Since the late 1830s, photographs have been integrated into jewelry as tokens of memory, devotion, or mourning. Contemporary photo-based jewelry artists extend these traditional functions and forms, while enlisting new technologies and techniques to engage a great variety of personal and social concerns. Organized by MAD Jewelry Curator Ursula Ilse-Neuman in collaboration with Suzanne Ramljak, editor of Metalsmith magazine, this panel discussion will address historical precedents for today’s photo jewelry and explore the wide range of cutting-edge approaches in both digital-image technology and innovative jewelry making. Through diverse combinations of these two creative practices, contemporary jewelers are expanding jewelry’s role as a carrier of cultural meaning as well as an agent of intervention on the human body.

Panelists include Robert Ebendorf, Lauren Kalman, Lyle Rexer, and Bettina Speckner.