Envisioned as an annual showcase of innovative and distinguished photography and related media, the LightField Festival officially opened its inaugural exhibition, “Making a Scene: Storytelling and the Real,” last Saturday at the Hudson Opera House. The show presents the work of eight international artists who explore the boundaries of storytelling and the increasing slippage in narrative art between documentary and fiction through photography, film, video and cross-platform installations.
Included in the exhibition are Zackary Canepari’s interactive web series Flint is a Place, which addresses the water crises in Flint, Michigan; the Live, Love, Refugee series by Syrian photographer Omar Imam; Yola Monakhov Stockton’s multimedia bird studies, In the Nature of Imitation; Wendel A. White’s black-and-white photographs of former segregated schools for African Americans; Arne Svenson’s visual essay on surveillance, The Workers; and Anastasia Taylor-Lind’s photojournalism covering the Ukrainian conflict.
The LightField Festival will also include film screenings, public talks and a youth photo workshop. On Saturday, September 3 at 4:30 p.m., the Festival will premiere the short film The Story behind Richard Prince’s Photograph ‘Untitled (Cowboy)’. And at 7 p.m., director Keith Miller will screen and discuss his second feature film, Five Star, a fictionalized story about gang life in Brooklyn starring actual gang members.
On September 17, the Festival continues with a presentation by Bard College associate professor of Photography Tim Davis. Admission to the “Making a Scene” exhibition, which stays open until September 25, and to all other LightField Festival events is free. For more information, call (518) 822-1438 or visit www.hudsonoperahouse.org or www.lightfield.vu. The Hudson Opera House is located at 327 Warren Street in Hudson.
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