Krista Wortendyke, a Nyack native, is now a Chicago-based conceptual artist whose work examines violence through the lens of photography. She will present two lecture/slide shows of her work at Rockland Community College on Wednesday, September 19 in the Technology Center Ellipse.
The daytime presentation from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m., “Killing Season: A Conversation about Violence,” is sponsored by RCC’s Criminal Justice department. In 2010, Wortendyke set out to track and photograph the site of every homicide in the city of Chicago between Memorial Day and Labor Day, a time she refers to as Chicago’s “killing season.”
Once the crime scenes were processed and the red tape removed, she systematically photographed these locations. The 172 resulting images are shown as a data driven installation. Their form makes tangible the statistics that are glossed over in the news every day. She will give a slide presentation of selected images from the project while discussing her experiences and what she learned.
The evening presentation, “Violence Mediated,” from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. is presented by RCC’s Humanities division. Wortendyke's images are the result of a constant grappling with the mediation of war and brutality both locally and globally. She will discuss her (re): media project, an exploration of the way imagery and information from movies, videogames, newspapers and the Internet come together to form our perception of war.
She will also discuss her Interventions project, a series of appropriated historical images that have been altered in a way that forces the viewer into a new relationship with the content. She will also address her Killing Season projects as they relate to the mediation of violence.
Wortendyke received her MFA in Photography from Columbia College in 2007. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Packer Schopf Gallery and David Weinberg Gallery in Chicago, SOHO20 Gallery in New York, and many other venues. Krista’s work is part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Krista is currently an adjunct professor of photography at Columbia College Chicago. For more info: www.kristawortendyke.com; http://killingseasonaddendum.blogspot.com/; http://killingseasonchicago2010.blogspot.com
