Panel

In conjunction with the release of Aperture’s “Queer” issue, Richard Meyer, the Robert and Ruth Halperin Professor in Art History at Stanford University, moderates a panel discussion that explores how contemporary photographers have cast their attention backward to draw upon and engage the visual record of gay, lesbian, trans, and non-normative sexualities. Panelists include writer and critic Vince Aletti; associate curator of photography at the Art Gallery of Ontario Sophie Hackett; and artists K8 Hardy and Lyle Ashton Harris.

Queer Genealogies is presented by Aperture Foundation in partnership with the Photography Department at Parsons The New School for Design and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, and funded in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the board and Members of Aperture Foundation.

[Vince Aletti was not able to attend.]

Participant Bios

Vince Aletti reviews photography exhibitions for the New Yorker’s Goings on About Town section and writes a regular column about photo books for Photograph. He also contributes reviews and features to Aperture, Artforum, W, and Document. He is the winner of the 2005 Infinity Award in writing from the International Center of Photography, where he co-curated Weird Beauty: Fashion Photography Now with Carol Squiers and was the curator of This Is Not a Fashion Photograph; he and Squiers worked together on Avedon: Fashion 1944-2000, the museum’s summer 2009 exhibition, as well as on its Abrams catalog Male, a book of photographs and other artwork from Aletti’s collection, was published by Andrew Roth’s PPP Editions at the end of 2008. In 2013, Acne published Rodeo, a book of 1950s photographs of rodeo cowboys by Bruce of Los Angeles from Aletti’s collection.

Sophie Hackett is the Associate Curator, Photography, at the Art Gallery of Ontario and adjunct faculty in Ryerson University’s master’s program in Film and Photographic Preservation and Collections Management. She has contributed to several Canadian art magazines, international journals and monographs, and she has curated or co-curated several exhibitions and public projects at the AGO, including Barbara Kruger: Untitled (It) (2010); Songs of the Future: Canadian Industrial Photographs, 1858 to Today (2011); Max Dean: Album, A Public Project (2012); Light My Fire: Some Propositions about Portraits and Photography (2013-2014); What It Means To be Seen: Photography and Queer Visibility and Fan the Flames: Queer Positions in Photography (2014); and most recently Introducing Suzy Lake (2014). Hackett was the lead juror for the 2014 AIMIA | AGO Photography Prize, a role she also held in 2010 and 2012.

K8 Hardy was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and now lives and works in New York. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and has been exhibited at the Whitney Biennial and MoMA PS1 in New York, Dallas Contemporary, Tate Modern in London, and at Künstlerhaus, Halle für Kunst und Medien in Graz, Austria. She is a founding member of the queer feminist journal and artist collective LTTR and the New York-based activist group W.A.G.E. (Working Artists and the Greater Economy). Hardy holds degrees from Smith College and the Milton Avery Graduate School for the Arts at Bard College and is a graduate of the Whitney Independent Studies Program.

For more than two decades Lyle Ashton Harris has cultivated a diverse artistic practice ranging from photographic media, collage, installation, and performance. His work explores intersections between the personal and the political, examining the impact of ethnicity, gender, and desire on the contemporary social and cultural dynamic. Known for his self-portraits and use of Pop culture icons (such as Billie Holiday and Michael Jackson), Harris teases the viewers’ perceptions and expectations, resignifying cultural cursors and recalibrating the familiar with the extraordinary. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Venice Biennale. His work has been acquired by major international museums, most recently by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His commissioned work has been featured in a wide range of publications, including the New York Times Magazine and the New Yorker. In 2014 Harris joined the board of trustees at the American Academy in Rome and was named the tenth recipient of the David C. Driskell Prize by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Born in New York City, Harris spent his formative years in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He received his bachelor of arts with honors from Wesleyan University, in 1988, and a master’s in fine arts from the California Institute of the Arts, in 1990. He currently lives and works in New York City and is an associate professor at New York University.

Richard Meyer is the Robert and Ruth Halperin Professor in Art History at Stanford University, where he teaches courses on twentieth-century American art, gender and sexuality studies, arts censorship, and the history of photography. He is the author, most recently, of What Was Contemporary Art? (2013) and, with Catherine Lord, Art and Queer Culture (2013). His first book, Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art (2002), received the Charles C. Eldredge Prize for Outstanding Scholarship from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Meyer guest-curated Warhol’s Jews: Ten Portraits Reconsidered for the Jewish Museum, New York, and the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, and Naked Hollywood: Weegee in Los Angeles for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.