Oil Slick, © Meg Birnbaum
Meg Birnbaum, featured in our online Corona exhibition, is a master of playing with light and life. The Griffin featured Meg’s series The Sisters of the Commonwealth in 2014. Her images seek out to highlight the quiet moments in the day, and remind us to stop, take a deep breath and wonder about the world we inhabit. Her image, Lights in the Sky, exemplifies this vision. We asked Meg about this image, and about how she finds light in her day.
images above – Fence & Opal Currant © Meg Birnbaum
Lights in the Sky is one of my favorite images in the show. How did you create such a great photograph?
Lights in Sky, © Meg Birnbaum
It was a lucky moment. I was finishing lunch in a restaurant and when I stood up to leave I saw that the retro lighting reflected magically in the window.
In this time of Corona, how do you find light in your day?
Mostly I find light in helping things grow, students or garden flowers. Also friends and family and dogs as role models – they always wake up optimistic.
What is next for you creatively? What are you working on?
Moon and Sleep © Meg Birnbaum
I’m playing with loosely recreating the allegorical paintings by Simeon Solomon, an almost forgotten painter from 1850 or so. His career was destroyed by the scandal of being arrested twice for soliciting sex in a men’s public bathroom. He died alone, an alcoholic in a house for the desitute. I love his work and it is easy to see through it to what he was really wishing for had it been another time in history.
About Meg Birnbaum –
Meg Birnbaum lives and works in the Boston area. She is a photographer, graphic designer, and educator.
Her most recent solo exhibition was at The Stonewall Museum and Archives, Fort Lauderdale in 2019. She has been featured with solo exhibitions at Gallery Tanto Tempo in Kobe, Japan, Corden Potts Gallery, San Francisco, The Lishui International Photography Festival, China, the Museum of Art Pompeo Boggio, Buenos Aires during the biennial Encuentros Abiertos-Festival de la Luz, the Griffin Museum of Photography, Massachusetts, Flash Forward Festival, Boston, Davis/Orton Gallery, NY, and Panopticon Gallery, Boston.
Meg teaches portfolio building classes at the Griffin Museum of Photography. She a member of the Griffin exhibition committee and designs their catalogs, signage and website. Her work is held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, the Lishui Museum of Photography in China, the Meditech Corporation, and private collections.
To see more of Meg Birnbaum‘s work log onto her website. Follow her creativity on Instagram
