• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Griffin Museum of Photography

  • Log In
  • Contact
  • Search
  • Log In
  • Search
  • Contact
  • Visit
    • Hours
    • Admission
    • Directions
    • Handicap Accessability
    • FAQs
  • Exhibitions
    • Exhibitions | Current, Upcoming, Archives
    • Calls for Entry
  • Events
    • In Person
    • Virtual
    • Receptions
    • Travel
    • PHOTOBOOK FOCUS
    • Focus Awards
  • Education
    • Programs
    • Professional Development Series
    • Photography Atelier
    • Education Policies
    • NEPR 2025
    • Member Portfolio Reviews
    • Arthur Griffin Photo Archive
    • Griffin State of Mind
  • Join & Give
    • Membership
      • Become a Member
      • Membership Portal
      • Log In
    • Donate
      • Give Now
      • Griffin Futures Fund
      • Leave a Legacy
      • John Chervinsky Emerging Photographer Scholarship
  • About
    • Meet Our Staff
    • Griffin Museum Board of Directors
    • About the Griffin
    • Get in Touch
  • Rent Us
  • Shop
    • Online Store
    • Admission
    • Membership
  • Blog
  • Visit
    • Hours
    • Admission
    • Directions
    • Handicap Accessability
    • FAQs
  • Exhibitions
    • Exhibitions | Current, Upcoming, Archives
    • Calls for Entry
  • Events
    • In Person
    • Virtual
    • Receptions
    • Travel
    • PHOTOBOOK FOCUS
    • Focus Awards
  • Education
    • Programs
    • Professional Development Series
    • Photography Atelier
    • Education Policies
    • NEPR 2025
    • Member Portfolio Reviews
    • Arthur Griffin Photo Archive
    • Griffin State of Mind
  • Join & Give
    • Membership
      • Become a Member
      • Membership Portal
      • Log In
    • Donate
      • Give Now
      • Griffin Futures Fund
      • Leave a Legacy
      • John Chervinsky Emerging Photographer Scholarship
  • About
    • Meet Our Staff
    • Griffin Museum Board of Directors
    • About the Griffin
    • Get in Touch
  • Rent Us
  • Shop
    • Online Store
    • Admission
    • Membership
  • Blog

Chris Berry Griffin State of Mind

Posted on February 4, 2022

Chris Aluka Berry is a documentary photographer based in Atlanta, Georgia whose long form essays challenge cultural norms and racial stereotypes by exploring race, class, and faith within underrepresented communities. Second Chances: Josh’s Salvation, documents Joshua Reynold’s life in prison. His hope is that this project can show the humanity of the prison population and the love and empathy than can result from programs such as the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation program. We asked Chris some questions, and are excited to share his answers below.

© Chris Aluka Berry

Tell us how you first connected to the Griffin Museum.

I first learned about the Griffin Museum when Paula Tognarelli contacted me to ask if she could showcase my work, “Second Chances: Josh’s Salvation.”

How do you involve photography in your everyday life? Can you tell us about any images or artists that have caught your attention recently?

I engage photography in my everyday life by teaching photography at PACE Academy to middle school students. I carry my camera with me often. And I make my living as a photographer so I’m shooting something most days of the week.

Please tell us a little about your series Second Chances: Josh’s Salvation, and how it was conceived.

© Chris Aluka Berry

This project started when I was working as a photojournalist at The State Newspaper in Columbia, SC. I had spent a lot of time in the horse communities in Camden, SC, when I found out about the prison program, the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation Program. I had worked on several projects that involved life in prison, and have always had a deep love for horses and other animals. It took several years to get the warden to give me permission to come into the prison and let me work on the project. Sometimes persistence pays off. In this case it resulted in me spending a year going back and forth into the prison to tell Josh’s story.

Has there been a Griffin Museum exhibition that has particularly engaged or moved you?

© Chris Aluka Berry

Unfortunately, I have yet to see the exhibitions of the Griffin Museum. I live in Atlanta and don’t have the opportunity to travel to Boston much. Now that I know about the Griffin I plan on following along with the exhibitions and I hope to be able to visit the museum in person soon.

What is your favorite place to escape to?

My favorite place to escape to is the Appalachian mountains of Western North Carolina.

What is a book, song or visual obsession you have at the moment?

