and all of us have been photographed. So we have a kind of fluency with this medium that I think makes it very accessible to visitors or audiences. And so we can have a conversation about photography in a way that I think painting art historians maybe don't feel like they can as readily have a conversation about what they know with members of the public.
Brent:
[10:58] Yeah.
Keller:
[10:59] And then pivoting out towards curating shows, how do you think through your approach of building a show? I guess initially just starting out with when you have an idea, what is that first couple of days like?
Becky:
[11:13] So, so I'm always thinking about the medium and, and photographs and artists that I'm interested in. Knowing that there's an artist who's doing a project that you're interested in can be one of the ways that you move towards doing a show because you want to help that artist get exposure for their work, or it's the work itself is something that you believe in and you want to make sure that that has a platform. But when I'm curating from the collection at the Center for Creative Photography, it's this massive collection, 120,000 photographs. So I haven't still seen them all.
Becky:
[11:51] But I come up with an idea, something comes into my head, and I start to wonder if it's something that our collection can engage with. So for instance there was I was at an art fair and I right at the very front one of the booths at the very front was showing the work of an artist named Chris McCaw and he does one-of-a-kind photographs and he had this huge big piece that was at the in this booth at the very front of the fair. And when it sold, the gallerist took it down, because it was sold, there was not another one, and put up a different piece by him. And I thought, huh, that's interesting. A one-of-a-kind photograph has this advantage if you're in the market that there's only one. And once it sells, it's gone, and now you get to sell another one. And so I started to think about one-of-a-kind photographs and wondered, oh, is this a whole like topic? Because part of what we think of as characteristic of photography is its reproducibility. You get a negative and you can make more than one print or with digital, once you have a file, you can make an infinite number of prints as long as you don't mess up the file.
Becky:
[13:09] So I was like one of a kind photographs. so that was a way to kind of take what was happening in my you know my experience and think about could our collection come into dialogue with that idea and.
Brent:
[13:27] Then how do you like think through what is a one-of-a-kind photograph and like why do artists use a medium that is reproducible to create that singular like object.
Becky:
[13:40] So in this case it was interesting to think about how was i going to find the one-of-a-kind objects in our vault so you know i interface with the collection because it's so large through a database that manages all of the objects that are in the collection so i then had to think about how to ask the database the right questions to find the objects that were going to match my research. So I.
Becky:
[14:10] I thought, well, Polaroids are one of a kind, so I can search for Polaroids. I could search for things that are collaged, because those are probably one of a kind. I can search for things that are hand-colored or written on. Those are probably one of a kind. And then we also have information in the database about the addition. So if it's an addition of 30 prints, that's not one of a kind. So I thought, well, I wonder if there are notations in the addition field. That say unique or one of one or edition of one. So I searched for those things. And so that was basically my approach. There are other media besides Polaroid that are one of a kind. So like daguerreotypes and tintypes and ambrotypes are all one of a kind. So I basically just started to look and see what I could find. And pretty rapidly, I was able to see that in our collection, which is strongest in the 20th century there was a huge flourishing of one-of-a-kind photographs.
Becky:
[15:15] Starting in the 70s kind of to the present and it was fascinating to go and look at what those were it was all of those things I described polaroids hand-colored things clothed things things that were torn there were some things that were listed as an edition of one or a unique edition. We had some paper negatives. We have some tintypes. So then it was interesting to think about when you have a hypothesis about one-of-a-kind photographs and why people might make them, then you go in and you create this pool of things that match your question. And then as you start to refine it for an exhibition, you're looking for the prints that are the very best examples, the very best evidence to support your hypothesis or your thesis.
Becky:
[16:09] So it was interesting to try and think about how do I refine from there. And what I rapidly figured out was that most of the photographers whose works I was finding were still living. They were people who were born at the earliest in the 1930s, but there were people who were born in the 40s, 50s, 60s. And so So it kind of opened up my research. Usually I'm letting the prints in the vault answer my question, you know, answer the hypothesis. In this case, I could see the object, but I still didn't necessarily know why the artist had chosen to make a one-of-a-kind. I could see that they had made a one-of-a-kind, but I didn't know why. And so I came up with the idea to ask. So I created a questionnaire that I sent out to each of the artists whose works I found in the collection and got back all of these responses. And it was really great. You know, some people's answers were...
Becky:
[17:11] Do you know how boring it is to make the same print from a negative 10 times, 20 times? You know, why would I want to do that? It's not that fun. Or some people were, you know, interested in the exploration and experimentation of a non-traditional process. They were painting with chemicals or, you know, just trying new things. And then there were the people who were hand coloring where they really saw the photograph as a starting point to their process. It wasn't the end point, and so embellishing the work was a key component of what they were doing. So it was fascinating to then see this range of reasons that people were using a reproducible medium to make a one-of-a-kind. And ultimately, in that exhibition's case, I decided that I would just quote from what people had told me so that the voice of the artist was right there on the label. Instead of me summarizing, it seemed really interesting to have all these perspectives of the makers tell the visitors directly what it was that they were thinking as they chose to make a one-of-a-kind photograph.
Keller:
[18:23] And looking at the visitors, I guess the audience, how does uniqueness influence our relationship with the work? Because obviously the artists have a reasoning, like you just mentioned, for why they might have chosen to do a particular piece that way. But in the exhibition, do you see maybe the relationship of the viewing audience differ based on the fact that these were just one-on-one?
Becky:
[18:47] Honestly, I think no. I think that, so, certainly rarity does create a perception of greater value or, you know.
Becky:
[19:03] Of increased rarity, right? Having something be a one-of-one makes it more rare. But I think that when people are visiting museums, there's a general sense that everything there is important or precious or valuable or, you know, there's a reason that you're going to a museum to see it. And I think the place where you see that breaking point of people appreciating that something is really rare is when they're going to see a famous painting, right? So, it's the Vermeer girl with a pearl earring that people have heard about their whole lives. Or, you know, it's a Van Gogh painting, Starry Starry Night. So, I think that for the most part when people come to museums, they're already expecting that they're going to see things that are unique and special and rare. And photography in many ways is the outlier in that you come and you see an Ansel Adams show and most of the things you're seeing aren't unique. They're actually multiples. But people are still, even though they're multiples, they still value them and appreciate that experience. So I think it was more an interesting idea to think about, like, huh, what does it mean to choose a tool and then not use it for the thing that we associate with that tool, right?
Becky:
[20:26] So that's just kind of a curious thing to think through.
Brent:
[20:29] Yeah. And you brought up Ansel Adams. I know he's done like many prints with different processes of the same original negative. Would you think about different prints in like, I'm sure like shadowing and like other ways of like manipulating the negative or the print? Are those one of a kind if you're printing differently, but it's the same negative?
Becky:
[20:53] Yeah, that's a good question. So I actually did, I'm an Ansel Adams scholar. So I wrote my doctoral dissertation about Ansel Adams. And the Ansel Adams archive is here at the Center for Creative Photography. So I've had a chance to work with it a lot over the nearly two decades I've worked here. And so I actually did a show about that very idea. It was called Performing the Print. And Ansel Adams had a saying that he thought of the negative like the composer's score and the print like the performance of that piece of music. And so in some cases, artists, photographers want all of the prints from a negative to be pretty similar, pretty consistent. They have an idea of what it should look like. Ansel Adams with that saying basically was allowing for the fact that when you're printing it, that's also part of the art making. And so if that day you're feeling it darker, then make it darker. Or if you're feeling it more kind of sparkly and glittering, make it that. And so yes, when I talk about photographs printed from the negative, I often use the term handmade.
