“Reinventing Documentary: Cornell Capa and the International Center of Photography (ICP)”

In the 1970s, photojournalism faced irrelevancy and potential extinction. Competition from television news, changes in magazine publishing, public fatigue with war pictures, and a growing interest in photographs as a collectible artform all threatened news pictures' markets and credibility. In the midst of these crises, the photojournalist turned curator Cornell Capa (1918-2008) decided to reinvent photojournalism's past to ensure its future. This talk examines the multiple media platforms through which Capa preserved the work of living and deceased photographers, and how his work in the 1970s paved the way for his creation of the International Center of Photography (ICP): New York's first museum, archive, and educational forum devoted exclusively to photography.

A historian of photography, the press, and mass visual culture, Nadya Bair is assistant professor of Art History at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY. Bair's first monograph, The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Postwar Image Market (University of California Press, 2020), won the 2021 PROSE Award for Media and Cultural Studies. Bair's articles have appeared in the journals American Art, History of Photography, Fotogeschichte, and edited volumes including Facing Black Star (MIT Press, 2023) and Life Magazine and the Power of Photography (Yale, 2020). Bair's current book project, Reinventing Documentary, on New York's International Center of Photography and its founder Cornell Capa, was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowship for 2023-2024.

This talk will take place in room A266 Bay 10 on the second floor of Smith Warehouse. Free and open to the public.