In this highlight of the Atelier 33 exhibition, we interviewed Julia Arstorp about her collection Invisible Threads, on display in the Griffin Main Gallery until March 26, 2021. This series captures the deeply personal moments shared between the artist and her daughter while revisiting memories from her family’s past.
© Julia Arstorp – Windswept
Which of these images was the impetus for this series? How did it inform how you completed the series?
I would say it’s the image of my daughter wearing a fur coat that belonged to my mother from the early 60’s. I very much feel this project was a collaborative effort with my daughter. I love how that photograph has the imprint of three generations and results in such a joyful image.
How has your photography changed since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic? Has the Atelier been a motivator to persevere through these trying times?
Before COVID I never took self portraits but with social distancing I had to
place myself in front of the camera which, at first, was uncomfortable.
Ultimately, I found that it added to the project and brought me a different
perspective on my work. I also found that focusing on a project about
family history helped to anchor me during these stressful times. And yes,
the Atelier was a key motivator to keep me on track.
© Julia Arstorp – 3 Rings
How has your Atelier work helped you to keep the family tradition alive of passing down stories to each generation?
I grew up on stories told by my grandmother and mother. And while clearing out my mother’s house, we found boxes that held pieces of my family history – everything form scrapbooks and letters to my great grandfathers spectacles and my great grandmothers wedding dress. This project allowed me the time to work on a body of work about these family memories and stories and, equally important, share the process with my daughter.
© Julia Arstorp – Cousin Margaret
I hope my work speaks to the connections and identity we find through childhood memories and family stories. The blending of past and present that helps us see we’re part of an ongoing story.
Tell us what is next for you creatively.
I really see myself as both a photographer and a printer. I’ll continue working on new prints – mostly platinum palladium and cyanotype. I’ll also continue documenting the neighborhood and small knit community my family has lived in these past 30 years and continue focusing on family stories.
Visit Julia Arstorp’s website and check out her Instagram, @JuliaArstorp to see more of her work.
Yesterday Diane Jonte-Pace, David Pace’s wife let us all know that David had passed away after 6 weeks of hospitalization to bring his leukemia into remission. David had hopes of a bone marrow transplant. What a tragic loss for his family and friends and our photography community.
Artist, photographer, and educator Meg Birnbaum has given us some of her time via email so we could ask her a few questions about her Griffin State of Mind. What is it that gets her creating, what puts her in the Griffin headspace to teach and imagine. 
I first started using X-rays as a tool to visually explore objects in 2010 when I took a box full of my daughters’ dolls to work. The X-rays were ghost-like and haunting, and I liked them. I could literally see beneath the surface (as the photography cliché goes). The source of X-rays is a linear accelerator– the same machine that is used to treat cancer patients. But treating dolls with cancer killing rays was not the end goal, of course. I continued making X-rays with other objects from diverse sources such as nature (birds, seed pods, skulls), flea markets (vacuum tubes and light meters), and musical instruments.. Five years ago, I started X-raying cameras Actually, I X-ray anything that seems interesting to me and fits on a few pieces of film or the digital imager. I have a small collection of thirty cameras that I started X-raying in 2015. I made a few prints and showed them to my photography friends. Many of them let me borrow their cameras to X-ray. After three years I had made x-rays of 130 cameras. The idea of the book came from a portfolio review of the camera X-rays by Jennifer Yoffy in Atlanta. It was published in December 2018 by Fraction Editions and 500 copies were printed.
This work uses x-rays to explore the micro-evolution of cameras and is a metaphor about the limits of evolution. While form and media may have changed, the camera is still a camera: a tool to create images by capturing photons of light. Today’s sophisticated digital cameras look and operate far differently than the first cameras of the nineteenth century, however the essentials have not changed. The photographer points a contraption with a lens towards the subject to encode its likeness on a storage medium, be it film or digital sensor. And this contraption has been manufactured in many wonderful and clever designs, the complexity usually hidden inside. While making these x-rays, I have been surprised and astonished by what I found inside the cameras. The lens, when imaged from the side, contain a multi-element train of perfectly shaped glass forms whose purpose is to collect and direct light towards the target.
The idea was formed when I started a series called Treasures: 44 objects, about all the things I’ve known for my whole life that live at my mothers house. The end product was a 6 x 8 x 3.5 inch wood box which included all 44 objects on 5 x 7 inch cards, Edition of 3. I decided to start putting all my fine art in book form for my family or anyone to easily enjoy. Treasures: objects I’ve known all my life, was perfect to start with, as I felt like it was already a book, and all the images were ready to go.
Treasures is a short story if you read the back of each card. Each card tells a bit about the life of the object. The images might trigger your emotions about objects you may have grown up with, so I want you to feel a connection to an object and have your own memory.
Treasures is a humorous look at the objects people live with, that we build our lives around, that we give breath to, and how they eventually become part of our lives – and tell our stories.
Artist Statement: Caught In The Looking Glass is a handmade artist’s book that celebrates random reflections that appear on a shiny surface. Twelve color images illustrate that, indeed, another world can exist within the frame of a mirror. This lay-flat book contains twelve images that were captured in or around a chateau in the South of France. Inside covers are lined with mirrored paper; the book is enclosed by a soft, paper slip case.
Artist Statement: As a diehard New Yorker, I have often admired the flowers one may find in her neighborhood bodega. Bodegas are unique and ubiquitous to the various neighborhoods in New York City; of course, pending gentrification. Their locations span from the Bronx to the Lower Eastside and Queens, Staten Island and Brooklyn. They are reliable 24 hour stores where one can purchase a beverage, lottery tickets, smokes or a sandwich. Many are also places where you could buy a colorful bouquet of flowers in a pinch. Wrapped in cellophane, these bouquets are specifically identified as ‘Bodega Flowers’. Some may view these flowers as ‘cheap or less than’ but that’s simply not the case. Roses come in every color, Daisies are pretty, and fluorescent Pom Poms are for the taking. Bodega Flowers are for everyone and they are truly beautiful!
The idea for this project came when I found out that the new art teacher in my son’s grade school was teaching the class to color within the lines. I knew that if I confronted her in an argument that she had a bad idea, I would loose the argument. So I choose to undermine her teaching by having my son create photograms in our bedroom – bathroom. I began that series in 1984 with each of my kids taking turns posing and then we developed the photograms in the bathroom. I came back to photograms fifteen years later, in 1999 with professional models. A second time I came back to the photograms with professional models around 2015. This when I came up with the idea of creating a book with these three sets of images.
