About
autoBIO
Born in Asheville, North Carolina, I spent my early years growing up in my mother’s childhood home. 8 Westwood Road was a house built in the Greek Revival style in 1927, with its portico and columns added later by my mother’s nephew Frosty. The view from the front porch was of Beaver Lake, which before its creation had been a landing field for my grandfather’s airplane. We sold the house when I was nine and my mother moved my siblings and me to Europe for a year. Most of that time was spent traveling around the continent in a 1965 Bel Air station wagon, perhaps the largest automobile most people there had ever seen at the time. It certainly created a stir whenever we came into a small village in Italy or Spain. Eventually we settled in Paris where I attended boarding school at Notre-Dame de Boulogne outside of the city. During those years living in Europe, I began to make pictures with a camera wherever we traveled and in museums I looked at pictures made by an art history of painters. I walked among the ruins of the ancient Romans and found a world to myself in the woods of Boulogne. My teachers gave me de la Fontaine and Baudelaire. And in the spring of 1968, I was given a lesson in political resistance that I have never forgotten.
From these beginnings it seems inevitable that I would seek a career in art as well as one that involved travel. A life in art and education has given me the appreciation for the poem, The Way It Is by William Stafford:
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
Things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
Or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
Work
Not all of my conversations with Paul Caponigro were about cosmic convergences and other kinds of esoterica. We would, on occasion, consider the issues common to many photographers today. There were often his complaints about the museum and gallery world of art photography – complaints that I could relate to from my own experience but certainly not to the same extent as his. One grumble, which many photographers would love to have, is how to stem the flow of certain popular photographs, such as his Running Deer. Wanting to be careful not to over-expose a particular photograph – like Adams may have done with his Moonrise over Hernandez, Paul told me of efforts he had made over time to maintain control over the number of prints sold while also giving collectors and curators other examples from his oeuvre to reflect upon – and to sell and collect. He is not a one-picture guy.[1] Perhaps all of this is inevitable and also a double-edged sword: we want success but at what cost? And what is driving the return on our investment of meditation and the involvement with our subjects? Our photographic efforts are often motivated by concerns and an imaginative drive that only later puts us into a discussion with the art dealers.[2]
On the more creative side, on issues of the soul, that is when my conversations with Paul Caponigro most encouraged me in my own life as an artist. Our exchange of words, often punctuated with moments of silence, could be as conversational as between two friends or almost as austere as in the form of Zen master to student leaving me to contemplate the koan just thrown at me. But never was there a sense of intimidation; Paul is gracious and kind in his observations. Once, when reviewing a set of abstract landscapes I brought him to see, he looked carefully through the five or six without saying much of anything. Then, almost equally a question as well as a statement, he said, “Audiences probably have a hard time understanding your work – maybe printing them not so dark would help.”
One of the most interesting, and somehow surprising conversations we once had was about a photograph he had made in Yosemite. It was a view of the valley from Big Oak Flat Road. A lifting fog reveals a delicate landscape, which had been hidden beneath this atmosphere. Somewhat low-key, it is remarkable. “I seldom print it,” he answered when I asked him about this picture which I had for so long admired. I wondered about other Yosemite pictures he might have made but he told me that it was a place he only photographed when there to conduct a workshop or to visit Ansel. Yet, for me, this was one photograph that is distinct from others made by Ansel Adams and his disciples of Yosemite that revealed something about the place that made theirs look, well, formulated.
Photographers are territorial, at least in subject matter – especially landscape photographers. Yosemite belonged to Ansel, Point Lobos to Edward. Of course, Paul is most associated with Stonehenge and other ancient Druidic and Celtic sites throughout the British Isles and Ireland.[3] Any photographer who follows these landscapists into these territories, even when they do not seek out the original tripod holes, are measured in skill and accomplishment by their predecessors, the first trailblazers.
