Tag Archives: photography

Alberto Herrera Fernández Photograph Collection Unveiled

An intimate ceremony on April 29 marked the dedication of the Alberto Herrera Fernández Photograph Collection at the Benson Latin American Collection, honoring the life and work of the renowned Mexican photographer. The event, attended by family members, scholars and esteemed guests, served as a recognition of Herrera Fernandez’s impact in capturing the life and culture of Sonora, Mexico through his lens.

The event was largely organized by Blanca Cummins, daughter of Alberto Herrera Fernández and a current Tower Fellow, whose commitment to preserving her father’s legacy was evident throughout the event. Former state historian of Texas – and Cummins’ brother-in-law – Light Cummins described the significance of Herrera Fernández’s photographic legacy and provided historical context for the photographer’s  work.

The Alberto Herrera Fernández Photograph Collection, carefully maintained by Cummins’ sister until its transfer to the university, showcases not only the rugged beauty of the Sonoran Desert but also provides a glimpse into the lives of vaqueros and copper miners in Cananea, Sonora. Herrera Fernández’s lens documented the essence of artistic communities, daily life, religious leaders and governmental figures, painting a vivid portrait of the region.

The bulk of the collection is comprised of 60,000 photographic slides, prints, and negatives (~23 Linear feet). In addition to the photographic materials, the collection boasts a selection of ephemera, including exhibition write-ups, interviews, recognitions, and correspondence, offering invaluable insights into Herrera Fernández’s enduring legacy as a photographer. The breadth and depth of Herrera Fernández’s work provide a unique perspective on Sonora, filling a critical gap in the Benson’s holdings.

The dedication ceremony also recognized Blanca Cummins’s tireless efforts in digitizing selected images from the collection. Working diligently in the rare books reading room for months, Cummins meticulously preserved the original order of her father’s archive, ensuring its integrity and accessibility for future generations.

Megan Frisque, Director of the Tower Fellows program, also spoke to the value of the Fellows program, recognizing Cummins as an example of the sort of impact that the participants can have through its access to a world-class lifelong learning experience.

Building for Digital Creativity

current pilot lab

Just over a year ago, the UT Libraries opened a pilot Media Lab  in a small section of the entry level floor of the Perry-Castaneda Library.  Under the purview of Teaching and Learning Services and equipped with 15 dual-monitor iMacs loaded with a long list of creative software, we hoped it would be a place for students to work individually or in groups to create and share digital media projects.  According to our preliminary assessment data and statistics, our hopes were realized and students took to our little lab like free pizza at a campus event.

Our Media Lab pilot was an opportunity to achieve two goals at once: First, provide an unrestricted space and high quality resources for students to create digital media projects regardless of their major or departmental affiliation and, second, to test out this service before a larger 44-seat Media Lab opens in Fall 2015 as part of the Learning Commons project.

So why a Media Lab in the library and why now?

Continue reading this post at the Learning Commons blog.

A View Through the Student Lens

Student photo exhibit poster final w-bleeds

Dark clouds gathered in the late afternoon sky in anticipation of the last storm of the summer. Inside, a DJ set the needle down on the 45-rpm version of a Jorge Ben classic just as the rain began to fall. Flecked by the light of a disco ball on the circulation desk, a convivial crowd had gathered to chat, snack, and enjoy the fact that it was almost Friday. The occasion was Field Notes, the fifth annual LLILAS Benson student photography exhibit and competition, held in the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection on the third Thursday in September.

peng
Photo by Ruijie Peng, LLILAS

Photographs from a summer of study, both abroad in Latin America and in Latina/o communities in the United States, hung in the Benson’s first-floor corridor, and visitors took in the images with interest and curiosity. The photos themselves expressed the range of experiences, viewpoints, and settings encountered by the student photographers: Ruijie Peng’s prize-winning photograph, taken in Ecuador, depicts Chinese and Ecuadoran workers standing in hard hats among rocky debris at the site of a hydroelectric construction project; the other prize winner, by Mariana Morante Aguirre, was snapped in Guadalajara, Mexico, outside a hostel along a railroad route used by Central American migrants and transient Mexican nationals alike.

In Mario Mercado’s photo, a trumpeter plays on a San Juan sidewalk in front of exuberant graffiti that invokes the instrument’s brassy sound. In a lovely image by Charles Wight, a lone boat floats on the Rio Negro near Manaus, Brazil. Our gaze turns skyward via the lens of Felipe Fernández Cruz, who photographed airplanes flying in formation against a clear blue sky above the Christ statue in Rio, the wings in identical posture to the outstretched arms of O Redentor. (A history student, Fernández went to Brazil to study how the twentieth-century state built air routes to colonize the interior.) A stunning black-and-white image by MFA film student Álvaro Torres Crespo shows two boys fishing from a pier under a cloudy sky at dusk in Puerto Jiménez, on Costa Rica’s southern Pacific Coast.

tasker
Photo by Kaitlin Tasker, Department of Geography and the Environment

Some student researchers encountered roadblocks both expected and unexpected…

(Continued at the LLILAS blog.)