Becky:
[22:10] Each one of them is handmade. And the analogy that I use most often is like thinking about baking a cake, because not everybody has played a piece of music from a score, but we've all maybe made a cake. But even if you have the recipe and you have the ingredients, even if you've done it before, it could turn out a little different than it did the last time. And maybe you even choose to make it different. You add a little bit more lemon zest or you add more chocolate chips to see how it changes things. So each photograph, having been handmade, is going to be a little bit different. And so, yes, you could argue that each one is unique, although in the language of photography, we tend to talk about things as being of all the multiple prints from a negative as being an addition and being related and not being one of a kind.
Keller:
[23:04] And looking at another exhibit you did, I'd love to hear about the process of coming in with an idea and then it shifting.
Keller:
[23:10] An example we had for that was the face-to-face exhibit. Could you just give an overview of what your initial thought was and how that changed as you went through the archives?
Becky:
[23:18] Sure thing. So face-to-face, it was a portraiture show, and I love portraiture. And so I had this idea about the difference between portraits that are made in the studio and portraits that are made in the field, so meaning anywhere but a studio. And I thought you know I wonder how they're different I wonder if you can feel the the control of the photographer in the studio versus the kind of looseness or unpredictability or candidness of being in the field and you know I was thinking about in the studio you might have lights your equipment is all set up maybe photographers in the studio are using a bigger camera. So I went to the CCP vault and I started looking at portraits. And it just...
Becky:
[24:16] I wasn't finding it. Like, yes, we had portraits that were made in the studio. And yes, we had portraits that were made in the field, but they weren't coalescing into two different groups. I couldn't draw assumptions about one or the other. And pretty quickly, it became apparent that there wasn't something to talk about there. But we did have great, great portraits. And I was committed to doing a portraiture show. So I moved forward and kept pulling great examples of portraiture. And what we ended up doing in terms of the interpretation of the show was talking about the relationship between the viewer and the sitter and the relationship between the photographer and the sitter. So there were instances where I had multiple photographs of the same person and could talk about, like, Alfred Stieglitz. There were multiple portraits. So there was one by Paul Strand, who was his...
Becky:
[25:20] Mentee. Alfred Stieglitz was Paul Strand's mentor. And then I also had a portrait by Dorothy Norman, who was in a relationship with Alfred Stieglitz. So it's like, how does your relationship to the subject change the way you might make the portrait? The same was true. We had an American Indian portrait by Edward Curtis, who was coming from outside that culture to make a portrait. And we had a portrait by Victor Maciezva of his own native nation. So how does that relationship between the photographer and the subject change? And then I kind of extrapolated that to talk about how do we as viewers read these portraits? What can we assume based on what we're looking at? And how do we read a portrait? And encouraging people to use the skills that they have in meeting people in the world to read a portrait. You know, how do you read the body language? How do you read the facial expression? How do you read the clothing?
Becky:
[26:28] And encouraging people to feel empowered that they have the skills to look at a portrait and see all kinds of things and interpret what it is that they're seeing. So I had one idea about the show going in, and then I responded to the pictures themselves to produce a different show. And I mean, I think it's a basic tenant of research that you have to respond to the data, right? So you create a hypothesis and then you gather data. But if the data doesn't reinforce the hypothesis you have, you have to shift. And if you don't, and I think this can happen in art history because, you know, as a soft science, there is room for subjectivity. But if you continue to put your hypothesis on works that don't support it or even worse, you just pick different works so that you, you know, if the group of data is telling you one thing, but you're like, no, no, no, I really want to say this. I'll just find works that fit that, then you're not, you're not a good researcher, right? Even though it's more subjective, the photographs tell you things and you need to be open to responding to what the, what is actually there in the photographs.
Brent:
[27:54] Yeah. And then kind of on the Stiglitz example in this, uh, like on the portraits, I remember, was it Ansel Adams who did one that was like in like the studio? Yeah.
Becky:
[28:07] I'm trying to remember. The Ansel Adams example that I can think of. So there was, there's this pair of portraits of Karis Wilson. And Karis was the wife of Edward Weston. And Edward Weston made this portrait of Karis Wilson that is like this, perhaps the sexiest photograph there is. So Karis, they were on a backpacking trip with Ansel Adams, and they were at a place called Lake Adiza. And she's completely covered. She's wearing these tall, laced-up boots. The mosquitoes were apparently really wicked. So she's got this scarf around her head. But Edward Weston, her husband, is photographing her, and she's leaning back against this piece of granite, and her legs, her knees are sort of dropped open. And so you're photographing towards her, you know, her body is very open to Edward Weston. And it's just, it's like, it's a great, great portrait. And in comparison, Ansel Adams, who's Karras' friend, he was friends with Edward and Karras, he makes a portrait of Karras on that same trip.
Becky:
[29:30] And initially I thought I would include it in the exhibition and when I put the two pictures the Edward Weston of Charis and the Ansel Adams of Charis next to each other the Ansel Adams was so.
Becky:
[29:44] It was not as strong it was not as powerful it was not as dynamic it was not as there wasn't this sizzle I mean the Edward Weston portrait of Charis had sizzle it like reached out to you through the, you know, threw the glass right at you. And the Ansel Adams didn't do that. I ultimately left the Ansel Adams out of the show because I just thought...
Becky:
[30:11] Was so sad in comparison. And I thought, well, I don't want to do that to Ansel Adams. It makes it look like he's not a good photographer. And the fact of the matter was his relationship to Karis meant that he couldn't make a portrait as powerful and dramatic and intense and emotional and sexy as the Edward Weston. And so I put them both in the brochure and I talk about that idea, But I didn't put the Ansel Adams in the show because it just, it felt so flat compared to the Edward Weston.
Brent:
[30:45] Yeah. And then, yeah, this was, I'm showing that. Oh, yes. That was a brochure.
Becky:
[30:49] Yeah.
Brent:
[30:50] That one. I was curious why that was defined as a portrait because it looks like Stielitz was just sitting in his office in the studio, but it's only him
Brent:
[31:01] and the general background. So you don't see the face or anything like that. What is a portrait in your eyes? And then also, how do you go about examining and reading a portrait? Yeah.
Becky:
[31:14] So, yeah. So this, you're right. I'd completely forgotten this. Ansel Adams was in that show. So this is an Ansel Adams portrait of Alfred Stieglitz. He's at his gallery, An American Place, which was a really important location for photography because Stieglitz used that gallery as a way to argue that photography deserved as much attention as painting. And so it was a really significant place for Ansel Adams, and he was very inspired by Stieglitz. I actually have made the argument in other places that for Adams, getting to know an American place was the inspiration for Adams co-founding the CCP, because he wanted to have a place like Stieglitz's where photography was celebrated. But so the reason that I think of this as a portrait is that.
Becky:
[32:04] The setting that Stieglitz is in is also a reflection of Stieglitz in this case. His creation of this gallery was part of his identity and really part of what we still talk about as the significance of someone like Alfred Stieglitz. So we're seeing him in his environment, and there's actually a category, it's called environmental portrait, where you see the person in a significant setting, and the details of the setting then also help us understand that person. So, you know, one of the frequent types is artists in their studio, where getting to see the space, the light, their materials, the other canvases in the space or the other sculptures, all of that helps you understand the person.
Becky:
[32:56] But the same could be true of, you know, seeing a person in their outdoor setting or seeing them in, you know, if a person is a professor and seeing them at the front of their classroom, how does the setting add information to how we understand that person and how we read that portrait? And so it describes Alfred Stieglitz's physical self somewhat, but you're right. He is kind of small in the picture overall, but everything we're seeing is helping us understand him. Yeah.
Keller:
[33:34] And then with portraits, this might be a rudimentary question, but we're talking about the dynamic between the photographer and the subject, you know, like the more intimate kind of creates a more lively dynamic with the actual picture. Are there examples where having like no intimacy in the portraiture itself is beneficial?
Becky:
[33:54] Yes, absolutely. I think that...
