American Ruins: Latinx Visual Cultures and Postindustrial Cities

The workshop “American Ruins: Latinx Visual Cultures and Postindustrial Cities” will take place Wednesday, April 24, 10:15-12.15 at the FRIAS Seminar room (Albertstr. 19) and is open to anyone interested.

It will feature talks by acclaimed photographer Camilo José Vergara and North American Studies scholar Dr. Florian Deckers from the University of Duisburg-Essen. The event is organized by Christian Mair and Maria Sulimma.

CAMILO JOSE VERGARA has documented America’s disenfranchised and marginalized urban communities for over four decades. Vergara came to the US in the 1960s from Chile to study at Notre Dame University. During his graduate studies in sociology at Columbia University, Vergara developed his interest in the relationship between environment and society. He has published numerous books, including Silent Cities: The Evolution of the American Cemetery (1989), The New American Ghetto (1995), American Ruins (1999), Twin Towers Remembered (2001), Unexpected Chicagoland (2002), Subway Memories (2004), and How the Other Half Worships (2005). His photographs have been exhibited internationally at such institutions as the National Building Museum, the Getty Research Institute and J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.  In 2002 he was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant. In 2013, Vergara became the first photographer to receive the National Humanities Medal, presented to him by President Barack Obama at the White House.

FLORIAN DECKERS is a research associate in the department of Anglophone Studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen and was a part of the UA Ruhr graduate research group Scripts for Postindustrial Urban Futures: American Models, Transatlantic Interventions. His dissertation “Raising Latinx Voices” investigates contemporary approaches of Latinx artists in New York that rescript the urban space as well as the identity of the fastest growing minority in the US.