"Half-Frames" Curated by Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock & Anibal Pella-Woo June 1 – July 31, 2013 Reception: Wednesday, June 5, 6 – 8 PM
All images courtesy of the Reverend J. Joseph Lynch S.J. Collection of the Fordham University Archives
Half-Frames brings together twenty-one prints made from the original color transparencies held in the personal archive of J. Joseph Lynch, S.J., a mathematics and seismology professor at Fordham University from 1950 to 1967. He also ran the William Spain Seismological Station at Fordham University’s Rose Hill campus for some 60 years. Through our research at the Fordham University Archive, we were pleased to discover that J. Joseph Lynch, S.J. was an avid photographer, as well as a teacher.
The title Half-Frames refers to the dimensions of the original color transparencies utilized in this exhibition, which are one half the size of a standard 35mm frame. This smaller format was often chosen because it doubled the number of images that one could make from a single roll of 35mm film and was more cost effective. Consequently, it was often used to document topics of a personal nature and was generally utilized in a more casual manner. Our edit from a much larger set of slides made in the 1960s by J. Joseph Lynch, S.J. displays this trend and highlights his spontaneous approach to documenting travels, events, people, and places. Our criteria for image selection stemmed from our mutual enthusiasm for his images, which resonated with contemporary directions in photography from the period such as the snapshot aesthetic and interests in the vernacular within the medium of photography.
We would like to give special thanks to Patrice Kane at the Fordham University archive housed at the Rose Hill campus’ Walsh Family Library for facilitating this exhibition. Her initial suggestion to look at several photographs of icebergs held in the archive started us on a winding investigation that resulted in the exhibit that you now see before you. Although there are no icebergs in this exhibition, the image of the iceberg, with all its hidden potential, is an appropriate metaphor for an archive – what you see at first is only a small part of the picture.
Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock & Anibal Pella-Woo, 2013
Press: Preceding Instagram: The Photos of J. Joseph Lynch, S.J.