Becky:
[33:59] Well, there's a very famous series by a photographer named Mike Disfarmer. And this is an interesting aspect of photography and curating photography. Mike Disfarmer was a small town photo. He ran a photo studio. So he was the local portrait photographer, like going to JCPenney's and getting your picture made. But he was Mike Disfarmer. and those photographs have made their way in to museum collections even though when they were made they were just the place you went to get your graduation picture or your you know when your baby turned two um and so we we sometimes call those vernacular pictures they weren't made as artworks they were just made you know the same term can be used for architecture vernacular architecture is like houses and, you know, fast food restaurant architecture is vernacular architecture.
Becky:
[35:00] So in that case, he was just photographing the townspeople. But the reason that we're interested in them now in art museums is that there's a kind of directness, there's a lack of artifice. There's an authenticity to those pictures that makes them really, I would say, charming, but also really beautiful. They speak of that moment in time. I think they're from the 40s, maybe 1930s and 40s.
Becky:
[35:31] So different dynamics between the photographer and the subject create different qualities in the finished photograph. And.
Becky:
[35:45] One isn't better than the other. They're different and they tell you different things.
Becky:
[35:50] So, and to use an extreme example, let's think about a surveillance camera, right? There's actually not a person with the camera at all, but there's still all kinds of intention.
Becky:
[36:03] And when you see a surveillance picture of somebody that does tell you something, There's a photographer, his name was Doug Ricard, and he did a whole series of pictures that were made by Google Street View cars. And so he would go on to Google Street View and find pictures of people and then take a screenshot, a screen grab, and then was making that his art. And it was a kind of appropriation. But also, like, what does it mean to be the accidental subject of an automated camera whose purpose is something else, right? So he was playing with that dynamic and what that meant. So I think that all of that is legitimate and interesting for study, and it just results in different kinds of products that then we as photo historians or you all as an audience get to ask questions about and think about what is the meaning, what is the significance, how does that relationship change? Or let's think about a photojournalist, right? Like, what happens when a photojournalist is in a war zone and they're photographing someone who's displaced, a refugee? Like, what is that relationship? Now we've got a huge power imbalance.
Becky:
[37:23] How does the photojournalist's motive, what newspaper they're working for, what country that newspaper is published by, how does that change how that subject is going to be depicted? We want to be asking questions about that because all of those points influence the picture we see. And so, you know, to be an informed consumer of visual content, you want to have those questions percolating about how did this picture get made and who was behind the lens and what was their intention and in some cases who was paying for it. And is there a power imbalance? You know, when you see a picture of someone who's working or a child or a person who's sleeping, those people can't give consent because they're stuck where they are.
Becky:
[38:18] And how does that change how we understand those photographs?
Brent:
[38:22] Yeah and then kind of on that topic do you ever like when you're evaluating all the behind the scenes of the photographer like the situation do you ever get like i don't know if annoyed is the right word or just i think with for me portraits i think there's sometimes i get apathetic with portraits because i'm like are you saying something new are you playing to a trope that's been done a million times before so like how do you like kind of think through some of these especially now social media where like i don't know if this is wrong to say but like the poor person like definitely in like a third world country or something like that and the white person comes in takes a photo like there's images that are extremely powerful and effective in that medium but then there's also people just kind of playing to that so how do you like work through some of topics like that?
Becky:
[39:14] That is an excellent question. I love that question. Because photography is so prevalent, so ubiquitous, we absolutely see that. I've joked that I never need to see another photograph of Antelope Canyon in Arizona again, because there aren't that many ways to photograph it, and I've seen it. But I think you're right. Rather than using the example of portraiture, let's use the example of nudes right so that's a genre um and i think that for much of history we've seen nudes of females made by males and uh, Part of my job as a curator is to look for photographs that are doing something new, important, resonant, relevant, valuable. And it's pretty hard for someone to show me a portrait, not a portrait, a nude of a female made by a male that's doing something new. Mostly they're beautiful. It's a figure study. It's about the shape of the human body. Maybe it's abstracting. Certainly there are some that are meant to be sexualized.
Becky:
[40:33] I'm not seeing a lot that's different. However, there's a photographer named Arno Minkinen, and he makes nude self-portraits. He's a man. And he fits his body in with the physical space that he's in to create echoes or contrasts, but it's very much his body in the space. So, you know, maybe he'll, there's a picture where he's in New York City and it's like his hands are pulling apart the buildings because of the foreshortening. His hands are close and the buildings are far. And so it looks like he's pulling them apart or um you know he'll go to maroon bells in colorado and fit his body in with the shape of the landscape or um he's done things in snow where just his hands are jutting out from a snow bank um or to give another example there's a photographer laura aguilar.
Becky:
[41:34] Chicana photographer living in a large body um.
Becky:
[41:39] And she made nude self-portraits, also in the landscape, that are about culture versus nature and how her body felt when she was clothed and in society versus nude and in nature and what her own relationship to her physical self was. And that work is also in dialogue with a history of art and the way that bodies have been pictured and what it was like to picture her own large-sized body that doesn't fit a kind of stereotypical art ideal. These kinds of nudes are doing something new, resonant, relevant, exciting.
Becky:
[42:26] And so those say something to me and those are things I want to show those are things I want to talk about and so yes absolutely in photography there are things that are fitting a pattern that already exists and then there are things that are pushing boundaries and it's the boundary pushing that makes something art and makes it interesting and worth talking about or worth exhibiting or worth publishing in a book and so that's part of my job is to think about everything that's come before and then who is pushing against
Becky:
[43:01] that or innovating or moving our cultural understanding through the creation of a photograph.
Keller:
[43:09] And when you're thinking about building out these exhibits does your process differ when you're creating an exhibit for the ccp or private exhibit because obviously your interest might lie in different areas and the overall audience might be different.
Becky:
[43:25] Absolutely so when i'm curating a show for the center for creative photography i'm thinking about what our institution is what our mission is what the collection is where is it strong what does it do well um, I'm thinking about the audience that comes to exhibitions here. We're on a university campus. We're part of a research center. But in this job, in an earlier phase of this job, I was in a joint appointment with the Phoenix Art Museum.
Becky:
[43:57] The Phoenix Art Museum is a totally different institution. It's a bigger audience. It's a public audience. It has a wider and more diverse clientele who come there. And so a less specialized audience, because we're a photo-only museum here at the CCP, but the people who came to the Phoenix Art Museum weren't coming just for photo.
Becky:
[44:19] So when I curated shows for Phoenix, I was thinking about that audience. When I curate shows for here, I'm thinking about this audience. And I'm also thinking about behind or underneath the surface issues. So the Center for Creative Photography collects archives, which means all of the materials that an artist produces in the process of creating their work. So we collect negatives and correspondence and teaching materials and biographical materials. And so one of the things that I think about is every time an artist sees a show produced by the CCP, they might be thinking about, well, are they using these archives well? And so I want to make sure that when we do shows, people understand that we're using our collection well, because if we do that well, then more people will want to be a part of our collection. And if we don't do that well, people won't want to be part of our collection. So all of those things are in my mind. And so to answer your question about is it different when I'm doing it for myself or for a private gallery, I got invited to do an exhibition.
Becky:
[45:33] An online exhibition for a database called Art Photo Index that was run by PhotoEye, which is a fabulous photography bookstore based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And they were trying to promote their database, Art Photo Index. And so they were inviting curators to create online exhibitions from the collection to.
Becky:
[45:57] Create opportunities for people to understand what was in this database. And so for the first time, I was curating something without thinking about this whole set of responsibilities of being the curator for a particular institution. And that was really exciting and initially a little scary because now I had to pick a topic and it could be anything. And so, but what I decided to do the show about was parenting. At the time, my kids were maybe five and eight, something like those ages. And so parenting was consuming a lot of my life and experience. And in particular, I was thinking about the way in which parents are judged. So, you know, if you don't get your kids vaccinated, you're judged. Or if you get your kids vaccinated too young or too many vaccines, you're judged. Or if you feed your kids this, you're judged. Or you let them watch too many screens.
