2009 Schedule

FREE to MoPA Members and Summer Workshop Participants, $6 Students, $8 Non-Members


Jo Whaley
July 2, 2009
7:00 pm
Jo Whaley will present a lecture at MoPA that discusses the compelling theme that has driven her work. Working in distinct series, the subject matter of Whaley’s photographs over the last 25 years have ranged from allegorical nudes, to a revision of the "vanitas" still life tradition, to a fusion of natural history and environmental issues in the Theater of Insects series. Whaley creates images with an ironic and quirky point of view where she juxtaposes organic and manmade elements to reflect the issue of environmental degradation in an imaginative manner.

Jo Whaley has lifelong roots in the San Francisco Bay Area, earning advanced degrees in Art and Photography from the University of California, Berkeley. Whaley’s theater experience informs her photography, in which she creates stage sets and employs props, painted backdrops and dramatic lighting. Whaley’s photographs have been exhibited in the United States, Europe and Japan. Her work is held in the permanent collections of many museums, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the George Eastman House. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Award. The exhibition, Jo Whaley: Theater of Insects will be at the Museum of Photographic Arts, May 16-September 27, 2009.


Amy Stein
July 9, 2009
7:00 pm

Amy Stein opens the annual Grossmont Workshop series with a lecture and workshop based on portraiture. Her work explores our evolving isolation from community, culture, and the environment. Amy Stein will discuss her beginnings, inspirations, and work process. Stein will also be discussing her series and first book, Dometiscated and her current portrait series, Stranded.

Amy Stein is a photographer and teacher based in New York City. She has been exhibited nationally and internationally and her work is featured in many private and public collections such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Nevada Museum of Art, SMoCA and the West Collection. In 2007, she was named one of the top fifteen emerging photographers in the world by American Photo magazine. Stein teaches photography at Parsons The New School for Design and the School of Visual Arts in New York City.


Mark Edward Harris
July 16, 2009
7:00 pm

Mark Edward Harris will present a series of travel images as he discusses his experiences and career in an evening lecture. Through his initimate portraits of people and places, Harris provides fascinating insight into the cultures he experiences in his travels. With recent photo essays, such as Inside Iran and Inside North Korea, Harris was driven by a fascination with history and international politics.

After graduating from California State University, Los Angeles with a Master of Arts Degree in Pictorial/Documentary History, Harris started his professional photography career doing the stills for the Merv Griffin Show. When the show ended in 1986 he set off on a four-month trek across the Pacific and throughout Southeast Asia, China, and Japan. The images created on that trip brought attention to his travel and documentary photography. He since has visited and photographed in eighty countries. His editorial work has appeared in publications including Life, Vogue, Elle, W Magazine, The New York Times, American Photo, and many others. His commercial clients include The Gap and Coca-Cola. In 2007 Chronicle Books published his book Inside North Korea. In September 2008 Chronicle Books published Inside Iran.


Byron Wolfe
CANCELLED (Cost of Series Pass has been reduced to reflect this change)


Christina Z. Anderson
July 30, 2009

7:00 pm Christina Z. Anderson closes the Summer Workshop/Lecture Series with her lecture and workshop. Christina Z. Anderson's work centers on the contemporary social landscape rendered in historic photographic processes. Dialogues between humor and tragedy, the banal and the sublime, beauty and ugliness, and acting and passing are themes that run through her work. Process is a very integral part of Anderson's work.

Christina Z. Anderson is an assistant professor and Photo Option Coordinator at the School of Film and Photography at Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana. She teaches experimental photography, alternative processes, and nonfiction photography, with her area of emphasis being alternative processes and specifically gum bichromate. Her prints have been exhibited in juried and solo shows in 18 states as well as Puerto Rico, China, Belgium, and New Zealand. Her work appears in publications such as The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes 2009, Photographic Possibilities 2009, and the British Journal of Photography. Christina has published Experimental Photography Workbook, Tutti Nudi, Reflections on the Reemergence of the Nude during the Italian Renaissance, and Alternative Processes, Condensed: A Manual of Gum Dichromate and Other Contact Printing Processes. Currently she is working on a comprehensive book on the history and practice of gum printing.