In conjunction with the SP/N Gallery exhibition, The Light in Between: Photographs by Alan Govenar, a panel comprised of photography professionals in the field will address the subject of documentary photographic practice.

Dr. Alan Govenar, Documentary Arts, in discussion with panelists:

Christopher Blay, Director of Public Programs, National Juneteenth Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Dr. Diane Durant, Photography Faculty, UT-Dallas

Sarah Meister, Executive Director, Aperture

Moderated by:

Prof. Marilyn Waligore, Photography Faculty, UT-Dallas

ALAN GOVENAR  - BIOGRAPHY:   Alan Govenar is a writer, poet, novelist, playwright, photographer, folklorist, and filmmaker. He is director of Documentary Arts, a non-profit organization he founded in 1985 to advance essential perspectives on historical issues and diverse cultures. Govenar is a Guggenheim Fellow and the author of more than forty books, including Boccaccio in the Berkshires, Paradise in the Smallest Thing, Stoney Knows How: Life as a Sideshow Tattoo Artist, Lightnin’ Hopkins: His Life and Music, Untold Glory, Texas Blues: The Rise of a Contemporary Sound, Everyday Music, Texas in Paris, Osceola: Memories of a Sharecropper’s Daughter, A Pillow on the Ocean of Time, See That My Grave Is Kept Clean: The World and Music of Blind Lemon Jefferson (coauthored with Kip Lornell), and Deep Ellum and Central Track: Where Cultures Converged  (coauthored with Jay Brakefield).

His photographs and artist books are in the collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.), San Francisco Museum of Art, Chicago Art Institute, Columbia University, New York Public Library, Museum of Modern Art (New York), and Museum of Fine Arts (Boston).

Govenar has produced and directed numerous films in association with NOVA, PBS and ARTE. His feature-length documentaries Down in Dallas Town: From JFK to K2, Looking for Home, Myth of a Colorblind France,Extraordinary Ordinary People, Tattoo Uprising, The Beat Hotel, Master Qi and the Monkey King, and You Don’t Need Feet to Dance are distributed by First Run Features.

Govenar’s off-Broadway musicals Blind Lemon Blues and Lonesome Blues (created with Akin Babatundé) and Texas in Paris have been staged at the York Theatre (NewYork), Forum Meyrin (Geneva), Maison des Cultures du Monde (Paris), Leidse Schowburg (Leiden), and other theatres in Europe and the United States.

CHRISTOPHER BLAY  - BIOGRAPHY:  Christopher Blay is a Liberian-born American artist, curator, and writer. He is currently  the Director of Public Programs at the National Juneteenth Museum in Fort Worth, and formerly Chief Curator of the Houston Museum of African American Culture [2021 - 2024]. Blay was the News Editor at Glasstire  from 2019 - 2021 and served as curator for the Art Corridor Galleries at Tarrant County College in Fort Worth for the ten years prior to Glasstire. Blay is also a contributing writer for Art in America magazine, with his most recent  essay on artist David-Jeremiah appearing in the September, 2024 edition of the magazine. He has also written catalog essays for Richard Prince, Richard Doherty,  and Letitia Huckaby as well as for the Nasher Sculpture Magazine, Gulf Coast, and the Fort Worth Weekly.

Now an independent curator, Blay is curating an exhibition for artist David-Jeremiah at the Modern art Museum in Fort Worth (August, 2025) and the Citywide African American Artist Exhibition in Houston for the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, opening in December, 2024. Blay’s work as a visual artist has been the subject of numerous group and solo exhibitions, and works of public art. Among his most recent works are the East Rosedale Monument Project, commissioned by the Fort Worth Public Art Commission, to be unveiled December, 2024, a solo exhibition titled Ritual SpLaVCe at the Galveston Art Center, (January, 2024), Artprize Featured artist award (2023), The Ion Artist Residency award (2023), and Christopher Blay: The SpLaVCe Ship, Barry Whistler Gallery, 2022.

