Sweet Way
The Sweet Way, with Charles A. Traub (Photography, New York School of Visual Arts)
October 20, Tuesday at 7:00 in Lovejoy 100
Charles H. Traub, photographer of the real world, will be talking about his long involvement with the delights of the street, here there and anywhere, but particularly those of Italy. Drawing from his two recent books, Dolce Via and Lunchtime –which are monographs of his color works from the 70s and 80s–, he will talk about change and the realities of then and now, as cultures have blended and issues of representation have radically changed the nature of the lens arts.
What can be said in passing by one stranger to another at 1/125th of a second? Is one picture worth a thousand words? Or does it take a thousand pictures to really say anything? In a time when anybody and everybody is photographing anytime and everywhere, what makes for a significant body of work? Traub believes that in essence, the dialog of the lens is a matrix for understanding all of our activities, and that visual arts literacy is essential to this understanding.
Charles H. Traub is chair of the MFA Program in Photography, Video & Related Media at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He holds an MS from the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology and a BA from the University of Illinois. He was formerly the director of the prestigious Light Gallery of New York, he is president of the Aaron Siskind Foundation for support of creative photography, and he is one of the co-founders of here is new york, a Democracy of Photographs, which received the Brendan Gill Award of the Municipal Arts Society, Cornell Capa Infinity Award, and a Distinguished Service Award from the Children’s Aide Society of New York.
Traub has had numerous one-person exhibitions including Marcus Pfeifer Gallery, Van Straaten Gallery, Chicago Center for Contemporary Photography, The Art Institute of Chicago, Light Gallery, and The Hudson River Museum. He has also authored and edited many books including Beach, Italy Observed, Angler’s Album, Education of a Photographer, Object of My Creation, and In the Still Life. His work has been published in Connoisseur, Fortune, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, American Photographer, Popular Photography, Aperture, Afterimage, and most recently the New York Times, which featured his photographs from the project No Perfect Heroes: Looking for U.S. Grant. He has received awards from the New York State Council on the Arts, Illinois Art Council, Olympics Arts Organizing Committee, and the Mary McDowell Center for Learning. His textbook, In the Realm of Circuit, was published by Prentice Hall in 2003; the monograph, Dolce Via: Italy in the 1980’s by Damiani Press in 2013; Vision Anew, a collection of essays by the University of California Press in 2015, and Lunchtime, a monograph of street portraits, is due to be published in September of 2015 by Damiani Press.
Student Discussions:
- Photographs December 15, 2015
Jessica Tregidgo A famous expression is: a picture is worth a thousand words. In Charles Traub’s presentation, we learned that this is most certainly true. Traub went about during their lunch break taking ... - A Picture Is Worth 1,000 Words November 9, 2015
Jay Arr Charles Traub is a renowned photographer, and he specialized in street photos of people going on their way. Photography as a medium is interesting because it allows the capture of ... - The Human in its Natural Environment October 28, 2015
wavinke What stuck with me the most after Charles Traub’s talk was the work that would later go into the book called “Lunch Time”. The book is just a collection of formal ... - Slowing down October 27, 2015
Sophie Suechting I can only imagine how busy and frantic lunchtime on the streets of New York can be. All of these high powered professionals getting lunch in the little free time ... - Charles Traub October 27, 2015
Grant Lowensohn This week’s presentation was done by photographer Charles Traub. His projects gave an interesting perspective for our study of human and nature. Instead of relating the two directly, he gave ... - Human is Nature? October 27, 2015
Nick Pattison I found Charles Traub’s visit to Colby change my perception of Patterns, Presentation, and Perception of humans and nature! I liked how in his “Lunchtime” piece, we see patterns emerge, things ... - The Nature of Photography October 27, 2015
Ernesto Although Charles Traub’s lecture didn’t explicitly demonstrate the connection between humans and nature, he did reveal to us preserved moments of human nature. In Traub’s Lunchtime and Dolce Via, we ... - Now v. Then October 27, 2015
Maya Meltsner I thought looking at Charles Traub’s Lunchtime collection was interesting because the people on the streets in the 1970s and 1980s do not look all that different from the people ... - The Sweetest Self October 27, 2015
Kathryn Chow Charles Traub’s portrait photographs of everyday people in the 70s show a jarring amount of honesty. The colors, lighting, and angles in the photographs created compositions that are whimsical and ... - Thoughts on Charles Traub’s Lecture October 27, 2015
Kay Shigemori There were several topics that Charles Traub talked about that grasped my interest: (i) the talk about difference between a ‘snapshot’ and a ‘street portrait’; (ii) the difficulties of capturing ...