ABOUT
About
Northlight Gallery at the ASU Herberger Institute’s School of Art was founded on the Tempe campus by Professor Jack Stuler and MFA photo students in 1972 at a time when the medium was struggling to be recognized locally as a fine art. Now, over five decades later, photography and related digital technologies dominate contemporary art as well as our daily lives. At present Northlight Gallery is a laboratory for thinking about and experimenting with photography today, to understand and actively examine its role as an experimental art medium, and as mediator and shaper of reality in contemporary society.
Northlight houses two important historical photographic collections, the Northlight Gallery’s permanent collection and the Solari Foundation collection on long-term loan, that include the works of internationally renowned artists such as Ansel Adams, Eugene Atget, Thomas Barrow, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Henri Cartier Bresson, Harry Callahan, Linda Connor, Van Deren Coke, Betty Hahn, Eikoh Hosoe, Mary Ellen Mark, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Aaron Siskind, Frederick Sommer, Paul Strand, Andy Warhol and Edward Weston. These collections offer an invaluable resource for teaching and art historical research for the ASU community and at large, to learn about analog photographic methods and printing techniques; and to examine critically and creatively the ways historical photography has shaped contemporary ways of seeing in subjects it has traditionally addressed such as landscape, gender, portraiture, the body and history, including colonial history.
A vital resource
ASU students enrolled in the photo exhibitions class with Juan Obando, or independent studies with Liz Allen, may work directly with the collections to curate exhibitions, catalog and preserve artworks and design and install shows. This kind of hands-on experience with renowned works and contemporary photography is inspiring and creates a professional environment in which students apply skills and knowledge as they learn. Northlight Gallery is a vital resource for the education of students earning a degree in photography.
Northlight Gallery serves the university community and a wider audience through collection-based exhibitions as well as a broad spectrum of photo-based shows by emerging, underrepresented, national and internationally recognized artists; as well as with public talks by artists and scholars on key issues related to photography.
The new Northlight Gallery is housed at Grant Street Studios in downtown Phoenix, offering greater visibility and possibilities for public engagement.
The team
Cecilia
Fajardo-Hill
Director Northlight Gallery
Cecilia Fajardo-Hill is a Latina / British/ Venezuelan art historian and curator in modern and contemporary art, focusing on Latin American and Latinx art. Fajardo-Hill has a PhD in Art History from the University of Essex, England and an MA in 20th Century Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, England. She has published and curated extensively on contemporary Latin American and international artists. She co-curated Radical Women: Latin American Art 1960-1985, at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, in 2017, touring to the Brooklyn Museum, New York and to Pinacoteca, Sao Paulo in 2018. Presently is co-curator of Xican-a.o.x. Body, a touring exhibition organized by the American Federation of Arts, opening in June 2023 at the Cheech Center for Chicano Art in Riverside. She is editor Remains Tomorrow: Themes in Contemporary Latin American Abstraction, Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2022; and co-editor of Guatemala: A Critical Art History, 1870-2020, an initiative of Arte GT 20/21, Guatemala, 2024. In 2020 she received the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant to research the photographic work by pioneer Chicana artist Patssi Valdez, which is now an exhibition project. She was Visiting Scholar at the Chicano Studies Research Center de UCLA, Los Angeles; 2020 Fellowship Visiting Research Scholar and Visiting Lecturer Art History, Princeton University; Clark Fellow in residence at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown in fall of 2021, and 2021-22 Central American Visiting Scholar of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) at Harvard University. Fajardo-Hill is Professor of Museum Studies and Art History at ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.
The team
Liz Allen
Curator Northlight Gallery
Liz Allen is a curator, educator, artist and activist. As the curator of photography at Northlight Gallery for over 20 years, Allen has developed her deep interest in understanding, interpreting, and teaching the richness of photography as an evolving medium to an expanding community. By creating a space for dialog between artists long accepted in the photographic canon with diverse voices of contemporary BIPOC and women artists, Allen troubles that history in a way that challenges calcified notions of authority, representation and power.
As an undergraduate student at the University of Arizona, Allen worked at the Center of Creative Photography while earning her BFA in photography. She went on to earn her MFA in Imaging Arts and Sciences with a concentration in photography at Rochester Institute of Technology while she interned at the Image Permanence Institute. In her art practice Allen delves deep into issues of human connection, grief and addiction, exploring relationships and the human psyche through metaphor and storytelling. She utilizes a combination of historical photographic processes with 21st century digital technology as a conceptual foundation for the striking portraits and multimedia installations she creates.
Allen has actively served in leadership positions in the Society for Photographic Education since becoming a member in 2001. She served as the Chair of the Women’s Caucus for over a decade and was elected to the SPE Board of Directors in 2016 and 2020. Allen served as the Chair of the Board in 2020-2021. Allen is an Academic Professional/Museum Specialist, ASU School of Art.