Hagey exposes his punctum
Paul Hagey and a front row audience member consider a picture by Minor White.
Basing his comment on a photo from a book by John McPhee, graduate student Paul Hagey said that the middle of nowhere rests between the Rockies and the Appalachians. Or in simpler geographic terms, where we live. Not offended, members of the audience giggled. At the first Wednesday gallery event at the Museum of Art and Archaeology, Hagey presented a history of landscape photography, with a particular focus on the Midwest and the Missouri Photo Workshop, to about 20 people. A slideshow accompanied his lecture.
Hagey traced the linear development of “photography to document” to “photography as art” to contemporary work that does both. Hagey discussed, as part of the visual continuum that makes up the landscape-photography tapestry, Carleton Watkins, Albert Bierstadt, Timothy O’Sullivan, Alfred Steiglitz, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Frank Gohlke, Terry Evans and MU professor Oliver Schuchard.
A photographer who prefers to shoot with black-and-white 35mm film, Hagey comes from an academic background that includes a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and a master’s in liberal arts. At MU, he’s studying journalism and magazine writing. Asked about his attraction to photography, Hagey said, “It brings you in. It’s transcendent.” Referencing Roland Barthes, Hagey said he appreciates pictures with punctum (versus only studium) - images that “hit you inside.”
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