A collection of Sally Stein's vital writings on photography has been long overdue. Close-ups from Afar is a landmark collection of texts showcasing a sharpness of mind and eye over the last few decades that has challenged received wisdom and championed overlooked work. Gathered together for the first time, this anthology allows us to appreciate the range and depth of Stein's thought and her commitment to new models of thinking about photography's past and present. Stein will be in conversation with David Campany, ICP's Creative Director and long-time admirer of Stein's writing. The conversation is being offered both in person at ICP, located on NYC's Lower East Side and online.
Purchase Close-ups from Afar: Selected Short and Longer Essays on Social Uses of Photography (MACK, $35) in ICP’s shop.
Dr. Sally Stein, Professor Emerita, Department of Art History, UC Irvine, is an independent scholar based in Los Angeles who continues to research and write about 20thcentury photography in the U.S. and its relation to broader questions of culture and society. She has written about New Deal FSA photographers—particularly Dorothea Lange, Marion Post Wolcott, Jack Delano—as well as the contested image of FDR. She also has written numerous essays about popular mass media – Ladies Home Journal, Life and Look – along with continuing her study of the various aspects of the rise of color photography. The interrelated topics she most often engages concern the multiple effects of documentary imagery, the politics of gender, and the status and meaning of black and white and color imagery on our perceptions, beliefs, even actions asconsumers and citizens.
David Campany is Creative Director of the International Center of Photography, New York. He has worked worldwide with institutions including MoMA New York, Tate, Whitechapel Gallery London, Centre Pompidou, Le Bal Paris, ICP New York, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, The Photographer’s Gallery London, ParisPhoto, PhotoLondon, The National Portrait Gallery London, Aperture, Steidl, MIT Press, Thames & Hudson, MACK and Frieze.
