Report from Pingyao

I'm thrilled to report that our visit to the Pingyao International Photography Festival was a huge success. The exhibit "Young Artists Emerging in America" was well received, and many conversations were begun around it. Thanks to all of you who participated — I'm truly honored by your good work.




A report of the exhibit has been posted on my flickr site, under the photo set titled PIP2009 Report. There are 193 photographs with captions, some of them extensive.

To view the report you can either dip in and out of the photostream as you like, or go to the flickr slideshow function and turn on "Show Info" to read the captions.

(Hint: for better viewing of both the pictures and the captions, go to Options and uncheck "embiggen," and check "always show title.")

For participating artists: if you'd like copies of any of the installation photographs, either download them directly from flickr or contact me for higher resolution files.



For everyone else: working in China over the past several years has been an incredible experience, and continues to inform my work as a teacher and artist here in the U.S. As you've heard me say again and again (especially if we've worked together), as artists we must take responsibility for our own inspiration, and learn how to keep ourselves growing from one day to the next. Getting outside your comfortable frame of reference is essential to this process. For me, China puts me outside myself in provocative and affirming ways. There are other methods, of course, but if the opportunity appears for you to explore and lose yourself China, I strongly recommend it.



Thanks must be showered on those who made it possible for us to participate in this event: to Zhang Guotian, the Chief Artistic Director of this year's festival, and to Amy Liu, the international coordinator; to Gerald Pryor, photo head at NYU's Steinhardt Deptartment of Art and Arts Professions, who encouraged and supported my proposals from the beginning; to Suzanne Nicholas, Associate Director of Education at ICP, and to Jim Ramer, MFA Director at Parsons, who helped get the exhibit off the ground in the early days — and who traveled to Pingyao with me to install and participate; to Ren Yue, doctoral candidate in photography at Renmin University, who helped coordinate my proposals and put out the call to our translators; to all the translators from around the world who participated via our Google wiki; and, of course, to the twenty-seven artists from NYU, ICP and Parsons who trusted me with their work and ideas.



For more on the exhibit catalog, or to purchase a copy directly from MagCloud, click here.

For a low-resolution preview gallery of the pictures in the exhibit Young Artists Emerging in America is available.