Steve Yates,
Photo historian and curator, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Lecture:
"From Dada to Surrealism: Photography's Primary Role in Modern Art"
Wednesday, September 22nd, 7 p.m. at the MUSEUM FÜR ANGEWANDTE KUNST, Schaumainkai 17, 60594 Frankfurt

Modern photography is a universal language that emerged beyond cultures at the beginning of the 20th century. It advanced as a major art form, unlimited by the syntax of spoken language or traditional art mediums. The first generation of modernists and avant-garde invented unparalleled forms of photographic expression.
The pioneers of early modern photography developed a wide variety of styles from the mainstream of modern art. Photographs were charged with new meaning and content. The Dadaists and Surrealists expanded content from non-art subjects and dreams. The Dadaists invented photomontage and phonetic forms of sound poetry. The Surrealists advanced these lessons by incorporating the subconscious.
Personal vision added more dimensions than what was seen or experienced by the camera. Modernists constructed an expanding visual vocabulary of symbols with the photographic process and related technologies. Modern photography was filled with personal vision, unconscious desires and ßeeting impressions. Dadaists and Surrealists evoked ideas and emotions that were inßuenced by the profound world of shifting realities after World War I.

© Steve Yates
Museum curator, Fulbright Scholar, international lecturer, researcher, essayist, artist and Adjunct Professor, Steve Yates studied and worked with the historian Beaumont Newhall, founding curator of the Photography Department, Museum of Modern Art in New York. He was the first Curator of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe and created the museum's photographic collection of almost 10,000 works with a catalog and website Idea Photographic: After Modernism (www.museumofnewmexico.org/idea). Today Yates conducts research and projects worldwide concentrating on early modern photography and the contemporary photographic arts. His is curator and editor of numerous publications from The Poetics of Space to international retrospectives of Alexandr Rodchenko and the Russian Avant-Garde, L·szlÛ Moholy-Nagy, Betty Hahn, Joel-Peter Witkin, Aleksandras Macijauskas and others. Most recently he taught masters classes and lectured in New York, Russia and Korea. Yates is curator for the upcoming exhibition Proto-Modern: Photographic Innovation of the Russian Avant-Garde, 1919-1939 for Curatorial Assistance (www.curatorial.org/exhib_russianAvant-Garde.html).

The lecture will be held in English.



www.museumofnewmexico.org