The Cincinnati Art Museum is hosting the Queen City debut of a new film from local Ann Segal centered on iconic photographer Nancy Rexroth.
Light on IOWA is the 10th in Segal's "Conversations with Photographers" series and features an intimate exchange with Rexroth about her childhood summers and how they influenced her work. A free virtual screening of the film takes place at 8 p.m. April 8. RSVP is required at cincinnatiartmuseum.org/rexroth.
In the early 1970s, Rexroth, a young photographer studying for a master’s degree at Ohio University, found her inspiration in the small towns and rural homes of Appalachian southeast Ohio. There, she used her Diana plastic camera — considered a toy, really — to take intentionally blurry, black-and-white dream-state pictures of people and places. And in 1977, she self-published a book of that work. She called it, strangely, IOWA.
The University of Texas Press released a handsome new edition of the out-of-print IOWA in 2017 for its 40th-anniversary celebration and in 2019, the CAM acquired The Nancy Rexroth Collection — a set of over 300 photos that includes the complete> IOWA collection, previously unseen work from the same period and a number of post-IOWAworks printed in various media.
“When the Cincinnati Art Museum announced a major, ongoing acquisition of Rexroth’s work in 2019, I was intrigued by Rexroth’s poetic expression and the thought-provoking nature of her imagery," says Segal in a press release.
Rexroth now resides in Cincinnati.
The CAM's Curator of Photography, Nathaniel M. Stein will offer opening remarks before the film screening.
For more information or to RSVP, visit cincinnatiartmuseum.org/rexroth.
