The Art of the Handmade Book: Barbara Bosworth and Emily Sheffer in Conversation (Online)

We are delighted to welcome Barbara Bosworth and Emily Sheffer to our Griffin Zoom Room for an online conversation about their book collaborations at Dust Collective: Handmade Photography Books

Artists Barbara Bosworth and Emily Sheffer will present an artist talk about their work with Dust Collective, a New England-based publisher specializing in small-edition, handmade photography books.

Emily Sheffer founded Dust Collective in 2017. Each Dust Collective book is skillfully designed, showing a close attention to material and the beauty of the photographic image. Dust Collective publishes works that address landscape, often as metaphor, memory, and narrative space.

Sheffer and Bosworth have collaborated on several artist books, including Some Lights Are From Fires, Diana’s Baths, Swifts, From Where the Sun Now Stands, and Light of the Eclipse. Their creative partnership involves Sheffer as designer and Bosworth as artist.

Their most recent publication, Evening: The Meadow marks the 10-year anniversary of Bosworth’s 2015 publication, The Meadow. This special edition features 21 previously unpublished images from the series, accompanied by poems by D’Anne Bodman, the former owner of the meadow. This special, limited edition was hand crafted by Bosworth and Sheffer.

Barbara Bosworth

Barbara Bosworth is a photographer whose large-format images explore both overt and subtle relationships between humans and the natural world.

Whether chronicling the efforts of hunters or bird banders or evoking the seasonal changes that transform mountains and meadows, Bosworth’s caring attention to the world around her results in images that inspire viewers to look closely. All of Bosworth’s projects remind viewers that we shape nature and, in turn, are shaped by it.

Bosworth grew up in Novelty, Ohio. She currently lives in Massachusetts, where she is a professor emeritus of photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston.

Bosworth’s work has been widely exhibited, notably in solo exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Cleveland Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, and Peabody Essex Museum. She is the recipient of the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award from The Cleveland Arts Prize.

Emily Sheffer

Emily Sheffer is a photographic artist, educator, and book designer. She is the founder of Dust Collective, a handmade and small edition photography book publisher.

Sheffer’s work examines the relationship between landscape, time, and materiality, using photography and book arts to explore narratives within the natural world. Through these artworks, she invites viewers to touch, feel, and move through layers of history, geology, and myth, encouraging a reflection on our relationship with landscape.

Emily earned her MFA in photography from The University of Hartford, and BFA in photography from The Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She lives in Massachusetts.

Dust Collective books are held in many libraries and museums including:
The New York Public Library
The International Center of Photography
Tufts / The School of the Museum of Fine Arts Library
The Phillips Library at Peabody Essex Museum
The Harvard Fine Arts Library
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Northeastern University Library

If you’re a student with a valid ID, we’d love to have you join the talk for free! Just email us at programs@griffinmuseum.org to reserve your spot.