Sept 8 - Nov 12, 2023
LOUISVILLE, KY
MESSAGE FROM PAUL PALETTI, DIRECTOR
Louisville Photo Biennial
Now in our 24th year, we have grown to encompass more than 50 venues, working together to celebrate the medium and art of photography. Each gallery, museum, college and cultural organization has its own vision and creates its own programming, assuring a richness and diversity to the exhibits which you will see. Our constant goal is to present exhibits which span the range of photographic possibilities, from shows of historic documentation and art to the newest forms of vision and technology.
Heading up the 2023 Louisville Photo Biennial, we are thrilled to have Lawrence Schiller as our keynote speaker. Over the past 70 years, Lawrence Schiller has photographed many of the most important figures in film, politics, and sports, including Marilyn Monroe, Muhammad Ali, and Robert F. Kennedy. Beyond that, his documentary research and collaboration with writers, and film and television directors and producers has provided historical depth and context to our understanding of several famous personalities, key events and news stories of our time.
We are grateful to the Speed Museum and its director, Raphaela Platow, and Film Curator, Dean Otto, for hosting the keynote evening with Lawrence Schiller, on September 21, 2023.
We have been able to accomplish 24 years of growth through the involvement of our participating venues, the hard work of our dedicated Board of Directors, volunteers, artists and staff, and the generosity of individual patrons and corporate sponsors. We invite you all to enjoy the exhibits and programs we are presenting this year, and to support the Louisville Photo Biennial into the future with your attendance, your creativity, and your donations.
HISTORY
Started in 1999 by four East Market Street galleries, the Louisville Photo Biennial has grown to encompass more than fifty photographic exhibits at venues throughout Metro Louisville, southern Indiana, and central Kentucky. This amazing cooperative effort between galleries, museums, colleges, universities, and other cultural institutions celebrates the medium of photography through a rich variety of exhibits including fine art, documentary, design, historic and even everyday snapshot photography. We are pleased to present works by photographers of national and international fame, as well as our extremely talented local and regional photographers.
2023 KEYNOTE SPEAKER LAWRENCE SCHILLER
September 21, 2023 Speed Art Museum • 5:30PM Reception • 6:30PM Presentation
Free and Open to the Public, Courtesy of the Museum
Though a childhood accident left him with impaired vision in one eye, Lawrence Schiller became an obsessive photographer; even while attending Pepperdine College, his pictures had already appeared in Life, Sport, Playboy, Glamour, and the Saturday Evening Post. Schiller’s interests and ambitions soon developed into a profession in print journalism, documenting major stories for glossy magazines all over the world, including Life, Look, Newsweek, Time, Paris Match, Stern, and the London Sunday Times. His iconic images of Robert F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Bette Davis, Barbra Streisand, Marilyn Monroe, Muhammad Ali, and Madame Nhu, among others are tributes to his doggedness, ingenuity, and charm as well as to his technical proficiency.
In November 1963, while on assignment for the Saturday Evening Post, he reached Dallas in time to photograph Lee Harvey Oswald. Later, he landed Jack Ruby’s final interview. After extensive interviews with the widow of Lenny Bruce in 1968, Schiller and the writer Albert Goldman published Ladies and Gentlemen, Lenny Bruce (1974); and, with the photographer W. Eugene Smith, he produced Minamata (1975), the epic pictorial chronicle of mercury poisoning in Japan.
Schiller moved into motion pictures by directing a portion of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969) with Paul Newman and Robert Redford, and “Lady Sings the Blues” (1972) with Diana Ross. In 1971, he produced and co-directed with L.M. Kit Carson the acclaimed documentary, “The American Dreamer ” on Dennis Hopper. His editorial direction of “The Man Who Skied Down Everest” (1972) won an Oscar for Best Feature Documentary for its producer. After obtaining extraordinary cooperation from the Kremlin, in 1986, he executive produced and co-directed “Peter the Great “, the Emmy Award-winning television mini-series starring Maximilian Schell, Vanessa Redgrave, and Laurence Olivier.
Perhaps nothing in Schiller’s career proved more remarkable, though, than his collaboration with Norman Mailer—a friendship unique in American literary history. For nearly thirty-five years, the two worked closely together on books including Marilyn (1973), The Faith of Graffiti (1974), Oswald’s Tale (1995), Into the Mirror (2002), and The Executioner’s Song (1979), for which Mailer won the Pulitzer Prize. Schiller, who conceived of the project, did much of the legwork, interviews, and research for the book, while outmaneuvering numerous other reporters to gain exclusive access to the book’s subject, Gary Gilmore, and went on to produce and direct the award-winning television miniseries based upon it, starring Tommy Lee Jones.
Schiller embedded himself into the so-called “Dream Team” defending O. J. Simpson, and with his unique insider’s perspective on the case, co-wrote (with James Willwerth) the New York Times number one best-selling “American Tragedy” (1996). His reporting on antisocial behavior soon became the basis for many books and motion pictures and documentaries for television, many of which he produced and directed.
Schiller has been a consultant to NBC News, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, and the Annie Leibovitz Studios, among many other photographic archives; and has written for The New Yorker, The Daily Beast, and other publications. Upon the death of Norman Mailer, in 2008, Schiller was named the President and Co-Founder of the Norman Mailer Center and Writer’s Colony in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He currently is a consultant and advisor to various estates and trusts on monetizing and preserving the legacy of noted figures in America.
EVENT SCHEDULE
PUMP: PASTE-UP MURAL PROJECT
Sponsored by Samtec Cares and the Caesars Foundation of Floyd County
The project is directed by Julie Schweitzer at ArtSeed Inc.
Louisville Photo Biennial Paste-Up Mural Project (PUMP) is an outdoor mural exhibition. PUMP will include Photo Biennial photographers from southern Indiana and Kentucky participating venues, and young adult and children’s photographers from both states.
PUMP will employ an innovative technique that allows photographs to be printed and pasted in various sites on buildings and public spaces across the Kentuckiana area with an emphasis on displaying Indiana artists in Kentucky and Kentucky artists in Indiana to promote interstate tourism.
Support Us
Louisville Photo Biennial is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Now in our 24th year, we
produce a collaborative bi-annual festival celebrating the medium of photography through
exhibitions, workshops and other programming. Our mission is to expand appreciation of
photography as an art form, to encourage visual literacy through photography as a documentary
tool and a powerful medium for storytelling, and to create meaningful dialogue throughout
Kentucky and Indiana.
The Louisville Photo Biennial is produced and staffed primarily by volunteers and arts
professionals who support us with their time, talent and generosity. Please show your support
and appreciation by making a contribution to the Louisville Photo Biennial.
Our mailing address is
Louisville Photo Biennial, Inc.
713 East Market Street, Suite 100
Louisville, Kentucky 40202
For any questions, contact Paul Paletti at 502-589-9254
Thank you!
PATRONS
Keith Auerbach, David & Cindy Becker, John & Jennifer Beckman, Edward Garber, Thomas & Mary Hardin, Leslie Holland, Paul Paletti, C.J. Pressma
Special Thanks
These generous donors and organizations make it possible!
