Saturday, October 28, 2023 from 1 – 6pm
University Hall, Lesley University
1815 Mass Ave., Cambridge, MA
Henry Horenstein, Nancy Grace Horton, Stephen DiRado, Jaina Cipriano
Join the PRC for our first ever film festival on Saturday, October 28th from 1-6pm at Lesley University’s, University Hall. This landmark event features films by photographers Henry Horenstein, Nancy Grace Horton, Stephen DiRado, and Jaina Cipriano. It’s clear that photographers and filmmakers share many motivations; desires to create narrative, inspire emotion, and document a place in time. However, the innate advantages photographers have in filmmaking include honed compositional skills and a unique insight into building strong visuals as an integral component. Notable photographers such as Man Ray, Robert Frank, David Lynch, and Nan Golden are recognized for both still photography and film work, often incorporating their own images into films, telling stories about creativity, and shining a light on curiosities of the human condition.
Moving Pictures: a day of film and conversation is an opportunity to engage with four New England photographers, to view their work and participate in discussion about their motivations, strategies, and techniques. At a time when image making has broken more boundaries than ever before, this event highlights experienced and emerging photographer-filmmakers who have pursued their own ways to tell stories outside of the traditional frame.
Thank you to our Beverage Sponsor: Culture Pop Soda.
Henry Horenstein has been a professional photographer, filmmaker, teacher, and author since the 1970s. He earned his BFA and MFA at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where he studied with photography legends Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. Horenstein’s photography is collected and exhibited internationally and he has published more than 30 books, including several monographs of his own work such as Honky Tonk, Histories, Show, Animalia, Humans, Racing Days, Close Relations, and many others. He has also authored Black & White Photography, Digital Photography, and Beyond Basic Photography, which have become industry standards for photography education and are used by hundreds of thousands of college, university, high-school, and art school students as their introduction to photography. In recent years Horenstein has been filming documentaries about what interests him the most after receiving that advice from Harry Callahan who then said, “shoot that stuff. Even if you make bad pictures, you’ll have a good time.” As the finale of Moving Pictures, Horenstein will be sharing several short films about a Texas dance hall and the early days of burlesque, which will be followed by part of his most recent film Speedway and the day will conclude with a book signing of Speedway 1972 showing a slice of what the world looked like in early 1970s at New England stock car racetracks.
Nancy Grace Horton is a photographer who embraces both analog and digital techniques to create bold narrative fragments informed by her background in photojournalism. With an MFA from Lesley University Art + Design, her work has been widely exhibited in galleries and museums, and she is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including several Artist Entrepreneurial Grants from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. Horton’s 2021 project, Becoming Grey, is a celebration of women’s hair, identity, desire, and power, as revealed in photographs and interviews. Through audio interviews, video, and still photographs, the project portrays women who defy stereotypical notions of greying and gender beauty. Horton invited women to flaunt their grey hair and to explore the feelings and motivations behind identity, aging and hair color, themes related to her previous projects investigating stereotypical roles and images of women. Click HERE to see a trailer of Becoming Gray.
Stephen DiRado is a documentary photographer, filmmaker and educator recognized internationally for his sometimes raw and deeply empathetic portraits, often devoting decades to a number of chosen themes. Initially a self-taught photographer, DiRado later attended the School of the Worcester Art Museum, followed by earning his BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and in 1982, he joined the faculty at Clark University, Visual and Performing Arts Department. DiRado’s photographs can be found in many private and public collections including MFA Boston, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the Currier Museum. He has been featured, profiled and reviewed nationally in such outlets as the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, National Geographic, National Public Radio, Black and White Magazine, the UK’s Daily Mail, Royal Photographic Society Journal, and recently, the University of New Hampshire, Museum of Art presented a retrospective, Stephen DiRado’s Embrace. With a preference for shooting his documentary projects in black and white with a large-format camera, he initiated what became a 20-year landmark project with his father, culminating in a 2021 film and book, With Dad. As part of Moving Pictures DiRado will present his 2012 film, Summer Spent, a long-term documentary depicting his obsessive work discipline and artist life connected to a diverse group of beach goers on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. Click HERE to see a trailer.
Jaina Cipriano studied at The New England School of Photography and is currently a Boston Fellow at Mass Art’s Creative Economy Business Incubator, and Merrimack Valley’s E for All Accelerator program. Her photography, film, and installations wrestle with the complicated path of healing and explore the emotional toll of religious and romantic entrapment. A self-taught carpenter, Cipriano loves a challenge and her larger than life sets draw inspiration from the picture books and cartoons of her childhood. She believes creating something truly immersive starts with the smallest details and she photographs within fantastical hand-built environments without any post-production digitizing. Cipriano’s foray into writing and directing short films began in 2020 with her release of, You Don’t Have to Take Orders from the Moon, a surrealist horror film wrestling with the gravity of deep codependency. Her second short,Trauma Bond, 2022, is part of the Moving Pictures event. Based on a true story, this dark coming of age short film recounts a girls night between two best friends that takes a dark turn after one of them invites a mysterious newcomer who promises emotional salvation.
Thank you to our Beverage Sponsor: Culture Pop Soda.