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This web site presents
the work of Esther Parada accompanied by texts taken from her writings.
Artist/photographer
Esther Parada was a faculty member at the School of Art & Design,
University of Illinois at Chicago from 1974 to 2004. In the mid-60s she
served with the U.S. Peace Corps as art instructor at the Escuela de Artes
Plasticas, Universidad de San Francisco Xavier, in Sucre, Bolivia, where
she learned to speak fluent Spanish.
Parada has written critical articles on Latin American photography and
cultural politics for Afterimage, Aperture, and Exposure
magazines. Her essay C/Overt Ideology: Two Images of Revolution is anthologized
in The Contest of Meaning, published by MIT Press (1989); and
her long-term concern with U.S. media and documentary practice in relation
to Third World countries led to the creation of a multi-media essay To
Make All Mankind Acquaintances, published as part of the CD-ROM Three
Works by the California Museum of Photography in 1996. The piece
may be seen at the Contact Zones web site (http://contactzones.cit.cornell.edu/artists/parada.html).
Parada’s earlier multiple-frame photographic works, Past Recovery
(1979) and Memory Warp (1980), which layer images and text related to
family history, are represented in the permanent collections of the Museum
of Modern Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Museum
of Fine Arts, Houston. Since 1986 she has used digital technology to create
a number of photo-montage and photo-text works which reflect on the relationship
between historical/cultural representation and power. These works, which
include The Monroe Doctrine: Theme and Variations, Define/Defy the Frame,
A Thousand Centuries, Native Fruits, and At the Margin, may be seen in
various publications such as In Our Own Image: The Coming Revolution
in Photography (1990, Aperture Press); Iterations: The New Image,
(1993, International Center of Photography with MIT Press); History
of Women Photographers (1994, Abbeville Press); Reframings:New
American Feminist Photographies (1995, Temple University Press);
and A World History of Photography (1996, Abbeville Press). They
may also be seen on the Digital Imaging Forum web site (http://www.art.uh.edu/dif).
Since 1995, Parada has explored connections between horticultural and
cultural history, leading to a 1996 website Transplant: A Tale of Three
Continents, and her recent work titled When the Bough Breaks. This multi-media
installation at Gallery 312 in Chicago (2004) was a memorial to the loss
of urban elm trees, and an exploration of their significance culturally
and as a methapor in American life. An earlier version of this work, titled
Canopy: A Meditation on the Demise of the American Elm, was developed
by Parada during her year as a Bunting Fellow at Radcliffe College, Cambridge,
MA (1997-98).
Parada was named SPE Honored Educator in 1994, and was the recipient of
NEA Photography Fellowships in 1982 and 1988.
From Esther Parada's Capsule Resume, 2/20/05. Her full resume, as
of 9/20/04,
may be found here.
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