Satellite

The Body Project are a series of twelve self-portrait collaborations between photographers Melinda McIntyre and Lisa Spencer. Viewed individually, each image is an examination of individual body parts. When combined together as a diptych, the photographs create a new, more intimate dialogue. Some of the diptychs seem to suggest an actual dialogue between the two panels, while others play with shape, tension, and formal comparison. 

To create the diptychs, the artists shot one body part at a time in weekly installations. The images were produced without discussion or posing direction in separate workspaces 5,000 miles apart. The images were then revealed and combined as diptychs, with the one artist’s work augmenting, reinforcing, or changing the narrative of the other, often in playful and surprising ways. 

While the project was originally designed as a self-portrait exercise – a depiction of the unsexualized, feminine form through the purely female lens – it quickly became a bonding experience and a trust exercise, as each artist learned to trust the other and trust the process of finding the narrative “between” photos. And while it was a coincidence that the two artists shared a similar hair type, skin tone, and body shape, it added an extra layer of interest to the project, as it was often hard for viewers (even the artist’s own parents) to distinguish who was who. Because the artists’ view and treatment of their own likeness is likely to change with age, Melinda and Lisa have committed to revisiting the project each decade.  This is Installment #1: The Thirties.

Melinda McIntyre is a photographer who recently repatriated to the US after 13 years abroad. Primarily a self-portrait and motherhood artist, Melinda takes pictures to “explore her role as an expat and mother in an ever-changing environment” as her family follows life in the Foreign Service. Her work has been featured in N- Magazine, Digital Camera Magazine, Click, The Foreign Service Journal, and This Detailed Life.  She is a juried member of the photography communities Click Pro and Hello Storyteller and has written and co-produced two self-paced courses – The Creative Collab and the Self Portrait Collab –  through Hello Storyteller platform. This is her first exhibition.

Lisa Spencer is a photographer, writer, and workshop leader based in Winchester, MA. She specializes in documentary storytelling. Named “Best Boudoir Photographer of 2024” by Click Magazine, her work has been featured in books, magazines, and online news content, including Winchester News. She is a juried member of the photography communities Click Pro and Hello Storyteller, and co-curator of the exhibit “Textures of Light” at the Viridian Moon Art Gallery in Bloomington, IN, an exhibition of fine art photography.  Her work has been selected for display at the Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts and is currently on view in Winchester, MA as part of the “Our Town” exhibition.

The Griffin is pleased to present the vision of Frank Siteman at our satellite gallery at WinCam. Soaring above the earth, Frank captures our imagination with his view from above New England. These vibrant abstracts engage our imagination with what is and is not to scale.

Frank Siteman was born in St. Louis in 1947. He attended Tufts University, where he majored in chemistry. Already immersed in photography, he shot portraits of the entire college faculty in exchange for his tuition.  He soon received an assignment to photograph an annual report for a Boston area rehab hospital, and taught in a Boston youth project. Following his graduation from Tufts, where he launched the photography department through the Experimental College, he began teaching at the Roxbury Latin School, the Orson Welles Film School, Simmons College, and the Art Institute of Boston.  During this time, he discovered the world of stock photography. Over the next several decades, he worked steadily shooting stock and completing commercial assignments, shooting the world while traveling. His photographs found their way into agencies, which sold them for a myriad of uses in magazines, advertising, annual reports, multi-media shows and textbooks. He continues to photograph the world and the people around him, living alternately in Winchester, MA and the White Mountains of NH.

The Griffin @ WinCam is located at 32 Swanton Street, Winchester, MA 01890

The gallery is free and open to the public during WinCAM’s regular hours of operation and while the room is not otherwise reserved. It’s best to call ahead at 781-721-2050.

About Xuan Hui Ng

My name is Xuan Hui. I am from Singapore and currently live in Tokyo.

I began photographing as a form of self-therapy. I was grieving the loss of my mother to cancer.  She had been both my confidante and my moral compass. Losing her plunged me into a downward spiral until a chance encounter with nature set me on my path to recovery.  Its vastness gave me a sense of perspective while its beauty reignited in me a sense of wonder and adventure.  It reminded me that life is beautiful, that there is so much to live for and to explore.

Initially, the urge to photograph stemmed from an almost desperate desire to prolong the serenity that nature brought.  Over time, I began to enjoy simply being in the embrace of the forests, lakes and meadows.  The Chinese idiom “天时地利人和”  speaks to the importance of fortuitous timing (天时), favorable conditions (地利) and the human resolve (人和) to our endeavors.  I think this is especially true for my photography because my images are a collaborative effort with nature.  I am grateful to be blessed with serendipitous encounters and would like to share these precious tokens of memories with others. 

