James Welling in conversation with Kaja Silverman and Alex Klein

Pre-Conversation Reception at 5:30
Conversation 6-8 pm

Renowned American photographer James Welling will discuss his work with Kaja Silverman, Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, and Alex Klein, Dorothy and Stephen Weber Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art.

Welling is for us today what Gustave le Gray was for the nineteenth century and Edward Steichen was for the twentieth: an artist located at the intersection of photography and painting, who is both profoundly attached to the sensory world, in all of its specificity, and deeply interested in the pictorial possibilities opened up by different technical processes, ranging from the contact print to digital “layering” and inkjet printing. The conversation will focus primarily on Welling’s recent work, particularly The Glass House, Meridian, Andrew Wyeth, Choreograph, and Chemical Photographs.

This event is sponsored by the ICA, the Department of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Mellon Foundation. It is part of an ongoing series of conversations between Silverman and artists who work in some way with photography and/or projected images.