Moscow Native to Discuss Worldwide Travels as Photojournalist

Yola Monakhov Stockton, assistant professor of photography, will discuss Hawaiian identity and tourism in relation to photography during her talk, "The Atlas of Aloha 'Aina: Mapping the Love of the Land," on Thursday, April 20, at 12:15 p.m. in the Science and Mathematics Complex 170.

Stockton’s talk is the last in the spring 2017 presentations of "Artists on the Road: Travel As Source of Inspiration."

Stockton will share stories from her travels, including emigrating from the former Soviet Union, studying abroad in Bologna, Italy, and working in photojournalism in the Middle East and Central Asia.

“My parents, who were forbidden to travel outside of the Soviet Union, took me to varied corners of that sphere, and always maintained an interest in other cultures—my father studied the Chinese language as a hobby,” Stockton said. “My mother took me on travels through the collections of the art museums of Moscow and St. Petersburg when I was a child, and later of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. When immigrating to the United States, we spent two months in Rome, as part of our migration.

“After the experience of a decaying, late-day Soviet life, spending time in Italy in the spring of 1981, I was awakened to the magic of how history inhabited a place, and how art, architecture, food, and the theater of the street brought forth that history.”

The second part of her talk will cover her more recent work in Hawaii, where the image culture of a tourist paradise masks a colonial history and the erasure of native rights. Stockton will speak about how her work seeks to engage these dueling realities, and how photographs constitute cultural memory.

Stockton received her master of fine arts from Columbia University and a master of arts in Italian from Columbia University. She has been included in numerous one- and two-person exhibitions and has been the subject of many national and international articles. Stockton worked as a correspondent for various news organizations covering Moscow and Central Asia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Jerusalem. Some of her photos depicting scenes within New York City have appeared in the New Yorker’s Goings on About Town section.   

The Artists on the Road series is co-sponsored by the Design Department and the International and Exchange Programs Office. For more information, contact Carol Townsend, associate professor of design and coordinator of design foundations, at (716) 878-4986.