Join PhotoAlliance for the 2025 lecture series with photographers John Divola and Austin Leong. The “PhotoAlliance Lecture Series: John Divola and Auting Leong” happens in the Bayfront Theatre, Building B, Third Floor, at Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture on Sunday, October 12, 2025, 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. ($25).
This evening of compelling discussion highlights each artist’s innovative approaches to contemporary photography and its larger role in visual culture. The artists present an overview of the past, present, and upcoming work, as well as field questions from the audience at the end.
About The Photographers
John Divola has taught photography and art at numerous institutions since 1975, and since 1988 he has been a Professor of Art at the University of California, Riverside, where he is currently Distinguished Professor Emeritus.
His most well-known projects include Zuma (1977-78), documenting an abandoned beachfront house and its degradation and transformation through time; Vandalism (1973-75), an exploration of his own mark-making in abandoned spaces; As Far as I Could Get (1996-97), where the artist set his tripod and self-timer and took off running; and Dogs Chasing My Car In The Desert (1996/98), humorous images of blurred canines in hot pursuit shot from his car window.
Divola’s work has been featured in more than 90 solo exhibitions in the U.S. Japan, Europe, Mexico, and Australia, and more than 200 group shows. Among Divola’s awards are Individual Artist Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1973, 1976, 1979, 1990), a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (1986), a Flintridge Foundation Fellowship (1998), a City of Los Angeles Artist Grant (1999), and a California Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship (1998).
Currently, John Divola works primarily with photography and digital imaging. While he has approached a broad range of subjects, he is now focused on moving through the landscape, looking for the oscillating edge between the abstract and the specific.
Austin Leong is a Chinese-American photographer living in Oakland, CA whose work includes equal parts humor, empathy, and nostalgia to produce photos from a keen eye trained on the street. His work chronicles contemporary Californian existence, where he walks, drives, and bike rides through parks and suburban sprawls. Not one to overlook the mundane, Leong looks for moments where the everyday offers some moment of greater significance.
He has exhibited widely, with recent solo and group shows at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Minnesota Street Project, Pier 24 Photography, the Center for Photographic Art, and Climate Control. Leong’s work is held in the collections of SFMOMA, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Pier 24 Photography, and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. His work was published in the book Soft Eyes (Deadbeat Club, 2024), a collaboration with photographers Adrian Martinez and the late Henry Wessel, and builds on earlier publications including On the Fence (2020) and Our Time Together (2017). His photography has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, and the San Francisco Examiner.
He received his BA in Sociology from San Francisco State University and co-directs Book and Job Gallery, a photographer-run studio, darkroom, and gallery space in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood.