How have photographic responses to ruins—from fallen stones to concrete wreckage—changed from the nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries across disparate cultural, environmental, and social contexts? Join Dr. Nicole Berlin, Assistant Curator of Collections, and former Gruber Fellow Dr. Carrie Cushman in conversation with Professor Erich Hatala Matthes on the aesthetic symbolism of ruins past and present. Berlin and Cushman will consider two distinct photographic projects—the early archaeological photography of Pompeii and a contemporary artistic critique of urban redevelopment in Tokyo—followed by a conversation with Matthes on the stakes of ruinous imagery in the age of the anthropocene. This program is held in conjunction with the Davis Museum exhibitions Picturing Pompeii: Archaeology and Early Travel Photography and Komatsu Hiroko: Creative Destruction.

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