Refreshments at our lecture are sponsored by:
Fort Point Beer Company and Winery Sixteen 600

All photos © Brenda Kenneally

Brenda Ann Kenneally is a mother, teacher, multi-platform documentary worker, Guggenheim Fellow, and Pulitzer Prize Nominee. Kenneally’s lived experience with incarceration, homeless and poverty in her youth, has shaped thirty years of immersive image-based collaborations in community with kindred spirits across America. Situated in image-based historical context, her work debunks the myth of “Bootstrap America” and exists as an antidote to internalized shame for those who “fail” to achieve it. Brenda explodes the “dangerous” fly on the wall myth of documentary work by harnessing the transformative power of photography to build counter narratives.

Brenda’s "Upstate Girls" project led her to form A Little Creative Class, Inc.  The non-profit arts organization with a mission to address the obstacles that deter marginalized communities from engaging in creative expression. Kenneally has received institutional recognition including; Fellowships from The Soros and Warhol Foundations, The NEA, The W Eugene Smith Grant for Humanistic Photography, World  and National Press Awards, New York State Council for the Arts, NYFA and Humanities Council Funding, Canon. Getty and Mother Jones Grants. Kenneally says that some of the most important documentary work she has ever done led to a collaboration with her desert community to replace her best friend Sun Shine’s condemnable house trailer. Among other feats of documentary magic Kenneally has been blessed to pull off, was a cross-country trip from Upstate New York to Bombay Beach California with six teens who struggled with trauma based social anxieties  Kenneally funded, produced, documented and drove the bus for that trip. In 2025, Kenneally expanded The Scrapbook Project movement that she founded in 2008, to include an ongoing collaboration with The Skid Row Artist Community in Downtown Los Angeles.

UPSTATE GIRLS (2015)

In the tradition of Dorothea Lange and Robert Frank, an eye-opening portrait of the rise and fall of the American working class, and a shockingly intimate visual history of Troy, New York that arcs over five hundred years—from Henry Hudson to the industrial revolution to a group of contemporary young women as they grow, survive, and love.

Welcome to Troy, New York. The land where mastodon roamed, the Mohicans lived, and the Dutch settled in the seventeenth century. Troy grew from a small trading post into a jewel of the Industrial Revolution. Horseshoes, rail ties, and detachable shirt collars were made there and the middle class boomed, making Troy the fourth wealthiest city per capita in the country. Then, the factories closed, the middle class disappeared, and the downtown fell into disrepair. Troy is the home of Uncle Sam, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the Rensselaer County Jail, the photographer Brenda Ann Kenneally, and the small group of young women, their children, lovers, and families who Kenneally has been photographing for over a decade.

Before Kenneally left Troy, her life looked a lot like the lives of these girls. With passion and profound empathy she has chronicled three generations—their love and heartbreak; their births and deaths; their struggles with poverty, with education, and with each other; and their joy.

SUNSHINE, DREAMS, LEGENDS OF BOMBAY BEACH: UNCONDITIONAL LOVE ART AND STUFF

Brenda’s newest book is a self-published diary about Bombay Beach, California that reflects life at the intersection of art, love, and communal bonds in a magically resilient desert town

All photos © Jett Lara

Jett Lara is a photographic artist living in Los Angeles, California since 2016. Lara is known for his work in Los Angeles and his deep connection to his subjects, shaped through chance encounters and orchestrated images with the people in his world. The world he invents through images was shaped by years of lived experience and self-taught photography. His photographs are an exploration of hard truths, challenging the viewer into deeper layers of seeing.

Lara’s self-published debut monograph, Dreams & Nightmares, was released by Norkwwd in 2025. It is an intimate exploration of Downtown Los Angeles and its surrounding neighborhoods, uncovering the inner core of survival within the city’s restless landscape. It is a parallel depiction of one of the most complex neighborhoods in Los Angeles where beauty and brutality coexist.

Paula Levine is a Canadian-American artist working in digital media and emerging 
technologies. Her work takes shape as installations, interactive work, single channel video and sound, photography and conceptual art. She received her MFA from San Francisco Art Institute where she focused in both photography and new genres. 

At this lecture, she will be screening her short film Mirror, Mirror, shot in Venice, California at Muscle Beach in 1987. In the film, Levine captures a body builder’s display of his physique, which markedly changes when he eventually notices the camera trained on him.

Her recent video, "Five Minutes to Five Years", a mix of science fiction and biography, screened at the Mill Valley Film Festival and was also shown in “Hole in the Head,” a popular video festival in San Francisco where it won the Viewer’s Award. She has work in permanent collections, such as The National Gallery of Canada, ZKM-Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany. Her work, “ Shadows from another place: San Francisco - Baghdad,” will be included within an upcoming book, "Dark Worlds: Culture, War, & The National Security State“ by Stephen Voyce, published by Stanford University Press.

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.

Fort Point was inspired by a love for San Francisco and a desire to make craft beer more accessible. Over the years, it has grown to become one of the city’s best-known independent producers, creating a wide range of new beers and even a line of ciders along the way. No matter the favorite Fort Point brew, one thing remains true — every can hits that sweet spot between interesting and easy to love.