The Skidmore College Art History Department, MDOCS, and the Tang Teaching Museum present a lecture by Holly Edwards, Senior Lecturer in Art at Williams College, on Thursday, March 29, at 5:30 PM. A reception will follow the lecture.

“Photographs are tricky. When they are taken, they capture the present, but when we look at them, they show us the past. After that, a single beautiful photo may be contemplated again and again, serving different purposes and generating community through shared experience. The same image may also be viewed by people elsewhere, viewed from other perspectives. And what happens when words are attached to images, directing attention this way rather than that way? Clearly, photographs wield morphing power in global visual culture. This talk will follow one photograph through various stages of its unfolding life. Be warned, we may never actually pin it down!” — Holly Edwards

About Holly Edwards

Holly Edwards, PhD, teaches the history of Islamic art at Williams College. Her research interests are presently centered in the 19th and 20th centuries, ranging from American Orientalism to Afghan photography, though her publications encompass a broader array of topics: medieval architecture in the Indus Valley, architectural epigraphy, and contemporary painting. She has curated various exhibitions including Noble Dreams, *Wicked Pleasures: American Orientalism 1870-1930 (Princeton University Press, 2000) at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, and (along with Mark Reinhardt and Erina Duganne) Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain (University of Chicago Press, 2007) at the Williams College Museum of Art. What underlies her work is the interest in the spaces between times and places and cultures and how images figure therein.

This event is free and open to the public.