2025 Keynote Lecture
with Ken Gonzales-Day
March 22, 2025, 10:00am at Bread & Salt
Ken Gonzales-Day presents the 13th annual Keynote Lecture for the Medium Festival of Photography on March 22, 2025 at Bread & Salt in San Diego’s Barrio Logan neighborhood. The Keynote Lecture headlines the Medium Festival as a signature event in our annual programming and is part of a full weekend of programming for photography in San Diego and Tijuana.
Ken Gonzales-Day’s interdisciplinary and conceptually grounded photographic projects consider the history of photography, the construction of race, and the limits of representational systems. As an artist and writer, Ken Gonzales-Day examines issues related to slavery, colonialism, and imperialism as seen through historic depictions of non-white populations. Collectively, the photographs he produces expand an art historical dialogue, giving voice to populations who have been marginalized, unseen, or erased from historical narratives. During his talk Gonzales-Day will provide a brief overview of several of his projects and will allow time for questions from our in-person audience.
We are honored to share space with Ken Gonzales-Day for the Medium Festival of Photography. As U.S. residents experience one of the most divisive chapters in recent American history, his work reminds us about the power of visual art and the importance of the photograph as record.
About Ken Gonzales-Day
Ken Gonzales-Day is a Los Angeles based artist whose interdisciplinary practice considers the historical construction of race and the limits of representational systems ranging from lynching photographs to educational museum displays. His widely exhibited Erased Lynching series, along with the publication of Lynching in the West: 1850-1935 (Duke University Press, 2006) transformed the understanding of racialized violence in the United States and raised awareness of the lynching of Latinos, Native Americans, Asians, and African-Americans in California, and helped to ground this history within the larger discussion of policing, migration, and racial justice.
Gonzales-Day is a Getty scholar and a Terra Foundation and Smithsonian Museum fellow. In 2017, Gonzales-Day received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography. In 2018, he was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.
Financial Support for the Keynote Lecture is provided by the City of San Diego
Biography
Ken Gonzales-Day received an MFA in art from UC Irvine; an MA in art history from Hunter College, CUNY; and was a Van Leer Fellow at the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program (ISP). Fellowships include: the Getty Research Institute (GRI), The Smithsonian SAAM fellowship in American Art, and the Smithsonian Artist Fellowship (SARF), The Terra Foundation in Giverny, France, The Rockefeller Foundation Center in Bellagio, Italy. His work is in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Getty, LACMA, MOCA Los Angeles, MoMA in NYC, The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery as well as The Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the National Gallery of Art, among others.
Gonzales-Day holds the Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair in Art at Scripps College, is represented by Luis De Jesus Los Angeles gallery, and received Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography in 2017.
Location and Event Info
This event takes place inside Bread & Salt, located at 1955 Julian Ave., San Diego, CA 92113
Street parking is available in the surrounding area. A dedicated parking lot will be available to VIP Pass holders on March 22 from 9:00am to 7:00pm. Ride sharing and cycling are encouraged.
Public transit options to the festival include the Orange and Blue Trolley lines, and MTS Bus lines 3, 12, and 929.
Access to the artist talk is included with Festival attendance. Seating is guaranteed for Festival Pass and VIP Pass holders. Passes. We have FREE Festival Passes available for anyone with financial assistance. Please email info@mediumphoto.org to inquire.