Mississippi State University will be host Oct. 22-25 for the Society for Photographic Education's 1998 regional conference.
The society is a national, non-profit organization that serves as a forum for the discussion of photography and related media as a means of creative expression and cultural insight. Its meeting at MSU brings together members from Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas.
Sally Mann, a nationally acclaimed fine art photographer from Lexington, Va., will be featured speaker at an opening session on the 22nd. Her public presentation begins at 7 p.m. in the Bettersworth Auditorium of Giles Hall.
Author of "Immediate Family" and "Still Time" (Aperture, 1992 and 1994, respectively), Mann is best known for large black-and-white prints shot with an 8-by-10 camera. Described as "haunting, comforting and disturbing," her works have earned fellowships from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts, among others.
Mann's lecture is the only part of the conference free to non-registered participants. The registration fee is $40 for society members; $50 for all others.
Making later presentations will be New York photographer Linda Troller; Rene Paul Barilleaux, chief curator of the Mississippi Museum of Art; and Claudia Khell-Cox, visual arts curator at the Louisiana State Museum, among others.
A special travel session on the 24th will feature Mississippi photographer Birney Imes III. Editor and general manager of the Columbus Commercial Dispatch, Imes is author of "Juke Joints" and "Whispering Pines," two nationally distributed books of rural Mississippi images.
Joining the art department and its Visiting Fine Artist Program and Photography Development Fund as conference co-sponsors are MSU's College of Arts and Sciences, School of Architecture, University Honors Program, communication department, along with PrintFile Inc., Luminos Photographic, and Ilford Photographic.
For more information, contact conference coordinator Marita Gootee at (601) 325-2970.
