Events & Discussions

MFA Photography, Video and Related Media presents Michael Shaw, publisher of Reading the Pictures, discussing how the publication analyzes news and media images for meaning, trends, context and fairness. Shaw will also describe how fluency in pictures is central to engagement in the current information, media and social media sphere.

SVA MFA Photography, Video and Related Media presents "The Backlash Election: Campaign '16 In Pictures, A Lecture by Michael Shaw." To many, the 2016 presidential campaign has only deepened the cynicism about the American political system. In this presentation, Michael Shaw, the publisher of Reading the Pictures, offers a visual grand tour of Campaign '16, from the anger and cynicism to the quirky irony to surprising instances of soundness. Michael Shaw, publisher of the non-profit, ReadingThePictures, is an analyst of news photos and visual journalism, and a frequent lecturer and writer on news imagery, photojournalism and documentary photography. Michael has been referred to as the first full-time news photo critic. Reading the Pictures is the only site dedicated to the daily analysis of news and cultural images. Launched in 2004, RTP is closely followed on multiple platforms (notably it’s own website, as well as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook by the news and visual media; the photojournalism community; university journalism, photojournalism and communication programs; and citizens interested in politics and visual culture. The site also features the Reading the Pictures Salon, a series that examines how the media and social media visually frame the major news events of our day. An “aha" exercise in media and visual literacy, the Salon invites photographers, editors and visual scholars to analyze an edit of 9-10 individual images either live, or in a live Google Hangout with accompanying audience chat. For more information: http://www.mfaphoto.sva.edu/

Manovich was born in Moscow, where he studied fine arts, architecture and computer programming. He moved to New York in 1981, where he received his MA, in experimental psychology, from New York University and his PhD, in visual and cultural studies, from the University of Rochester. His dissertation, "The Engineering of Vision from Constructivism to Computers," traces the origins of computer media, relating it to the avant-garde art of the 1920s. He is the author of Software Takes Command (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), Soft Cinema: Navigating the Database (MIT Press, 2005) and The Language of New Media (MIT Press, 2001).