Brent:
[47:00] You're judged.
Becky:
[47:00] Or if they have a phone too young, you're judged. And it just goes on and on and on and on. You let your kids sleep in the bed with you or you let them cry it out. I mean, literally, you can't win as a parent because whichever choice you make, someone's going to judge you for it. And we feel really comfortable culturally judging people for their parenting choices, which feels a little unfair to me because we're not the parent. We don't know what that kid is like. So anyway, that was a topic that was interesting to me. So I went through the database and I chose photographs that related to that theme. And then I had to sequence them and I wrote a text that went with it. And I was also working in a new environment. So I hadn't done an online show before. So I'm used to.
Becky:
[47:47] An exhibition that's in physical space that's with actual objects created by artists and that have different sizes and unique properties and some of them are color and some are black and white and so suddenly I was doing this exhibition in a virtual space and so I was needing to learn how to do that and what that space wanted that's different than doing something in a physical gallery that people will walk around in. So it was really, it was such a good experience and incredibly nerve wracking. And also I felt like this was a show that potentially more people I knew would see because, you know, in Tucson or in Phoenix, only the people who actually come to that place will see the show, but a virtual show could circulate and people anywhere could see it. And so that created a different kind of pressure.
Becky:
[48:47] So I spent a lot of time on it. And one of the greatest parts of being a curator is that I'm constantly learning and I'm constantly doing new things. And even if I'm curating shows for the same space you work with a new artist or a show has a different concept or you're you have different goals for a show and each time you do that you learn and it pushes you into new things and that's so stimulating and it means that no, you know no spring is the same as the previous spring because I'm working in a different way or I'm working with new people or I'm dealing with new ideas or I'm trying a new process. And all of that makes the job very exciting.
Brent:
[49:35] I'd love to hear more about how you think through the physical space, whether it's the actual room in which the photographs are, the geography in which the building, the whole situation is located. And then after that, how that contrasts to, especially with movement through it and creating that storyline And then did you struggle with that when you went to digital?
Becky:
[50:00] So, um, A lot of it is practice and getting to know a space. So curating in a new space comes with it a certain amount of uncertainty because you don't know how people move in the space. You don't have any experience with that. As you learn, as you become a better curator, you can anticipate somewhat a new space or how people might use it. But there are basic rules. And you learn them through apprenticeship, mostly. So when we were preparing for this and you asked me, were there books that you could read to learn about the process of curating? There aren't many because it's a process that we do through apprenticeship. You get an internship or you get an entry-level job at a museum and you work with a curator who's more experienced than you. And you either watch what they do or if you're lucky, they talk to you about what they're doing so that you can understand how they're making the decisions that they make.
Becky:
[51:09] A lot of it is subjective. There isn't a single right way to do something, but there are all of these subtle decisions, nuanced decisions that you're making that impact the overall experience. And that starts with things as minor as how well the mat is cut, so you have the opening in the mat that reveals the photograph, and.
Becky:
[51:39] You can have a mat that's cut very well and very cleanly and very precisely, and then you don't notice it. But if the mat is wonky and those lines aren't perfectly straight or the corner is overcut, so there's a little line past the corner where there shouldn't be, or the frame is the wrong color or the wrong size, the mat is overly big or too tight. All of those things influence how the visitor sees the photograph the art object that we're trying to feature and so the the accumulation of all those little decisions end up impacting how the person experiences the show so for instance if there's too much text or there's not enough text that can leave a person either overwhelmed or not with not enough information to understand what they're looking at. If you don't tell people why you chose what you chose, then they're just wandering around looking at pictures instead of thinking about the thread that should be connecting all of the pictures in the show. If the frames aren't right, it might cause a sense of unease. If the wall color isn't right, it can make the space feel too tight or too oppressive or too too big and not full enough. I mean, like each of those little things influences.
Becky:
[53:08] If you have a sound component and it's too loud and it's filling up all the rooms or it's not loud enough and people can't understand what the content is, then they feel confused and left adrift. So as a curator.
Becky:
[53:22] So we've been talking about the ways in which a curator is a researcher,
Becky:
[53:26] but when you're thinking about an exhibition, in many ways it's like you're a host. And you're trying to create an environment so that the visitor can have a good experience. And a good experience might mean that they're learning things. It might mean that they're feeling things. It might mean that they're confronting or challenging things in themselves. There's not one right experience, but if you leave people uncomfortable or uncertain or unsupported, they can't have a good experience. So I'm often thinking about how do you empower people? How do you make sure that they have all the information they need to understand the work they're looking at? How do you sequence things so that they understand intuitively what the flow is? Did you create a space where they could make their own discoveries? If you tell everybody everything you want them to know, and you spell everything out, you haven't created a space where they can learn and where they can come to their own conclusion.
Becky:
[54:40] You want there to be a space that they can occupy with their own discoveries or their own observations. And so it's a balancing act, but it's like planning a wedding. No individual choice that you make matters so much, but the accumulation of all the choices you make end up with a feeling. And with a wedding, you want to create a space where people enjoy the love that's there, that everybody's there to celebrate. And with art, you're trying to create a space and an opportunity for people to have a resonant experience with the artworks. So you have to, you know, sometimes that means showmanship and drama. And the show should have...
Becky:
[55:32] Design. And then other times it means stripping those things away and letting the art really be the focus. But it depends on the show and the kind of story you're trying to tell and the messages that are coming across.
Becky:
[55:48] Sometimes if a show is very heavy and the content is going to require a lot of emotional work on the part of the visitor you want to be very careful and respectful and thoughtful about how you present the work so that they have um they feel safe to experience that and and then there are like little things that like you know when you walk into a room what do you see first and if you have let's say your exhibition has big pictures in it and smaller pictures. If people walk into the room and all they see are tiny little rectangles on the far wall, that's not very tantalizing. But if you can give them one big picture and maybe that's what's next to the text, they're drawn to it because they can see what they're looking at. And so we think about that as we think about a space. How do you create through a doorway something that looks tantalizing, whether it's new text for them to read or an anchor, a heading, a quote, or a picture that's really clear that will draw them over. So you're constantly thinking about how do you organize the space so that people know what to do, how to move through it, how to navigate it, but they're also tantalized and pulled into the next part of the show. And then you asked about.
Becky:
[57:14] Where, like geography, you know, like, who is the audience in Tucson? How is that different in Phoenix? So here, we have students who come to the exhibitions, we have faculty members who bring their classes, we have Tucson visitors who come to visit the CCP. And then we have a small number of tourists. Whereas at the Phoenix Art Museum, because it's a bigger city with larger tourism, there are many more tourist visitors to the Phoenix Art Museum. So they're not necessarily coming from the community, although there are many community visitors. And then I've had the great good fortune to curate shows in Milan, Italy, in Palermo, Italy, in Rotterdam. I have a show right now that's on view in Cincinnati, Ohio. And so often in those cases, you're getting to work with someone who is local and they can help you think about, well, who is this audience and what are the labels need to be like to address the needs, the interests of that audience? I mean, maybe the labels need to be in more than one language because that audience is going to be a very international language. So you're thinking about all of those things to make sure that the story and
Becky:
[58:37] the ideas that you're trying to convey are able to get to the visitor who's actually coming.
Keller:
[58:43] In that process of making an exhibit, when you have different voices around curating, one of them obviously being the artist, how do you deal with potential issues where they might have a certain intent for their piece, but that might not fit the broader picture of the overall exhibit, or there might be slight differences in that dynamic? How do you think through that? And then another piece kind of talking about how the audience feels. Are there times where you'll decide to have the artist there or not for the actual exhibit because the way that the audience interacts with their presence might change things? Okay.
