About the Center
The Salzmann Photography Center is a regional center for the visual arts. Its purpose is to promote photography and other visual arts through a series of programs and fellowships that will be housed in Photo West Gallery at 3810 Lancaster Avenue.
The Salzmann Photography Center will feature three interrelated functions:
1. Photo West Gallery hosts exhibitions by emerging and established artists each year.
2. The Salzmann Center serves as a cultural and educational center for the arts, with an ongoing series of lectures, poetry readings and discussion groups, The Center in the future may provide residencies for photographers and other visual artists.
3. The Salzmann Center serves to preserve the legacy of photographer Laurence Salzmann. His work over sixty years will be featured in rotating exhibitions in the Photo West Gallery.
About Salzmann
Laurence Salzmann, born 1944, is a documentary artist from Philadelphia. His extraordinary career spanning six decades, he is one of Philadelphia’s the city’s most renowned artists working in lens-based media. An internationalist and a humanist, Salzmann has worked in over a dozen countries, learning half a dozen languages along the way. In creating his studies of little known communities around the world, he has adopted a method of full immersion, living and working with local communities for months and years. His photo works and film works defy easy categorization. Part historical record, part ethical chronicle, part visual poetry, Salzmann’s works chart new pathways in the exploration of the folkways and values of communities, demonstrating the dignity of lives very different from American mainstream culture. In 2018, the University of Pennsylvania’s Kislak Center for Special Collections acquired the entirety of Salzmann’s archive, for use by future generations. For information about Salzmann’s work, see www.laurencesalzmann.com.
Salzmann Photography Center
3810 Lancaster Avenue
Philadephia, Pa.19104
