About Me
I am Fred Camper, an artist who makes digital prints of multiple photographs, and who lives in Chicago. For many years before starting to complete these works, at the beginning of 2005, I was, and still am, also a free-lance writer and lecturer on art, photography, and film. When I was younger I was a filmmaker. There is a 2007 interview with me, largely on my film SN, by the Chicago artist and writer John Neff, in the print and online journal BAT. My studio is in the East Bank Storage Building.
I've been publishing film articles in a variety of periodicals, catalogues and books since 1968. I've been writing regularly on film for the Chicago Reader since 1986, and on art from 1989 until February 2007, when my "Now Showing" column was canceled. From 1993 until 2004 my reviews of art and photography exhibits, and interviews with artists, appeared in the Reader almost weekly; "Now Showing," which began in 2004, was more often than not profiles of artists. These articles can all be purchased at low cost from the Reader's archive site. I've written a number of catalogue essays for artists, and have written on art for the Chicago Tribune, ArtNEWS, and other periodicals. I have taught at several colleges and universities in New York, New Jersey, and Illinois. In Fall 2000, I taught a course, American Melodrama, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which met at the Film Center, and which was both a for-credit course and a series of screenings and lectures that were also open to all for a small fee.
For my a little more detail on my life, see this short autobiography
This site has a large number of my film articles on-line, several articles on art, and links to a few of my art reviews that artists or galleries have placed on their sites, a list of my favorite filmmakers, and many other things. Coming in the future: a few more film articles, many more art articles, photography reviews, and other stuff.
Please email me with any errors you might find here, including expired links, as well as with suggestions for additional relevant links.
I'm a co-founder of and member of the Chicago Art Critics Association.
I am a member of the International Association of Art Critics, an excellent organization.
I'm the founder of a very small Internet film discussion group, Film Art, which became active in February 2008. Prior to that I co-founded and participated in the Internet film discussion group a_film_by; I withdrew from that group in February 2008; I've placed the early posts to this group on my site. I participate in FrameWorks, an email discussion group on avant-garde film. All of the postings to this group have been archived at Flicker, a Web site devoted to experimental and avant-garde film.
I've presented a variety of lectures and lecture-screenings in various locales, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto, New York, Turin, and Naples. Perhaps my personal favorite is a talk and film program that I'm still developing, titled "Nature and Cinema," which I have already given at Chicago Filmmakers, the San Francisco Cinematheque, the L. A. Filmforum, and E-M Arts.
I have won three awards for my writing:
In 2004, I was given the Exceptional Achievement in Criticism award from Cinemarati, an association of online film critics, for my liner notes to the Criterion DVD, By Brakhage: An Anthology. The same group also gave this Brakhage DVD their "Best DVD Award." I was especially pleased by both awards because to judge from the other winners and the original nominees, this is not a group devoted to avant-garde cinema in particular, thus suggesting that Brakhage may be starting to break through at last.
In 2001 I received the Anthology Film Archives Film Preservation Honor for my film criticism.
I received the 1999 Lisagor Award, given to various Chicago journalists, for my cover story Men in the Street, about the photographers Marvin Newman and Yasuhiro Ishimoto, both students at the legendary Institute of Design in the late 1940s and early 1950s who did some extraordinary Chicago street photography then.
My writing has been translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Norwegian, Lithuanian, Japanese, and Chinese, and possibly other languages without my awareness or consent.