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Alumni Lecture with Sean Kernan & Arno Minkkinen
December 5, 2023 @ 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Join not one but two Maine Media legends for this wonderful double-feature lecture, hosted by Provost Elizabeth Greenberg.
Header image by Arno Minkkinen
Arno Rafael Minkkinen is a Finnish American photographer, essayist, curator, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Lowell as well as docent at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland. National Endowment for the Arts and Massachusetts Cultural Council grant recipient, Minkkinen’s awards include being knighted in 1993 with the Order of the Lion First Class Medal for his service to Finnish Photography followed by the Finnish State Art Prize in Photography (2006). In 2013, he was honored with the Lucie Award for Achievement in Fine Art and in 2015 became a Guggenheim Fellow. On the 100th Anniversary of Finnish Independence in 2017, Minkkinen received Finland’s highest cultural honor, the Pro Finlandia Medal, given for literature, dance, music, and the arts. In 2019 he was named Honored Educator by the Society for Photographic Education, an award he also received from SPE’s Northeast chapter two years earlier.
Today Arno Rafael Minkkinen continues his passion for teaching workshops, writing, and extending what is one of the longest running, non-stop, self-portrait bodies of work in the history of photography. A screenplay is in the works with a Finnish producer, a project that got its wings from two Wayne Beach workshops at Maine Media.
Sean Kernan is a widely-exhibited photographer, writer, film maker and teacher, and has focused deeply on an exploration of creativity in our photography and lives. He is the author of The Secret Books (with Jorge Luis Borges), Among Trees (with Anthony Doerr), Darrell Petit: In Stone, and Looking Into the Light, which explores creativity and photography.
In recent years he has made several award-winning films: Crow Stories, The Kampala Boxing Club, A Mind of Winter, and The Visitor. His photography has been exhibited and published in France, Mexico, Egypt, Greece, China, Italy, Switzerland, Iran, Korea, and across the U.S. He has also collaborated with the dance company of choreographer Alison Chase on a theater/dance/multimedia work, Drowned that premiered at MASS MoCA. Clients include AT&T, Knoll, GE, Pratt and Whitney, New York Times, Smithsonian, Bloomberg, Harvard. He has taught and lectured at the New School/Parsons, Art Center Pasadena, Yale Medical School, ICP, and the University of Texas, and he has written for Communication Arts, Lenswork, and Graphis.
Our 2023 Alumni Lecture series is brought to you by First National Wealth Management.
