More than four years in the making – since Brian Lanker died of pancreatic cancer on March 13, 2011, at the age of 63 – this retrospective exhibition accompanies a major book of the artist’s photography, with reflections and reminiscences by his colleagues, friends, and admirers. Drawn primarily from the images in the publication, the exhibition features Lanker’s extraordinary photographs of rural Kansas, sports, the arts, noted African American women, shoes, and more.

In 1974, Clarkson encouraged Lanker to accept a job at The Register-Guard in Eugene, first as photographer and later as director of graphics, where he continued to set new standards for journalism and photographic storytelling. He left in 1982 to pursue free-lance work for such magazines as Life, National Geographic, and Sports Illustrated. He also took on three personal book/exhibition projects. The first, I Dream a World: Black Women Who Changed America (1989) —Lanker’s first collaboration with Maya Angelou -- featured portraits of 75women in academia, the arts, business, politics, sports and other fields and was at that time the largest attended exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C.  Shall We Dance (2008; foreword by Maya Angelou) began as a photo essay for National Geographic and expanded to become a book that explored dance in cultures throughout the world.

See more at: http://jsma.uoregon.edu/BrianLanker