Lynn Hershman Leeson, Seduction, 1985, gelatin silver print. McEvoy Family Collection. Courtesy the artist; Bridget Donahue Gallery, New York; and Altman Siegel, San Francisco.

Lynn Hershman Leeson, Seduction, 1985, gelatin silver print. McEvoy Family Collection. Courtesy the artist; Bridget Donahue Gallery, New York; and Altman Siegel, San Francisco.

Talks & Panels

Person. Woman. Camera. TV.

A lively discussion on technology and the female body with pioneering media artist Lynn Hershman Leeson and feminist scholar Peggy Phelan.

Lynn Hershman Leeson’s arresting photograph Seduction (1985) is the jumping off point for an illustrated discussion on technology and the female body led by curator Corey Keller with Hershman Leeson and feminist scholar Peggy Phelan. Person. Woman. Camera. TV. is organized by Keller in conjunction with the exhibit Image Gardeners, which features many images, including Seduction, that resist and reframe conventional understandings of identity and the self.

Hershman Leeson is a media artist whose pioneering work has long investigated the power of technology to frame and control the female body. Phelan is a renowned feminist scholar whose work is foundational to the field of performance studies. Keller has curated exhibitions and written about a wide array of photographers, including Susan Meiselas, Clare Strand, and Francesca Woodman.

ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS

Lynn Hershman Leeson is an American artist and filmmaker whose work transgresses art, social commentary, technology, and media. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums internationally, including the New Museum, New York; The Tate Modern, London; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. Her films have been exhibited at the Berlin Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, and Toronto International Film Festival, among others. She is the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, Prix ars Electronica, and Siggraph Lifetime Achievement Award. She lives and works in San Francisco and New York.

Corey Keller is a historian of photography and independent curator based in Oakland. From 2003 to 2021, she served as curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) where her exhibitions included monographic surveys on Dawoud Bey, John Beasley Greene, and Francesca Woodman as well as the thematic exhibits About Time: Photography in a Moment of Change and Brought to Light: Photography and Invisibility, 1840-1900. Recent writings include essays on Eliza Withington, Susan Meiselas, and Clare Strand. She has lectured and taught widely, and is currently adjunct professor in the photography program at California College of the Arts (CCA).

Peggy Phelan is the Ann O’Day Maples Chair in the Arts and Professor of Theater & Performance Studies and English at Stanford University. Her widely influential work covers an extensive range of subjects including feminism, photography, dance, film, music, and poetry. She most recently edited, contributed to, and co-curated with Richard Meyer Contact Warhol: Photography Without End (MIT Press and Cantor Art Center, 2018). Phelan has been President of Performance Studies International, a fellow of the Getty Research Institute, and a Guggenheim Fellow.