NOOR, in collaboration with the Houston Museum of African American Culture, presents an online conversation about agency and authorship in visual storytelling with Christopher Blay, Sasha Phyars-Burgess, Tanya Habjouqa and Andrea Bruce.
Banner and photo (above) © Tanya Habjouqa/ NOOR
Digital Event | Agency and Authorship: Approaches to visual storytelling, Christopher Blay in conversation with Sasha Phyars-Burgess, Andrea Bruce and Tanya Habjouqa
Thursday, March 3, 2022.
7 PM CET | 1 PM ET
Registration has closed for this event.
On Thursday, March 3, the Chief Curator of the Houston Museum of African American Culture, Christopher Blay, will converse with 2020 Stanley Greene Legacy Prize and Fellowship recipient Sasha Phyars-Burgess and NOOR members Tanya Habjouqa and Andrea Bruce about agency and authorship in visual storytelling, both as authors in the documentary community and as visual practitioners entering spaces. This conversation will touch on the history of photography and contemplate the role agency has in evolving documentary and journalistic practices.
During the conversation, Sasha will share her work “UNTITLED AND YET TO BE DETERMINED, 41.8949° N, 87.7654° W (AUSTIN)” and Christopher, Andrea, and Tanya will speak to this subject through their own selection of visuals. Each participant will discuss their motivations for different stories as it relates to different environments and how their understanding of self corresponds to their progressing approach to photography.
To view the conversation on March 3, visit the link below.
The Moderator
Christopher Blay
Christopher Blay is the Chief Curator of the Houston Museum of African American Culture. The Liberian-born American artist, writer, and curator was the News Editor at Glasstire Magazine from 2019 - 2021 and served as curator for the Art Corridor Galleries at Tarrant County College in Fort Worth for the ten years prior to Glasstire. Blay has been a guest lecturer at the University of North Texas, Texas Christian University, Tarleton State University, Sam Houston State University, as well as the University of Texas at Arlington and Stephen F. Austin university in Nacogdoches, Texas.
Blay’s writing credit includes art criticism, Op Ed essays, and interviews for the Fort Worth Weekly, Glasstire Magazine, and most recently, the November/December cover article for Art in America Magazine.
Blay has spoken at length about his work at museums such as the Dallas Museum of Art, the Kimbell Art Museum and the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth. His public lectures also included conferences such as the Texas Society of Architects convention in 2014, New Cities, Future Ruins presented by Southern Methodist University in Dallas in November, 2016, and Texas A&M University in 2021.
A list of awards Blay has received for his work includes the Otis and Velma Davis Dozier travel grant from the Dallas Museum of Art, a Nasher Sculpture Center Artist’s Grant, and Critics Choice awards from the Dallas Observer and the Fort Worth Weekly. Blay has served on jury panels for the Nasher Sculpture Center, Southern Methodist University Meadows Museum's Moss/Chumley award, Big Medium’s Tito’s Prize, as well as numerous University gallery exhibitions including the recent student exhibitions at Texas State University in San Marcos, and the Juried Members exhibition of the South Central Chapter of the Society for Photographic Education in Dallas. The artist hosted a panel discussion on the mural boom in Fort Worth at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in September.
As an artist, Blay uses photography, video, sculpture, and performance in exhibitions, and his work considers the Black experience in America. His exhibitions and public art projects follow the themes of the Black experience and include the ongoing East Rosedale Monument Project in Fort Worth, Texas, and Dindi (for Annibel) in Dallas' Coombs Creek park near Oak Cliff. His most recent exhibition, Power, Traps, and Targets: New Work by Christopher Blay was exhibited at Big Medium gallery, Austin, Texas, and is part of the Amarillo Biennial-600 in Amarillo, Texas. The exhibition focuses on justice, equality, and race, and will be on view through January, 2022.
Blay is a 2003 Graduate of Texas Christian University with a BFA in Photography with a minor in Art History.
PANALISTS
Sasha Phyars-Burgess
b.1988.
Scorpio.
Black.
Alive.
Tanya Habjouqa
Born in Jordan and raised between Texas and the Middle East, Tanya Habjouqa fuses a mordant sense of irony with unstinting, forensic interrogations of the implications of geopolitical conflict on human lives. Largely focusing on the Middle East, her work on Israel-Palestine, in particular, has been cited as a powerful investigation of the cross-currents of religion, politics, economics, and cultural production. Her project Occupied Pleasures received critical acclaim from Time Magazine and Smithsonian and the project won a World Press Photo award. A leading advocate for new methods in photojournalism and documentary practice, Tanya is the co-founder of the Middle East visual storyteller organization Ruwa, and is a mentor in the Arab Documentary Program, providing marginalized narratives and narrative-creators with the space and skills to tell their stories. She is an artist, educator, and member of NOOR Images. There is always a layer of gravitas and an intuitive sense of metaphor beneath her work.
Andrea Bruce
Andrea Bruce is a documentary photographer who brings attention to people living in the aftermath of war. She concentrates on the social issues that are sometimes ignored and often ignited in war's wake.
Andrea started working in Iraq in 2003, following the intricacies and obstacles of the conflict experienced by Iraqis and the US military. For over ten years she has chronicled the world's most troubled areas, focusing on Iraq and Afghanistan. For eight years she worked as a staff photographer for The Washington Post and later as part of the VII Network (2010-2011). At The Post, she originated and authored a weekly column called "Unseen Iraq.” She also worked at The Concord Monitor and The St. Petersburg Times and after graduating from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Her awards include top honors from the White House News Photographers Association (where she has been named Photographer of the Year four times), several awards from the International Pictures of the Year contest, and the prestigious John Faber Award from the Overseas Press Club in New York. In 2010 she received the WHNPA grant for her work in Ingushetia and was a 2011 recipient of the Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship. In 2012 she was the recipient of the first Chris Hondros Fund Award for the “commitment, willingness and sacrifice shown in her work.” The World Press Photo awarded her 2nd prize Daily Life singles for the image 'Soldier's Funeral’ in 2014. In 2016 she was a recipient of the Harvard Nieman Fellowship.
Andrea Bruce was a CatchLight Fellow in 2018 and is currently a National Geographic Explorer. She is presently based in North Carolina and is the author of a weekly bulletin about the region, Down in the County.