Stephen Chalmers: Unmarked, Speaking Light Lecture Series

The Speaking Light Lecture Series continues with photographer Stephen Chalmers. Stephen will be presenting his project “Unmarked”, which documents the locations where the victims of serial killers were found. These locations were precisely located using Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, police records and newspaper articles.

“Stephen Chalmers’ photographs of sites where serial killers dumped their victims on the West Coast of America are haunted with the final experiences of the victims that were brutally disposed of. They also tap into our society’s fascination with what murder looks like. Obscured by the passage of time and often invoking the natural beauty surrounding them—wilderness areas being ideal dumping places—Chalmers’ pictures challenge photography’s ability to expose the spectral history of a location and the knowledge of its viewers.” (Natasha Egan, Associate Director, Museum of Contemporary Photography. Chicago)

The lecture will begin at 6PM on Friday March 30 in the JVH Auditorium located on the 2^nd Floor of Thayer Hall (201 Wood Street) on Point Park’s Campus.

More about Stephen:

Stephen Chalmers has worked as a Lead Treatment Counselor to Severely Emotionally Disturbed children, worked as an Emergency Medical Technician, and taught gang children photography – informing his projects which deal with issues of loss. Chalmers has taught many workshops in alternative photographic processes and digital imaging, and been a visiting artist at numerous colleges and universities. He has also been a contributor to five books, and has been in group and solo exhibitions throughout the US and also in Australia, Ireland, British Columbia, Thailand, England, South Africa, and China. Stephen Chalmers earned his MFA in Cinema and Photography from Southern Illinois University, was the NW Regional Chair for the Society for Photographic Education for two terms, was professor of Photography and Digital Media in the state of Washington for eight years and is currently a professor of Photography at Youngstown State University in Ohio. The work of Stephen Chalmers is in several collections including the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Light Work, Polaroid, and the Getty Research Institute. Since the start of March of 2012, his work was featured on the Picture Show on National Public Radio (NPR), the Huffington Post, the Daily Mail (UK) and other venues.

Selections from his projects and more biographical information can be viewed at: www.stephenchalmers.com

SPE Scholarship Winners Jamie Russel and Marie Mashyna

The SPE MA Board is happy to announce the 2012 National Scholarship winners for the National Conference in San Francisco, California.

Along with awarding the Adjunct Faculty, Graduate Student and Undergraduate Student Scholarships, we are extremely honored to recognize our friend Patrick Millard.

The Patrick Millard Scholarship has been awarded to two students from Point Park University. Patrick Millard served the SPE MA region as the Webmaster for 2011 and was active in SPE for a number of years. To celebrate his life and contributions to SPE, one scholarship was awarded by the SPE MA region and a matching second scholarship was generously donated by Point Park University.

We would like to thank Dr. Heather Starr Fielder of Point Park University for her help with the Patrick Millard Scholarship.

Additionally, we would like to thank SPE National for recognizing the contributions of Patrick Millard by donating a National Conference Registration to each Millard scholarship winner.

Enjoy San Francisco!

Sincerely,

Sonya A. Lawyer

SPE MA Secretary

Marie Mashyna:

Marie Mashnya is working towards her BFA in Photography at Point Park University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Marrow is a rendering of something that is difficult to articulate. It is about those quick moments in life that are not always shared or acknowledged, the interior transitional moments between action and reaction. They are bursts of significant emotion that do not appear externally, but occur silently within. They are defining moments that last perhaps a quarter of a second but linger while we exhale and sometimes long after that.

-Marie Mashnya

The scholarship committee found her imagery particularly compelling and awarded her a Patrick Millard Scholarship for her work "Marrow".

Jamie Russel:

Jamie Russell is working towards a BFA in Photography at Point Park University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

This project was an experiment with letting go. After I began working with it, I began to embrace the uncertainty of the pinhole. I eventually let go of any control I had over the image making process and simply opened the shutter. While making the abstract images I finally accepted that I didn't have control.

- Jamie Russell

She was challenged by Patrick Millard to create and use a pinhole camera. The resulting body of work, "Letting Go", was selected for the scholarship award.