jason francisco home photo works writings contact A brief résumé Teaching 2008-present: Associate Professor, Department of Visual Arts, Emory University. 2006-2008: Associate Professor, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. 2000-2006: Assistant Professor, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. Undergraduate courses in intermediate and advanced black and white photography, social documentary photography, alternative processes, photographic books; graduate courses in the history of photography, photographic criticism, critical theory and cultural studies; advisement of undergraduate and graduate students in photography, book arts, painting, sculpture, video, installation, critical studies. 1998-present Lecturer (photography), Department of Art, Stanford University. Beginning and intermediate black and white photography. 1998-2008 Lecturer (art), Stanford University, Continuing Studies Program. Special courses in photography studies, including: “City of Ambition, City of Desire: Twentieth Century Photography of New York,” “Robert Frank: Legacy of an American Photographer,” “The Photograph as Document in 1930s America,” “Social Photography by Women,” “A Sense of Place,” “Picturing Home,” “Dialogues between Image and Object: Photography at the Cantor Center for the Arts,” “Turning Pages: The Art of the Photo Book,” “The Portrait.” 2003 Lecturer (art), University of Pennsylvania, College of General Studies. History of photography; photographic workshops. 1996-1998 Teaching assistant, Department of Art, Stanford University Beginning, intermediate and advanced black and white photography, the view camera, alternative processes. Books 2009 On Alfred Stieglitz’s The Steerage, University of California Press, as part of the series “Defining Moments in American Photography,” edited by Anthony W. Lee. This volume co-authored with Anne McCauley, Professor of Art History, Princeton University. In production. 2006 Far from Zion: Jews, Diaspora, Memory, 72 duotone plates and an essay, “Diasporic Investigations,” Stanford University Press. The project investigates places of diasporic Jewish origins in Europe and North America in an attempt to work out an unsentimental reckoning with diasporic Jewish memory and identity. Limited Edition Books Chinatown (2008) undertakes a layered witnessing of the Chinese American community's historic neighborhood in San Francisco, in photographs and texts produced between 1990-2008. The book combines an analysis of the origins of an alternate history of American documentary as it grew up in San Francisco’s Chinatown a hundred years ago, and a sequence of original photographs investigating the complexities of social difference in the neighborhood today. Manuscript under review for publication. Fatherlands (2005) contemplates problems of historical memory. A sequence of eighty photographs made between 1988 and 2001 in various locations across Europe, including Nazi camps, the project undertakes a journey through the inferential connections between observation of the commonplace and historical consciousness. New Pictures from East Europe (2002), a collaboration with Paul Mueller, looks at Latvia and Ukraine on the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Soviet Union. The Remaindered Doorway (1998) is a sequence of ruminative photographs made at the addresses of Jews deported from Paris to Auschwitz, addresses collected from the Holocaust archive in Paris. The Hours (1999-2006) is a book of "doubled" transparencies made in the death camp at Birkenau, Poland, plus a text reflecting on Jewish historical memory. The Shoah Scrolls (1997-1998) is an installation of twelve photographic scrolls describing various events in the Jewish Holocaust using sharply transfigured historical photographs. Were people so peaceful I would be bold among them (1998-1999) collects photographs from a winter in Paris. The Villages: Rural India at the End of the Twentieth Century (1990-1997) is a broad-reaching investigation of rural life in southeastern India. The aggregate of many discrete photographic essays, the project relates the social and economic conflicts of a traditional hierarchical society, the low-grade tensions evident in the bodies and the material culture of the villages. My introductory text analyzes the causes of endemic poverty in the areas in which I worked, including original research on problems of debt, land tenure, land use and availability of credit. (4 volumes). Uuluru (The Villages): The Reportages (1990-1997) are fifty-plus photographic essays on specific topics made during two years of photographing in India—four of these essays were published in partial form in the India Magazine (New Delhi). After the American Century (2007) is a broad consideration of American civilization at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Zeiss Ikon and Other Stories (2006-2007) is a series of photo-text pieces investigating Jewish memory and the relationship between narrative and images. The stories include: Zeiss Ikon, Shabbes