Race and Visual Literacy: A Conversation about “Race Stories: Essays on the Power of Images”

Please join Aperture and the MFA Photography, Video and Related Media Department at the School of Visual Arts for a panel discussion about Race Stories: Essays on the Power of Images by Maurice Berger and edited by Marvin Heiferman (Aperture, 2024). Joining Marvin Heiferman are Noelle Flores Théard, photo editor and photographer, and Zun Lee, physician, photographer, and educator. Flores and Lee are both featured in Race Stories: Essays on the Power of Images and share Berger’s desire to use images—still and moving—to engage the world and reach new audiences.

Race Stories is the first title in Aperture’s Vision & Justice Series—featuring a collection of award-winning short essays by Maurice Berger that explore the intersections of photography, race, and visual culture. The book examines the transformational role photography plays in shaping ideas and attitudes about race and how photographic images have been instrumental in both perpetuating and combating racial stereotypes. Written between 2012 and 2019 and first presented as a monthly feature on the New York Times’s Lens blog, Berger’s incisive essays help readers see a bigger picture about race through story-telling.

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Race Stories: Essays on the Power of Images

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Marvin Heiferman is a curator, writer, editor and producer – organizes exhibitions and online projects about photography and visual culture for venues that have included: The Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian Institution, International Center of Photography, Whitney Museum of American Art and the New Museum, Castelli Graphics/Photography and LIGHT Gallery. Author of 15 books including Photography Changes Everything (2012 Smithsonian/Aperture) and Seeing Science (2019 Aperture/UMBC), Heiferman has contributed essays and articles to numerous artist monographs, museum catalogs, trade publications, magazines and media outlets including The New York Times, CNN, Artforum, Gagosian Quarterly, Design Observer, Aperture, Art in America, and BOMB. Books edited include Race Stories: Essays on the Power of Images by Maurice Berger (Aperture/New York Times) 2024 and Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, (Aperture) 1986.

Noelle Flores Théard has been the senior digital photo editor at The New Yorker since 2021. She’s also the producer for Photo Booth, the magazine’s photography column. She was the program officer at Magnum Foundation from 2016 to 2021, and is a co-founder of FotoKonbit, a nonprofit organization created in 2010 to engage and support Haitians telling their own stories through photography.

Zun Lee is a physician, technology executive and educator who has been a full-time artist for the past 10 years. His practice incorporates photography, visual archives, socially engaged practice and creative writing. As a cultural entrepreneur with two decades of senior executive experience in management consulting, Lee also works with cultural and academic institutions to leverage storytelling for increased business and community impact. Lee is a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow and has exhibited, taught and spoken at numerous institutions in North America and Europe. His works are widely published and represented in public and private collections around the world.

Maurice Berger (born and died in New York, 1956–2020) was a cultural historian, curator, and writer, who spent much of his career studying and teaching racial literacy through innovative visual literacy projects. In influential essays, books, and provocative museum exhibitions, Berger gathered and presented compelling photographic images to engage and challenge readers and viewers into reconsidering both cultural and personal assumptions and prejudices. His books include White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness (2000) and For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights (2010), which was also one of the premier projects mounted by the National Museum of African American History and Culture. He received honors and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, Association of Art Museum Curators, and Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and was nominated for an Emmy Award. 

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Image: Deborah Willis, Carrie in EuroSalon, Eaton, Florida, 2004; from Race Stories: Essays on the Power of Images (Aperture, 2024); courtesy the artist