| Thursday, June 26 |
PHOTO-CULTURALISM: A Panel to Discuss Photography as Aesthetic Practice via Culture Work
(Hybrid)
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PHOTO-CULTURALISM: A Panel to Discuss Photography as Aesthetic Practice via Culture Work
Baltimore Camera Club is hosting its inaugural annual Photo-Culturalism panel! I invited Teri Henderson from the Baltimore Beat to mediate and facilitate the discussion between Baltimore's hardest working and generous photo-artists and activists, Devin Allen, Joe Giordano, Chuck Patch, and Micah E. Wood.
How do we, as photographers, use our cameras in the service of culture work, a sister to our aesthetic practices?
How can photography play a role in visualizing what might be the dormant or hidden aspects of advocacy, influence, and representation? How do we actually see our neighborhoods as viable places to practice and document our aesthetics and vision, and actually interact with the people who inhabit and work in these environments?
The Baltimore Camera Club, America’s oldest, continually-running photography society, has invited five artists
and activists from our own Baltimore City to illustrate the stories behind their images, and answer questions that address the motivation to move beyond social media, and the gallery, to publish works of photography, and how this complements the work already being done in the field. The panelists will have their books for sale.
Whether in person or attending via Zoom, bring your questions, ideas, and your friends: this event is FREE and open to all members of the community.
TERI HENDERSON is a Baltimore-based independent curator and
the Arts and Culture Editor of Baltimore Beat. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, The Washington Post, and numerous other publications. Henderson’s previous roles include staff writer for BmoreArt, gallery coordinator for Connect + Collect, and board member of Maryland Volunteer Lawyers for The Arts. Henderson was a 2020 Momus Emerging Critics Resident, 2024 Poynter-Koch Media and Journalism Fellow, and a 2024 Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.
Fellow. In 2024, Baltimore Magazine named her a GameChanger
for her role as a leading voice in Baltimore’s creative community. In 2023, she served as a jury member for the exhibition “Histories Collide: Jackie Milad x Fred Wilson x Nekisha Durrett.” In 2024, she was a consulting curator for the exhibition “New Worlds: Women to Watch 2024” at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Most recently she co-curated LAYERS: The Art of Contemporary Collage at Maryland Institute College of Art. She is the author of Black Collagists: The Book (2021) and currently serves on the Board of Directors for Art+Feminism, and is the assistant curator for the inaugural Scout Art Fair.
DEVIN ALLEN (born 1988, Baltimore, Maryland) is an award winning, self-taught photographer and artist. He gained international
acclaim in May 2015 when one of his photographs of the Baltimore
Uprising was published on the cover of TIME Magazine, making him
the third amateur photographer to have his work featured in the publication. Since then, his work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art, The Peale, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African-American History & Culture in Baltimore, and the Gordon Parks Foundation in New York, among others, and is in the collections of National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, D.C., the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art in Auburn, Alabama. Allen’s photographs have also been featured in New York Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Aperture, and on a second TIME cover in 2020.
His accolades include the first Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship in 2017, an NAACP Image Award nomination for his book, A Beautiful Ghetto (Haymarket Books, September 2017), and the Gordon Parks Foundation/Steidl Book Prize in 2023. Allen is also the founder of Through Their Eyes, a youth photography educational program, and was recognized by the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture in 2019 for his arts and activism leadership. His latest book, No Justice, No Peace: From the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter, was released in 2022 under the Legacy Lit imprint of Hachette Book Group. In 2020, he was named an ambassador for Leica Camera AG—an international, premium manufacturer of cameras and sports optics. His forthcoming book, Baltimore, will be published by Steidl in June 2025.
JOSEPH MARIO (J.M.) GIORDANO is an award-winning photojournalist based in Baltimore and co-host of the photojournalism podcast, 10 Frames Per Second with Molly Roberts. His book, Trumpland:Carnival to Chaos (Nighted Life Press, 2024) documents the rise of Trump. This year he was named a finalist for the prestigious 2025 National Gallery’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Prize and will be featured in American Photography Annual 41 for his coverage of 10 years of police brutality in America. His work was featured in American Photography Annual 40 for his second book 13-23 (Nighted Life Press), covering a decade of Baltimore’s homicides. His international photographs covering the collapse of the steel industry are the subject of a solo show at the Museum of Industry in Baltimore. His first book, We Used to Live At Night (Culture Crush Editions) chronicles 25 years of the city at night and was called “a mix between Weegee and Brassai”. His work has been featured on NPR, ProPublica, Al-Ja-zeera, GQ, Architectural Digest, Taste, The Observer New Review Sunday Magazine, The Guardian,
The Telegraph, The Daily Mail, Washington Post, The Baltimore City Paper, i-D Magazine, Discovery Channel Inc., Rolling-Stone. His work, from the Struggle Civil Rights series, is in the permanent collections at the Reginald Lewis Museum.
CHUCK PATCH began photographing with “serious intent” in
1970. Although he has never worked full-time as a professional photographer, he has exhibited and published periodically since then.
Known primarily for his street photography, he has also produced landscape, portrait, documentary, publicity and product photography.
His work has been exhibited in the US, France, and England. In the early 2010’s he was a member of the street photography collective Vivo. He has published his work in American Photo, APF, Bump Books, Eyeshot Magazine, Huck Magazine, and a variety of photography-oriented websites. His self-published book, Ordinary Places, is available through Magcloud. Silver Keeps, from Eyeshot Books, was published in 2025. His photographs can be viewed online at Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/photos/chuckp/), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/chuckpatch/), and
Tumblr (https://www.tumblr.com/blog/chuckpatch). Prints are available at https://chuckpatch.darkroom.com/
MICAH E. WOOD is a Baltimore-based photographer and musician
originally from Newport News, Virginia. After moving to Baltimore
in 2009 to attend the Maryland Institute College of Art, he quickly
fell in love with the city’s vibrant art scene and discovered his passion for portrait photography. His first book, Features (2016), celebrates Baltimore’s music scene through portraits of his favorite artists. Since then (2016-2024) Micah has continued to document bands and individuals of the microcosmic Baltimore music scene, culminating in his new 300 page photo book Scene Seen. He has expanded his storytelling through editorial photography featured in The Washington Post, Inc. Magazine, Pitchfork, Baltimore Magazine, Urban Outfitters,Bandcamp and more. Micah has also had his portraiture displayed in galleries such as Creative Alliance, Maryland Art Place, and Metro Gallery. His approach to using light as a 3-dimensional or sculptural form on the subject is a playful feature that links both his portrait and landscape work. Micah is currently a Full-Time Freelance Photographer and a Part-Time Photography Professor at Maryland Institute College of Art.
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