Conversations at MOCA: Two Voices, One Vision

The Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami (MOCA) is pleased to present “Two Voices, One Vision: When Writers and Photographers Collaborate” featuring art historian and curator Dr. Liz Shannon as part of its free, virtual “Conversations at MOCA” series on Aug. 20.

In 2008, while working on a newspaper story with Leonard Pitts, Jr., Carl Juste captured the image of Memphis sanitation worker Elmore Nickelberry and his son, Terence, with a placard that read, “I Am A Man.” Inspired by the collaboration between Juste and Pitts and the “I Am A Man” image that is now installed outdoors as a public artwork on the MOCA Plaza, Shannon will explore a variety of collaborations between photographers and writers. Looking at a wide selection of photographic artworks where image and text combine to create new meanings, she will discuss photobooks including James Agee and Walker Evans’ Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), Roy DeCarava and Langston Hughes’ The Sweet Flypaper of Life (1955), Richard Avedon and James Baldwin’s Nothing Personal (1964), among others.

Dr. Elizabeth Shannon is a curator, writer and academic based in Miami, Florida. She has worked with the collection at the International Center of Photography in New York and held curatorial positions at Dundee Contemporary Arts in Scotland, Locust Projects and Vizcaya Museum and Gardens in Miami, and was a Knight Curatorial Fellow at the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach. Shannon co-founded and ran SEAM, an organization that produced site specific projects and exhibitions of contemporary art across different venues in Glasgow, Scotland. Educated in the UK, Shannon holds a PhD in the History of Photography from the University of St Andrews and an MA in History of Art and English Literature from the University of Glasgow. She has taught at the University of St Andrews in the UK and the University of Miami, Florida International University and New World School of the Arts in the US. Shannon has edited and written for a number of art journals and exhibition publications.

MOCA North Miami’s exhibitions and programs are possible through the generous support of the City of North Miami and its mayor and council; the State of Florida; Department of State and its Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture; the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council; the Miami-Dade County mayor and Board of County Commissioners.

For more information on virtual programming please visit www.mocanomi.org