Wet-Plate Photographer to Conclude May Series

LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 2, 2011) − France Scully Osterman, an artist known for her wet-plate photography, will give the final lecture in the 2011 Robert C. May Photography Endowment Lecture Series presented by the Art Museum at the University of Kentucky. Osterman's lecture, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 4 p.m. Friday, March 4, in the Worsham Theater at the UK Student Center. Osterman's photography is also currently on display at the Art Museum at UK. This free public exhibition will be shown through March 13.

Osterman is among a handful of photographers today recognized as a master in wet-plate collodion photography. Known for her "Sleep" series, Osterman's wet-plate photography takes viewers into a twilight world that is among the most mysterious and desirable of human states. She produces her photographs using a time consuming process that was first introduced in the late 1840s.

As a photographer, Osterman's lush prints in deep brown tones have a sense of presence that makes her subjects seem embodied in the work. Their sensual surfaces emphasize the sexual association we have with beds, and her choice of subject matter harkens to the Victorian age, when sleep was regarded as a form of death and eerie deathbed photographs of loved ones were common.

Osterman is an artist, teacher and scholar at the George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y. She also gives lectures and demonstrations throughout the U.S., Europe and Japan. Much of her work has been placed in Houston's Museum of Fine Art, The George Eastman House International Museum of Photography, and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University. Along with all of this, Osterman and her husband created The Collodion Journal devoted to help keep wet-plate photography alive.

The May Lecture Series is made possible through the Robert C. May Photography Endowment, a museum fund established in 1994 for the support of acquisitions and programs relating to photography.

For more information on the France Scully Osterman lecture or on the Robert C. May Photography Endowment Lecture Series, contact the Art Museum at the University of Kentucky at (859) 257-5716 or visit online at www.uky.edu/ArtMuseum.

MEDIA CONTACT: Whitney Hale, (859) 257-1754 ext. 229, Whitney.Hale@uky.edu