Ìę
Profile
Stephanie Schwartz is Associate Professor of American Art. Her research and teaching address photography and its histories, with a particular emphasis on American documentary. Stephanie is the author of Walker Evans: No Politics (University of Texas Press, 2020) and the editor of Modernism After Paul Strand, a special issue of the Oxford Art Journal (2015). She is currently writing Allan Sekulaâs War WorkÌęfor MACK Books Discourse series.Ìę
Contact Details
Office:Ìę407, 21 Gordon Square
Office hours:ÌęWednesday - 16:30-17:30. Book an appointment .Ìę
+44 (0)20 3108 4031 (internal 54031)
Email:Ìęstephanie.schwartz@ucl.ac.uk
Appointment
Associate Professor in History of Art
Dept of History of Art
Faculty of S&HS
Research Themes
Photography and its histories; documentary; American modernism.
Research
Research Summary
Stephanie is interested in photography and its histories, with a specific focus on the emergence of American documentary in the 1930s. Her first book, Walker Evans: No Politics (University of Texas Press, 2020), offers a sweeping reinterpretation of Evansâs prolific work. Taking seriously Evansâs refusal to act or work politically, his 1935 insistence âNO POLITICS whateverâ, Walker Evans challenges the established claim that American documentary finds its origins in the politics of the New Deal. Likewise, it questions the assumption that Evansâs work is necessarily about the Great Depression. Framed by a study of the work Evans completed in Cuba during the revolution of 1933, the book situates Evansâs work and documentary in a long history of Americanisation.Ìę
Stephanie is currently completing a second book project on the work of Allan Sekula. Preliminarily title Forgetting Reagan: Allan Sekulaâs Documentary, the book considers Sekulaâs long-held, though rarely discussed, obsession with the figure of Ronald Reagan. Stephanieâs concern is not simply with the fact that this obsession has not been addressed in the extensive literature on Sekulaâs prolific productionâthat it has been forgotten. It is with what this tells us about a desire to forget the centrality of the writing of national histories to Reaganâs work and the work of American documentary. The appeal of photographyâs global turn, of which Sekulaâs practice has been deemed representative, Stephanie argues, represses the writing of national and local histories of colonialism and imperialism that need to be accounted for as Sekulaâs work.
Forgetting Reagan speaks to contemporary nostalgia for a lost past or a âlost causeâ, a concern also at the centre Stephanieâs ongoing research on the filmography of Paul Strand and the international collective Frontier Films. Focusing on the collectiveâs final production, Native Land (1942), this project attends to the fight against fascism that animates much cultural work of the late 1930s and early 1940s. More specifically, it addresses documentary practices contending with Langston Hughesâs insistence that fascism was ânativeâ to America. An study of how nativity was reimagined in the wake of Depression, when the nation needed, once again, to represent itself as unified, Stephanieâs current research speaks to contemporary concerns about how to address recent nativist impulses and the emergence of new or late fascisms in America.Ìę
Selected Publications
BOOKS
Allan Sekulaâs War Work. London: MACK, forthcoming.
Walker Evans: No Politics. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2020.Ìę
Journal Articles
Ìę
âThe Physiognomy of a Nation,â October 158 (Summer 2023): 50-66.
, Arts 10, 29 (2021): 1-12.
, Arts 9, 92 (2020): 1-20.
âRevolution and Afterâ, October 158 (Fall 2016): 126-154.
âWriting Afterâ, an introduction to âModernism After Paul Strandâ, a special issue of Oxford ArtÌęJournal 38, no.1 (March 2015): 1-10.
âLate Work: Walker Evans and Fortuneâ, Oxford Art Journal 38, no.1 (March 2015): 117-141.
âPaul Strandâs Living Laborâ, ARTMargins 2, no. 3 (October 2013): 3-30.
âTania Bruguera: Between Historiesâ, Oxford Art Journal 35, no. 2 (June 2012): 215-232.
Chapters in Books
âOn Social Photographyâ in Documentary Genealogies, 1848-1917, ed. Jorge Ribalta (Madrid: MuseoÌęNacional de Arte Reina Sofia, 2022), forthcoming.Ìę
âIs This What Democracy Looks Like? Tania Bruguera and the Politics of Performanceâ, in AlejandroÌęAnreus, Robin Greeley, and Megan Sullivan (eds) Companion to Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art, eds. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2022), pp. 410-422.
âThe Face of Protestâ, in Hilde van Gelder (ed) Dissembled Images: Contemporary Art After Allan SekulaÌę(Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2019), pp. 212-227.
