Ileana Selejan Lecture on Modern Photography

“Reading Between the Lines: Working at the Intersections of Scholarship and Curating”

Photography was the first new media genre to disrupt the traditional hierarchy of the fine arts, becoming gradually integrated into the art museum establishment. Yet while the museum continues to privilege the singular image-object, artists and practitioners, particularly those interested in experimentation, have been most drawn to the medium‘s transitional qualities, and its transgressive forms. In developing curatorial strategies for the presentation of photography and contemporary art, scholarship plays a tremendous role, one that is often underplayed. This lecture will address the complexities of working in the space between, reflecting on how different practices can complement each other, and also on how productive contradictions can lead to innovative approaches. 

Ileana Selejan is the Linda Wyatt Gruber ‘66 Curatorial Fellow in Photography at the Davis Museum at Wellesley. Selejan has published articles on the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, war photography, and the documentary at the turn of the eighties, and Post-War photography in Mexico and Guatemala.