Featuring photographs from the Houck Medford Collection (Special Collections & Archives) and the WFU Art Department Print Collection Special Collections & Archives: Room 625 Exhibit: April 26–December 31, 2023 Artists have long employed visual aids to replicate the perfect linear perspective to lend two-dimensional artworks the illusion of depth. One of the most widely used visual aids, camera obscura, eventually led to the invention of photography. Regarded essentially as a child of technical rather than aesthetic traditions, photography has been viewed as an outsider to fine art. This stigma can also be attributed to the Western pictorial tradition which places a higher value on the classical principle of ideal art as a transcription over more subjective “interpretations” of reality. However, photography was born into an era when the fever for an objective tool for recording reality was rising. Early photographs were made in a spirit of documentation and investigation, but with increasing technical versatility resulting from different printing processes, artists have been able to employ the medium for their interpretation of the contingent realities of the visible world. Photography matured to accommodate both “objective” and more “interpretive” approaches. The Medford Collection, like many other ostensibly documentary photographs, straddle these modes. Particularly, the series What Happened? may be viewed as an expression of nostalgia evoked by the dilapidated structures and vernacular architecture of Floyd County, Virginia. Placing the Medford Collection in dialogue with a selection of photographs from the Print Collection, the exhibition also examines six alternative photographic processes and their role in the industrialization and democratization of photography.

Join us for a wide-ranging conversation between Jennifer Finkel, Acquavella Curator of Wake Forest’s Art Collections, and SCA donor/documentary photographer Houck Medford concerning the role of philanthropy in supporting the arts and humanities. 4:30-5:15: Reception, Special Collections & Archives Research Room (Room 625) featuring More Than Meets the Eye: Alternative Photographic Processes Featuring photographs from the Houck Medford Collection and the WFU Art Department Print Collection, curated by Tsing Liu (‘23) Dr. Jennifer Finkel is the Acquavella Curator of Wake Forest University’s Art Collections. Finkel studied art history at Georgetown University and received her doctorate in Renaissance art at Case Western Reserve University. Houck Medford is a native of Waynesville, NC, a third-generation dentist, documentary artist, and bookmaker. He attended Wake Forest University and was the first faculty member of the new Department of Dentistry at the Wake Forest University Medical Center in 1979. In 1997, he created the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation and left the organization in 2010 as CEO Emeritus and Founder. Dr. Medford is a graduate of Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies. The Houck Medford collection, containing documentary photographs and hand-crafted artists’ books, is available in Special Collections & Archives at Z. Smith Reynolds Library, Wake Forest University.

One hundred and one years ago the world’s most famous mummy, King Tutankhamun of Egypt, was unearthed from the tomb where he had spent more than 3,000 years. So our Halloween event this year celebrates all things mummy! Join us in ZSR Library Special Collections & Archives for mummy-themed snacks, trivia, prizes, and some helpful (and historically accurate) incantations to ward off any curses you might encounter. A pop-up exhibit of books from our collection will trace how our longstanding fascination with ancient Egypt plays out in popular culture. And we’ll also see how the discovery of Tut’s tomb contributed to changes in the world of archaeology and helped spur on the Egyptian independence movement.