Becky:
[59:20] So in my experience with working with living artists, my role as a curator changes pretty dramatically. So when I'm curating a show from the CCP vault, from the collection, and I'm pulling together works with a particular idea that relates those works, I have a lot more authorial presence. And it's my story to tell. And it's a much more creative process because I'm bringing my ideas and my interpretation, my expertise, my background, my understanding of the history to bear. When I'm working with an artist, particularly I've done...
Becky:
[1:00:05] Single-person shows and two-person shows in working with living artists. I really think my role switches and I become like a midwife, where my goal now is to help that artist realize their vision. And so I get to think about what can I offer them based on my expertise with that particular space, with the staff that work here at the center, to give them the goal that they want. So, for instance, I'm working on a show with an artist named Kelly Connell that will open in August of 2025 here at the Center. She's been doing research at the CCP for 10 years. She actually does research about Edward Weston and Karis Wilson, who we were talking about earlier. And she was really interested in trying to understand Karis and what her dynamic, Karis' dynamic, was working with Edward Weston. And because the story that we've been told is that Karis was steamrolled by Edward Weston, for lack of a more nuanced term, and that her voice was diminished because he was so strong.
Becky:
[1:01:19] And what Kelly learned through research is that that actually isn't how Karis felt. She really felt like she was a partner with Edward Weston. And Karis was angry that people said that after Edward died because she felt like it was disempowering her. Like, wait a minute. That wasn't how it was. I didn't feel steamrolled at all. I had a voice and he was very respectful to me and we were partners. Karis was a writer. And so she would often write the component of Edward Weston's book. So they were a team. So Kelly's been researching that. And she went with her wife to the places that Edward and Karis had been, and they made new photographs. And she photographed her wife Betsy in those locations. And Kelly ultimately then wrote a book. With her own narrative about researching Edward and Karras and about making her photographs. And so we've been working with her on that project. And so in thinking about the labels for the show.
Becky:
[1:02:23] We were trying to figure out how to bring Karras's voice into the show and Kelly's voice into the show. And so what we ended up doing, so normally I write the labels. If I'm the curator for the show. I write the labels. But for this show, I wrote the intro text, which is that panel that you see when you first arrive at an exhibition that introduces the show. After that, all of the labels that are with individual objects are texts that I pulled from Kelly's book. So they are in Kelly's voice. And they're snippets, little tiny excerpts that relate to the photograph that give you a sense of Kelly's voice that hint at this bigger story that she's written that's published in the book. And wherever Kelly quoted Karis, I tried to pull those things out and put those things with the pictures so that the show is Kelly's voice through the photographs, but then Kelly's voice in the labels and Karis's voice in the labels.
Becky:
[1:03:29] And it was a different way of doing the show but it was a way to help Kelly realize her goal of bringing Karis into the middle of the project and it centers a different perspective.
Becky:
[1:03:42] In this case, the curatorial perspective isn't as important and needs to take a backseat or needs to be submerged under Kelly's voice and that's very often the case when you're working with a living artist and you're like.
Becky:
[1:03:56] You want to foreground their project. Whereas when I'm doing a show that uses multiple artists, I'm now using a work or a couple of works that are part of a bigger idea. And so maybe we don't know as much about their goals or their project, but their individual artwork is part of my narrative or my story. Yeah there was i feel like there was a second part to that question um.
Keller:
[1:04:29] There was like whether when you're doing the space itself if it is a living artist to include them.
Becky:
[1:04:34] At the exhibit yeah yeah so um yes again because the goal when you're working with a living artist is much more about foregrounding their intent and their goals there's really almost nothing better than having them there.
Becky:
[1:04:53] And I've worked with great artists. So it's really exciting to be able to connect audiences directly to that artist. Early in my career, I did an exhibition with a photographer named Barbara Bosworth, who's based in Massachusetts. And this was at the Phoenix Art Museum. And she came to do a gallery talk. And there was a woman, a visitor who had been to the show several times and came to the talk, I'm getting goosebumps thinking about this, came to the talk and said to Barbara, I am so glad to meet you. Your works have meant so much to me and I've so enjoyed this exhibition. And I thought, like, art matters and these exhibitions matter. And people come to them and they see photographs that change them, that give them new insights or perspectives that help them see the world in a different way or help them feel validated and important in who they are because some artist has made a work that connects to them. And so it was so powerful then for her to get to meet Barbara and to connect with her personally and to ask her questions and to listen to her talk about the work. And so I think that that is really exciting. And.
Becky:
[1:06:17] Artists are all different kinds of people. They might be stoic and quiet, or they might be dynamic and excited, and they might be precise and intense, or they might be messy and exuberant. And just getting to see that tells you something and helps you connect with who they are and gives a depth to understanding the work. You know, maybe it's a show, I worked with another artist named Betsy Schneider, and she did a project on 13-year-olds where she photographed 250 13-year-olds using 4x5-inch color film. So it's a bigger camera, slow process, analog process.
Becky:
[1:07:08] And she is kind of this whirlwind of a woman, you know, dynamic and silly and over the top and emotional. But the portraits are calm. And so it's great, I think, for people to get to see these composed, beautiful portraits that are honoring these 13-year-old subjects and then see her and all the energy and pizzazz of her personality. And that contrast, I think part of the reason that the pictures are so strong is because of the person who she is, but they don't necessarily seem the same, but the one produces the other.
Becky:
[1:07:55] So yeah, I love having the artist as involved as is possible. Yeah.
Brent:
[1:08:00] And then on that sentiment about how powerful art can be, how do you approach taking on the responsibility of kind of having that say over what voices get represented and how you tell the story and your own beliefs, but maybe the artist or the subject's beliefs? And how does that dynamic work for you?
Becky:
[1:08:20] Yeah, I think that's interesting. And I think that there is sometimes a misperception that curators are gatekeepers, that we're, I mean, we do have a lot of responsibility and authority to decide what kinds of things come into our collections or to talk about what kinds of art gets presented. But i i tend to think of us as our goal is to make things visible so gatekeeping has this sense of exclusion and i really think of us as people trying to provide access and trying to create opportunities for people to connect with artworks and i think that the responsibility to represent different perspectives is intense. And, a critical part of what curators are doing. And I think we've all been on a journey.
Becky:
[1:09:22] When Beaumont Newhall defined what the canon of the history of photography was.
Becky:
[1:09:28] He was not thinking about being equitable. He wasn't thinking about being inclusive. He wasn't thinking about whether or not women were represented or people of color were represented or were indigenous voices represented. And so the responsibility now to make sure that as many perspectives are represented as possible, I think is something that curators take very seriously and that cultural heritage institutions take very seriously. It's a key part of our responsibility that our audiences with all of the range of people who are part of our audiences feel safe in our spaces feel represented in our spaces and can find artworks that are meaningful to them that's the point of art is that whether it's a piece of music or a film or visual art or a dance performance, that it means something when a visitor experiences it and feels something. Again, whether that's emotional, whether it's that they learn something, whether it's a belief that they hold gets challenged and that pushes them.
Becky:
[1:10:53] But those things don't happen if you're not showing a wide range of works made by a wide range of makers. And so in order for art to do its job, we have to have art spaces that are inclusive and that are intentionally trying to represent a wide range of perspectives. And.
Becky:
[1:11:17] I think that the notion of showing things that you disagree with is a really, it's an interesting and challenging one. I think it's easiest to resolve when we're looking at things historically and to acknowledge that people didn't always feel the way we feel now and that language has changed and culture has changed and that the photographs that represent those earlier cultures are. Or societies, or cultural beliefs, the fact that we have photographs of them help us remember, even when it's unpleasant to remember. So in the center's collections, we have, you know, we have pictures of riots and demonstrations, and we have pictures of inequity and crisis, and people being subjugated, and we have pictures of misogyny, and we have—I mean, so all of that is our history. That is our history.
