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Acclaimed Photographer Amy Stein to Lecture at UK
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Feb. 7, 2012) − Award-winning photographer Amy Stein will present the next lecture in this year’s Robert C. May Photography Endowment Series presented by the Art Museum at the University of Kentucky. The photographer, who will talk about capturing the incarnation of the natural world in her popular series "Domesticated," will present her lecture at 4 p.m. Friday, Feb.10, at Worsham Theater in the UK Student Center. An exhibit of Stein’s work is currently on display at the Art Museum at UK until March 4. Both the exhibition and lecture featuring Stein’s work are free to the public.
In her series "Domesticated," Amy Stein depicts the close encounters humans and animals are experiencing ever more frequently in suburbia. Her work reflects these encounters with taxidermy life-like animals, exploring the domestication of animals as well as people.
Stein became interested in the concept after hearing people's personal encounters with wildlife in Matamoras, Pa. "Each story was relayed with a sense of wonder and fascination that hinted at a deeper connection," she says. "I began to realize that something far more primal and mystical was happening in this town."
With a master’s degree in political science, Stein’s work often studies the changes in contemporary America. In her photography, it is often the humans who seem trapped behind fences as opposed to the other way around. One constructed photograph by Stein shows a bear peering over a fence at a girl who is on a diving board looking directly back at the wild creature standing on his feet only a few feet away.
In addition to her "Domesticated" series, Stein also has a series focused on distressed motorists with broken down cars and families left roadside. The "Stranded" series works to capture the "collapse of certainty."
Stein won the Critical Mass Book Award in 2008 for her book, "Domesticated," and she was named one of the top 15 fifteen emerging photographers by American Photo magazine in 2007. She also received the Saatchi Gallery/Guardian Prize for "Domesticated" in 2006.
Stein’s work is included in collections at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Portland Art Museum in Oregon, and the Light Work Collection in Syracuse, N.Y. She currently teaches at the School of Visual Arts and at Parsons The New School for Design.
The Robert C. May Lecture Series touches on photography in the 19th century and its reinvention in today’s digital world. Each year the lecture series features four emerging photographers. The series is made possible through the Robert C. May Photography Endowment, a museum fund established in 1994. Photographer Jerry Spagnoli will close out this year’s lecture series.
For more information on Amy Stein’s lecture or Robert C. May Endowment Lecture Series, contact the Art Museum at UK at (859) 257-5176 or visit www.uky.edu/ArtMuseum/.
MEDIA CONTACT: Whitney Hale, (859) 257-8716 or whitney.hale@uky.edu