Benson Goes for Baroque

Iglesia de Santa María Tonantzintla, Puebla. Caroyln Brown.
Iglesia de Santa María Tonantzintla, Puebla. Caroyln Brown.

The extravagance of the Baroque period in Spanish America is currently on display in an exhibition at the Benson Latin American Collection.

Inside the Baroque illuminates the splendor and diversity of Mexican arts and letters in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and their enduring legacy. A selection of photographs by Carolyn Brown accompanies rare books and manuscripts from the Benson’s collections to present the Baroque period’s ornate style as it was manifested in the Spanish colonies of the Americas.

A complementary documentary film by Quin Mathews presents arresting views of Mexico’s baroque churches against a backdrop of life in modern-day Mexico. Mathews traveled with photographer Carolyn Brown in 2008, recording scenes of daily devotional and festive practice, and the film captures the centrality of local churches.

Wedding at Catedral de Zacatecas. Carolyn Brown.
Wedding at Catedral de Zacatecas. Carolyn Brown.

Originating in 16th century Italy as a European Catholic response to the austerity of the Protestant Reformation, the Baroque style found purchase in the art, architecture and music of the period, and made its way to the Western Hemisphere by the end of the 1600s.

Catedral de Zacatecas at dusk. Carolyn Brown.
Catedral de Zacatecas at dusk. Carolyn Brown.

What made the movement particularly unique as it was expressed in the Americas was the influence of indigenous populations, craftsmanship and resources on the decorative style of religious structures that were erected as monuments to Spanish colonial power in the New World.

The exhibition will be on display through January 31, 2015, in the Benson Second Floor Exhibition Gallery, and is free and open to the public. Check the Benson website for a complete listing of hours.

Concurrently on view in the Benson’s first floor gallery is the 5th Annual LLILAS Benson Student Photography Exhibition featuring photography by University of Texas at Austin graduate and undergraduate students highlighting their expansive research, fieldwork, and volunteer activities within Latin American and U.S. Latina/o communities during the previous year.

 

The Trail That Made Texas

When Alonso de Léon took his troops from the Rio Grande to the Guadalupe river – and later to the Neches – in search of French settlements, he probably had no idea that his tracks would pave the way for the creation of the state of Texas.

The Benson Latin American Collection is hosting an exhibition of photographs by Christopher Talbot from the National Historic Trail formed by de Léon’s expedition.

El Camino Real de los Tejas is on display at the Benson through the end of the month, and a reception with Talbot in attendance takes place tomorrow, Wednesday, September 21, from 5-7pm.

You can RSVP to the Benson’s Facebook event page.

FAL Exhibit Explores an Explorer

The Fine Arts Library is hosting an exhibition tracking the life and work of Colonel Leo Bond Roberts, an Army civil engineer who traveled extensively in his capacity for the military, taking photographs and collecting ephemera and artifacts from his travels throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

An opening reception takes place from 5-7 p.m., Friday, May 7, in the Roberts Reading Room of the Fine Arts Library. The exhibit will be on view through July.

The exhibit includes materials from all phases of Roberts’ life: childhood, college years, officer during World War I, topographer and explorer during the 1920s and 30s, civil engineer, military engineer and planner during World War II and chief engineer of the Jones Beach Marine Theater on Long Island, NY.

Photographs, publications, military awards, African masks, and lantern slides of travels in the Gobi Desert and in Ethiopia will be on display with many other items from Roberts’s travels.

Items in the exhibition were generously donated to the Fine Arts Library by Roberts’s daughter-in-law, Jan J. Roberts.

If you would like to attend the opening reception, please RSVP to Eve McQuade at emcquade@austin.utexas.edu or call 512-495-4363.

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Science Study Break and Deborah Hay exhibit kick-start the home stretch

HAL 9000
HAL gets the once-over from Dr. Risto Miikkulainen in 2010's first Science Study Break "Machines Gone Wild"

As always seems the case, the Libraries are ratcheting up the post-Spring Break calendar with a slew of events.

After a brief hiatus, this week sees the return of the wildly popular Science Study Breaks series hosted by the Life Science Library. I won’t bother going into the background of this pop culture meets science program, but you can read about it in our most recent issue of the Libraries Newsletter.

At any rate, this first SSB of 2010 features Computer Science and Neuroscience faculty Dr. Risto Miikkulainen discussing “Machines Gone Wild” using Mr. Data from TNG and HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey as foils for discussion. The program gets underway at 6:30pm, Wednesday, March 24 in Wheeler Lecture Hall (4.102) in Robert Lee Moore Hall.

Also later this week, an exhibit of photos featuring post-modern dance maven Deborah Hay gets an opening reception at the Fine Arts Library. Twenty images Continue reading Science Study Break and Deborah Hay exhibit kick-start the home stretch