Capturing Gulf Coast ‘cowboys’
The lines carved into their faces, calloused hands, and a penetrating gaze indicate a life of hardship for Louisiana fishermen — especially following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in April 2010. Jackson Fager ’06 spent the four months leading up to the first anniversary of the spill taking photos of the fishermen, which Vanity Fair published online in May.



    As a cameraman for WWL-TV in New Orleans, Fager has been documenting the men and women whose livelihoods are at the mercy of the Gulf Coast’s health — even before the catastrophe. But, last January, Fager put down his videocamera and grabbed his Canon 5D to capture them in still images as they continued to pick up the pieces at that crucial moment in time. “I wanted to tell the human side of it,” he said.
    On his days off, he would drive around, “getting lost and finding these little towns,” stopping when he saw fishermen working on their boats. Because he knew the challenges facing their industry from his work over the years, he easily developed a rapport with them. “We would talk, and after a little while, I’d ask if I could take their photos. They were always willing.” As he spent the day with them, he said, “they saw the camera as a way to tell me what they were going through.”


    Fager had wanted to be a videographer since his childhood, when he was surrounded by his dad’s (Jeff Fager ’77, chairman of CBS news) best friends, who were cameramen. “I’d think, these guys have amazing stories — I want to do what they do,” he recalled.
    At Colgate, he took video classes in which “[Professor] John Knecht gave me the confidence to think outside the box.” After graduating, he road-tripped to New Orleans, and the city cast its spell on him. “I need to move there,” he told himself. Fager initially worked in Alabama until he landed the job at WWL. And there’s no shortage of inspiration in the Big Easy. “It’s such an incredibly rich culture and place for so many different types of people,” he said. “You can walk around here with your camera and never stop taking pictures.”


    But it’s the fishermen who have made an indelible mark on him. “They’re a dying breed,” Fager said. “They remind me of American cowboys. It’s a life of solitude.” While on assignment, he’s even spent time on the water with the fishermen, and he admitted becoming fascinated with the lifestyle. “It’s just them and the ocean for weeks at a time; they don’t have interaction with the rest of the world, and they like it like that,” he said. “And they’re so in touch with nature. Part of me wanted to leave everything and become a fisherman with them.”
     At least for now, he’ll stay on land, telling their stories through his lens.
    To see Fager’s complete Vanity Fair slideshow, visit: www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/05/portraits-of-the-gulf-slide-show-201105

Knecht gets animated about exhibition
As a haunting soundtrack from one of his films played in the background, Professor John Knecht introduced his newest exhibition — a series of animations — during a gallery talk in Clifford Gallery in September. There are biblical references throughout the series, starting with the title, Fragments from the Wheels of Ezekiel.
    Explaining that his work is autobiographical, Knecht told the audience of his colleagues, students, and friends that he learned a lot about the Bible while attending elementary school in a church basement in his small Midwestern hometown. He said he’d always been fascinated with the story of the prophet Ezekiel’s visions of wheels of fire.


Fragment #13, from John Knecht’s Wheels of Ezekiel series, 2011; still frame from a hand-drawn, digital animation.

    “Fragments from the Wheels of Ezekiel is a metaphor for the space where there’s no logic — anything goes, there are no rules in that atmosphere,” said Knecht, the Russell Colgate Distinguished University Professor of art and art history and film and media studies.  
    If the exhibition sounds indescribable, that’s because it was, to some extent. Even the artist admitted that, although he sees obvious symbols of his life experiences, he can’t pinpoint an exact meaning for every piece. “You’ve been allowed to look in my brain for a little while — good luck in there,” he joked.
    However, Knecht was able to offer a very tangible — and apropos — explanation of Anima, an animation on the entire far wall of the gallery, showing books flying upward. “A book [symbolizes] knowledge and formal thinking within the academy,” he said. “They’re flying away now, they’re fleeing like a soul, and so it’s a private goodbye,” Knecht added. After 30 years of teaching at Colgate, the professor will retire at the end of this academic year.
     He has taught such successful documentary filmmakers as Joe Berlinger ’83, Chris Paine ’83, and Sandy Cioffi ’84. “John loved being controversial and challenging our conceptions,” said Paine, who made Who Killed the Electric Car? and Revenge of the Electric Car. “He will always be my seminal influence as a filmmaker.”
    “When I was at a crossroads in my life, in my late 20s, trying to figure out how to get into filmmaking, he [Knecht] gave me the sage advice: ‘Go make a film,’” recalled Berlinger. “I did, and I have been making films ever since.” Berlinger’s successes include such documentaries as Metallica, Paradise Lost, and Crude.
    As to what the future holds for Knecht, his first answer relates to that mysterious-sounding music in the gallery, which he made with an electric guitar and a piano. “I’m going to start a band as soon as I retire,” he said emphatically. And, of course, he’ll continue creating animations. “I love this medium because I can use words with it, I can use music… There’s no formula anymore. I’m too old for formulas. But it’s working all right. And I’m really anxious to start something new.”

