Panoramic Photographer Opens May Lecture Series

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Nov. 3, 2010) − Panoramic photographer Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao kicks off the 2010-2011 Robert C. May Photography Endowment Lecture Series presented by the Art Museum at the University of Kentucky. Liao's free public lecture begins at 4 p.m. Friday, Nov. 5, in the Worsham Theater, located in the UK Student Center. Photography by Liao is currently on display at the museum through Nov. 14. The exhibition is also free and open to the public.

Liao, a Taiwanese artist, is known for transforming his daily commute from Queens to Manhattan on the IRT 7 train into a series of panoramic photographs. This series captures the urban life and the people who inhabit it. To make the large panoramic scenes, the photographer unites historic techniques and contemporary technology by taking multiple photographs with an 8x10 view camera and then combines together the scanned images into works that are up to eight feet wide.

Prior to becoming a well-known panoramic, contemporary photographer, Liao attended high school in Canada. He moved to New York in 1999 to study photography at Pratt Institute of Art and Design in Brooklyn. After earning his bachelor's degree in 2003, he completed a master's degree at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan in 2005.

Liao currently lives and works in Queens, N.Y. Bronx Museum of the Arts commissioned Liao to make a series of photographs that celebrate the centennial of the borough's Grand Concourse. In addition, he has also photographed the construction of Citi Field, the stadium that hosts the New York Mets. Liao's work is part of permanent collections of the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography, the Harvard Business School, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Deutsche Bank, the Norton Museum of Art, and the J. Paul Getty Museum.

The May Lecture Series explores photography's roots in the 19th century and its reinvention in the digital world with four exciting artists who come from different places. The 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. Other photographers coming to Lexington as part of this year's series are Kael Alford, Abelardo Morell and France Scully Osterman.

For more information on the Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao lecture or on the 2010-2011 Robert C. May Photography Endowment Lecture Series contact the Art Museum at the University of Kentucky at (859) 257-5716 or visit www.uky.edu/ArtMuseum.