Family Photographs and the Museum

The UNM Art Museum presents Family Photographs and the Museum, two performative lectures by UNM MFA candidates Francis Reynolds and Anna Rotty. Using their own family photographs, Reynolds and Rotty will explore a range of topics including the many roles photographers adopt, how humans form and are formed by the spaces they inhabit, and whether photographs can be used to envision a livable world. The lectures will be held on Wednesday, April 26th, at 5:00 PM in the UNM Art Museum’s Upper Gallery.

As members of Collective Constructs, Francis Reynolds and Anna Rotty have contributed to the development and interpretation of Hindsight Insight 2.0. With UNM Ph.D. candidate Marina Perez and Assistant Professor of Art and Art History Marcella Ernest (Ojibwe), Collective Constructs has provided guidance on works displayed in the exhibition, posed questions to museum visitors through wall text, and will continue to engage with the exhibition through publishing a zine, conducting interviews with artists and museum staff, and developing a series of public programs. Reynolds and Rotty also have work on display in the exhibition.

Francis Reynolds

Made Plain: Representation Beyond the Frame

With the advent of chemical gas warfare, the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk argues, “the fact of the living organism’s immersion in a breathable milieu arrives at the level of formal representation.” Through two photographs of his great grandfather—one made before World War I, the other after—MFA candidate Francis Reynolds examines what it means to make a representation of a livable milieu, what a photograph can capture, and what exceeds the image’s frame. Within the context of Hindsight Insight 2.0’s overlapping themes of portraiture and landscape, this performance will explore the relationship between humans and their environments, and how humans form and are formed by the spaces they inhabit. Like a breath on glass, an image can show us the world in which we live in a new form. Can it also allow us a vision of how it can be changed?

francisreynolds.com

Anna Rotty

some things you’ll know already: an exploration of family archive in institutional space

MFA candidate Anna Rotty will explore family archive through a performative lecture at the UNM Art Museum. Rotty focuses on two family photographs made by her great uncle Halden Rotty. Through oral histories in conversation with family, she considers perceptions of land, the many roles a photographer inhabits simultaneously, and ways in which war has impacted understanding of family and place. By placing her own family photographs within Persona, the portraiture section of Hindsight Insight 2.0, Rotty asks, what happens when family archive enters the museum?

annarotty.com