events & groups
IRIS Nights Lecture Series (Thursday evenings from 6:30 to 8pm)
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Additional lectures for the The Year from the 67th Pictures of the Year International (POYi) exhibition period will be posted within the next few weeks.
Please check back for details!
The Annenberg Space for Photography offers live programming through the lecture series entitled IRIS NIGHTS. IRIS NIGHTS is a public program offered free of charge, by online reservation on a first-come, first-served basis. IRIS NIGHTS brings to life the featured exhibit with hourlong lectures by the photographers featured in the Photography Space exhibits, as well as by other notable guest artists and experts. These programs give attendees unique access to the artists in the intimate setting of the Photography Space.
PLEASE NOTE: The digital content in our central Digital Gallery is suspended at 5pm on Thursdays
to prepare for our IRIS NIGHTS lectures.
Lecture Series Schedule:
Francine Orr
Thursday, September 2, 6:30-8:00pm
For more event details, click here:
Growing up in Colorado, Francine Orr was profoundly affected by images of the American civil rights movement, which led her to study history and art at the University of Saint Mary, in Leavenworth, Kansas. After college, Orr volunteered for the Peace Corps on the island of Yap in the Federated States of Micronesia before beginning her career as a photojournalist.
While living in a Yapese village and working with visiting anthropologists and documentary teams, she learned how to be a quiet observer -- a skill that served her well during her extensive work in Africa and Asia. Her six-part series chronicling poverty in Africa, "Living on Pennies," a collaboration with Los Angeles Times Managing Editor Davan Maharaj, inspired readers to donate tens of thousands of dollars to aid agencies working in Africa.
Orr is a staff photojournalist with the Los Angeles Times and has won numerous awards for her journalism.
Renée C. Byer:
"The Storytelling Power of Photography"
Thursday, September 16, 6:30-8:00pm
Registration for this event will be open on
Wednesday, September 8th at 12pm PT and Thursday, September 9th at 9:30am PT.
Renée C. Byer is a Senior Photojournalist at the Sacramento Bee and has been profiled in newspapers and magazines throughout the world. Byer has the rare inner lens needed to produce photos with profound emotional resonance and sensitivity.
She is currently working on a book project for the nonprofit organization The Forgotten International, with the working title Living on a Dollar a Day . Her hope is to tell the story of the more than one billion individuals around the world who work long hours -- sometimes under dangerous conditions -- to ultimately earn only about a dollar a day. Byer's goal is to raise awareness of the women, children, and families at the bottom of the economic ladder, who work so hard just to stay alive.
Byer’s talent has brought her many honors, including the Pulitzer Prize in feature photography for a series called "A Mother’s Journey," the McClatchy President's Award, the Associated Press's Mark Twain Award for Excellence in News Photography, the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism, the POYi World Understanding Award and World Hunger's Harry Chapin Media Award for Photojournalism.
Her work has been exhibited most recently at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art. Other exhibits include the LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph, the Hartmann Center Art Gallery, the Muroff Kotler Visual Arts Gallery, FotoWeek, the Exposure Gallery, Days Japan International photojournalism exhibit, the International Children’s Cancer Day and the Angkor Wat photography festival. An interactive video interview with Byer and her twenty Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs can be viewed in a permanent kiosk exhibit at the Newseum in Washington, DC.
Byer, a native New Yorker, graduated cum laude from Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois in 1980. She is married to photographer Paul Kitagaki, Jr.
Larry Towell:
"Being Human"
Thursday, September 23, 6:30-8:00pm
Registration for this event will be open on
Wednesday, September 15th at 12pm PT and Thursday, September 16th at 9:30am PT.
Larry Towell's business card reads "Human Being." Experience as a poet and a folk musician has done much to shape his personal style. The son of a car repairman, Towell grew up in a large family in rural Ontario. During studies in visual arts at Toronto's York University, he was given a camera and taught how to process black-and-white film.
A stint of volunteer work in Calcutta in 1976 further inspired Towell to photograph and write. In 1984, he became a freelance photographer and writer focusing on issues such as dispossessed peoples, exile and peasant rebellion. He completed projects on the Nicaraguan Contra War, the relatives of the disappeared in Guatemala and American Vietnam War veterans who returned to Vietnam to rebuild the country after the war. His first published magazine essay, "Paradise Lost," exposed the ecological consequences of the catastrophic Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound. He became a Magnum nominee in 1988, and a full member in 1993.
In 1996, Towell completed a project based on ten years of reportage in El Salvador, followed the next year by a major book on the Palestinians. His fascination with landlessness also led him to document the Mennonite migrant workers of Mexico, an eleven-year project completed in 2000. With the help of the inaugural Henri Cartier-Bresson Award, he finished a second highly-acclaimed book on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in 2005, and in 2008 released the award-winning The World From My Front Porch , a project on his own family in rural Ontario where he sharecrops a 75-acre farm.
Rick Loomis:
"OUT THERE: Photographs that Matter"
Thursday, September 30, 6:30-8:00pm
Registration for this event will be open on
Wednesday, September 22nd at 12pm PT and Thursday, September 23rd at 9:30am PT.
Rick Loomis won the Pulitzer Prize for his yearlong project documenting the ills of the world’s oceans. He has been a photojournalist for the Los Angeles Times since 1994, covering a wide array of topics with an empathetic eye that draws viewers into situations they might not otherwise witness.
Over the last decade, two major themes have run though Loomis' work - the environment and world conflict. He will present a mix of images and multimedia presentations ranging from his war experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, work on the "Altered Oceans," the earthquake in Haiti and the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
Since September 11, 2001, Loomis has been intensely involved in documenting the United States war against terrorist groups. He spent a month in New York City in the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center and then followed the story to Afghanistan. Since then, he’s spent almost two years living in Afghanistan -- either embedded with the Army, Marines or Special Forces, or telling the civilian side of the story.
An avid SCUBA diver since the age of 15, Loomis has explored some of the world's most pristine and remote corners, as well as the damaged depths of sewage outflows and urchin barrens. In pursuit of environmentally-based stories, he has camped on the Alaskan tundra, trekked through the jungles of Uganda and rappelled from cliffs in the remote Oregon wilderness.
A graduate of Western Kentucky University, Loomis holds a BA in Photojournalism and a minor in Latin American Studies. He lives in Long Beach, California, with his girlfriend and their dog Tikka.
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