Your Good Pictures: Trends in Popular Photography

How-to books and photo blogs often represent the rules of photography as timeless or inherent to the medium. In fact, though, what we define as a “good picture” is constantly changing. In her new book,  "Good Pictures: A History of Popular Photography," Kim Beil traces 50 stylistic trends through 175 years of photographic practice. In this informal hour-long conversation via Zoom, she discusses elements of contemporary pictures that seem unassailably good (the “best” angle for selfies, the “best” light for portraits), and shows that these judgments are actually recent developments, which overturn decades of previous advice on how to make good pictures.

In the second half of the hour, Beil comments on pictures submitted in advance by you, the audience, placing your own family photos (1880 – 1980) in the context of photo history. Send pictures of your favorite vintage photos to communityprograms@sbma.net by 9/21 to have your photos included in the conversation. Kim Beil teaches art history at Stanford University

Breast Cancer Resource Center of Santa Barbara: PINK WEEK 2020

Santa Barbara, CA (September 29 – October 2, 2020) – On Tuesday, September 29, 2020 The Breast Cancer Resource Center of Santa Barbara (BCRC) will host PINK WEEK a series of FREE educational webinars to raise awareness and much needed funds to continue providing essential free services for women and men facing breast cancer in the Santa Barbara community.

PINK WEEK will coincide with the beginning of October which is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, an annual campaign to bring awareness of the disease. On October 1, 2020 Dr. Susan Love, of the Susan Love Foundation for Breast Cancer Research, will present “A message of hope” as PINK WEEK keynote speaker. Additional topics will include “Metastatic and Learning to Thrive”, “The Art of Self-Care” and a session devoted to our Spanish speaking community “Compañeras unidas por la salud de nuestros senos”.

Please visit https://www.bcrcsb.org/pinkweek/ for more information and online registration.

Inclusion in Action

A conversation about being Black and creating a diversity sensitive environment on Weds, September 30th at 6:30 p.m.

Art Matters Lecture – Casta Paintings: Picturing Racial Difference in Colonial Mexico with Elena Fitzpatrick Sifford (via Zoom)

Elena Fitzpatrick Sifford
Assistant Professor of Art History, Baker Center for the Arts

In the 18th century in Mexico, artists began painting images of couples of different ethnic backgrounds along with their racially-mixed children. Typically, created in sets of 16, each picture showed a different type that was loosely codified in the sistema de castas, a hierarchy that categorized people based on racial mixture. This talk introduces casta paintings and discusses their formal and contextual characteristics, including the impetus for their creation and the significance of the works for those who commissioned and displayed them on both sides of the Atlantic.

credit: Miguel Cabrera, 5. From Spaniard and Mulatto Woman, Morisca (5. De español y mulata, morisca) (detail), 1763. Oil on canvas. Private collection.

Ticket Cost:
Virtual Experience via Zoom: FREE

Fall Programs AHA!

AHA! is offering Free Zoom after-school programs this year with the opportunity to do more in person if things begin to open up.

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