âLa toma larga (The Long Take)â, Monumento mĂĄquina: Jorge Ribalta (CĂĄceres: Centro JosĂ© Guerrero yÌęFundaciĂłn Helga de Alvear, 2015), pp. 82-99.
Essays
âBack to the Future,â Afterimage 50.4 (December 2023): 46-50.
âQuestionnaire on Modernism and Diaspora,â October 186 (Fall 2023): 98-105.
âLightness and Lethargyâ in Jordi Barreras, Already But Not Yet (Rome: Punctum Press, 2020).
âMonumental Failure: The Face of Bigotryâ, Art Monthly 471 (June 2018): 38-39.
ââ, Tate: In Focus, November 2016.
âMaking the Newsâ, International New Media Gallery, February 2015
âThis Ain't The Swiss Family Robinsonâ, Photoworks 20 (October 2013): 146-153.
âBetween Labour and Intellect: Jorge Ribaltaâs Anonymous Workâ, Philosophy of Photography 3, no. 2Ìę(2013): 358-365.
Interviews
ââ, Archives of American Art,ÌęSmithsonian Institute.
âAnother Walker Evans: Photography, Writing and the Magazine Pageâ, an interview with DavidÌęCampany, in Krakow Photomonth Festival (Krakow, 2014), pp. 36-65. (Reprinted in Photography & Culture 7, no. 2 (July 2014): 189-198.)
âDocumentaryâs Future Past: A Conversation with Jorge Ribaltaâ, Photoworks 18 (May 2012): 50-57.Ìę(Reprinted in Spanish in Luna CĂłrnea 34 (2013): 324-339.)
âChronicles: A Conversation with Manuel Piñaâ, Third Text 110 (May 2011): 361-383.
BOOK REVIEWS
'Our Future', a review of Steve Edwards,ÌęMartha Rosler: The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems,ÌęArt JournalÌę72, no. (Summer 2013): 124-126.
"Beyond Looking," a review ofÌęExposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera, edited by Sandra Phillips and Jonathan Finn,ÌęCapturing the Criminal: From Mug Shot to Surveillance Society,ÌęOxford Art JournalÌę33, no. 3 (November 2010): 389-92.
"Pictures, Again," a review ofÌęWords without Pictures, edited by Charlotte Cotton and Alex Klein,ÌęArt JournalÌę68, no. 4 (Winter 2009): 87-9.
Teaching and Supervision
Stephanie teaches undergraduate courses on photography and American visual culture, including:
- The Principles and Pleasures of Surveillance
- American Geographies: Figuring the West, 1848-1914
- Histories of Photography
- On Property: Land, Labour and Photography in the United States
She also teaches a MA Special Subject entitled âAmerican Documentary: Inventions, Reinventions and Afterlivesâ.
She is interested in supervising doctoral dissertations on photography and its histories, documentary and American art, including film, video, theatre, performance, dance and television.Ìę
Prospective students should contact her directly to discuss their proposals at: stephanie.schwartz@ucl.ac.uk.
Current PhD Students:
Daniel Ward, âAntinomies of Video: Collective Filmmaking and State Apparatus in the UK 1982-2000â.
Tom Cornelius, âAmerican Surfaces: Topographies of the New Westâ.
Jacqueline Mabey, âThis Must Be the Place: Mapping Artistic Kinship and Economic Change inÌęDowntown New York, 1973â1987â.
Rebecca Van Straten, âOlivetti: Typing a History of Italian Photographyâ.
Past Research Students:
Freya Field-Donovan, âA Strange American Funeral: Dance and Technological Reproduction inÌę1940s Americaâ, awarded June 2022.
Kimberly Schreiber, âStill Lives in Changing Times: Documentary and the American Carceral State,Ìę1964-1980â, awarded June 2022.
Stephanie King, âThe Less Acceptable Face of Capitalism: A Study of British Documentary DuringÌęthe Rise of Thatcherismâ, awarded December 2019.
Andrew Witt, âOn the Edge of Catastrophe: California and the Dystopian Image, c. 1970â, awardedÌęNovember 2016.
Larne Abse Gogarty, âRehearsals, Reproduction, and the Art of Living: Historicising Social PractiseÌęin the USAâ, awarded June 2015.
Biography
Stephanie is associate professor of American Art at University College London. She received her PhD from Columbia University in 2007. She was the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in History and Theory of Photography at Bryn Mawr College from 2007-2009 and the Andrew W. Mellow Research Forum Postdoctoral Fellow at the Courtauld Institute of Art from 2009-2010. She joined the Department of History of ArtÌęat MyAV·¶ in 2010.