© Chris Aluka Berry

My current visual obsession is my ongoing photo series, which will be published as a book in 2023, entitled, Affrilachia: The Remnant that Remains. For the past five years, I have documented African American communities in the southern Appalachian mountains.

If you could be in a room with anyone to have a conversation, who would it be and what would you talk about?

If I could have a conversation with anyone, it would be Jesus Christ of Nazareth. I would love to know if he really is the son of God. If so, what is God like? And what does the after-life look like? I would also be curious to know what his favorite food is.

© Chris Aluka Berry

Does he like chocolate?  And I would most definitely try and make his photograph.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Primary Sidebar

Footer

Cummings Foundation
MA tourism and travel
Mass Cultural Council
Winchester Cultural District
Winchester Cultural Council
The Harry & Fay Burka Foundation
En Ka Society
Winchester Rotary
JGS – Joy of Giving Something Foundation
Griffin Museum of Photography 67 Shore Road, Winchester, Ma 01890
781-729-1158   email us   Map   Purchase Museum Admission   Hours: Tues-Sun Noon-4pm
     
Please read our TERMS and CONDITIONS and PRIVACY POLICY
All Content Copyright © 2025 The Griffin Museum of Photography · Powered by WordPress · Site: Meg Birnbaum & smallfish-design
MENU logo
  • Visit
    • Hours
    • Admission
    • Directions
    • Handicap Accessability
    • FAQs
  • Exhibitions
    • Exhibitions | Current, Upcoming, Archives
    • Calls for Entry
  • Events
    • In Person
    • Virtual
    • Receptions
    • Travel
    • PHOTOBOOK FOCUS
    • Focus Awards
  • Education
    • Programs
    • Professional Development Series
    • Photography Atelier
    • Education Policies
    • NEPR 2025
    • Member Portfolio Reviews
    • Arthur Griffin Photo Archive
    • Griffin State of Mind
  • Join & Give
    • Membership
      • Become a Member
      • Membership Portal
      • Log In
    • Donate
      • Give Now
      • Griffin Futures Fund
      • Leave a Legacy
      • John Chervinsky Emerging Photographer Scholarship
  • About
    • Meet Our Staff
    • Griffin Museum Board of Directors
    • About the Griffin
    • Get in Touch
  • Rent Us
  • Shop
    • Online Store
    • Admission
    • Membership
  • Blog

Floor Plan

Amy Rindskopf's Terra Novus

At the market, I pick each one up, pulled in by the shapes as they sit together, waiting. I feel its heft in my hand, enjoy the textures of the skin or peel, and begin to look closer and closer. The patterns on each individual surface marks them as distinct. I push further still, discovering territory unseen by the casual observer, a new land. I am like a satellite orbiting a distant planet, taking the first-ever images of this newly envisioned place.

This project started as an homage to Edward Weston’s Pepper No. 30 (I am, ironically, allergic to peppers). As I looked for my subject matter at the market, I found that I wasn’t drawn to just one single fruit or vegetable. There were so many choices, appealing to both hand and eye. I decided to print in black and white to help make the images visually more about the shapes, and not about guessing which fruit is smoothest, which vegetable is greenest.

Artistic Purpose/Intent

Artistic Purpose/Intent

Tricia Gahagan

 

Photography has been paramount in my personal path of healing from disease and

connecting with consciousness. The intention of my work is to overcome the limits of the

mind and engage the spirit. Like a Zen koan, my images are paradoxes hidden in plain

sight. They are intended to be sat with meditatively, eventually revealing greater truths

about the world and about one’s self.

 

John Chervinsky’s photography is a testament to pensive work without simple answers;

it connects by encouraging discovery and altering perspectives. I see this scholarship

as a potential to continue his legacy and evolve the boundaries of how photography can

explore the human condition.

 

Growing my artistic skill and voice as an emerging photographer is critical, I see this as

a rare opportunity to strengthen my foundation and transition towards an established

and influential future. I am thirsty to engage viewers and provide a transformative

experience through my work. I have been honing my current project and building a plan

for its complete execution. The incredible Griffin community of mentors and the

generous funds would be instrumental for its development. I deeply recognize the

hallmark moment this could be for the introduction of the work. Thank you for providing

this incredible opportunity for budding visions and artists that know they have something

greater to share with the world.

Fran Forman RSVP