Conference 2007: Executive Address

Welcome Home...

It is a honor for the Center for Photography at Woodstock (CPW) to welcome the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions of SPE to our home in upstate New York on the occasion of the 2007 joint regional conference. Three decades ago, the Center for Photography at Woodstock was established by a group of passionate photographers in order to provide an artistic home, a place for photographers where they could learn, share, and grow. So it is more than fitting that, thirty years later, CPW serve as host to this conference and center the dialogue on the topic of Homeland and the borders and boundaries in which it elusively lies.

The idea to invite both regions to conference jointly in Woodstock was born out of a sense that as an artist-centered space, CPW felt at home in both SPE regions. That our location within a non-urban rural region of upstate New York, was a growing home for artists working in the photographic arts served a catalyst to share that artists find home in a diversity of places.

Over the past several years, the subject of Homeland has been a center point in our national dialogue. In that time, its meaning has been appropriated, redefined, and warped. Whereas once it served as reference to one’s country of origin it now holds a more simplistic didactic meaning that instills images of frontier-era defensive isolation. The comforting image of a motherly, embracing homeland as a place where we hold a sense of belonging to, has shifted to that of steely eyed big brother committed to protecting us from everyone but ourselves.

We live in a time of visible and invisible borders and boundaries. Firewalls fill our computers to protect us from viruses, hacker infiltration, and invisible intrusion. Checkpoints and border defenses define our range of movement and impose others’ definition of our homeland. Surveillance systems integrate their watchful subjective eye into our everyday lives, watching, observing, and protecting ourselves from ourselves.

As image-makers we have the power and responsibility to poke, prod, question, and investigate these definitions that have been imposed on us. We are responsible for creating our own sense of homeland and often are required to find it within ourselves. And yet as artists we are constantly looking for a place in which we belong, our own homeland. The need for creating and sustaining a sense of community amongst a landless, de-centralized community requires a broader and perhaps more internal notion of homeland.

A conference is a vast and daunting event to assemble and there are many individuals deserving of endless words of appreciation. My sincere and heartfelt thanks to both the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast Regions for helping make this vision of a joint Regional Conference a reality – for generously bringing their resources to the table and working together in a way that empowers both regions for the future. I am deeply indebted to my Conference Co-Chairs, Andrew Atkinson, Colette Copeland Chair of the Mid-Atlantic Region and Jim Ramer Chair of the Northeast Region, They have each tirelessly worked and coordinated with their board members to ensure this undertaking be a success.

Thank you to Anita Allyn, for a beautiful job in maintaining the Conference’s website and getting up- to-the minute details posted. Thank you to Scott McMahon for energetically coordinating and publicizing our student exhibition and scholarship program. Thank you to Lynn Estomin for passionately coordinating our student volunteers and scholarship opportunities. Thank you to Andrew Atkinson for diligently and tirelessly coordinating our presenter line-up and handling communications amongst us all. Thank you to Jim Ramer for thoughtfully overseeing the design and printing of our program. Thank you to Colette Copeland for assembling an engaging and thoughtful video program to complement the conference’s theme. Thank you to Peggy Feerick and Ann Chwatsky for masterfully coordinating our Conference sponsors. Thank you to Leena Jayaswal for gracefully handling registration.

A special thanks to student volunteer to Mark Fernandes at Parsons the New School of Design, for designing our program. And thank you to all of our student volunteers, without you we would have surely run for the hills!

Many thanks to our Keynote Speaker, David Levi Strauss, our Honored Educator, Wendy Ewald, and our Featured Artist, Trevor Paglen, for taking time out of their daunting schedules to join us and present their thoughts on Homeland. Thank you to all our presenters and portfolio reviewers, who have so generously shared with us their images, words and perspective.

Thank you to our sponsors for their continued support of SPE, this conference, and both the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast Regions; to Fuji Film for their sponsorship of David Levi Strauss’ keynote address; to to Sprint Systems of Photography for their sponsorship of Wendy Ewald’s honored educator lecture, to Canon USA for their sponsorship of the juried student exhibition, and to AL-ART Video, Aperture, Archival Methods, Calumet, and Ilford for their generous support. Lastly, my thanks to the Center for Photography at Woodstock’s staff, Rachel Bank, Megan Flaherty, Larry Lewis, Angela Simpson, and Liz Unterman, for their continuous support and inspiring commitment to this and every other idea I bring to the table.

To those attending us for this special weekend, I invite you to make yourself at home, take in the sites, embrace the community and be a part of the dialogue.

Ariel Shanberg, Conference Chair
Executive Director, Center for Photography at Woodstock