Artist Talks at Moore College of Art & Design
Sponsored by Moore College of Art & Design and Aperturent
Architectural Landscapes
How do photographers transform lived experience into compelling visual stories? Join photographers James B. Abbott , Mike Froio and Rob Tucher for an engaging conversation moderated by Leslie Lodwick exploring the diverse ways contemporary artists use photography to document, interpret, and reimagine the world around them.
From Froio's evocative explorations of forgotten landscapes and American industrial history, to Tucher's deeply human documentary portraits that celebrate resilience and everyday life, to Coston-Hardy's intimate investigations of identity, memory, and belonging, each artist brings a distinct perspective to the evolving language of photography. Together, they will discuss their creative processes, the ethical and emotional dimensions of image-making, and how personal experience shapes visual storytelling. This dynamic panel offers audiences a rare opportunity to hear three accomplished photographers reflect on the power of photography to preserve history, foster empathy, and create meaningful connections across communities. [20/20]
Moderator
Leslie Lodwick
Leslie McShane Lodwick is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Creative and Critical Studies at Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia. She holds a Ph.D. in Visual Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research focuses on the built environments of education, histories of photography, landscape and the environment, and the role of children and families in histories of planning. She holds an M.S.Ed. in urban education from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in art and art history. Her chapter, “Backward to Wayward: Listening to Archives of Disciplinary Education in Philadelphia,” was included in Paths to Prison: On the Architectures of Carcerality published by Columbia Books on Architecture and the City. She has a forthcoming chapter in an edited volume published by TU Delft later this year. Her work has been published in BOOM California, Visual Studies Journal, and SAH Archipedia. She is a former public school teacher.
Artists
Mike Froio
Michael Froio is a photographer, educator, and visual researcher based in southern New Jersey. His work focuses on examining cultural landscapes, industrial heritage, and the built environment, with long-term projects concerned with the relationships between transportation, industry, and place.
He is the creator of From the Main Line, an ongoing photographic survey of the former Pennsylvania Railroad, and Over the Mountain, a contemporary study of Pennsylvania's anthracite coal region. His photographs have also contributed to preservation and documentation initiatives, including Railroads in the American Landscape for the Library of Congress.
Froio serves as faculty and Facility Manager in Drexel University's Photography Program, where he teaches photography and supports the development of emerging photographers. His photographs are held in the collections of the Library of Congress, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Woodmere Art Museum, and the Camden County Arts Bank.
Rob Tucher
Rob Tucher was born and raised in New Jersey, though he has spent much of his professional career on the road. He has visited fully 49 of the 50 states and hopes to add Alaska to his tally. He was born in Plainfield, New Jersey in October of 1956 and went through the public school systems in Dunellen and Bridgewater, and then on to Rutgers University, attaining a Communications BA in 1979. Twenty years later, Rob went back to school and secured his certificate in Historic Preservation from Drew University in1999.
During a period of intern employment with the USDA Forest Service, Rob met and was later assigned to bird photographer L. John Trott. This was a pivotal experience, and John became his mentor and friend. Rob turned his attentions to photographing birds at every and all opportunities and garnered quite a few publishing credits, including a cover of the National Audubon Society’s American Birds journal in July 1981, and numerous inclusions in their and others’ guidebooks, bird books, magazines and journals. But Rob quickly discovered that freelance income derived from natural history subject matter didn’t support a growing family so he turned his vocational attentions elsewhere.
He has operated Rob Tucher Photographic Documentation (PhotoDoc) as sole proprietor since 1979, providing, in particular, photographic interpretations of cultural remains and resources, but his introduction to historic structures photography began by chance in 1983.
James B. Abbott
James B. Abbott is a photographer returning to his roots on the Delaware River.
Abbott arrived in Philadelphia in 1981 and began photographing the Ben Franklin Bridge and surrounding neighborhoods along the Delaware River.
Over a 25-year period produced three additional and different bodies of work on the Ben Franklin Bridge and its neighborhood. He also went on to other long-term urban and landscape projects in Berlin, the Cape Cod National Seashore, Florence, and Venice. A graduate of Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI, Abbott has received numerous grants, awards, residencies, and commissions while maintaining a freelance photography practice.
After five years of teaching in Certaldo, Italy, he has recently refocused his image-making to Philadelphia and the riverfront, and his studio at Cherry Street Pier places him in its epicenter. He will again seek to create photographs that are densely layered, idiosyncratic, personal visual interpretations that inform collective memory through investigating dichotomies and juxtapositions of old and new, iconic and mundane, enduring and changing.
