MURFREESBORO
— Photographers Meg Griffiths and José Betancourt will discuss their work
on exhibit at MTSU’s Baldwin Photographic Gallery in a special public lecture
set for 6 p.m. Monday, Nov. 16.
“Cuba: Two
Visions” unites Griffiths’ “Casa de Fruta y Pan” and Betancourt’s “Cuba:
Reconstructing Memories” in a single exhibit at the Baldwin Gallery, located in
the Bragg Media and Entertainment Building, through Dec. 30.
The photographers’ free
Nov. 16 lecture will be held in Room 103 of the Bragg Building and will be
followed by a public reception upstairs in the gallery.
The Baldwin
Gallery is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and closed on
weekends and state and university holidays. A searchable campus parking map is available at http://tinyurl.com/MTSUParking2015-16.
Griffiths is a
photographer currently living in Columbia, South Carolina, where she is an
adjunct professor of photography in the University of South Carolina’s School
of Visual Art and Design.
Her photos in “Casa de Fruta
y Pan,” or “House of Fruit and Bread,” capture a cross-section of gentle scenes
in private homes that Cubans opened to tourists to supplement their
state-regulated income after the collapse of the communist bloc in 1989.
“These images are a
tribute to these individuals’ tenacity and willingness to improve the quality
of their lives through the sharing of private, even sacred, spaces where their
personal possessions are always on display,” Griffiths said. “The images are an
attempt to capture cross-cultural differences and similarities and to mark a
shift from ‘pure’ communism to a nascent, hybrid economy.”
Griffiths, who earned Bachelor
of Arts degrees in cultural anthropology and English literature from the
University of Texas and a Master of Fine Arts from Savannah College of Art and
Design, has published a book of her Cuba photographs, “Casa Particular.”
You can learn more about
her work at her website, http://meggriffithsphotography.com.
Betancourt is a professor of photography at the
University of Alabama in Huntsville’s Department of Art and Art History. He
came to the United States in 1971 at age 5, traveling with his parents from
Havana, Cuba to Miami, Florida, as part of the “Freedom Flights” that carried more
than 250,000 Cubans to America between 1965 and 1973.
“I had always wanted to return to this forbidden
place, but for many reasons, it became difficult for me to travel there,” Betancourt
said. “The more I thought about going back, the more memories came to me. I
remember going to the beach, riding the ferry into Havana, riding the train and
watching crabs walking along the railroad tracks in front of our house. These
simple, innocent memories of a child would be altered through time by other
stories.”
His “Cuba:
Reconstructing Memories” exhibit is a group of photos manipulated by the
photographic techniques that best communicated the unclear images, from digital
to 19th-century light-sensitive emulsions.
You can learn more about
his work at his website, http://josebetancourt.com.
Special Baldwin
Gallery tours can be arranged by contacting gallery curator Tom Jimison, a
professor in MTSU’s Department of Electronic Media Communication in the College
of Media and Entertainment, at 615-898-2085 or tom.jimison@mtsu.edu.
For more
information about MTSU’s Baldwin Photographic Gallery, visit http://baldwinphotogallery.com or http://www.facebook.com/BaldwinPhotoGallery.
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