About Fotovision:
Fotovison was founded in 2003 in the San Francisco Bay Area to create, nurture, and educate a community of social documentary photographers. The founding board of directors and executive director were working documentary photographers and writers: Michelle Vignes, Ellen Manchester Kim Komenich, Ken Light and Melanie Light. Fotovision served artists and journalists who sought to help one another, connect photographers to resources, organized classes and workshops, and featured world class talent at public book signings, lectures and events.
In 2011 Fotovision ceased operation but wanted to continue bringing important documentary photography to the public. The final board of directors, Ken Light, Alison Taggart Barone, Cary McQueen, Mark Conroe and executive director, Melanie Light created and endowed the Fotovision Lecture Series at the Graduate School of Journalism at University of California, Berkeley. The endowment was made possible, in part, through the generosity of Stephen and Deb Goldblatt and Paul Sack.
George Tice (b. 1938) is drawn to vestiges of American culture on the verge of extinction: people in rural or small town communities to suburban buildings and neighborhoods that are often in decline. Although he has photographed throughout the Northwestern United States, he is best known for pictures of his native New Jersey, and his impeccable black and white prints.
He joined the Carteret Camera Club at fourteen, and left high school to work as a darkroom assistant for a Newark portrait studio at sixteen. A year later, he enlisted in the Navy, working as a photographer’s mate. After the war, he worked as a home portrait photographer for ten years. Tice’s interest shifted to his personal vision, and he turned his lens on the American urban landscape.
Steichen was one of the first to recognize Tice’s talents and acquired an image of an explosion aboard the USS Wasp for MOMA. His work is shown internationally and collected by institutions like the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, & the Art Institute of Chicago. Tice received fellowships from both the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has eighteen books. “Paterson” received the Grand Pix du Festival d’Arles.
An exhibition of George Tice’s work is on view in San Francisco at the Scott Nichols Gallery from September 5th through November 16th, 2013.