Lucas Blalock

BA, Bard College. Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. MFA, UCLA. Exhibited at the Hammer Museum, Center for Creative Photography, Dallas Museum of Art, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Marian Goodman Gallery, Hauser and Wirth, and MoMA PS1. Solo exhibitions: Ramiken Crucible (New York), Rodolphe Janssen (Brussels), White Cube (London), Peder Lund (Oslo), and White Flag Projects (St. Louis). Work featured in numerous publications, including Art in America, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Frieze, W, Mousse, Monopol, and Aperture, among others. Artist books: SPBH VII (2014), Inside the White Cub (2014), WINDOWS MIRRORS TABLETOPS (2013), Towards a Warm Math (2011), and I Believe You, Liar (2009). Published writing about art and photography includes a growing body of essays, experimental writings, and interviews, including conversations with Zoe Crosher (Aperture 2012), Jeff Wall (Aperture 2013), and Torbjorn Rodland (Mousse 2014), as well as a recent essay rethinking the camera as a drawing tool (Foam 2014). SLC, 2015–

Undergraduate Courses 2019-2020

Visual and Studio Arts

Problems in Photography

Open , Seminar—Year

This class will deal with the ways that contemporary artists working in photography discover and develop the problems central to their work. Looking at the work of a single artist—or even a single work by an artist—will provide an opportunity to unearth and understand the influences and histories on which that work depends. We will use these encounters to help focus and understand our own picture making. This is an art class and will be centered on student work and critique; however, students should expect reading and looking assignments, as well. Previously, this class was taught as a survey; this time, it will deal more singularly with questions in photography. The first semester will oscillate between explorations of specific projects from art history and contemporary practice, followed by related assignments and critique. The second semester will open up some, and students will be encouraged to develop independent projects in photography. An interest in art history and basic knowledge of DSLR cameras, inkjet printing, and Adobe Photoshop is encouraged.

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Previous Courses

Problems in Photography

Open , Seminar—Year

This class will deal with the ways in which contemporary artists working in photography discover and develop the problems central to their work. We will use these encounters to help focus and understand our own picture making. Looking at the work of a single artist, or even a single work by an artist, will provide an opportunity to unearth and understand the influences and histories on which these works depend. For example, we could begin with a Cindy Sherman untitled film still and then use Sherman’s work to discuss the conditions of postmodernism, look back at the development of self-portraiture in photography, consider the feminist tradition, and unpack the cultural and political moment in which the work was made. Students will then be asked to respond to the material raised in this discussion with their own work made from their own position and perspective. Students should expect reading and looking assignments, as well as shooting assignments. An interest in art history and a basic knowledge of DSLR cameras, inkjet printing, and Adobe Photoshop is encouraged. Conference work for the course will be an independent photographic project to be shared in critique a number of times each semester.

Faculty
Related Disciplines

Image/Object/Picture: Problems in Photography’s Expanded Field

Open , Seminar—Year

This class will explore questions regarding what has been called the “New Photography,” which involves a range of practices that have developed in response to the changes that have taken place in the medium since the rise of digital technologies. The class will use production (art-making), research, and discussion to come to terms with the issues that this area of the field presents. We will explore topics that include photography’s relationship to painting and sculpture, photography as an object-making practice, the camera as a drawing tool, the virtual-sculptural, screen space vs. print space, picturing the picture-making apparatus, and whether the digital can be political. We will look at a range of historical and contemporary artists, including Liz Deschenes, Walead Beshty, Elad Lassry, Michelle Abeles, Deana Lawson, Leslie Hewitt, and Christopher Williams. And we will also look for the roots of these endeavors in the history of art across mediums in order to understand these practices through narratives that are deeper than the mere response to technological change.

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