Artist, teacher, and youth mentor Iris Dawn Parker will give a free public lecture at Gustavus Adolphus College at 7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 5 in Wallenberg Auditorium. Parker’s presentation is titled “Africans & Photography: We wish to tell our own stories, now!”
Parker was born in North Carolina and now lives in Johannesburg, South Africa as a teacher and mentor to emerging photojournalists and documentary photographers exploring issues of identity formation, gender, family, and community. She will discuss her work with these emerging South African photographers as well as her own current projects, including the Apartheid Archive Book Project, done in collaboration with Witwatersrand University.
Parker manages the Photojournalism and Documentary Photography Programme at Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg and has been an active volunteer and photographer with the Rivers Foundation, working on projects in communities such as Alexandra Township and Soweto. She has been active in residencies and curatorial projects for Wits University, the Africa Gender Institute, UCT, Human Science and Research Council, and exhibitions in South Africa and the United States. In 2010 she was curator of an exhibition by celebrated photojournalist Peter Magubane titled “Mandela: Man of the People” at Primitive Gallery in Chicago.
Parker’s appearance at Gustavus is sponsored by the Lyceum Lecture Series, the Art and Art History Department, and the Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies Program. For more information about Parker’s appearance at Gustavus, contact Associate Professor of Art and Art History Priscilla Briggs at pbriggs@gustavus.edu.
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