Lecture: Lois Conners March 3, 2005

Photographer Lois Conner will lecture at Carleton College in conjunction with the Art Gallery exhibition, ?Rising Waters: Edward Burtynsky and Lois Conner. Photographing China?s Three Gorges Dam Region.? Titled ?Travels with Camera along the Yangtze River,? Conner's slide presentation will be held at 8 p.m. on Thursday, March 3, in Boliou Hall, Room 104. The event is free and open to the public.

Conner, a New York-based photographer, has been photographing in China since 1984. In 1997 she spent the summer along the Yangtze River in the Three Gorges area, a region being dramatically transformed by the Three Gorges Dam project. Begun in 1993 and scheduled for completion in 2009, this huge hydroelectric engineering project has irrevocably changed the countryside and lives of its inhabitants.

Conner spent six weeks photographing humble dwellings, historic sites and expansive river views. Long celebrated for the scenic beauty of the Gorges, defined by steep cliffs and turbulent waterways, this region now also offers extraordinary manmade spectacles, including the dam itself, enormous dykes defining the river banks and entirely new cities replacing those dismantled in advance of the rising waters of the reservoir.

Using a banquet camera, Conner composes panoramic compositions packed with detail and boldly designed. The artist is known for her modestly scaled platinum prints, rich in subtle tonal effects. For the Carleton exhibition, Conner achieved bolder effects with inkjet prints as large as 18 x 72 inches.

Conner lived in China for more than eight months during her initial trip in 1984. She has returned every year since. What began as a brief inquiry into a country and its people turned into a lifelong obsession. Conner focuses on landscape to discover culture; the panoramic banquet camera (producing a 7 x 17" negative) helps the photographer gain access not only to the realities of China but to its mythic dimensions as well.

Conner holds an M.F.A. from Yale University and she is the recipient of a Guggenheim and other fellowships. She is a lecturer at the Yale School of Art. Her publications include ?China: The Photographs of Lois Conner.?

For more information and disability accommodations, call Carleton?s Art Gallery at (507) 646-4342.