Susan kae Grant & Mary Virginia Swanson:
UPCOMING SYMPOSIUM
Susan kae Grant and Mary Virginia Swanson met during their graduate studies when serving as volunteers at the National Meeting of the Society for Photographic Education (SPE). They continued to attend industry events together and grow their shared photography and photobook communities. Following their tenure on the SPE National Board of Directors, they established and taught the workshop Strategizing a Career in Photography to student volunteers and scholarship winners at the SPE National Conference over many years. In 2023 they celebrate their twentieth anniversary in presenting this workshop and providing advice to the next generation of photographers. Grant and Swanson were named SPE Honored Educators in 2014 and 2015 respectively.
It was through observing the evolution of Grant’s diverse creative practice that Swanson was introduced to the genre of the photographic artists’ book. Their shared interests in the book form brought them to present Strategies for Placing Artists’ Books with Photographic Content into the World at the 2019 College Book Arts Annual Conference (CBAA). In June, 2022, Grant served as a panel member on “Placing Your Photographic Bookworks in Public, Curatorial and Academic Collections,” Swanson’s closing conversation for The Art of the Photobook series presented by the Griffin Museum of Photography.
Photo: SkG + MVS at College Book Art Association's 2019 Conference, Tucson, 2019