Becky:
[1:12:29] We cannot like it, but it doesn't change the fact that all of those things existed. And by having photographic documentation of it, it allows us to understand. And if we can't understand what happened or we don't endeavor to understand what happened, we can't grow.
Becky:
[1:12:50] We need it to help us appreciate where we've been.
Brent:
[1:12:55] Mm-hmm. And then on that too, that was kind of talking more about what you're showing. When you're thinking about who you're bringing into the collection and who are you going to archive, do you take a similar approach? Is there any way you're trying to predict what history will deem important and wanting to archive it before it gets to that point? How do you work through some of that and filling the gaps in the CCP's collection?
Becky:
[1:13:22] Excellent question. So part of what you do as an archive is we do try and anticipate the questions that people will ask, but you can't. We can't know what will be important. But if you choose a range of photographers who are making good work, then those artists, by their very practice, are addressing the issues that are important. And so if you're interested in the archive, you're interested in the archive. If we include different perspectives and underrepresented perspectives.
Becky:
[1:13:57] Then we have the best chance of bringing in material that future generations will want to see and will have questions about. And whose research queries will be answered by the things that we've collected. So one of the things that's true of archives is they're a lagging indicator. We're collecting the archives now of people who are in their 70s 80s 90s so that means that they were starting their careers and they're in the 1960s 1970s 1980s and um so we're but then we do also acquire individual works that were maybe made in the last two years five years ten years So we're collecting both at the same time. So archives tend to come to us at the end of a person's life when they're, you know, retiring or they want to make sure that their life's work is protected somewhere.
Becky:
[1:14:59] But then we have acquisition funds where we're purchasing individual work. So, for instance, Dawood Bay, as an African-American photographer, he did a project called Night Coming Tenderly Black that's about the Underground Railroad. And there are these dark, dark, dark, dark.
Becky:
[1:15:17] Pictures of the landscape um in various underground railroad locales and he's just made those in the last five years so because our collection is very strong in landscape and this is an interesting way to think about how do you photograph a thing that's unphotographable how do you show the underground railroad in a photograph which was a thing that you couldn't have even shown when it was happening, is a really exciting thing for us to be thinking about photographically. So we've acquired some of those pieces at the same time that we're acquiring the archives of an African-American photographer who was working in the 60s, 70s, 80s.
Brent:
[1:16:02] Yeah.
Keller:
[1:16:02] And with exhibits, when you're looking at the end product and the success of an exhibit, what are those metrics? You mentioned, obviously, the emotional aspect of the audience. Are you surveying people after the fact? How do you collect that feedback? And what do you do with the feedback in live time? Will you ever change things in exhibits after the first showing? Or how does that play out?
Brent:
[1:16:26] And then on that, too, do you ever just sit in the exhibit and observe as people go through at different times?
Becky:
[1:16:33] Yes, it's really fun to watch people go through the show and to see how they move through it and what are they spending more time with? Are people talking to each other about the works? One of the things that we've found, I know this is true at Phoenix Art Museum, is that with bilingual labels, you'll sometimes get a multi-generational group, maybe a Chicano family where grandparents are reading the Spanish label to their grandkids who maybe don't read Spanish themselves but speak Spanish. And so, yeah, watching those processes and seeing how people, and, you know, some people come to exhibitions and they're not there to look at the pictures. They're there to be in the space or to kind of feel something.
Becky:
[1:17:22] What the museum is like or what the exhibition is like. And those are all valid ways to use and experience a show. We do make changes. We just had a community day for the Luis Carlos Bernal show that's on view downstairs right now. And I had somebody complain to me that he felt the labels were too small, that literally the type on the label was too small. So we're going to make some large print labels so that if people are struggling with the labels, there's an option so that they don't have to struggle. Struggling is not a way to make people feel safe and feel like they can have a good experience. That kind of struggle. Emotional struggle is fine. You know, intellectual struggle, that's good stuff. Struggling to read is not so good.
Becky:
[1:18:09] So the metric we use the most is attendance numbers, which is not a great, not always the best metric, right? That tells you that a show is popular. It doesn't tell you that a show is good or that it's having a meaningful effect on people or that people feel seen.
Becky:
[1:18:32] Sometimes museums do survey. I mean, mostly what you do is you survey your visitors. But that can tell you things like, are you reaching the demographic of your city? And if you're not, then you can work harder to attract audiences. But, you know, it's, it's, these are complicated questions. Is it that you didn't advertise in a particular zip code?
Becky:
[1:19:00] Or is it that people in that zip code don't feel comfortable at your museum? And if it's the latter, that's hard. You know, how are you going to invite an audience that hasn't felt comfortable at your museum to feel comfortable at your museum? And I think that that is the hard work of cultural heritage institutions now is it's not enough to have people come who already feel comfortable there. What are institutions proactively doing to change their programming, to change their content, to change their language? You may need to change the architecture. You may need to change your pricing structure. I mean, all of those things have an impact. I have a colleague who did a show about incarceration, and they got a grant to offer transportation to the show and to offer child care so that people who needed child care in order to get away and see the show had that as an option.
Becky:
[1:20:00] So I think institutions are trying to think about what does it mean to truly serve children?
Becky:
[1:20:06] You know, your city or your, in this case, we're on a campus, you know, how do we make students feel like these shows are for them? And that's a hard question. And we have a long history of museums and institutions doing the shows that they think are important and putting them out there and letting people use them or not. And I think institutions are evolving and we're asking different kinds of questions and and importantly um who are we serving and who are we failing to serve and how can we change what we do so that we can serve a larger audience real.
Brent:
[1:20:44] Quick how are you doing on time because i see you're.
Becky:
[1:20:47] Fine okay.
Brent:
[1:20:48] Perfect on that note like kind of like piggybacking off of like what is a successful exhibit how often do you think like maybe this is the art world broadly are people funding the art like influencing what's being presented and like maybe where is that most present and how that maybe contrasts like really focusing on the viewer the people coming to the show.
Becky:
[1:21:15] Yeah the funding is you have to ask the question right is how are these projects getting funded so for instance the lewis carlos bernal show that's on View downstairs was funded by a loose foundation grant. So that has allowed us to do more with this particular show because we got extra funding. And because it came from a foundation, we were able to ask for money for what we wanted it for. And then when they granted it to us, that allows us to, in this case, Luis Carlos Bernal is a Chicano photographer. He was born in Douglas in 1941, grew up in Phoenix, but then worked here in Tucson at Pima Community College and created the photography program there. So this was really a show, and his work focuses on picturing his own Chicano community. So this was a show that really was about the Mexican-American community in Southern Arizona, and we wanted to make sure that that community felt connected to the show and felt that the show was for them. So we created a community advisory group, and we asked for funding for that in the grant. So we were able to do that and do it well, do it right.
Becky:
[1:22:36] We wanted there to be a publication so that this work could circulate. So we were able to ask for money for the publication through the grant. It is true that when you look at traditionally the people who fund art museums, it's not grassroots funding. It tends to come from people who have established wealth. And I think all nonprofits grapple with, Issues about who's funding them and what are those people asking for their money to do? And how does that reinforce or contradict with the mission of that institution? And I think it's an interesting challenge.
Becky:
[1:23:22] I think that one of the issues is that young people who are coming into museums to work in museums are idealistic. They're progressive. They have very inclusive ideas. They're putting good pressure on institutions to change the ways that they do things and to be more inclusive and more open and more representative. And that can create absolutely conflicts between the people who are providing
Becky:
[1:23:55] the money and the museum workers who have a particular vision of what that money should support. I think when you have a strong museum administration, it is their job to communicate between these two groups, the funders on the one hand and the staff, the employees on the other hand, who are working as advocates for the community. And when you have good administration, you have good flow of information both directions, and then you have a successful institution because the funders understand what the museum is trying to do and why it's so important to be inclusive, to represent previously unrepresented voices, to be accessible, to people.
