Kemper Peacock
Melissa Shook, ca. 1960s
Gelatin silver print
10 x 8 inches
© Kristina Shook & The Estate of M. Melissa Shook
Melissa Shook: Freedom to Create, curated by Fiona Laugharn and presented by the Stevenson Library at Bard College this fall, traces the celebrated photographer’s formative relationship with Bard College—where she studied from 1959 to 1961—through a recent, generous gift from her daughter, Krissy Shook.
Letters exchanged with family and friends, graded essays, Bard newsletters, professor evaluations, and portraits of alumni collected over the years join a suite of ceramics and handmade artist books that span a life’s work devoted to daily observation and personal identity. Shook’s cameras are displayed alongside exhibition catalogues and postcards, artist interviews, and selected contact sheets and prints from her seminal Daily Self-Portraits 1972-1973 (1972/1973)and Wellfleet (1973) series.
