BGSU art historian wins prestigious photography fellowship

Andrew Hershberger, School of Art, will use a $2,500 research fellowship to study “The Dark Side of Photography: A Short History of the Negative Print.”

A contemporary art history specialist, Hershberger has been awarded a 2004 Ansel Adams Research Fellowship at the University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography. One of two recipients this year, he is among 22 selected since the program’s inception in 1991.

He will spend roughly two weeks at the center this summer, studying 34 photographers’ negative prints—photographs in which highlights are black and deep shadows are white.

Andrew Hershberger

Hershberger’s doctoral dissertation at Princeton University dealt with mid-20th century American photographer Minor White, whose negative prints inspired a contemporary, Walter Chappell, to claim that they made him “remember what I do not yet know.” White loved the assessment, said Hershberger, noting that while it’s confusing, he also finds it fascinating.

Photographer Franz Roh’s description of negative prints as “photography in the minor key” is “probably the most interesting theory I know of” on the subject, added Hershberger, who wants to explore why photographers made such prints, how they used them and what they said about them. He expects the research to result in an article and/or an exhibition.

The international fellowship, funded through a Polaroid Corp. endowment in memory of renowned photographer Ansel Adams, is open to scholars from any discipline, as well as museum professionals, independent researchers, artists and candidates for advanced degrees. A committee comprised of the Center for Creative Photography’s director and staff, along with invited photography faculty, chooses recipients.

Founded by Adams in 1975, the center holds an extensive collection of photographs and related materials by artists from around the world. It also houses the greatest number of complete archives of American photographers found in the United States.

Hershberger has been a BGSU faculty member since 2001, the same year he earned his Ph.D. in art and archeology from Princeton. He received a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Arizona and master’s degrees from the University of Chicago and Princeton.

From 1998-2001, Hershberger was curatorial and research assistant and cataloger at the Photography Study Center at Princeton’s University Art Museum. He has co-curated three photography exhibitions there, and his photographs and short films have been part of gallery shows and screenings elsewhere. He has won an honor and a merit award from the American Institute of Architects for his photographs.

His most recent publication is a 2003 review of The Illuminating Mind in American Photography, a book that the first Adams Fellow, David Peeler, developed from his fellowship project.