2025 Lecture Series
Lewis Watts and Jonathan Mark Jackson
Sunday, September 7th, 5:00 pm PDT
Bayfront Theatre (BATS Improv) at Fort Mason, Landmark Building B, 2 Marina Blvd, San Francisco, CA 94123
Directions to Bayfront Theatre at Fort Mason HERE
Students are always welcome to attend PhotoAlliance lectures for free, please tell our check-in volunteer you are a student and show your school ID
ABOUT THE PROGRAM
Join us for an illuminating lecture featuring photographers Lewis Watts and Jonathan Mark Jackson, whose practices engage Black cultural memory, archival presence and absence, and photography as a mode of reclamation and resistance.
Lewis Watts, Professor Emeritus at UC Santa Cruz and co-author of Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore and New Orleans Suite: Music and Culture in Transition has spent decades documenting African Diaspora communities, exploring the cultural landscape through both photography and archival research. His recent work consists of portraits of Black creatives, as well as a project that examines the effects of migration throughout America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Jonathan Mark Jackson’s poetic images activate ancestral spaces, using a mix of documentary methods and critical fabulation to confront historical narratives. He also explores the idea of haunting, which he defines in his practice as “experience of entering a temporal state where the past, present, and future overlap.”
Together, they’ll explore photography as an active force in shaping, challenging, and reimagining historical narratives. Don’t miss this dynamic conversation.
All photos © Lewis Watts
ABOUT LEWIS WATTS
Lewis Watts is a photographer, archivist/curator and Professor Emeritus of Art at UC Santa Cruz where he taught for 14 years. Before that he taught in the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley. His research and artwork centers around the “cultural landscape” primarily in communities in the African Diaspora. He is a documentary photographer and also examines the archive of 19th. And 20th. Century African American Literature and ephemera. He is the co- author of Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era” Heyday Books Berkeley 2020, “New Orleans Suite: Music and Culture in Transition” UC Press 2013 and “Portraits” Edition One Press Berkeley 2020. He is currently working on photographic projects: “Charleston and the Low Country” for the International African American Museum in Charleston South Carolina. Also “ Portraits of Black Creatives”, “and effects of migration throughout America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
His work has been exhibited at and/or is in the collections of The Center for Photographic Art Carmel CA, The Zimmerli Museum, Rutgers University (Seize the Time), Staatiche Kunstammiunger, Dresden Germany, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art: University of Oregon, Autograph London, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Citè de La Musique, Paris France, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, The Oakland Museum of California, The Neuberger museum of Art, Purchase NY, The Amistad Center for Art and Culture, Hartford, Conn, Light Work, Syracuse NY, The Paul Sack Collection, San Francisco, The McEvoy Foundation, San Francisco among others.
All photos © Jonathan Mark Jackson
ABOUT JONATHAN MARK JACKSON
Jonathan Mark Jackson received a BA in Art and The History of Art from Amherst College, and a MFA in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design. He has held a residency at the Center for Photography at Woodstock, and has participated in group exhibitions nationally. He is a recipient of the Kodak Film Photo Award and the St. Botolph Club Emerging Artist Award. Jackson currently teaches at the University of California Santa Cruz, in the role of Assistant Professor of Photography: Race, Representation, and Critical Practice.
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ABOUT Winery Sixteen 600
Winery Sixteen 600 is a vineyard-focused winery founded in 2007 by Phil Coturri, along with his wife Arden Kremer and sons, Max and Sam.
The winery produces small-batch, single-vineyard wines exclusively from certified organic vineyards farmed by Phil and his vineyard management company, Enterprise Vineyards. Their portfolio includes wines they love to drink and collect—Grenache, Rhône varietals, field blends, as well as Cabernet and Zinfandel, honoring Sonoma’s rich heritage.
Sixteen 600’s success is built on the dedication of its exceptional team, particularly the vineyard crew, winery staff, and the passionate individuals who work alongside Sam in the office and tasting house.