An image has the power to show us the world anew—something we need now more than ever. In captivating keynotes, award-winning artists and speakers LaToya Ruby Frazier, Titus Kaphar, and Teju Cole take audiences into the concepts and ideas behind their photographs, paintings, and critical vocabulary, changing the way we see the world.
LaToya Ruby Frazier: “Photos can change society—our view of ourselves and our communities.”
LaToya Ruby Frazier is an award-winning photographer, MacArthur “Genius” and one of Lavin’s most compelling speakers on the entanglement of race, labor, family, and the environment. Her TED talk—viewed over a million times—bridges her personal history with social justice, amplifying the vulnerable voices we need to hear.
Titus Kaphar: “Images should be as challenging as the issues we face.”
With more urgency than a front-page headline, Titus Kaphar’s paintings and sculpture capture the spirit of social justice and change in America today (exemplified in his TIME cover portrait of the Ferguson protests). If art is a language that speaks, what is it saying? For Kaphar, his role as an artist is clear: to draw back the curtain on ignorance and deception, and amplify the voices of those who cannot speak for themselves—as he does in his standing-o TED Talk.
Teju Cole: “I see myself as an observer of the world who has a strong drive to testify.”
Teju Cole is an award-winning novelist and the highly influential photography critic for The New York Times Magazine. His talks are insightful, generous, compelling; erudite without being exclusionary; deeply personal, striking, and elegantly phrased. As a speaker, Cole bridges the space between words and images, articulating a picture’s inherent “thousand words” with incisive, critical takeaways.