Ansel Adams’ approach to photography established a way of working – and especially, a way of seeing – among new generations of photographers. Equipped with view cameras, Zone VI tripods, 1o spot meters and black and white film, you can see them pouring over the Western landscape. Workshops are the training camps for these photographers, following the formulas and methods given them by their teachers. Adams’ books are the scriptures, and the Ten Commandments are the tones of a scene transformed into values of black through white detectable by film, codified into what Adams called “The Zone System,” (or what Paul Caponigro once wrote to me in a letter, ‘the zzzzzzone system.’)
So, why do photographers continue to produce pictures so like their predecessors, at least, superficially? Each new issue of View Camera or Camera Arts display another imitator. The galleries of yet other photographers whose style of photographing and choice of subject matter is derivative can be seen in the advertising section in B&W magazine. But, art history is filled with the lesser known, the unknown, those who nonetheless worked diligently and sincerely at their art. And their results always have value for them and for us. If I am advocating a certain sense of following other photographers, remaining part of a collective, so to speak, then why shouldn’t I expect imitation? We admire Greek art but not the Greek artist – many of whom are anonymous to us. And, had it not been for the Roman penchant to duplicate and copy what they admired, we would have far less of the Greek for ourselves.[4] In their copying from the Greeks, the Romans actually developed a style and subject uniquely Roman. Similar patterns of stylistic imitation can be seen in the history of Chinese landscape painting.
Yet, photographers push ahead into what they believe to be unexplored wilderness. It is important for some photographers, perhaps due to the pressure of the market, to be a pioneer, to find what others have missed. Are there no undiscovered territories? As a photographer more interested in using my photography to wander, to travel and to explore, I realize that by now most us like-minded photographers are following a well-beaten path – a path created long before the invention of photography. However, we each still hope to bring back something different, even something as yet previously unseen.[5]
For eleven years I photographed in the Forest of Fontainebleau. In 1986, when I made my first trip there (as an adult), it was for two reasons. Having just spent my first semester as an art history 
undergraduate studying the nineteenth century landscape painters who lived in Barbizon and made the forest their refuge and subject, I wanted to experience first hand where they placed their easels. What were the sights, the sounds they may have experienced as they worked plein-aire, away from the city? What did the air feel like when Rousseau painted his lisière or forest edge pictures? To stand in the vicinity of where he and Narcisse Diaz painted their views – which I was becoming familiar with by looking at their paintings from catalogues, to museums in Boston, London and Paris - to look out from the forest interior to the fields beyond was a view I also wanted. In the years that followed, my trips lasted from a few days to a couple of weeks during each of the four seasons. I spent one Christmas Eve at the Mare aux Fées – the Pond of the Fairies – observing a comet. Returning on Christmas morning one of my favorite photographs of the forest was made of that pond shrouded in a warm fog.
There was a greater art history of the Forest of Fontainebleau that I wanted to explore. It was in this forest, beginning around 1800, that nature was being reconsidered as the true inspiration and source of the artist’s work rather than the academies of art in Paris or the mythology and history of Greek antiquity. An early arrival to the forest who would make it is home and ‘natural studio’ for the remainder of his life was Jean-François Millet, who advocated to other artists, “You should become 
accustomed to nature being the only source of your impressions…you must immerse and saturate yourself in her, and think only what she makes you think.” By the 1840s, the forest and the village of Barbizon were swarming with painters seeking the best view, their own beau coin. A decade later, the photographers were arriving with their large view cameras.[6] I suppose you could say that this ancient forest, once the private hunting preserve to French kings, serves as precedent for places such as Yosemite or Point Lobos.[7] These are landscapes that represent something of a nation’s history, celebrated by giving certain natural features a historical or cultural distinction. My explorations of this sylvan museum were equally motivated by a desire to photograph some of these famous sites for myself, but also to piece together the art history of a place that finds a continued expression today among so many photographers and the landscape traditions that they follow.
But, there was another motivation that drew me back to Fontainebleau in May of 1986, and that was the memory of camping in the forest when I was a part of the Scouts de France or French Boy scouts twenty years before when my family lived in Paris.
To be a part of a community of explorers satisfies many photographers, knowing also that there are those out there who are like-minded. If the subject of our explorations is tied to a larger social issue, for example, then the numerous voices along with the differing formats of photography substantiate the importance of our concerns.
Consider the collective photographic projects that deal with nuclear energy by Richard Misrach, Peter Goin, Patrick Nagatani, John Pfahl, and Emmet Gowin along with the writers who support their positions such as Mike Davis, Rebecca Solnit and William L. Fox.[8] Of these photographers, some make use of the large format camera and place their subject within the traditions of the picturesque as espoused by Uvedale Price and William Gilpin in the eighteenth century. Another uses a type of montage, yet another the elegance of the black and white print. These bodies of work, both stylistically and conceptually, reinforce what many others are doing on a local scale. My own photography in the Las Vegas Wash, for example.
The environmental and land use issues facing southern Nevada are acute, as this area of the country is suffering through an extended period of drought. What has concerned me, as a photographer, is how to “put a face on the problem.” For many observers, the effects of the drought are seen in water restrictions resulting in brown lawns or the fountains of so many gated community entrances being turned off. Without going global, but extending one’s view beyond the front yard, how can a socially engaged artist point to a nearby landscape, a place where these issues might be better understood by those of the local community? (Consider Lucy Lippard’s book The Lure of the Local.) The intended audience of these photographs, most of whom are not art savvy, needs the kind of an image that they can relate to. Local issues sometimes need a visual vocabulary that is most familiar, and that vocabulary is often the picturesque and the sublime.
Does the beauty of the landscape photograph place a veneer over the problem, though? When I photograph the Las Vegas Wash my photographs do not show the poor water quality entering into Lake Mead in the palette of color and the effects of atmosphere I may use. There have been the critiques of John Pfahl’s nuclear plant series from the 1980s that he softens the blow of the threat posed to the environment by these power generators by surrounding them with that kind of color and effect. It is a valid point, and one not lost on this photographer.[9]
The larger issues being explored by the photographer, I believe, should take precedence in our conversations over the critique of pictorial modes of presentation. The Photograph as Art Object – this sometimes conflicts with much of its true nature. The beauty of photography is in its documentary mode in both its form and content, and the photograph does not have to be artless. Yet, I believe the photographer has some responsibility to articulate to his audience the meaning and significance of a body of work. It may even be seen as a measure of one’s thoughtful consideration of what their pictures aim to do, how they seek to connect. The role of art is not to merely inform but to transform, and this is often the role of beauty (for artist and audience alike).
The photographer who plans an itinerary, raises the funds for a trip and departs for places far from home, is both scientist-amateur; artist-explorer. This notion of being an amateur is taken literally here for its meaning, “for the love of something” rather than its association with someone without a skill or a naïf. Knowing how to proceed by some method, being educated about the people and places to be visited and having the insight into what all of it means, this is essential to the artist-explorer. But, at some point, one must give way to the intuitive, allowing the place to take over from the calculations and preconceptions of the photographer. As I said, art is not only information but also transformation.
Anyone with the right equipment, technical ability and sense of the pictorial can make high quality photographs of their travels. But, are they interesting? Do they reveal something beneath and beyond the surface? Why exactly has the photographer engaged himself or herself in the place of their choosing? It is a question I consider every time I go to the airport. There are many undiscovered territories awaiting the thoughtful and contemplative photographer. Even if my photographs look like someone else’s or my journey to Angkor Wat is preceded by Kenro Izu, I know that the work must have a substance beyond the ability of the camera to record.
1 In spite of the modern artist’s renunciation of The Masterpiece, many photographers are still known for that one image which seems best to summarize their art. Adams has his moonrise, Weston his bell pepper, George Tice his oak tree, White his windowsill and Stieglitz his clouds.
2 Most of the time. When I first met Paul in Rockport, Maine the summer of 1981, I also met a number of other successful photographers who had developed direct marketing plans to reach their collectors, some of whom are still at it today. Michael A. Smith, known for his panoramic landscapes and Robert Steinberg, whose portfolio of albumen prints he was selling encouraged me to also publish a limited edition portfolio, but of carbon prints.
3 Caponigro has also spent time in Japan photographing Buddhist temples, monasteries and Zen gardens. These are delicate images even when enlarged to 16x20”. I once asked him if he had plans to return to Japan, and he quipped, “If someone pays me to go.” However much one protests to the contrary, artists still depend on a patron.
4 Perhaps it is in the collective unknown or anonymous body of artists that most of the work will be done – a work or body of art that illuminates the crises of our day. In his closing paragraphs of How the Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Cahill says just that. Likening our end time to that of the ancient Romans (after whose collapse much knowledge was temporarily lost), he writes, “What will be lost, and what saved, of our civilization probably lies beyond our powers to decide. No human group has ever figured out how to design its future. That future may be germinating today not in a boardroom in London or an office in Washington or a bank in Tokyo, but in some antic outpost or other – a kindly British orphanage in the grim foothills of Peru, a house for the dying in a back street of Calcutta run by a fiercely single-minded num from Albania, an easygoing French medical team at the starving edge of the Sahel… - in some unheralded corner where a great-hearted human being is committed to loving outcasts in an extraordinary way.” (p.217)
5 The notion of a pilgrimage is the conceptual framework I followed when writing my doctoral dissertation. In an introduction to pilgrimage and contemporary photography, I wrote this about these photographers.
With the sensibility of an archaeologist, Ranney sees his photographs of Central and South American architectural sites as contributing toward a deeper understanding of their histories as well as serving to encourage further preservation. Gowin's photographs of Petra are less direct, speaking rather to the antiquarian's love of the past and the legends which describe it. His pictures are essentially aesthetic classifications of the architectural remnants of a past culture. Unable to speak for themselves, the sacred and cultural messages of the Maya, the photographs of Ranney and Gowin have preserved the Inca and the Nabetaeans.
With that restless need to wander, like LeGrey, Paul Caponigro and Linda Connor look for those sites with illuminating power. Like Ranney, Caponigro believes in the necessity of return. Limited by time and even temperament, the site does not give up its secrets all at once. They exist in an occult environment waiting for the initiated, those prepared to deal with their message. Buddhist temples, megalithic monuments and Celtic Christian churches are loci of the occult. They attract the unsettled spirit by their literal and symbolic darkness.
6 In 2008, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. held an exhibition titled, In the Forest of Fontainebleau: Painters and Photographers from Corot to Monet.
7 The Fontainebleau Forest, like many of the national parks in the United States, is more than a nature preserve. It is a place that symbolizes the history of a people, in this case the Gallic peoples of France. In fact, the French can lay claim to having established the world’s first national park with the Fontainebleau Forest, for it was in 1853 that Napoleon III set aside this forest as a special preserve for its protection as “aesthetic refuge.”
8 Mike Davis, Dead Cities, Rebecca Solnit, Savage Dreams, and William L. Fox, Playa Works, The Myth of the Empty.
9 Since the 1970s and the watershed exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape, photographers around the globe have turned their cameras 180o from the view held by Ansel Adams. One of the on-going critiques leveled against the photographs by artists such as Edward Burtynsky, David T. Hanson and those mentioned above, questions how one employs the conventions of art – concepts and modes of the picturesque – and still be able to effectively convey a message of environmental degradation and destruction. Some photographers, such as Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz, have found that the use of the black & white image without the dramatic lighting and compositional effects of an Ansel Adams landscape help avoid this tension. Other photographers, such as John Pfahl and Richard Misrach, maintain a fine art aesthetic in their otherwise political landscapes.
EDUCATION
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque: PhD ABD, Art History.
Doctoral Dissertation Topic: "Pilgrimage and Ruin in Contemporary American Photography."
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque: M.A., Art History.
Master’s Thesis Topic: "The Religious Component in the Painting of Wassily Kandinsky. 1910-1914."
University of Nevada, Las Vegas: B.A., Art History.
TEACHING AND ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE
1997 to 2010 COLLEGE OF SOUTHERN NEVADA. Las Vegas.
Professor, Global Art History
1991 to 1996 UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, LAS VEGAS.
Art Historian
1989 - 1991 UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO, ALBUQUERQUE
Lecturer
1985 - 1989 UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, LAS VEGAS.
Adjunct Faculty in Art History and Art Studio.
1985 to 1988 COLLEGE OF SOUTHERN NEVADA.
EXHIBITIONS (select)
2011 |
“Contact Zones.” Marjorie Barrick Museum of Natural History, UNLV, Las Vegas, Nevada. |
| 2009 | “Clash of Cultures.” Invitational exhibition organized by Cultural Arts, City of Las Vegas. |
2007 |
“CCSN & UNLV.” Las Vegas City Hall. |
2006 |
“Songlines: Photographs by a Globetrotter.” College of Southern Nevada, Fine Arts |
2005 |
“The Promise of Power.” University of Nevada Las Vegas, Barrick Museum |
| 2004 | “Wanderers, Travelers & Adventurers.” The Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego. |
| 2002 | “Movers and Shakers.” Contemporary Art Collective, Las Vegas, Nevada. |
| 2000 | “Night,” Traveling group exhibition sponsored by the Nevada Arts Council. |
| 1999 | “Loving Las Vegas,” French Institute, Edinburgh, Scotland. |
| 1998 | “Motel Vegas,” Small Works Gallery, Las Vegas, Nevada. |
| 1997 | “Motel Vegas,” O.K. Harris Works of Art, New York, New York. |
| 1996 | "Melancholy Cure," Västerbottens Museum, Umeå, Sweden. Curated by Jeffrey Vallance. |
| 1995 | "Casino Landscapes," University of Nevada, Las Vegas. |
| 1993 | "Art and Guardianship," Cafe Gallery, Albuquerque, New Mexico. |
| 1992 | "Las Vegas Photographers Invitational," University of Nevada Alumni Center, Curated by Art Critic Libby Lumpkin. |
| 1991 | "The Barbizon Tradition," University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. |
| 1989 | "Journey Without End," ArtSpace, Las Vegas, Nevada. |
| 1987 | "Observed Realities: Images in the Southwest," Albuquerque, New Mexico. |
| 1986 | "Landscapes: Vantage Points," Allied Arts Gallery, Las Vegas, Nevada. |
| 1985 | "Work from the Permanent Collection," Clark County Library, Las Vegas, Nevada. |
| 1983 | "Deserted Landscapes," Boulder City, Nevada. |
| 1982 | "Wildlife Portraits," Upstairs Gallery, Las Vegas, Nevada. |
| 1977 | "Gentle Wildlife: Four Artists," James Hunt Barker Galleries, Palm Beach, Florida. |
MEDIA PROJECTS
Loss of the Wild. Written, Directed, Filmed documentary about an imperiled landscape and watershed in Southern Nevada. Will be used by the Desert Wetland Conservancy. Filming near completion.
The Goldwell Project. Film documentary about Goldwell, Nevada and European artists who make art in the Mojave Desert. Director, videographer and writer for project. In production. Completion date 2010.
Bagan. Film documentary about village life around the temples of Bagan, Myanmar.
Sukhothai: Dawn of Hapiness. Short documentary about the history of Sukhothai Buddhist architecture in relation to modern-day Buddhist practice in this area of Thailand. In production. Partial funding from Tourism Authority of Thailand.
Hutong 798. Documentary about the relationships between the destruction of historical architecture in Beijing, China with the rise of contemporary art. Two years of research complete; preliminary video footage made.
e-Motion Productions, Las Vegas, Nevada. Interviewed for film documentary about artist Robert Beckmann. Co-wrote script. 2005.
Michael Hoff Productions, San Francisco. Interviewed for documentary series about Las Vegas. Produced for Equator HD, a High Definition cable channel. 2004.
NPR Radio. Narrator for series about Native American art in Southern Nevada. March 2000.
