November 15, 2022
A Life With Others
This book is a definite monograph of Laurence Salzmann' Photographs works that celebrates his close to 60 year career in photography.
Commissioned by the University of Pennsylvania’s Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts in honor of Salzmann’s gift of a substantial photographic and film archive that covers works from his 60 year career as a photographer and filmmaker.
Text by noted photographer and photo essayist Jason Francisco*.
Cover photograph by Siegfried Halus of a young Salzmann in 1966 while he was filming his film The Ragman with a 16 mm Bolex movie camera.
September 1, 2022
Laurence Salzmann speaking to people at the 2021
Wiota Street Garden Show (Philadelphia).
A Path Ahead:
20/20 Photo Festival
Satellite Exhibition 2022
Presented by Photo West Gallery
Featuring Laurence Salzmann, Amie Potsic,
Katie Tackman, Vanessa Couvreur,
and Milton Lindsay
Show Dates:
September 16 – 30, 2022
Garden Party & Reception:
Sunday, September 18, 2-5 PM
Location:
Wiota Street Garden
4020 Powelton Ave
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Photography captures the past, present, and future in an instant. Exploring the world around them, these photographers communicate new and undiscovered perspectives on foreign territory both near and far - paths ahead revealed. Through their contemporary lenses, our diverse planet is revered and celebrated in documentary, abstract, and conceptual photography.
This public art exhibition is presented at Wiota Street Garden, an urban farm and vegetable market in West Philadelphia, to share a multiplicity of perspectives through photography and connect with the vibrant local community. The Garden Party and Reception is open to all and will feature light refreshments alongside the weekly vegetable market in this beautiful, green oasis in Philadelphia.
April 8, 2022
Showing Faith at the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral
In Showing Faith, the well-known artist Laurence Salzmann (born Philadelphia, 1944) examines faith traditions across time and culture, culled from his photographic archive of some six decades. The exhibition focuses on celebrations that Salzmann has witnessed as a participant-observer, following his training in visual anthropology at Temple University. Salzmann began to make "faith" photographs at age 17, of Easter observances in Chichicastenango, Guatemala, by candlelight and the African American woman who proudly display their church bonnets on Easter Street at the church on the corner of Baring Street where he lives. Presented here for the first time, these photographs possess great resonance, and anticipate the arc of Salzmann’s subsequent work—his search for the specific and universal truths that a keen-eyed, keen-minded photographer is poised to receive.
—Jason Francisco
FYI: The photographs in this exhibition are drawn from my archives, representing close to sixty years of a life in photography. Many of the photographs look into faith from a social perspective—how people of different cultures outwardly display faith ritually—and others of the photographs are abstract or allegorical considerations. Why this variation? Like trust or dignity or wonder, faith is, of course, ultimately an inner phenomenon—strictly speaking, it has never been photographed. The best I can do in pictures is to provoke an imagination of it. It seems to me also an open question how we should distinguish between "true" and "false" objects of faith. We use this word, after all, to describe both tender religious devotion and hateful ideological fanaticism. Again, my hope is to prompt reflection. If you are so moved, I encourage you to write your thoughts, and add them to the public exploration of this spiritual and also worldly topic. —Laurence Salzmann
Feb 1, 2022
Laurence Salzmann’s retrospective exhibition,
Misk’i Kachi Runakuna, at Taller Puertorriqueño from X-X
In 2016, Laurence Salzmann traveled to Peru on a Fulbright scholarship. His project was to observe and document the traditional ways the native Quechua speaking people have maintained their traditions from pre-Hispanic times. It was during his stop in the town of Maras near Machu Picchu that he became captivated by the salt ponds, “Salinas de Maras.” Their relationship with these famous ponds, or Salineras in Spanish, has endured for more than 800 years, preceding even the Inca Empire. Being in continuous use since that time, it offered a window that Salzmann describes as “the extraordinary symbiosis of natural beauty and human history.”
Reception for Laurence Salzmann’s exhibition. Read more here.