Marilyn Waligore, an associate professor in the School of Arts and Humanities at The University of Texas at Dallas will serve as curator of the exhibit Legacy of Photomontage: Engineering the Photograph, on display in the main gallery of the university’s Visual Arts Building from March 16 to April 13. 

The exhibition will feature works by several artists, including Yoon Cho, Enrique Fernández Cervantes, Carolina Kile, Stephen Marc and Gordon Young.  These contemporary artists expand upon the practice of photomontage, which involves making a picture by assembling pieces of photographs, often in combination with other types of graphic material. Photomontage was “invented” by the Berlin Dada artists who, according to Dadaist Raoul Hausmann, thought of themselves as engineers seeking “to construct and assemble” their works. 

According to Waligore, “From political critique, to the generation of narrative, to works that challenge our concepts of reality, these images pose questions about the methods we rely upon to construct meaning.  All of these artists employ digital methods in their image creation, acknowledging the potential of new technology to expand the creative potential of montage.  They pull indirectly from a range of historical precedents, including Dada, Surrealism, Pop Art and Futurism, as well as influences from poetry, fiction and historical narratives to construct their images and fit pieces into new compositions.”

Stephen Marc will lecture on Walking in the Footsteps: Dealing with Remnants of Slavery and the Underground Railroad.
Wednesday, April 4, 7:00 p.m., Jonsson Performance Hall, free

The lecture is co-sponsored by the School of Arts and Humanities at The University of Texas at Dallas and by Richland College in conjunction with The Parallel Festival: The 15th Annual Richland College Computer Arts Festival.

Stephen Marc, photographer and art professor at Arizona State University’s Herberger College of Art, will lecture on his imagery, which references the history of slavery in America, specifically the Underground Railroad.   He has traveled across the United States and Canada, photographing locations that housed the Underground Railroad, visualizing the hidden history embedded in the geography of these communities and the artifacts that remain. 

He has produced tens of thousands of photographs at historically documented sites.  Marc combines images of locales, artifacts and individuals to produce visual narratives.   His digital photographs will be on display in the main gallery of the Visual Arts Building from March 16 through April 13 as part of the Legacy of Photomontage exhibition.

Marc is producing a book that documents his images from A Passage on the Underground Railroad series.  He has several previous photographic book publications, namely The Black Trans-Atlantic Experience, Street Life and Culture in Ghana, Jamaica, England and the United States, and Urban Notions, a photograph series on African-American life in the Midwest. 

His work is featured in public, private and corporate collections in both the United States and abroad, including the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Princeton University and the Sprint Corporation.

Steven Marc’s website is http://herbergercollege.asu.edu/marc/
More information on The Parallel Festival is available at
http://www.richlandcollege.edu/multimedia.