Sam Abell • October 10, 2003
Linda Connor • November 14, 2003
Thomas Southall • February 6, 2004
Harriet Logan • March 26, 2004


All lectures are at 4 p.m. in Worsham Theater in the Student Center.
Parking available next to the Student Center, click here to see map.
For more information, call 859-257-5716.

Sam Abell
October 10, 2003
As a documentary photographer working for the National Geographic Society, UK graduate Sam Abell is best known for color photographs of exotic cultures, exquisite gardens, and adventurous voyages. His newest publication, Sam Abell: The Photographic Life, explores the role that black and white photography held in the development of his artistic vision. Aiming to challenge the conventional notion that black and white and color photography were distinctly separate sides of his profession, Abell set out to record “life’s daily details” in a black and white photographic diary. He planned to answer particular questions, such as “Are there esthetic and emotional differences between black and white photography and color photography?” and “Is one form ... more truthful?” In the end, he discovered: “What I thought was separate has turned out not to be—the two, taken together, express what it means to me to live the photographic life.” As part of his appearance at the Robert C. May Photography Endowment Lecture Series, Abell will be welcomed as the 2003 College of Education Hall of Fame honoree.

Biography: Born in Sylvania, Ohio, 1945. Studied at University of Kentucky, B.A. 1969,and has worked as documentary photographer for National Geographic Society since 1970. Work featured in solo exhibition (1990) at the International Center of Photography in New York City and in the monograph Stay This Moment: The Photographs of Sam Abell (Thomasson-Grant, 1990). Produced several books of his photographs, including the most recent publication, Sam Abell: The Photographic Life (Rizzoli, 2002), which accompanied a retrospective exhibition organized by University of Virginia Art Museum in July 2002. Currently lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Linda Connor
November 14, 2003
Throughout her career, Linda Connor has remained intrigued by the inherent contradiction between what is real and what is illusion in the photographic image. She has employed various techniques—using a 1902 Century View
Camera with a soft focus lens, developing negatives under natural light, assembling prints from various negatives, hand coloring—to heighten the illusion and reveal the mysterious. In time, she discovered that mysteries occasionally reveal themselves and, in 1978, she began creating images with a sharp focus lens, exploiting photo-graphy’s clarity to reveal the mysterious and ultimately to deepen one’s experience of reality. Inspired by ritual sites,

Connor’s images move beyond the place itself to reveal hidden meanings that are both personal and universal. Her work is featured in the exhibition, Visions from America: Photographs from the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1940-2000, which will be on view at the University of Kentucky Art Museum from November 16, 2003 through January 26, 2004.

Biography: Born in New York City, 1944. Studied photography under Harry Callahan at the Rhode Island School of Design, B.F.A. 1967, and under Aaron Siskind at the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, M.S. 1969. Freelance photographer since 1966. Instructor, San Francisco Art Institute, since 1969. Received numerous awards, including Guggenheim fellowship, 1979. Publications include Solos (Millerton, New York, 1970). Lives in San Anselmo, California.

Thomas Southall
February 6, 2004
Thomas Southall, Curator of Photography at the High Museum in Atlanta, oversees the museum’s project of commissioning prominent photographers to produce work on the South. Inspired by the High’s historical survey exhibition Picturing the South (1996), these commissions provide a contemporary perspective on Southern subjects and themes. In the process, the High has built a distinctive collection with works by Dauwood Bey, Emmet Gowin, Sally Mann, Richard Misrach, Alex Webb, and others. Bey made a series of over-life-size portraits of Atlanta High School students. Mann’s commission helped support her shift to landscape work, resulting in the first works of her Motherland series. Webb, the noted Magnum photographer, captured the drama of Atlanta’s street and nightlife. Misrach used a view camera to reveal the beauty and the pathos of the Mississippi River landscapes bet-ween Baton Rouge and New Orleans, an area known as ‘Cancer Alley.’ And Emmet Gowin made aerial photographs of aeration ponds of several paper mills located in the South. At his talk, Southall will present an overview of this important series of commissions.

Biography: Born in Bronxville, New York, 1951. Studied at St. Lawrence University, B.A. 1973, and at University of New Mexico, M.A. 1977. Professor of Art History and Curator of Photography, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, 1977-87. Curator of Photography, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, 1988-95. Curator of Photography, High Museum of Art, since 1998. Organized numerous exhibitions with publications, including Diane Arbus: Magazine Work (Spencer Museum of Art and Aperture, 1984), Walker Evans and William Christenberry: Of Time and Place (University of New Mexico, 1990); and Chorus of Light: Photographs from the Sir Elton John Collection (High Museum and Rizzoli, 2000).

Harriet Logan
March 26, 2004
One of Britain’s most prominent photojournalists, Harriet Logan is known for pursuing tough stories in Somalia, Sudan, the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Mongolia, Iran, Kashmir, Angola, India and America. In 1997, she went to Afghanistan on assignment for the London Sunday Times Magazine, just fifteen months after the Taliban gained power. Despite a strict ban on all photography and film, Logan photographed and interviewed women in very intimate settings, capturing their lives in a series of black and white photographs. In 2001, after the Taliban’s defeat, Logan returned to complete the stories of these women for her book Unveiled: Voices of Women in Afghanistan (HarperCollins, 2002). Her appearance at the Art Museum’s Robert C. May Photography Endowment Lecture Series is in coordination with the University of Kentucky’s 2004 Kentucky Women Writers Conference.

Biography: Born in England, 1967. Studied at Rhode Island School of Design. Work has appeared in the London Sunday Times Magazine, Fortune, Marie Claire, and Elle. Has received Britain’s two leading awards for “Young Photographer of the Year”—Ian Parry (1992) and David Hodge (1996)—and more recently a special award from Pictured Editors (1999) and the Vic Odden Award, Royal Photographic Society (2000). Publications include Blood on the Tracks (MacMillan, 1995). Lives in London, England.