GSF Graduate Scholars Colloquium presents "Mater Obscura: Looking Through a Photographic Archive"

Hunter Augeri (PhD Candidate, English) will be presenting with a response by Amber Manning (PhD Candidate, English) Abstract: In this essay I look at the interference of photography and memory alongside the work of motherhood and art production. My mother, Lynne Augeri (Hewitt), had a successful career as an artist in New York in the 1970s and 80s. Often clad in licentious costuming, her black and white photographs feature herself as a sexualized object of desire. Dressed as a damsel in distress or topless Weimar soldier, her photographs adorned the walls of the house I grew up in. While digitizing her archive, I began to see how my mother's photography shaped my own perception of the world and how artistic and sexual development converge to form a sense of self.