This panel discussion will explore how photography is inextricably bound with what we consider to be true. Since photography’s inception, its evidentiary quality has been utilized to document the minor spectacles of the everyday, to reveal hidden forces or to give credence to the improbable. The cosmologists working with the Hubble telescope rely on photographs to popularize their research yet are suspicious and somewhat dismissive of cosmic ‘eye candy’. In terms of the paranormal, whether it is conspiracy theories of alien invasion or age-old tales of haunted houses, believers and skeptics alike have utilized photography and other modern technologies to prove or debunk the otherworldly. The artist/photographers on this panel represent a broad spectrum of artistic practice; Marsching’s digital media work focuses on scientific investigations and collaborations with glaciologists; storytelling, cultural history and the quest to image the invisible are a part of Botz’s long term investigations and Lamson employs photography and video to witness eccentric private performances. This panel will explore how artists employ photography and related media to examine the fuzzy edges of visual truth and the varied manifestations of evidence. -Mark Alice Durant, curator.

Special Thanks to Mark Street

Mark Alice Durant is an artist, writer and curator. He is a Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He is author of McDermott and McGough: A History of Photography and Robert Heinecken: A Material History. With Jane D. Marsching, he curated and authored Blur of the Otherworldly: Contemporary Art, Technology and the Paranormal. He writes regularly for the photography journal Aperture, is an editor for Dear Dave, Magazine and has contributed essays to numerous anthologies monographs including Marco Breuer: Early Recordings, Vik Muniz: Seeing is Believing and The Passionate Camera: Photography and Bodies of Desire. In 2008 he curated Notes on Monumentality at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Jane D. Marsching explores our past, present and future human impact on the environment through interdisciplinary and collaborative practices, including video installations, virtual landscapes, dynamic websites, and data visualizations through her work as a digital artist. Recent exhibitions include: the ICA Boston; MassMoCA; North Carolina Museum of Art; San Jose Museum of Art, CA; Photographic Resource Center, Boston, MA; and Sonoma Museum of Art, CA. She has received grants from Creative Capital, LEF Foundation, Artadia and Artists Resource Trust. Recent publications include: BiPolar (Cornerhouse 2008), Gothic (Whitechapel Press, London, 2008), and S&F Online: Gender on Ice (Barnard College, 2008.With Mark Alice Durant in 2005, she curated The Blur of the Otherworldly: Contemporary Art, Technology, and the Paranormal, at The Center for Art and Visual Culture, Baltimore, MD; a catalog of the exhibition was published in June 2006 with essays by Marsching, Durant, Marina Warner and Lynne Tillman. She is a cofounder and member of Platform2: Art and Activism, an experimental forum series about creative practices at the intersection of social issues. She is currently Associate Professor at Massachusetts College of Art in Studio Foundation. She received her MFA in photography from The School of Visual Arts, New York City, in 1995.

Corinne May Botz is an artist who investigates the perception of space and our emotional connections to architecture and objects. Her photographs have been internationally exhibited including shows at Wurttembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart, Germany, Bellwether Gallery in New York, Hemphill Fine Arts in Washington D.C. and The Center for Contemporary Art, Torun, Poland. She is the author of Haunted Houses (The Monacelli Press, 2010) and The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death (The Monacelli Press, 2004). Her work has been reviewed by The New York Times, Village Voice, BookForum, and Modern Painters. Recipient of residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Akademie Schloss Solitude Fellowship in Stuttgart, Germany, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Botz teaches photography at International Center of Photography and School of Visual Arts in New York City. Botz received a B.F.A. from the Maryland Institute, College of Art, and an M.F.A. from Bard College.

William Lamson is a Brooklyn based artist who works in video, photography, performance and sculpture. His work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and a number of private collections.   Since graduating from the Bard MFA program in 2006, his work has been shown at P.S.1, The Brooklyn Museum, Franklin Art Works in Minneapolis and the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, among others.