After a well-attended lecture by the great Martin Parr last month, the Akron Art Museum is at it again this weekend, bringing in Stephen Shore for a talk on Saturday afternoon.
Shore was one of the very early pioneers of color photography and has carved a legend for himself with his images of the American vernacular landscape. His lecture will "explore how the physical and formal attributes of a photographic print help define and interpret its meaning".
The photographic print is of course quite a poignant subject for discussion in today's age of digital photography, where film and prints are rapidly disappearing--one of my favorite local labs just shut down all of their film processing services a few weeks ago due to lack of demand.
Should be interesting to hear Shore's perspectives in the aftermath of some provocative comments he made on the "film vs. digital" topic and the overabundance of mediocre photography being spread by the internet and new digital technology, during an interview before one of his exhibitions at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle in '07. The recap is here, though I'm just trying to keep the issue as a matter of consideration and discussion and am really not interested in rehashing any new bouts of Shore-bashing. However, for the sake of full disclosure, by and large I find myself in agreement with much of Shore's critique and loathing for the proliferation of digital photography, so he can at least count on one captive audience member...

The details--
The Nature of Photographs: A Talk by Stephen Shore
Saturday 19 April, 2:30pm
Akron Art Museum
One South High St., Akron OH
members and students $5, non-members $10