STCC Professor Shares Spectacularly Brief History of Photography
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — Springfield Technical Community College professor and photographer Sondra presented an engaging lecture titled A Spectacularly Brief History of Photography on Nov. 14, at The Springfield Museums.
The presentation, which explores how photography helps shape visual culture, was part of the popular lunchtime lecture series Museums á la Carte.
Sondra Peron, Assistant Professor of Art and Cultural Programming and Gallery Coordinator of the Amy H. Carberry Fine Arts Gallery at STCC, is a photographer whose work integrates historical and philosophical issues producing photographs beautifully abstract in visual nature while also deeply meaningful in historical context.
Peron’s photo series Atrocity Landscapes, for instance, captures black and white abstractions from the sites of US Civil War battlefields to Somme trenches and Verdun forts. “The images reveal our collective historical memory as it inhabits our landscape today,” Peron said.
She offers through her photography an opportunity for contemporary viewers to juxtapose the current landscape with its historical context, challenging the viewer to reconsider the landscape. “These photographs bridge the gap between the past and the present through a reinterpretation of how landscapes serve as witness to humanity’s worst conflicts,” Peron said.
In her lecture, A Spectacularly Brief History of Photography, Peron explored the idea that since the birth of photography in 1839, the photographer has played an important role in helping form our collective visual culture. Peron surveyed photographic work from the earliest daguerreotypes in the 19th century to the digital works of the present, highlighting such photographers as Louis Daguerre (French, 1787-1851), Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946), Robert Capa (Hungarian-American, 1913-1954), Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965), Elliott Erwitt (American, born 1928), Richard Avedon (American, 1933-2004), Graciela Iturbide (Mexican, born 1945), Jeffrey Wall (Canadian, born 1946), and Sally Mann (American, born 1951).
Peron focused on photographic technology as a development concurrent with the photographer’s exploration of cultural, social, economic, and political issues to help form of our collective historical memory.
About Sondra Peron
Sondra Peron grew up in Connecticut and resides in Northampton, Mass. She is currently on the faculty at Springfield Technical Community College where she teaches photography as well as conducting independent studies with advanced students, and academic advising. She has also taught traditional and digital photography at Hampshire College, Holyoke Community College, and at her alma mater Northwestern Connecticut Community College.
Peron has produced a significant body of work using vintage cameras, most notably the Brownie Hawkeye manufactured by Kodak from the late 1940s to early 1960s. Her photography has been exhibited in solo, two-person, and group shows throughout New England, Maryland, Tennessee, and China.
Her work was featured in a special issue of Afterimage: The Aesthetics of Atrocity, Cerise Press: A Journal of Literature, Art and Culture and The Sun Magazine. Work can also be found in the collections of the Mortimer Rare Book Room in Neilson Library at Smith College, and private collections. She has served as a guest artist and lecturer at the Smith College Museum of Art, Skidmore College, Hampshire College, and Brown University.
She holds her MFA in Photography from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland. She graduated as an Ada Comstock Scholar from Smith College with a BA in Philosophy in 1998.
(Article submitted by The Springfield Museums)