A&E Network. “Las Vegas: Gamble in the Desert,” and “Las Vegas: House of Cards.” Consultant and researcher for series about the history of Las Vegas. Originally broadcast December 1996.
PBS New York affiliate WNET. “Going Places.” Associate Producer for one hour travelogue about Las Vegas. Also served as on-camera host. Originally broadcast March 1997.
BBC Radio, London. Interviewed for series about the culture and architecture of Las Vegas. July 1995.
CNN Television. Interviewed about the opening of Luxor Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada. August 1993.
BIBLIOGRAPHY - Essays, Reviews, Catalogues (select)
Bottomlands: Photographs of the Las Vegas Wash. Exhibition catalog. (Henderson, Nevada: WSG Editions. 2008). Photographs from exhibition by the same title. “Gazing at Mountains.” Essay for forthcoming book about the large-scale digital works by artist Jim Stanford. Published by Smallworks Press, Las Vegas, Nevada. 2009. “Man in a Suitcase.” Jarret Keene. CityLife Magazine. January 11, 2007. Review of exhibition of my photographs made during my travels. “A Familiar Place.” CERCA Magazine. Summer 2004. Essay and photographs about the Las Vegas Wash, Nevada. “Change of Pace.” Ken White, Las Vegas Review-Journal, March 29, 2002. “Sigman finely frames his Las Vegas Heritage.” Jerry Fink, Las Vegas Sun, March 22, 2002. Review of exhibition Motel Vegas. Landscapes and Intersections.” Gregory Crosby, CityLife, March 28, 2002 “Hallways and Ecosystems: Lessons from a photo exhibit’s cancellation.” Scott Dickensheets, Las Vegas Weekly, March 29, 2001. “Saving Las Vegas from Itself.” Scott Dickensheets, Las Vegas Weekly. September 16, 1999. Review of exhibition Casino Landscapes held at the Smallworks Gallery, Las Vegas. Las Vegas News Bureau. Writer and photographer routinely transmitting to wire services: AP, UPI, Reuters and Agence-France Presse (AFP). Photographs and text copy appeared in magazines throughout the world, particularly in Japan and Korea. 1998 to 1999. “Signs of the Times.” Ken White, Las Vegas Review-Journal, July 10, 1998. Review of “Motel Vegas” exhibition. Sites and Stations, Provisional Utopias, Lusitania Press, 1996. Publication of selection of photographs from Casino Landscapes. Text by Dave Hickey. Neon, Journal for the Nevada State Council on the Arts, February 1996. Minneapolis Star-Tribune, September 21, 1995. “Making Book.” SCOPE Magazine, May 1995. Review of Twenty-Five Year Retrospective by Gregory Crosby. LAS WEELAS VEGAS WEEKLY, May 1995. Review of Twenty-Five Year Retrospective by Charles Morgan Literay Literary Las Vegas, Henry Holt and Company, 1995. Featured photography and photo editor. Art on File International, “Las Vegas Style: Fantasy Architecture and Signs,” 1995. “A Good Experience,” Scott Dickensheets, Las Vegas SUN, December 8, 1995. Interviewed about the aesthetics of the Fremont Street Experience project. Landscape Architecture Magazine. Interviewed about Las Vegas casinos and the contrivance of their environments. December 1995. Pyramid Power,” Scott Dickensheets, The Las Vegas SUN newspaper, August 21, 1993. “Three Photographers: Three Styles,” A. D. Hopkins, Las Vegas Review-Journal, June 21, 1982. |
PUBLIC LECTURES
“Zabriski Point: Why Ansel Adams Went There.” Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, California. May 2009.
“l’Authentique: French Photography of the Second Empire.” Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, California. April 2009.
“Songlines: Photographs of a Globetrotter.” Public presentation of recent research and photographs for the Cultural Affairs Department, City of Las Vegas, Nevada. February 2009.
“Architainement: A Personal History of Las Vegas Casino Architecture.” On-going lectures for Speaker’s Bureau, College of Southern Nevada. 2002 – 2008.