Goy, Strawberry Mansion, Tsores, and The Garden. A Land of Shadows (2004-ongoing) investigates the loss and retention of memory of immigrant Chinese life in 19th century California. The project combines my own photographs of the remnants of Chinese settlement in the Sierra Nevada foothills and the Sacramento Delta with a forgotten album of government mug shots of Chinese immigrants made at Downieville, Calif. in the 1890s. A Germantown Document (2002-ongoing) investigates the ways in which history and memory of American social experience rise to legibility through photographs. The project describes of one of the oldest neighborhoods in the United States, Philadelphia's Germantown, a place of great social complexity and an important location of industrial and civil rights history. street without words (recitative) (2005) visually interrogates the most public of public realms in San Francisco, the Union Square district, the only area of the city in which there is something close to a true cross section of the city's varied populations. A Concern with History (2003) is a sequence of pictures showing aspects of American life in the foil of the American invasion, conquest and occupation of Iraq in 2003. Integrating photographs made between 2000 and 2003, the book delineates the sprawling geography, the signal cultural formations and the political contradictions of the emergent American empire. Continent (1998-2005) investigates the ideals of American life and its realities, in the form of a peripatetic movement across the United States joined with anonymous vintage snapshots. Blind Panorama of New York (2004) is a sequence of photographs made in Manhattan in the days and weeks following the attacks of September 11th, 2001, along the changing periphery of “Ground Zero,” in an effort to fashion and contend with the image of trauma in the public realm. An American Idyll (2002-ongoing) is a longitudinal study of an American family, collecting a decade of photographs in order to examine time, change and animating interpersonal tensions. In progress. Angel City (1987-ongoing) investigates Los Angeles as a city resistant to traditional notions of documentary photography. The project presents circumspect observational photographs that act as provisional holding formations of social, economic and material flow. Democratic Vistas (1988-ongoing) are books of pointed single images made in many cities and towns across the country (three volumes). Eight American Publics (1990-2004) are a series of short books examining the nature of crowds and public space in varying locations and circumstances across the United States: Gulf War at Home, San Francisco, 1991; State Fair, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1993; Farmer’s Market, Madison, Wisconsin, 1994; Independence Day, Chrissy Field, San Francisco, 1997; Thanksgiving Parade, Philadelphia , 2001; Coney Island, Brooklyn, 2001; The People Speak Against War, Washington D.C., 2003; Disneyworld, 2004. Writings in photography and visual studies 2009 Foreword to Richard Gordon’s American Surveillance: Someone to Watch Over Me, San Francisco, Chimaera Press. 2007 “Teaching Photography as Art,” American Art Journal, Smithsonian American Art Museum. 2007 “Picturing Difference: Documentary Practices and San Francisco’s Chinatown,” in Jason Francisco, Chinatown. 2006 “Diasporic Investigations,” in Jason Francisco, Far from Zion: Jews, Diaspora, Memory, Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press. 2005 “War Photography,” in Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Photography, New York, Routledge. 2004 “The Shock of the Posthumous: Vladimir Syomin's Caucasus Project,” in Diane Neumaier, ed., Beyond Memory: Photo-related Works from the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union, Rutgers University Press, 2004, pp. 207-218. 2003 “Of Cheroots and Current Coins: Reconsidering the Photography of Colonial India.” Exposure, Journal of the Society of Photographic Education, Volume 36:1, 10-22. Writings in literary studies 2002 "In the Heat of Fratricide: The Literature of India’s Partition Burning Freshly," in Mushirul Hasan, ed., Inventing Boundaries: Gender, Politics and the Partition of India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, first edition 2000. 1998 "The Telugu Jews of India," in Jews in Placed You Never Thought Of, ed. Karen Primack (New York: KTAV Publishing). 1997 "M. U. Memon's An Epic Unwritten: A Review," written for Annual of Urdu Studies, XIV (accepted but unpublished). 1996 “In the Heat of Fratricide: The Literature of India’s Partition,” Annual of Urdu Studies, XI, pp. 227-250. 1995 “Alok Bhalla’s Stories on the Partition of India, A Review Essay,” Annual of Urdu Studies, X, pp. 213-221. 1994 “The Pervious Lover and Mir—an Open Essay,” in Annual of Urdu Studies, IX, pp. 119-132. 1994 Book review of Intizar Husain’s Leaves, in Annual of Urdu Studies, IX, pp. 239-242. Solo Exhibitions 2008 “A Concern with History,” Visual Arts Gallery Annex, Emory University, October- December, as part of Atlanta Celebrates Photography 2008. 