Denis Defibaugh - Featured Faculty 2018
Denis Defibaugh
College of Art and Design
DENIS DEFIBAUGH IS PROGRAM CHAIR AND PROFESSOR FOR THE ADVERTISING PHOTOGRAPHY PROGRAM IN THE SCHOOL OF PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTS AND SCIENCES IN CAD.
Professor Defibaugh has a Master of Science in Graphic Arts Publishing, Type & Design and a Bachelor of Science in Professional Photography, both from RIT. His professional background is in advertising photography where he began by producing studio and location photography in Atlanta, GA and Aspen, CO.
His current research involves his role as PI with the National Science Foundation awarded project Rockwell Kent and Early 1930’s Greenland: A Comparative View of Environmental, and Social Cultural Change in Contemporary Greenland. This collaborative project combined visual, historical, and anthropological methodologies to approach social, cultural and environmental change in four Greenlandic communities of Illorsuit, Sisimiut, Nuuk, and Uummannaq.
The research is inspired by the work of Rockwell Kent, an American artist and writer, who resided in Greenland in the early 1930s and produced photographs, art, and literature about his time in the country. Kent’s rare historic lantern slides, not viewed in Greenland since their production, were displayed and discussed with community.
Workshops were held with students in each community, during which pupils were taught photographic techniques to produce and exhibit their own images. PI Defibaugh, Co-PIs Jette Rygaard, lecturer in Literature and Media at Ilisimatusarfik (University of Greenland), Axel Jeremiassen, PhD student at Ilisimatusarfik, and Susan Vanek, PhD student at Binghamton University produced in collaboration with Inuit natives the ethnographic study of still photographs and video interviews that introduced Inuit oral histories and contemporary experiences. The research provides an awareness into how communities in Greenland define themselves during a period of rapid social, cultural, and environmental change incurred by modernization efforts, political transitions, and economic shifts.
Traveling exhibitions and publications of Defibaugh’s photographs and videos will be developed with the premiere exhibition titled North by Nuuk, Greenland After Kent opening at RIT’s University Gallery in August of 2019.
Denis Defibaugh
Professor and Program Chair, Advertising Photography
College of Art and Design