“Landscape Photography in a Time of Global Climate Change.” University of San Diego, History of Photography class. 2007, 2008.
“Songlines: Photographs of a Globetrotter.” Presentation of recent research and photographs to members of the Sunrise Hospital medical staff. Las Vegas, Nevada. February 2005.
“Art and Artifice in Las Vegas: The Casino Landscape.” Lecture series at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. June 2004.
“History of Las Vegas Casino Architecture.” Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Presentation to visiting members of the museum board. February 2004.
“The Personalities of the Las Vegas Strip.” Scripps Institute. Lecture to visiting academics, January 2004.
“Desert Beginnings, Desert Endings.” Discussion of photography of the Las Vegas Wash. CHAC, Las Vegas, Nevada. May 2002.
“Herbert Beyer in Las Vegas.” Gallery talk on exhibition of photographs and drawings of Bauhaus artist Herbert Beyer. Smallworks Gallery, Las Vegas, Nevada. 1999.
“Photographers and the Nuclear Landscape: Documenting the Unseen.” Donna Beam Gallery, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. November 1995. Lecture in conjunction with exhibition of photographs by Carole Gallagher, “American Ground Zero.”
“Casino Landscape." Cornell University trip to Las Vegas, 1995.
“Las Vegas, The Postmodern Garden." Plenary speaker for the American Culture Association Annual Meeting, Las Vegas, Nevada, 1994.
"The Photographs of Ansel Adams: Claude Glass of Yosemite." Conference of the Western Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Las Vegas, Nevada, 1994.
"The Implosion of the Dunes Hotel: Context of Meaning." Contemporary Arts Collective, Las Vegas, Nevada, 1993.
"Iconography of Sexuality in the Western Tradition." Contemporary Arts Collective, Las Vegas, Nevada, 1993.
"Van Gogh: Arles and Discontent." Las Vegas Unitarian Church, Las Vegas, Nevada, 1993.
"Art and Guardianship." Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1993. Moderated symposium panel which included Charles Ross, Peter Goin, Alan Sekula, Michelle Stuart and Suzi Gablik.
"Sources of Beauty in Landscape Photography." Photographic Arts of Nevada, 1992.
“The Poetics of Ansel Adams: Philosophical and Aesthetic Origins." The History of Photography Group, SPE, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1991.
"Traditions of Southwest Landscape Art." lecture series for the International Elderhostel Organization, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1991.
"Photographs of the Fontainebleau Forest: Poetics and Documents." University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, 1991.
"Earth Art: Pilgrimage into the Past, into the Self." University of New Mexico, 1990.
"Traditions of Southwest Landscape Art." lecture series for the International Elderhostel Organization, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1990.
"The Photographic Changes of Minor White." Visiting Lecturer. University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 1990.
"'Furyu ': a Facet of My Photography." University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 1990.
"The Hindu Influences on Wassily Kandinsky's Painting: 1910-1914." University of New Mexico, 199
"The Meaning of the Void: Wassily Kandinsky and Minor White," University of New Mexico, 1989.
"Journey Without End," Clark County Community College, Las Vegas, Nevada, 1989.
"The Art of Medical Practice," American Society of Orthopedic Surgeons, Annual Conference, Las Vegas Nevada, 1989.
"Trends in Contemporary Color Photography," Nevada Camera Club, 1989.
"Photography: An Aspect of Modernism," University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 1988.
"Barbizon and the Fontainebleau Forest: A Contemporary Response," Clark County Community College, 1988.
"Photographic Syntax," Nevada Artist's Forum, Las Vegas, Nevada, 1986.
"Understanding the Language of Photography," Nevada Artist's Forum, Las Vegas, Nevada, 1986.
"Photographing in the Baja Peninsula," San Diego, California, 1984.
"Alternate Processes for the Creative Photographer," West Palm Beach, Florida, 1983.
"Alternate Processes for the Creative Photographer," Las Vegas, Nevada, 1983.