Becky:
[1:24:43] Think about how to make the museum welcoming to different communities. And then you also have a staff who understand the challenges and limitations of finite resources. So that's the administrator's, maybe the museum director's job is to help both groups of people understand the whole ecosystem. And when that's working, then you have the right money to do all the things you need to do. But yeah, those are good questions to be asking. And I think reasonable for museum visitors to ask hard questions of their cultural heritage institutions and to put pressure on and to vote with your dollars. If an institution isn't giving you the kinds of exhibitions you want, don't go there. Go to the institutions that are doing the shows that you feel safe in, or that you feel represent you, or that give you the kind of challenge or experience that you're looking for. And that process of people spending their money in the places that they feel represent them will have a natural effect of strengthening institutions that are providing the right kinds of experiences and will, over a long, slow time period, weaken those that aren't meeting their community's needs.
Brent:
[1:26:08] Yeah.
Keller:
[1:26:09] Have you seen any kind of decentralized museums being created with this new generation of students that might have this kind of darker or negative perception of institutions saying, you know, we don't even want to be involved in the first place? Because I know like in a different light with politics, for example, like students are just, I don't even want to be involved. I'm going to do my own thing, completely separate and build it up from zero. Have you seen that kind of movement or are students going in saying, no, we're going to change it. We're going to take lead and we're going to work within.
Becky:
[1:26:38] Both. I think both things are happening. And we need both. So institutions need to change. The thing is, just like universities, museums are very conservative. And I don't mean conservative politically. I mean conservative as in they're slow to change they're designed to maintain the status quo where our whole thing is that we protect the things that have already been made and and honor them and so that ethic is slow to respond to these kinds of changes.
Becky:
[1:27:16] But we need to change. These institutions need to change. And we need not just
Becky:
[1:27:22] young people, but people who want to put pressure on those institutions. But in the arts ecosystem, there are different kinds of institutions. So a museum that collects has a huge fiscal responsibility to that collection. And that means that they don't have as much money to be responsive because a lot of their budget is invested in taking care of the things that they have. And they can't change what that collection is rapidly.
Becky:
[1:27:56] We have 120,000 things. Before we have 240,000 things that are equitable, that's going to take another 50 years of this institution's history. So that's going to change very slowly. But there are things like art centers, which don't have a collection, whose job is to show living artists or emerging artists or to do exhibitions that are responsive to current events. And because their budget doesn't have to support a collection, they can do that more readily. So a world event happens and and they take down the show that's up and they put up a new show right away that's responsive to that situation and so i think that in some cases you get young people coming into museums trying to put pressure on to make a change and then in other cases you find young people going to work at art centers because they see a kind of program that's more aligned with how they're thinking about the world and where as a.
Becky:
[1:29:02] Maybe the education program of that art center is able to do social activism as part of that institution's mission. And so, and then, yeah, absolutely. You know, I've watched colleagues create new models of arts institutions so that they can support artists in a different way. Or, you know, there are pop-up spaces, or people are using social media to create support for particular ideas. So we can see people taking advantage of the range of opportunities to move things forward in different ways. And I think that we need all of that, because that's how with each of these different facets of the larger arts ecosystem, we get change. Because each different part is going to evolve in its own way. But then together, that offers a wide range of options to the visitors.
Brent:
[1:30:06] And then when you're looking at the future of curating, arts, photography as a whole, how are you thinking about technology and the way it's changing and all the new things that are becoming available right now?
Becky:
[1:30:21] Um so within photography people get nervous you you know when we saw the switch from analog to digital made people nervous it's scary change is scary right it all relates to our fear of death and you know it's change is real um and can be very hard um.
Becky:
[1:30:45] But the one thing that is consistent in the medium of photography is technological change. It's been happening since the thing was invented. And so it can be uncomfortable. Like, you know, if I have expertise about gelatin silver prints, and now suddenly most of what we're seeing are digital prints, I don't have expertise about that. And so I have to change what I know and learn more. Um and so i think that and the same is true for ai i think it's very easy to be dismissive.
Becky:
[1:31:22] That's not art that's not real that's a threat to real art um it's not it's a tool and very often with a new tool it takes time for people to learn how to use the tool to do something meaningful it's sort of like the conversation we had about nudes right the first thing that people do with a new tool often is the same thing that they were doing with the old tool and so okay no this is not so interesting um you know ai image making may be very useful for creating advertisements because you can more cheaply do the thing than setting up a person in a red dress on a horse in front of a beach. AI can just do it and you don't have to pay for all of that. But it'll get interesting as people start to think about what AI can do that digital photography cannot. And what will that look like? And how will people leverage this tool in new ways to say new things?
Becky:
[1:32:24] Then we're talking about art making. So when there is AI art, there will be AI art. And until there is people will experiment with the tool to figure out what it can do and um, Art is hard to make art, and it requires a control of your tools, your medium, in order to express complex things that are part of you, and so it just takes a while to adopt new tools. So I'm not threatened by that, but it does make it messy and can be confusing and can be complicated and creates a bunch of conflicting perspectives. But, you know, that's a dynamic world. That's what we, I wouldn't wish against that.
Brent:
[1:33:23] Yeah. And then as technology is ramping up a lot right now, especially with AI and all that, are you seeing the art world go back and counterculture it and go back towards the analogs as a way to almost maybe rebel against this technology?
Becky:
[1:33:39] Yeah. And quite frankly, it's been happening ever since the advent of digital photography. So, you know, we start to see a lot of digital photography, 94, 95, 96, it's that era. I don't know exactly what the dates of things being invented were. And it got adopted really rapidly in the commercial space and much more slowly in the art space. Um but even as early as the the turn of the millennium we saw art historians talking about this embrace of you can call them like antique photography or historic photography or some people call them alternative processes but yeah suddenly now you can do everything on your computer, but there are people who want to be in the wet dark room. I have a colleague, husband and wife, photographers based in Phoenix, David Emmett Adams and Claire Warden, and they both work in what are alternative processes.
Becky:
[1:34:46] They like to hand make their artworks. They find that that set of tools are useful for what they're trying to express. And as a curator, That's always what we're looking for. Is there a good match between the medium and what is trying to be expressed? When there's a mismatch, the artwork isn't as strong. When there's a really neat kind of connection or knitting together of the materiality and the expressive goals, that's when you get like amazing works of art because everything is aligned and reinforcing. So, you know, I love to see things that are in historic processes. But then sometimes you see people who are using them in a gimmicky kind of way or just as a default. And anytime somebody's using a tool as a default, it's not going to be as good as using the tool on purpose, right? We could say the same thing for poetry or film, right? If somebody's shooting a black and white film now, they better have a good reason for it, right? Why is it in black and white?
Becky:
[1:35:58] If there's a good reason for it, great. If not, if they just think it's going to make their film look more arty, then it's not, actually, because there's not a good justification for that use of that tool.
Keller:
[1:36:12] Yeah yeah i think there's a huge trend among students that will get an old digital camera that's really bad pixelation or getting a film camera that just like outwardly looks good but they don't even know how to shoot with it just for the simple trend of it but it is interesting i think to see i feel like a large reason for that is because of the ease of pictures of like the iphone people got so comfortable early taking pictures and now they're approaching it from more of an art even if it is the regular consumer they're approaching it from a more artistic artistic point of view so it'll be interesting to see i think as that kind of ages through where those pictures lie in the kind of larger scheme i.
Becky:
[1:36:54] Mean it we can think about um vinyl right the comeback of vinyl records or i also equate it to like foodie people right people who are buying the fancy olive oil or the, you know, the small batch bourbon, or they're wanting to get local ingredients. I think that in this contemporary world that we live in, so much is so readily accessible, certainly information, but also products. You know, you can.
