Acclaimed photographer and Guggenheim Fellow Andrea Modica will be lecturing on the ETSU campus on Friday, April 11, at 7 p.m. in Ball Hall, Room 127.
Her lecture is presented by the ETSU Student Photography Association and sponsored by the ETSU Student Government Association B.U.C. Fund.Andrea Modica received her MFA from Yale University in 1985 and is best known for her 1996 book Treadwell.
In this 10-year project, Modica photographed a single family in a small town in upstate New York, focusing on one young girl in particular.
Although the book is named for a real town in New York, the true focus of the book is on the life dramas of the members of this impoverished family as they battle between life and death, joy and sorrow, and innocence and adolescence.
However, Modica’s pictures are staged scenes, and her world is a fictional one detached from any one place, a world where the viewer must confront these primal elements of life.
Of particular interest to Modica was a young girl named Barbara. First photographing her at age 7, Modica follows Barbara in her pictures as she matures into a woman, developing a bond with the girl that becomes an apparent and very important part of her photographs.
Tragically, Barbara died in 2001 at age 22 from adult-onset diabetes. Characteristic of their close relationship, Modica photographed Barbara during this slow decline as well and published these photographs in 2004 as a companion piece to Treadwell called Barbara.
Modica continues to explore these strong bonds with her subjects in projects like ‘Real Indians’ (2003) and ‘Fountain’ (2005), the latter an extension of Treadwell where she works with a Colorado-based family.
Modica’s work has been exhibited in numerous galleries nationwide including the Whitney Museum of Art, New York, the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Los Angeles Photography Center, and the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, as well as galleries in Italy and Belgium.

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