Michael Childers' Author, Author: A Photographic Retrospective of Authors, Playwrights, and Screenwriters To Exhibit Gutman Library, 10/29

The Arts in Education Program (AIE) at Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) will present world-renowned photographer Michael Childers' exhibition Author, Author: A Photographic Retrospective of Authors, Playwrights, and Screenwriters (October 29 - November 20, 2015) at the Monroe C. Gutman Library Gallery at Harvard University, 6 Appian Way, Cambridge, MA.

Author, Author is a retrospective featuring intimate portraits selected from a series of more than 100 writers, screenwriters, playwrights and poets photographed by Childers from the 1960s through today. The opening on Thursday, October 29 (4pm - 5 pm) will feature an Artist Talk/Conversation with Michael Childers, author and film historian William J. Mann, and Steve Seidel, director of the Arts in Education Program at HGSE, with a reception to follow (5 pm - 6 pm). The Monroe C. Gutman Library Gallery is open Mon - Thu, 7 am - 11 pm; Fri, 7 am - 7 pm; Sat, 9 am - 7 pm; and Sun, 12 noon - 9pm. Admission is free of charge and open to the public. For more information please visit, http://www.gse.harvard.edu or contact HGSE Arts in Education office at 617-495-9068.

"The AIE program encourages students to explore the relationships between art, artists, and learning. This requires deepening our understanding of the nature of what it means to be an artist," says Steve Seidel, director of the Arts in Education program at HGSE. "Michael Childers' portraits in Author, Author reveal a new element of intimacy to these brilliant writers, and the chance to affirm or challenge perspectives that we all layer upon his subjects. This exhibition moves beyond what we think we know of writers by their words, and through Childers' masterful eye, we come to see them, and their work as if for the first time."

Childers is known for his fine art photographs of legendary movie stars, artists, and other iconic luminaries that first graced the cover of Andy Warhol's' Interview Magazine as well as more than 100 covers of various magazines around the world including Time, Life, Look, GQ, People, London Sunday Times, Paris Match, Elle, and English Vogue.

When Childers was in high school working at the local library he was mentored by a wonderful librarian who taught him about books and authors. This created a lifelong interest in literature. While working in the 1960s and 1970s in Los Angeles, New York and London, Childers was introduced to many of the great writers, screenwriters and playwrights of the period through his life partner, the late Oscar-winning director John Schlesinger. Among his first professional assignments in the mid-1960s were book jackets for famed authors Ray Bradbury and Rod McKuen.

Over the years, Childers has cultivated a seminal collection of portraits from Christopher Isherwood, Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams to contemporary writers like T.C. Boyle, Michael Cunningham, Jonathan Franzen and Amy Tan. In the process, he has revealed the enigmatic personae of a number of writers who have contributed to the annals of American and English literature in the second half of the 20th Century.

Michael Childers Born in North Carolina, Childers attended the UCLA Film School where he directed student films and began his photography career by studying with Robert Heineken and Edmund Teske. Childers created the mixed media work for the record-breaking run of the hit off-Broadway musical "Oh! Calcutta!" for Kenneth Tynan in New York. Tynan subsequently invited Michael to work for Sir Laurence Olivier's National Theatre in London, and he remains the only American photographer invited to photograph productions at this prestigious institution. He went on to become a founding photographer for Andy Warhol's Interview and After Dark magazines. For Dance magazine, he produced many covers including those featuring the Joffrey Ballet, the Royal Ballet, and the Alvin Ailey Dance Company. He also co-authored the book, Bejart: The World of Dance.

From his Melrose Avenue and Venice studios, Childers photographed more than 200 magazine covers, including GQ, New York, TV Guide, Esquire, Los Angeles, Elle, Paris Match, Life, London Sunday Times Magazine, and both English and Italian Vogue. He created more than 150 album covers and film posters for major motion picture studios and worked as a special photographer on dozens of films, including Grease, Marathon Man, The Year of Living Dangerously, Coal Miner's Daughter, Pennies from Heaven, The Terminator, Hammett, Torch Song Trilogy, Endless Love, The Champ, and Oceans 12.

In 2003, Palm Springs Desert Museum presented a forty-year retrospective of Michael's work titled Icons and Legends: The Photography of Michael Childers. The three-month show was enjoyed by more than 55,000 visitors. Michael received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Hollywood Photography at the Temecula Film Festival in September of 2004, and the Lifetime Achievement Award for Hollywood Photography from the Provincetown Film Festival that same year.

His photos are in the Seattle Art Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Victoria & Albert Museum, and the British Film Institute Library in London, Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, Palm Springs Art Museum, University of California, Riverside, Photography Museum, Las Vegas Art Museum, Laguna Art Museum, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Marion Center for the Photographic Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in Beverly Hills, the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts, San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, the Seattle Art Museum, Scripps College Museum of Art, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Begovich Gallery at California State University Fullerton, and the Santa Monica Museum of Art.

In 2011, a "David Hockney - Andy Warhol" exhibition was shown at the Talisman Gallery in Bergamot Station, Santa Monica. In October 2011, the Carmel Film Festival featured "Famous Faces on Film." Michael's "Distortions" show was exhibited at the Michael Lord Gallery, February-March 2012. Backyard Oasis, part of the Getty Museum's Pacific Standard Time, was at the Palm Springs Art Museum January-May 2012. His iconic photograph, "The Hockney Swimmer", is the cover of the Backyard Oasis book and has been featured in international publications, including Time Magazine, The London Telegraph, Vanity Fair and American Vogue.

William J. Mann is an author and historian, whose biographies and studies of the American film industry have been widely acclaimed. KATE: THE WOMAN WHO WAS HEPBURN was named a Notable Book of 2006 by the New York Times and TINSELTOWN: MURDER, MORPHINE AND MADNESS AT THE DAWN OF HOLLYWOOD was an Edgar Award Finalist. Among his other works are the Lambda Literary Award-winning WISECRACKER and biographies of Elizabeth Taylor, Barbra Streisand and John Schlesinger. In addition, Mann is an executive producer on the film and television adaptations of KATE, TINSELTOWN and WISECRACKER. He also is an Associate Professor of History at Central Connecticut State University.

The Arts in Education (AIE) Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, is unique among arts education Master's programs nationally for its embrace of activities at the intersection of the arts and learning. Established in 1995, the AIE Program seeks to strengthen students' capacities to influence, expand, and improve educational practice, research, policy and activism, both in schools and in community settings. Each year approximately 40 AIE students pursue their diverse interests through course work, internships, research, volunteer work, working with their peers and faculty from across the University and in the wider community. The AIE Program enables its graduates to provide leadership for the field through sharing best practices, engaging in innovative collaborations, and working to expand public understanding of the distinctive role of the arts in creating and maintaining healthy institutions, communities, and societies.

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