In 2026 Blay’s work will be in a solo museum exhibition at Ballroom, Marfa, and on view for a public art commission in New Harmony, Indiana.

Blay is a 2003 graduate of Texas Christian University with a BFA in studio art and art history.

DIANE DURANT  - BIOGRAPHY:  Diane Durant (b. 1978) works with image, text, and found objects to tell true stories, from remaking childhood moments to exploring familial relationships and societal expectations through humor (and trophies). She is a graduate of Baylor University (BFA '01), Dallas Theological Seminary (MA/BC '04), and the University of Texas at Dallas (MA '07, PhD '13) where she currently holds the position of Professor of Instruction and Director of the Marilyn & Jerry Comer Collection of Photography. Diane is a member of both the Board of Directors for the Dallas Wings Community Foundation and Texas Photographic Society. Her photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally; appeared online at Aint-Bad, Don't Smile, Lenscratch, Insider, and T, the New York Times Style Magazine; featured in print with Chronicles and Sun Magazine; and belong to the permanent collection of the National Park Service. Her creative writing has appeared in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, RiverSedge, di-verse-city, the Texas Poetry Calendar, Stymie, The Spectacle, The Ekphrastic Review, Slackjaw, and McSweeney's. She is the former president of 500X Gallery in Dallas and past editor of The Grassburr, The Rope, Sojourn, and Reunion: The Dallas Review. In 2018, Diane was named one of four inaugural Carter Community Artists with the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth. Her first monograph, Stories, 1986–88, was released by Daylight Books in 2020. To her credit, she's never eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and fully intends to keep it that way.

SARAH MEISTER - BIOGRAPHY:  Since 2021 Sarah Meister has been Executive Director of Aperture, following twenty-five years in the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. While overseeing the organization’s move to a permanent home on the Upper West Side in New York City in mid-2025, Meister is curating an exhibition of Carrie Mae Weems’s work for the Gallerie d’Italia in Turin, Italy (opening April 2025), accompanied by an ambitious publication. 

Meister’s acclaimed exhibitions at MoMA included Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography (2021), Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures (2020), From Bauhaus to Buenos Aires: Grete Stern and Horacio Coppola (2015, co-curator), Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light (2013), and Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography (2010, co-curator). Among her notable publications are Gordon Parks and the Atmosphere of Crime, 1957 (2020), Frances Benjamin Johnston: The Hampton Album (2019) Arbus, Friedlander, Winogrand: New Documents, 1967 (2017), One and One Is Four: The Bauhaus Photocollages of Josef Albers (2016), and the three-volume Photography at MoMA (2015, 2016, 2017, co-editor). She played a central role in expanding the Museum Collection, reimagining strategies for collection installations, and leading transformative educational initiatives, including the August Sander Project (co-director), and the online course Seeing Through Photographs.

MARILYN WALIGORE  - BIOGRAPHY:  Marilyn Waligore is an artist working in photography and digital media who lives in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.  She currently is Professor of Visual and Performing Arts / Photography at UT-Dallas.  She is a recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Visual Arts Artist Fellowship, Arts Midwest/ National Endowment of the Arts Regional Visual Arts Fellowship, and the Moss/Chumley North Texas Artist Award.  Her work is included in collections at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the National Museum of Women in the Arts Archive, Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas. She has exhibited in Hong Kong, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Thailand, and at SIGGRAPH, Los Angeles, California, the New York Digital Salon, NYC, Center for Photography at Woodstock, New York, and in Texas at Ro2 Gallery in Dallas, Artspace 111 in Fort Worth, Women & Their Work in Austin, and the Texas Biennial.   Her articles on photography have appeared in Leonardo and Photography Quarterly, and she has curated and co-curated group exhibitions for the Bathhouse Cultural Center, in Dallas, the University of Texas at Dallas, the Center for Photography at Woodstock, Woodstock, New York, and the Museo de La Ciudad and Casa de la Cultura in Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico.  She is represented by Ro2 Gallery in Dallas, Texas.  

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