Jill Enfield | Artist Talk on Glasshouse of New Americans (Online)

The Griffin Museum is thrilled to welcome creative artist Jill Enfield’s Glasshouse of New Americans to our grounds this summer. We are also pleased to present a special online conversation with the artist.

Join us online on September 5th at 6:30 PM for this engaging presentation.

Titled “The New Americans,” this physical display explores heritage, genealogy, and homeland. Jill’s personal connection to immigration, her paternal relatives fleeing Frankfurt, Germany, in 1939, inspired a project honoring immigrants’ integral role in society and acknowledging the challenges they continue to face to this day.

Combining 19th-century wet collodion ambrotypes with digital scanning and 21st -century printing, Enfield sought to merge traditional and digital photographic practices. The distressed exterior window frames forming the glasshouse were sourced from abandoned side roads, flea markets, and construction sights, symbolizing the precarious nature of immigration that still exists today.

The wet collodion process references the technique used to document immigrants passing through Ellis Island in the 1800’s. By blending historical and contemporary elements, Enfield creates portraits reflecting both the historic technique and the present-day reality of immigration.

Photography, reliant on the interplay of time and light, becomes a narrative journey during the prolonged exposures required by the wet collodion process. The resulting stillness allows the viewer to step into the photographer’s and the subjects’ shared experience, capturing the far-reaching heritage and stories encoded in each subject’s eyes.

About Jill Enfield

Jill Enfield is a fine art photographer, author and educator who has accomplished international acclaim, in all three of these capacities, as a leading authority in Alternative Photographic Processes. In addition to expertise in current standard digital photo techniques for the last 10+ years, Enfield is also known for her instruction of hand coloring, wet plate collodion, and an array of other photo processes at Parsons The New School for Design, Fashion Institute of Photography, New York University, Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus, and the International Center of Photography in New York City as well as RISD. For years Jill has also appeared annually for workshops around the world including Cairo, Croatia, Edinburgh, Italy, Lisbon, London, Norway, and dozens of other cities around the globe as well as many cities in North America, including Anderson Ranch, Maine Media Workshops, Palm Beach Photo Workshops, Penland School of Crafts, and Santa Fe Photographic Photo Workshops.

As for her own photographs, Enfield’s work is in the permanent collections of The Amon Carter Museum of Art, Bellagio Hotel, Bibliothque Nationale, The Boca Raton Museum of Art, Canyon Ranch Spa and Resort, The Crocker Art Museum, The Florida Senate, Hilton Hotels, Marriott Hotels, Southeastern Banks, The Toledo Museum of Art, and Museo de Arte Moderno de Medillin, Bogota and Cartagena, in Colombia, where her work was shown during a three month exhibition that traveled throughout the country including her personal engagements for lectures and openings. As for exhibitions, Enfield has been the subject of dozens of solo exhibits over the years, in galleries and museums around the world. Her work is also included in hundreds of group exhibitions.

Jill’s personal work has appeared in such publications as American Photo, Archive Books, Camera Arts, Camera & Darkroom Techniques, Digital Camera, Hasselblad’s FORUM Magazine, Modern Photography, National Geographic, Nikon World, PDN, Photo Techniques, Popular Photography, Shutterbug, Step by Step and ZOOM.

Jill’s first book on non-silver techniques titled Photo Imaging: A Complete Guide to Alternative Processes was published by Watson-Guptill, Amphoto in November 2002 and won the Golden Light Award for Best Technical Book of 2003 through the Maine Photographic Workshop. Her second book, Jill Enfield’s Guide to Photographic Alternative Processes: Popular historical and Contemporary Techniques, was published by Focal Press in 2013, has already sold out and is currently being prepared for a third printing. To learn more about Jill Enfield click here