Zora J. Murff, a photography graduate student in the Department of Art and Art History, will present a free public lecture about his “Corrections” series at 5:30 p.m. Jan. 27 in Richards Hall, Room 15.
For three years, Murff provided monitoring and rehabilitation services to youth on probation in eastern Iowa. Combining his work in human services and photography, he documented the young men and women in his charge. The result is his series “Corrections,” which shows an examination of youth experience in the juvenile justice system, the role images play in defining kids who are deemed criminals and how the concepts of privacy and control may affect their future.
“Corrections” was published in December 2015 by Aint-Bad Editions. It includes 40 pages of anonymous portraiture, landscapes and still-life images illustrating those placed in the juvenile justice system, the crimes they have committed and the objects and spaces they come into contact with as a result.
Writer and curator Pete Brook contributed a foreword titled “Off Paper,” which outlines the current proliferation in electronic monitoring practices in the American criminal justice system and how it relates to Murff’s work. Murff’s images raise critical questions about the techniques and programming local governments use to incarcerate and rehabilitate juveniles.
Prior to coming to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for graduate study, Murff attended the University of Iowa where he studied Photography and holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Iowa State University. His work has been exhibited nationally, internationally and featured online including The British Journal of Photography and Wired Magazine’s Raw File. His work has also been published in VICE Magazine and PDN’s Emerging Photographer Magazine.
Murff was named a LensCulture 2015 Top 50 Emerging Talent, a 2014 Photolucida Critical Mass finalist and is part of the Midwest Photographers Project through the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago.
To learn more, visit Murff’s website at http://go.unl.edu/vmvh.
