The New Social Environment#831

Bright Sparks: Photography and the Talbot Archive

Featuring Geoffrey Batchen and Toby Kamps, with Joel Chace

 

1 p.m. Eastern / 10 a.m. Pacific

Art historian Geoffrey Batchen joins Rail Editor-at-Large Toby Kamps for a conversation. We conclude with a poetry reading by Joel Chace.

In this talk

Visit Bright Sparks: Photography and the Talbot Archive on view at Bodleian Libraries through June 18, 2023 →

Geoffrey Batchen

Photo of Geoffrey Batchen
A specialist in the history of photography, Geoffrey Batchen is Professor of History of Art at University of Oxford. He began his career as a curator, but he also edited art magazines, hosted a radio show, and published a variety of books, most recently Inventing Photography: William Henry Fox Talbot in the Bodleian Library. His writing has been published in twenty-three languages to date and his curated exhibitions shown in Brazil, Australia, United States, Netherlands, UK, Iceland, Japan, Germany and New Zealand. He has a particular interest in the early history of photography but often brings this into conversation with the present, and especially with contemporary art practices.

Toby Kamps

Portrait drawing of Toby Kamps by Phong Bui
Portrait of Toby Kamps by Phong Bui
Toby Kamps is former director of Blaffer Museum of Art, and curator of modern and contemporary art at the Menil Collection. He is now the director of external projects at White Cube Gallery and is an Editor-at-Large for the Brooklyn Rail.

The Rail has a tradition of ending our conversations with a poetry reading, and we’re fortunate to have Joel Chace reading.

Joel Chace

Photo of Joel Chace
Joel Chace has published work in print and electronic magazines such as Tip of the Knife, Eratio, Otoliths, Word For/Word, Golden Handcuffs Review, and the Brooklyn Rail. Most recent collections include Humors, from Paloma Press, Threnodies, from Moria Books, and fata morgana, from Unlikely Books. Maths is just out from Chax Press. Another full-length book under the working title of Cipherings will be published by Four Way Books in 2024. Chace is an NEH Fellow.

❤️ 🌈 We'd like to thank the The Terra Foundation for American Art for making these daily conversations possible, and for their support of our growing archive.