Conversation, Panel

When Cornell Capa founded the first and groundbreaking Center of Photography in New York City thirty years ago, he steered clear of the quagmire that had divided photography into either art or journalism. Under his stewardship, photography was defined in terms of both paradigms, and thus began to yield immense popularity and influence. The medium has since re-positioned its dual parent institutions–the museum and the press-room–and has turned popular arts, like film and video, into high art while making high art popular. Today, photography sits at the apex of all visual expression. How did it acquire its current status and power, and where is it going? Willis E. Hartshorn, Director of the International Center of Photography, discusses these and other questions as inheritor of the institution that propelled the revolution. Hartshorn is interviewed by Judith Mara Gutman, lecturer and author of Passion Unlimited: The Story of Dorothy Norman and Alfred Stieglitz, Mixing Art and Politics (forthcoming)