The Lens

The local nonprofit exhibits Fusion at the Purple People Bridge July 19–August 14, bringing student perspectives to the community.

Cameras have never been more accessible to young people, and yet it still takes practice and encouragement to learn the technical skills required to make good photographs and to develop as young artists. That’s why i.imagine, a nonprofit based out of Union, Kentucky, has focused its efforts on making professional-grade cameras available to high school students, and guiding them toward an exploration in finding a distinctive approach to their image... Continue reading i.imagine Helps High Schoolers Find Their Artistic Voice Through Photography

Originally published on July 11, 2020 by The Art Newspaper, FotoFocus Artistic Director and Curator Kevin Moore asks which photographs will ascend to a more permanent station in today’s social imagination.

Monuments have taken a beating this past week—traditional monuments, that is, statues of what you might call failed white male conquerors, so prevalent in the lingering Confederate South. Shortly after the current occupant of the White House gave a speech at Mount Rushmore on 3 July, protestors in Baltimore pulled down a Christopher Columbus... Continue reading Photographs Are the Monuments of Our Online Visual Culture

Covid-19 interrupted senior thesis shows throughout the region. Here’s how five art departments made do this spring—offering, perhaps, a taste of creative ways universities may have to again adapt in the fall.

The senior thesis show is a rite of passage for art students. It is their moment to show their work and skill—to take their art out of the classroom and to present it, in person, to the public at large. And for many, it functions as their debut into the professional art world. However, the global Covid-19... Continue reading Local Universities Honor Their Graduating Art Students Amid a Global Shutdown

Originally published on June 11, 2020 by Artnet, FotoFocus Artistic Director and Curator Kevin Moore discusses why certain images stemming from the unrest in the U.S. are sure to be remembered in years to come.

The best historic photographs don’t just document events but carry a residue of the mood. Some even become an emblem of a cause—they become iconic.

Elaine Mayes’s photographs of the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, for example, taken on assignment for... Continue reading Why Some Photographs Transcend the Moment in Which They Were Taken and Transform Movements Into Icons

The Camp Washington art center worked fast to act on their mission of "pairing a community’s needs with artists’ sense of possibility" by distributing food and art, transitioning projects—and finding ways to pay artists.

For anyone familiar with the work of Wave Pool Art Center and its director Calcagno Cullen, their stunning agility and creative vision tied into social action is hardly a surprise. Throw in an unprecedented global pandemic, a screeching halt of society as we know... Continue reading Wave Pool Pivots to Launch New Projects in Light of Covid-19