Becky:
[1:37:28] Get whatever you want. And so I think people are looking for experiences and products that feel more authentic. And so sometimes handmade or analog can give you that more authentic experience. You know, it slows you down. Maybe it makes, it takes you out of a comfort zone and puts you in a less comfortable space. And that can be really, there are values to that. You know, having a camera that's not so easy may make you think about it more. It may slow you down. It asks you to make different kinds of choices. And in forcing you to make choices, you get deliberate and you get engaged. And I think that lots of people, young people, but people of all ages want experiences that feel authentic, meaningful, memorable. And so if we just take the thing that everybody's got, then we're going to get the experience that everyone has. But if we make different choices, we can have different kinds of experiences.
Brent:
[1:38:41] Yeah. And then with your work that you've done, a lot of work with stuff from throughout history and stumbling over that question.
Brent:
[1:38:54] You've done a lot of work that spans a long period of time. And on this topic of people kind of wanting to almost regress in a way, have you seen a generation that feels so nostalgic for an era they've never experienced?
Becky:
[1:39:08] Huh. I think that one of the advantages of going to an art museum and seeing an exhibition is that you see things that aren't part of your regular life or your regular experience. I don't know if it's primarily historically nostalgic or, you know, about past time periods as much as it is an experience that feels exceptional. You can go to a museum and you You can be surrounded by things that feel unique or exclusive or unique.
Becky:
[1:39:54] There's something rarified about it. And again, it's not just the artworks. It's like the whole experience feels like something different and special and memorable and meaningful and unpredictable, right? You go to a movie at a movie theater and you know what you're going to get.
Becky:
[1:40:17] But maybe coming to an art museum gives you an experience that is less predictable in the good way, in the way that you can, you will experience something that then you can talk about after because you're processing what it was that you experienced. So I think that that's what we're seeing in people who are coming to museums is a desire for that particular kind of experience, not necessarily about historical moments. Although we did an exhibition here at the center of Linda McCartney's photographs. Paul McCartney's first wife, Linda, was a photographer. And a lot of the people who came to the show came because they had such strong feelings about the Beatles. And they wanted to be in the aura of that moment in time of that cultural experience of being with the Beatles music as a teenager, when the Beatles were teenagers and that phenomenon. And so, I mean, definitely there are times when people come looking for a nostalgic experience.
Keller:
[1:41:35] And as we wrap up, I guess before that, when you're looking at the current landscape of photography, do you have certain trends that you personally are really interested in or certain photographers that just speak to your own liking?
Becky:
[1:41:52] I think that there's tons and tons of interesting work being done. And so what do I like? Um you know i'm i am i really like portraiture and so i'm always interested in the way that people are looking at other people and communicating about who we are my favorite genre in reading is memoir i i'm i'm in this business because i'm interested in people and the way that we communicate and connect with each other um but as my from my institutional perspective.
Becky:
[1:42:31] I'm really interested in the way that artists, Kelly Connell, who we talked about earlier as a great example.
Becky:
[1:42:38] Who are looking at archives and thinking about past work and then incorporating that into their current practice so that there's a dialogue going on between the contemporary and the historic. People who are looking at their own history, either their history as an artist or the history of photography, and they're incorporating that history into how they move forward. So from an institutional standpoint, because I work at an archive, that practice of being in dialogue with one's own history is really interesting and exciting to me. And it helps keep these historic collections we have relevant because they're being interpreted by someone who's in the present moment. So in the case of Kelly, she's a feminist, she's queer, she's bringing that lens to historic works and reinterpreting them, which I think allows audiences and audience members from all different perspectives and backgrounds to see it anew. And that feels really exciting and dynamic.
Becky:
[1:43:48] But you go to an art fair, you go to another museum, and you look at what people are doing. And for me, it's so stimulating to think about the kinds of questions people are asking. What kinds of topics are they dealing with? How are they using the materials or the processes? How are they pushing what's possible with them? It's a really exciting field. and and then of course it's also fun to critique the things you think are less interesting right it's it's like going to a bad movie and then you go out after and you spend a half an hour trashing it.
Brent:
[1:44:23] Talking about.
Becky:
[1:44:24] What went wrong that's that's a fun process too to think about what do you want to see happen and how is it working and where is it coming from so i'm excited about all of that.
Brent:
[1:44:36] Yeah and then as we wrap up what are like some of the like your key like things like messages you want to get across maybe like you said there like on the critiquing side like what do you want like these this younger generation to like stay away from the things like overdone or where do you see people like the room to grow and like where should they be like spending their attention and time and focus and all that.
Becky:
[1:45:01] So I think from a curatorial perspective, people who are thinking about doing the kind of work that I do, I think there is an anti-expertise trend. I suspect that you're very familiar with that as you think about academia. Um, in American culture, we tend to want things to be so accessible that we question expertise and we worry that expertise is elitist or exclusive. And what I would argue is that it takes expertise to explain things in a way that is accessible.
Becky:
[1:45:47] You don't have to start from a general knowledge to convey knowledge to a general audience. You actually have to start from expertise to think about how to take complex ideas and convey them in a way that a lot of people can connect with them. And it's about storytelling. We've used that term as we've been talking. You know, how do you create a message in a way that people from all different backgrounds can connect with it? And so I would say don't be afraid of expertise. Don't be afraid of really engaging with the depth and the nuance and the complexity of issues. I mean, that's true of anything, because it's in that messy complexity and really getting to know a subject well that you get to a point where you can tell a story in a way that's meaningful and resonant. for people.
Becky:
[1:46:45] And that's a really exciting place to find yourself. I would also say, though, in thinking about art and where it is right now, is that there is always going to be bad art.
Becky:
[1:47:01] And that's part of the process. And that's part of the reason that it's fun and exciting. As we've said, art is hard. When you think about what an artist is doing, they're taking the things that are the most important to them, the things that are so significant and intrinsic to their being that they want to spend their life talking about it or communicating about it. And that process of bringing things from inside your soul into a visual form or musical form or dance or theater.
Becky:
[1:47:45] Is so hard and complicated that even really great artists don't succeed all the time. You know, great writers write mediocre books or, you know, great movie makers sometimes miss and they pick a screenplay that's not that interesting or they don't cast it well. And so it doesn't come off the way it should. And so those experiences of mediocre
Becky:
[1:48:15] or bad art aren't an indication that we're not in a rich period of artistic production. It's evidence that artists are doing a really hard thing. And when it works, it's transcendent. It's transcendent to experience a work of art that moves you. That's so exciting. But it can't happen all the time. And so, you know, I've been to art exhibitions where it's a three-part exhibition.
Becky:
[1:48:46] Three different bodies of work by the same artist, and it's like, wow, this film was great, and wow, these photographs are great, and the third part's leaving me a little flat. And that's okay, you know, because you can see the artist working through ideas, and you can ask, well, why am I not so excited about the third part? What did the third part not do as well? but it's i think all of that is just evidence that um when you're in the presence of great art it's because that artist is a great artist they they worked really hard everything came together they got the support they needed they found a curator who wanted to help them bring that work to the world and so um you know that that messiness and um the kind of inconsistency of the quality of art or art exhibitions is part of it. And that's great. That's an exciting place to appreciate that we're going to experience lots of different things. And the thing that resonates for your friend isn't maybe the thing that resonates for you. And the thing that resonates for you might not resonate for someone else. That's okay. That's all part of it. And so what we want is a world where lots of art can be produced and lots of art can be shared and then that will give us all the the opportunity to have experiences that are really meaningful.
Keller:
[1:50:15] Perfect thank you for your time today.
Becky:
[1:50:16] Yeah thank you it was such a fun conversation i really appreciate it.