Thursday, December 18, 2008 at 7:00 PM, BookWoman, 5501 North Lamar #A-105 (between North Loop and Koenig Ln.; We¹re across the street from the U-Haul and next door to Great Hall Games.)
Join us for a booksigning and conversation with Alan Pogue.
Alan Pogue began taking photographs during the Vietnam War, prompted by “an urge to record what shocked me as well as what was beautiful.” His desire to bear witness to the full range of human experience matured into a career in documentary photography that has spanned four decades and many parts of the globe from his native Texas to the Middle East. Working in the tradition of Russell Lee and Dorothea Lange, Pogue has been a witness for justice, using the camera to capture the human context and to call attention to conditions needing remediation.
From his basement darkroom at the YM-YWCA in 1968 to the fabulous vista from the 2nd floor of the University YWCA at 2330 Guadalupe, Alan Pogue spent 20 years photographing movements for social change: The Rag, anti-war, gay rights, women’s liberation, Brown Berets, Community United Front,
Womanspace, CURE, Women & Their Work. Alan crossed the state and the nation with farmworkers and prison reform activists photographing for social change. Most recently, he has been in Cuba, Haiti, Central and South America, Iraq, the West Bank, Israel and Pakistan. The University of Texas Press asked Alan to select photographs from forty years of work to be published in his book “Witness for Justice”. Offering a comprehensive visual survey of Alan Pogue’s documentary photography, this book opens with images of social protests of the 1960s and early 1970s, along with Austin¹s countercultural scene and prominent cultural and political figures, from William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg to Ann Richards and George W. Bush.
Alan Pogue is an award-winning documentary photographer whose work has been widely exhibited and published in numerous national and international periodicals, including the New York Times Magazine, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, International Herald Tribune, Kyodo News Japan,
Photo District News, and Texas Monthly. He lives in Austin, Texas, where he has been the chief photographer for the Texas Observer magazine since 1972.