SPE Chicago

The lineup of invited speakers at this year's conference was incredible including Martin Parr, Richard Misrach, Richard Renaldi, Mona Kuhn and Zwelethu Mthethwa. Our very own Megan King had the privilege of working the book booth for Martin Parr and Richard Misrach was kind enough to dance with a few of our girls. 

Once the weekend's festivities quieted down, a few of us were able to spend a day checking out some of the the local photography venues. Victoria Sambunaris had an incredible exhibition of landscape photographs at The Museum of Contemporary Photography.

We toured the massive photography department at Columbia College Chicago, led by the most accommodating Myra Greene. We were also fortunate enough to be able to sit down with Paul D'Amato to talk about grad school, life and photography.

No trip to Chicago would be complete without a visit to the Art Institute of Chicago. Fortunately for us, ETSU Alum Erin Florence is a curatorial intern in the photography department so we were able to get a behind-the-scenes tour of the collection. There was absolutely too much to see, but we made a mad dash to see works by Van Gogh, Monet, Seurat, Grant Wood, Edward Hopper, Irving Penn, Dorothea Lange, Lee Friedlander, Roger Fenton, Brassai, the Joel's, Stephen Shore and Garry Winogrand. Whoa.

To top it all off, Chicago artist Daniel Shea was kind enough to grant us a visit to his incredible UIC studio. He talked at length about his expanding artistic practice and shared both the newsprint and hardback editions of his amazing book - Blisner, Ill. Such a great way to end a fantastic, if not overwhelming, weekend.