Nature has been pivotal to my own healing and growth.  I dedicate my images to kindred spirits, the weary, the lost and the lonesome. I hope that they can experience the joy I felt when I laid my eyes on these magical landscapes.

Xuan-Hui Ng is a photographic artist from Singapore who currently resides in Japan. Her work is represented by Foto Relevance gallery in Houston, Texas, with her debut solo show Interludes in 2021. Her solo exhibition, Transcendence: Awakening the Soul, at the Griffin Museum of Photography will take place in December 2023.

Ng has been a Critical Mass Finalist in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Her work has been juried into exhibitions at the Davis Orton Gallery, Southeast Center for Photography, Texas Photographic Society, New York Center for Photographic Art, and Fotonostrum’s 17th and 18th Pollux Awards. She is the winner of both series and single image in the Nature category at the 20^th Julia Margaret Cameron Award. She has been an artist lecturer at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Nobechi Creative, Artquest Photo Workshops and various camera clubs. Publications of her work have been featured in What Will You Remember?, fotoMAGAZIN, PetaPixel, ON landscape, forum naturfotografie, Dodho Magazine, CURIOUS Photo blog, Float Magazine, Feature Shoot and Popular Photography (大众摄影）.

In 2022, she was interviewed by BBC World Service’s Cultural Frontline on “Creativity and Mental Health.” She is a contributor to ELEMENTS landscape photography magazine and an instructor for Santa Fe Workshops.

She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Griffin Museum is pleased to host Jake Benzinger’s Like Dust Settling in a Dim-lit Room (Or Starless Forest) in our satellite WinCAM gallery.

Artist Statement

Like Dust Settling in a Dim-lit Room (Or Starless Forest) constructs a liminal world that explores the intersection of reality, dream, and memory. Through photography, this body of work functions as a mirror, a reflection of my inner psyche and an investigation of identity, relationships, the domestic, and the natural world.

This process, with its focus on the self, is rooted in an attempt to heal. The exploration of ordinary locations, places devoid of people and often characterized by the presence of flora, have functioned as a refuge in my personal life. By frequenting these places, I began to see them as sets, utilizing them to construct my visions. I imbue them with fragments of the people, places, and memories that inhabit my subconscious.

I fail to find stability in the societal constructs of home and family; so I seek to create it in the natural world. Through the dislocation of these places and the infusion of nature into the domestic, this work constructs a fleeting world that lives in ambiguity. This space is familiar yet still foreign; it is a constructed world that visualizes my deepest desires and greatest fears.

About

Jake Benzinger (he/him) is a photographer and book artist based in Rockland, Maine; he received his BFA in photography from Lesley University, College of Art and Design in Cambridge, MA. His work explores the intersection of dreamscape and reality. Through the dislocation of space, he weaves together imagery to construct a world that exists in the liminal, investigating themes of duality, longing, identity, and the natural world.

He is currently a gallery assistant at Blue Raven Gallery and recently had work featured by Fraction Magazine, alongside exhibiting both internationally and in the greater Boston area. His most recent body of work, Like Dust Settling in a Dim-Lit Room (Or Starless Forest), was recently self-published and has sold out of its first edition hardcover books, with a second coming in November, 2023.

I view land as firm, solid and reliable – our principal habitat.  Conversely, I recognize that water is literally fluid and equally vital to our existence.  It’s hard to envision how water, which is so physically compliant in many ways, can supersede, overpower, and ultimately reshape the land.  Water scarcity creates new deserts — where life struggles or fails to exist at all.  

Using silver nitrate and cyanotype (made with sea water), I experiment with methods of applying the chemistry (sea sponges, for example) to paper and the overall process (layering paper).  Through this, I attempt to explore the relationships of land and water which are now changing more frequently and deeply — with greater consequence to all living things. 

My mammalian brain is disquieted.  My regional habitat now vacillates between drought and deluge.   I see the living world struggle as it attempts to evolve.  Land is revealed or deposited, water carves new pathways and erodes the land.  

About Connie Lowell

A native New Englander, Connie Lowell has spent much of her adult life in a cubicle, staring at a screen or if fortunate, out a window.  Feeling disconnected from the natural outdoor world, she developed a passion for nature’s systems and the connections within and among species over the course of time.  Lowell frequently finds herself preoccupied with the many and varied changes humanity has introduced within the natural environment.  Residing now in New Hampshire, Lowell’s work strives to reflect nature or the natural processes by employing a variety of mechanisms and methods to capture, print and create visual, photographic art works. Lowell’s works have been selected for numerous juried shows across the US and has appeared in the Boston Globe and ArtScope Magazine in relation to exhibits.  The images Lowell creates explore humanity and our relationship to the natural world as well as investigating our fellow occupants and the relationships among us all.