Christa Parravani's Photography

Acclaimed first-time author Christa Parravani (who visits UAlbany tomorrow to present her new memoir, Her, about the life and death of her identical twin, Cara) is also an accomplished photographer.

View her internationally exhibited series, "Kindred," featuring dual portraits of herself and Cara in surreal settings, on her website at http://www.christaparravani.com/kindred.htm.

Represented by the Michael Foley Gallery in New York City and the Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles, Parravani’s photography has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and Europe. Her widely-exhibited 2006 photography series, “Kindred,” shot prior to Cara’s death, featured both twins posing and interacting in a variety of dreamlike settings. The Center for Photography at Woodstock said of “Kindred,” “The landscapes become the medium for the telling of [the twins’] fractured relationship…. Here, identity is malleable and the past and the present merge to create an all encompassing reality. The photographs explore underlying themes of childhood, narcissism, sexual confusion, and family romance that identify a singular path, individuality, and separate lives…. Parravani is the author of the images and the subject at the same. She is both the viewer, the viewed, and inserts a large amount of control over the image while also losing control by making herself vulnerable.”

Parravani has taught photography at Dartmouth College, Columbia University, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, the writer Anthony Swofford (author of Jarhead and Hotels, Hospitals and Jails: A Memoir), and their daughter.

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On loving and losing a twin...

Christa Parravani's new memoir of her deceased twin Cara was just named Amazon's "Featured Debut" for March 2013, as well as a "Best Book of the Month."

Also a noted photographer, the Guilderland High School graduate posed in a series of photos with Cara shortly before her death. One of them (featured here) graces the cover of the book.

Parravani visits the Institute this coming Thursday:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#christa

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A Trillion Frames Per Second

MIT researchers have invented a camera that can take pictures at the rate of a trillion exposures per second.

In his latest video on Big Think, Michio Kaku, who visits on 2/21, explores the implications of this new technology.

See the video.

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Photography vs. Writing

Teju Cole, who visits 2/10, talks with India Realtime about why photography beats literature:

"I probably get a deeper satisfaction of having taken a very good photograph than of having written something very good, a very good story. Maybe it’s because the element of magic is so present in a good photograph – luck and magic, but also hard work and being ready and all that.

In the case of literature, so much of what’s on the page is you really making an effort to put it there. So people can give you the credit for what you’ve written down and praise you for writing that sentence.

But in the case of photography, although it also takes a lot of preparation and work, it can give the illusion of chance, of magic: How did you make it happen? How did you happen to be there? And maybe that’s a reaction I’m much more at home with."

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Featured photo is from Teju Cole's website. See more of his work on Flickr.

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