Words and Pictures: Surfaces for Feelings

Words & Pictures is pleased to present an online panel discussion in conjunction with our fall exhibition, Keeper of the Hearth: Picturing Roland Barthes’ Unseen Photograph. This event will dive into the enduring magic and lure of vernacular photography – the ordinary, everyday snapshots that we make, keep, collect, store, and cherish. Our panel includes Ka-Man Tse, Alejandro Cartagena, Laurel Nakadate, and Odette England, and is moderated by Barbara Levine, a Mexico and Texas-based artist, vernacular collector, and author. The panel will share personal stories and insights and engage in conversation about photographic objects as social history and personal archives. The discussion will explore how we engage with old amateur photographs and what they do to us, how and why we still make family pictures, the daily personal rituals of image-making and sharing, and how these ephemera link back to Roland Barthes’ notion of the Punctum as it is expressed in his famous unseen snapshot of his mother, Henriette, at age five - The Winter Garden Photograph.