Colgate hosts prestigious Flaherty Film Seminar
Attending the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar means being open to a different kind of film festival. Don’t, for example, ask for a list of films to be screened, because you won’t get one. Do, however, be open to in-depth discussion, and lots of it.
    At the end of June, for the fourth consecutive year, the Flaherty Seminar was held at Colgate, an arrangement that has proved successful for both parties.
    “In addition to Colgate having dual 35-millimeter projectors — which is one of the hardest things to find on a college campus — and enough seats in a theater, it [was] also great to be in upstate New York,” said Mary Kerr, the Flaherty’s executive director. “We [had] people from all over the country and the world attending, and we [were] excited to be able to expose them to this kind of setting.”
    The theme of this year’s seminar, curated by Dan Streible, was Sonic Truth. It focused on the audio and musical dimensions of filmmaking. “It just kept coming back to audio, music, and place, and how music is a part of every culture and how it can really define a place,” said Kerr. “Dan wanted to concentrate on not just sounds for technical filmmaking, but also on the sound of the atmosphere that surrounds you.”
    One screening turned out to be a mix of 16mm films by Lillian Schwartz and Jodie Mack. Schwartz is considered a pioneer in the world of computer art, and she is credited with one of the first digitally created films. Mack, inspired by Schwartz’s work, currently teaches animation at Dartmouth College and is known for her artistic depiction of tactile objects such as fabrics, objects, and cutout materials, as well as celluloid. During the session, 3D glasses were passed out for the participants to watch Schwartz’s films UFO’s (1971) and Galaxies (1974).
    All filmmakers invited to present at the seminar stay the entire week, creating the opportunity for an evolving discussion with participants.
    “I really like the mix of people — that it’s not all filmmakers and not all film scholars, but also anthropologists, museum curators, and more,” said Augusta Palmer, a filmmaker and scholar from Brooklyn, N.Y.
    Colgate President Jeffrey Herbst and Flaherty board members met to discuss ways to further develop the relationship between the seminar and the university, integrating the expertise offered by festival participants with that of faculty members. One opportunity for the future might be to utilize the university’s visualization lab in the Ho Science Center.
— Monica Dutia ’13

Birds and Beasts in Beads
One’s hand starts to cramp just imagining the hours dedicated to the intricate beadwork decorating the 200-plus pieces featured in Birds and Beasts in Beads: 150 Years of Iroquois Beadwork. Box purses with beaded loops dripping off the bottom, embellished pincushions, and colorful three-dimensional birds took over the Longyear Museum of Anthropology from August 29 until October 30.

(photos by Warren Wheeler)
    The majority of the collection was on loan from Dolores Elliott, a museum consultant and retired archaeologist from Johnson City, N.Y., whose “knowledge of Iroquois beadwork is unsurpassed,” according to senior curator Carol Ann Lorenz.
    Many of the objects date from the mid-19th to the early 20th century, but there were also new pieces made by local Iroquois.
    The “beasts” were represented in imagery of animals from the farm, the forest, pets, and exotic species including a zebra, an elephant, and even a unicorn. There was a case devoted to Mohawk-style birds and another displaying Tuscarora-style feathered friends — “so you can see the differences from one end of Iroquois country to the other,” Lorenz explained.  
    In addition to the exhibition, in mid-September, Colgate hosted the third annual International Iroquois Beadwork Conference, organized by the Iroquois Studies Association with the assistance of the Longyear Museum. It attracted approximately 100 international bead workers, collectors, curators, and bead specialists.
    The keynote speaker was Ruth B. Phillips, Canada research chair and professor of art history at Carleton University in Ottawa, whose career has focused on the study of historical and contemporary Native North American art.  
    Students in Lorenz’s Native Art of North America course attended parts of the conference, and she dedicated a section of the class to Iroquois art, as well as bead history and trade.






Preview



Successful Strategies
Brehmer Theater, Dana Arts Center
November 3–5 at 8 pm, Nov. 5 and 6 at 2 pm

Directed by Simona Giurgea, the University Theater Program presents Successful Strategies, a brisk and sophisticated comedy written by Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux and translated by Timberlake Wertenbaker.
    With elegance, whimsy, and buzzing energy, the play examines the ambiguity of love and the hardship of self-quest. Encumbered by deception, deceit, connivance, and self-delusion, the characters — masters and servants living in a sheltered world of social immobility — experience bewildering emotional change.


For information on other arts events, visit www.colgate.edu/arts