Meet member Joel Kitchens at our February 9 meeting when he shares his story and his new book!
Where will your art take you? For Joel Kitchens, it led to a doctoral degree and a book newly published by Texas A&M University Press. In the early 2000s, Joel had been changing his photographic technique from 35mm color to 4×5 large format black and white, and a return to the traditional wet darkroom. San Antonio’s five colonial-era missions became the preferred subjects he photographed as he honed his skills. Because Joel was neither a native Texan nor Catholic, he began to read and research the missions in order to make better informed images. Somewhere along the way, he realized there was a story about the missions that was not being told. The research escalated exponentially and he chose to make these missions the focus for his doctoral dissertation, and after many revisions, the present book, San Antonio and Its Missions: Three Centuries of History, Memory, and Heritage. The missions are “sites of memory,” and the book defines this concept and explores how and why Spain built the missions, what happened to the missions after the Spanish colonizers left, and how and why the missions came to weigh so heavily in American imagination and identity, even into the twenty-first century. Now with the book published, Joel can return to the style of photography he loves most, the silver gelatin print, created on film, and made in the traditional wet darkroom.
Doors open at DEGALLERY at 5:30pm. There will be light refreshments. Come by a bit early, chat and catch up!
