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The New York Public Library

presents

The Big Picture

Josh Sapan

in conversation with

Luc Sante

 

Wednesday October 23, 2013

6:00 p.m.

Margaret Liebman Berger Forum
Room 227 (2^nd Floor)

 

The New York Public Library

Stephen A. Schwarzman Building

5^thAvenue at 42^nd Street

New York, NY 10018

917-275-6975

 www.nypl.org

(directions)

  Room 227 opens to public at 5:30 p.m.
All events are FREE and subject to last minute change or cancellation.  

The early 20th century saw a mania for panoramic group photographs, some encompassing hundreds of people and spanning a full 360 degrees. Celebrated in a new book, The Big Picture: America in Panorama, the panoramic photo is an ostensibly faithful record that can blur the line between fact and fiction. Join editor Josh Sapan and critic Luc Sante as they discuss these astonishing images and show examples of some of their favorites.

At the turn of the 20th century, photographic technology and an American culture of optimism and self-celebration combined to create what Luc Sante calls the “strange and compelling medium” of panoramic group photography. Organizations famed and obscure—from the Anti-Saloon League of America and the troops at Camp Sevier during the Great War to the members of the Midget Swing Review—commissioned photographers to produce images that sometimes encompassed a full 360 degrees. The photographs compose a portrait of a society on the cusp of sweeping change, as their details preserve the enduring humanity of their subjects: a bathing beauty tosses her curls; a group of cross-dressing women smile enigmatically at an off-camera friend; children at play on a summertime lawn appear only as blurs behind an Ohio town meeting. Compiled by Josh Sapan, The Big Picture: America in Panorama gathers nearly one hundred of these fascinating images, most never before published.

Copies of the book are available for purchase and signing at the event after the audience Q&A.

Josh Sapan is the CEO of Rainbow Media, the company that operates the cable channels AMC, IFC, WEtv, and the Sundance Channel. The channels, movies, documentaries and series created under his guidance have won multiple awards including Emmys, Golden Globes, Oscars, and Peabodys. Sapan serves on the board of trustees of the New School, People For The American Way, and the Museum of the Moving Image.

Luc Sante is a writer and critic whose books include Folk Photography, Kill All Your Darlings, Walker Evans, The Factory of Facts, and Low Life. He has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Grammy Award for album liner notes, and an Infinity Award for writing from the International Center of Photography. Sante teaches writing and the history of photography at Bard College.

This event is organized in collaboration with Arezoo Moseni.