2008 Far from Zion: Jews, Diaspora, Memory, Gallery 1401 University of the Arts, Philadelphia, January. 2007 Visual Semantics of Diaspora: Far from Zion: Jews, Diaspora, Memory, Lehigh University Art Gallery, January-April. 2005 “Jason Francisco: The Photograph as Document—Photo Works and Books, 1990-2005,” Sedgwick Center, Philadelphia, Nov 2005-Jan 2006. 2004 “A Dialogue with Separation: Picturing an American Chinatown,” Asian/Pacific/American Studies Institute and Gallery, New York University, June-August. 2004 “Far from Zion: Jews, Diaspora, Memory,” Gallery of the School of Engineering and Architecture, Temple University, March. 2003 “The Outer World,” Central European University, Budapest, Hungary, October. 2002 “Far from Zion: Time in Jewish Homelands,” Stanford University Art Gallery, July-September. 1998 “New Photographs from Rural India,” Southern Light Gallery, Amarillo, Tex, April. 1989 "New Pictures," Postcrypt Gallery, Columbia University, New York, NY, June. Selected Group Exhibitions 2006 “Turning Pages: The Photograph and the Book,” Photo West Gallery, Philadelphia, December 4-23. Curated by Jason Francisco. 2005 “Time in New Brunswick,” The Project Room, Mason Gross Galleries, New Brunswick, NJ, September. Installation of photographs by Jason Francisco, Deborah Bowie and Jamie Lyn Davis. 2003 "Home and Away," Works Gallery, San José, CA, including Richard Gordon, Paul Mueller, Davey Hubay, June-July. 2002 "[re]Readings: Artists' Books Now," Gallery Lux, San Francisco, CA, December-February. 2002 "Chinatown Scene/Unseen," Asian Arts Initiative, Philadelphia, PA, October-December. 2000 Nagler Award exhibition, Judah Magnes Museum, Berkeley, Calif, June-August. 2000 Phelan Award exhibition, San Francisco Camerawork, February-March. 1998 Master of Fine Arts exhibition, Stanford University Art Gallery, June. 1997 “In Black and White: What Has Fifty Years of Independence Meant for Indian Women?” Group photography show including Sebastiao Salgado and Raghu Rai. Bombay and 35 Indian cities. 1989 Group photography shows, Postcrypt Gallery, Columbia University, New York, NY, May. Selected Bibliography 2007 Peter Wollheim, “Jews on View,” Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism, Vol. 34.4, pp. 36-38. 2006 Libby Rosof, second review of “Turning Pages” at Photo West Gallery, Philadelphia, fallonandrosof.blogspot.com/search/label/jason%20francisco 2006 Libby Rosof, review of “Turning Pages” at Photo West Gallery, Philadelphia, fallonandrosof.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html. 2005 Theresa Paulson, “Mixing fine art with bricks and mortar,” The Daily Targum, Vol. 137, no. 18, September 27. Interview with Jason Francisco concerning “Time in New Brunswick.” 2005 Michelle Falkenstein, “New Brunswick: Ready for Its Close-Up,” The New York Times, Section 14 NJ, p. 11; New Jersey Footlights, September 4. Review of “Time in New Brunswick.” 2004 Martha Rosler, “Post-Documentary, Post-Photography?” in Decoys and Disruptions, Selected Writings, 1975-2001, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, p. 235. 2003 Mary Hull Webster, review of "[re]Readings: Artists' Books Now at Gallery Lux," Artweek, March issue, p. 17. Includes review of Jason Francisco's work. 2002 Karen Zuercher, "The Great Divide: Why do books and other art forms remain so separate?" San Francisco Weekly, December 24, 2002, online at www.sfweekly.com/issues/2002-12-24/books.html/1/index.html. Review of a group show of artist's books, including a consideration of Jason Francisco's views of artist's books and of his book, Continent. 2002 Rachel Metz, "Jewish Geography: A new photography exhibit at the Thomas Welton Stanford Art Gallery profiles lives 'Far from Zion'", Palo Alto Weekly, (California), July 12, 2002, pp. 11-12. Exhibition review and artist profile. 2001 Renée Olson, "With these Eyes I See," Rutgers Magazine, volume 81, number 3, pp. 32-37. Artist profile and selected photographs. 1999 Featured artist, Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, Arts Supplement, vol. 103, no. 44. 1998 "Megilot HaShoah (The Shoah Scrolls)" reviewed by E.H. Spitz in Hadoar (Hebrew language),July issue, pp. 13-14. 1997 Traveling exhibition "In Black and White" reviewed in numerous Indian newspapers, including The Times of India, The Statesman, The Hindu, Ee Dari (Telugu language). Selected Collections Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. The Judah Magnes Museum, Berkeley, Calif. Stanford University Libraries Special Collections The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley Numerous private collections Education Stanford University, Stanford, Calif., M.F.A., photography, 1998. University of Wisconsin, Madison, M.A., South Asian Studies, 1994. Columbia University, New York, NY, B.A., philosophy, 1989. 02D0B43A-D36D-45BD-B249-5D6CEA8B4556.htmlPHOTO%20WORKS.htmlWRITINGS.htmlmailto:jlfrancisco@earthlink.net?subject=email%20subjectshapeimage_2_link_0shapeimage_2_link_1shapeimage_2_link_2shapeimage_2_link_3