How the Other Half Looks: Sara Blair on the Afterlives of Images
New York City’s Lower East Side, long viewed as the space of what Jacob Riis notoriously called the “other half,” was also a crucible for experimentation in photography, film, literature, and visual technologies. Scholar Sara Blair’s book How the Other Half Looks: The Lower East Side and the Afterlives of Images, takes an unprecedented look at the practices of observation that emerged from this critical site of encounter, showing how they have informed literary and everyday narratives of America, its citizens, and its possible futures.
Join us virtually for a lecture and conversation with author Sara Blair and ICP Director of Exhibitions and Collections Erin Barnett exploring how images of the Lower East Side have influenced a lasting way of seeing and looking. The evening will begin with Sara Blair presenting a lecture on her newly released book, followed by a discussion with Barnett examining the role images play in creating narratives about this first port of entry for generations of immigrants.
This program is held in conjunction with The Lower East Side: Images from the ICP Collection. View a virtual tour of The Lower East Side while enjoying a playlist inspired by the exhibition.
Bios
Sara Blair is the Patricia S. Yaeger Collegiate Professor of English at the University of Michigan. She writes widely on 20th-century imaging, Jews and photography, documentary practice, and sites of photo experimentation, including New York’s Lower East Side. Her wide-ranging publications include the award-winning How the Other Half Looks: The Lower East Side and the Afterlives of Images, Trauma and Documentary Photography of the FSA, co-authored with Eric Rosenberg, and Jewish in America, co-edited with Jonathan Freedman. Blair has collaborated on exhibitions and publications with curators and photographers at the DIA, the Richard Avedon Foundation, the International Center of Photography, and the Addison Gallery of American Art, and she has curated photo exhibitions at UM’s Institute for the Humanities and the Middlebury Art Museum. Her current work focuses on Jews and contemporary photography and the afterlives of the photograph in the digital era.
Erin Barnett, Director of Exhibitions and Collections, returned to ICP in 2016 after a brief hiatus. She had previously worked in ICP’s Exhibitions and Collections department for eleven years. Her exhibitions include The Lower East Side: Selections from the ICP Collection (2020); James Coupe: Warriors(2020); Your Mirror: Selections from the ICP Collection (2019); Edmund Clark: The Day the Music Died (2018); The Loving Story: Photographs by Grey Villet (2012); President in Petticoats! Civil War Propaganda in Photographs (2012); and Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945 (2011).