Photo Alliance

About the Lecture
Photographer James Henkel combines visual phenomena with everyday objects to make new formulations that are rich in possibility, filled with cultural meaning, and underpinned with a steady sense of humor. Black and white tones, careful camera positioning, and poetic juxtapositions of shapes and content come together into still pictures that celebrate looking, yet cause the viewer to remember even longer the gathered experience.

SFAI visiting faculty member and photographer Sean McFarland will provide an introductory presentation on Henkel's work.

Artist Bio
Henkel earned his MFA from Florida State University, and has exhibited in over one hundred national and international venues, including St. Petersburg, Russia; Teheran Museum of Contemporary Art, Iran; Anji, China; SFMOMA; Pace MacGill Gallery, New York; and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. His work is in collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Minneapolis Institute of Arts; and SFMOMA. He has been the recipient of grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Bush Foundation, McKnight Foundation, and the Minnesota State Arts Board. Henkel is a faculty member in the Art Department of the University of Minnesota.

SFAI faculty member Sean McFarland’s work explores the relationships between the process of image making, artifice, photographic truth, and the representation of landscape. He earned his MFA from the California College of the Arts in 2004. He has exhibited nationally, internationally, and locally at Eli Ridgway Gallery, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Berkeley Art Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SF Camerawork, Headlands Center for the Arts, The San Jose Museum of Art, Galeria de la Raza, and Jack Hanley Gallery. He has received the Phelan Art Award in Photography from the San Francisco Foundation in 2005, a Fellowship from the National Photography Institute at Columbia University, Baum Award for an Emerging American Photographer in 2009, John Guttmann Photography Fellowship in 2009, and a Eureka Fellowship in 2011. His work is in the collections of  SFMOMA, Oakland Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art Library, Humboldt State University, and UC Davis.

Image Credit
James Henkel
Abracadabra, 1995

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About the PhotoAlliance Lecture Series
PhotoAlliance, an affiliate of SFAI, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting the understanding, appreciation, and creation of contemporary photography. PhotoAlliance fosters connections within the Bay Area photography community through public programs and educational activities including workshops, lecture series, and portfolio reviews. www.photoalliance.org

All PhotoAlliance lectures begin at 7:30 pm in the Lecture Hall on SFAI’s 800 Chestnut Street campus. Tickets are purchased at the door: $5 for students / $10 for the general public. For a complete schedule of SFAI's lectures and events, please visit www.sfai.edu/events