Update 3/20/18: Due to inclement weather and dangerous travel conditions, this event has been canceled. The Department of Communications Media is working to reschedule the event for a later date.
Indiana University of Pennsylvania Communications Media 2001 graduate Amanda Lucidon will return to campus this month to share her experience working in the White House and to discuss her best-selling book, Chasing Light: Michelle Obama Through the Lens of a White House Photographer.
Lucidon will speak in IUP's Stouffer Auditorium at 6:30 p.m. on March 21 with a reception and book signing to follow. Copies of her book will be available for purchase at the event or can be purchased in advance at the IUP Co-op Store.
The IUP College of Education and Communications and the Department of Communications Media are sponsoring this free event.
Lucidon is an award-winning documentarian, filmmaker, and former freelance New York Times photographer who served as one of the White House photographers responsible for photographing First Lady Michelle Obama from 2013 to 2017.
She is one of only a few female White House photographers in history.
Lucidon's work has been honored by Pictures of the Year International, National Press Photographers Association Best of Photojournalism, and the White House News Photographers Association, among others. She is currently a photographer, filmmaker, and public speaker based in Washington, D.C.
In the acknowledgements of her book, Lucidon mentions her IUP photography instructor, retired Communications Media faculty member Ron Juliette.
Juliette has fond members of Lucidon as a student.
"Amanda was a quiet but focused student who had the ability to let her images speak for her,” Juliette said. “Her class assignments were completed with thought and passion. As a photojournalist and filmmaker, she was driven to reveal worlds most of us don't experience firsthand, especially when covering the compelling social issues of the under privileged that drove her work, which may explain how a photographer so young caught the attention of Pete Souza and found herself in the White House shadowing Michelle Obama.”
Read more about Lucidon in the Fall/Winter 2016 IUP Magazine Feature “Focus on the First Family.”
Photo information: First Lady Michelle Obama participates in a discussion with President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Freida Pinto, and students at R. S. Caulfield Senior High School in Unification Town, Liberia, June 27, 2016. (Official White House Photo by Amanda Lucidon)