Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell Lecture: Andrea Modica

Andrea Modica, a contemporary Philadephia-based photographer and the 2015 recipient of the Akron Art Museum’s Knight Purchase Award, will visit Akron to present the Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell Lecture at the Akron Art Museum.

Modica teaches at Drexel University in Philadelphia and has received many honors for her work, including a Fulbright Grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Noted for her meticulous craftsmanship and evocative narratives, she uses traditional processes—an 8 x 10 inch view camera and platinum palladium contact printing—to achieve the lush tones that characterize her images. Modica speaks about the physicality of the view camera and the set up time required to operate it as necessitating her sustained attention, amplifying her understanding of her subjects. This quality is augmented by Modica’s practice of working in series, which have included explorations of skulls from a psychiatric hospital grounds, rural families in New York and Colorado, teenage best friends and landscapes.

The Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell Lecture is an annual guest lectureship in photography and photographic media that includes significant time to workshop with or critique work of University of Akron Mary Schiller Myers School of Art students. The lecture is held at the Akron Art Museum and is free and open to the public.

Image: Andrea Modica, Scuola Venturi, Modena, Italy, 2010, platinum palladium print, 10 x 8 in. Courtesy of the artist.