Winchester

Photosynthesis XX is a collaboration between Burlington High School and Winchester High School facilitated by the Griffin Museum of Photography.

Join us on April 3, 5:30 – 7:30pm for an Artist Reception to celebrate these talented students’ works and meet their instructors and supporters.

This 5-month program connects students with each other and with professional photographers, artists, and curators. Using photography as a visual language, students increase their vocabulary to communicate about themselves and the world around them. Interacting with fellow students from different programs, backgrounds, and schools, the students create a capsule of who they are in this moment, learning from each other to create a united exhibition showcasing all they have learned during the program.

Winchester High School

Isabella Bogovich | Mason Lieberman
Ainsley Porter | Maddie Shonkoff | Bowdie Simpson

Burlington High School

Sean Cox | Mackenzie Goldsmith | Taylor Papagno | Emanick Carrasquillo | Olivia Floyd | Maddie Spreadbury | Jillian Noke | Nora McDowell | Naya Ulysse | Grayson Reidy | Alessia Pedruzzi | Emersyn Kirchner

The New Horizons: Korean Contemporary Photography exhibition will introduce the creative and diverse works of established Korean photographers to American audiences.

Curated by Joanne Junga Yang, this exhibition in our Main Gallery showcases the captivating works of seven contemporary Korean photographers: Ok Hyun Ahn, Seongyoun Koo, Anna Lim, Soosik Lim, Hyundoo Park, Jiyeon Sung and Sun Hi Zo, Their diverse portfolios delve into the intricate tapestry of human emotions, exploring themes of longing, loss, and the nuanced ways in which individuals navigate their cultural identities.

Read more from Joanne Junga Yang‘s curatorial statement here.

Korean photography has developed through a dynamic balance between documentation and artistic expression, serving as both a means of recording reality and a tool for creative interpretation. While traditional documentary photography has captured social and historical transformations, contemporary photographers explore new possibilities by expanding the boundaries of the medium. Through this evolution, Korean photography has developed a distinct visual language that reflects the ongoing changes in society and culture.

<New Horizons: Korean Contemporary Photography> introduces seven photographers who reinterpret reality through their images, responding to the world around them and creating new narratives. This exhibition highlights how Korean contemporary photography engages with global artistic trends while maintaining its unique perspective. These artists, who have witnessed the transition from analog to digital photography, continue to experiment with the medium’s potential. Their works go beyond simple representation, using photography to question, redefine, and expand how we perceive the world.

Ok Hyun Ahn

Ok Hyun Ahn lives and works in Seoul. She earned her MFA in Photography, Video, and Related Media, at the School of Visual Arts in New York. She was awarded the Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) Fellowship at the Bronx Museum, New York (2012), and has had residencies in the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), New York (2010), and the Ssamzie Studio Program, Seoul (2007). Her numerous solo exhibitions include Dictee x Love Poem, Daejeon Museum of Art (2023), Love, Tears, Seduction, Lydmar Hotel, Stockholm (2015), and Homo Sentimentalis, SHOW ROOM, NYC (2013). Her work was presented at 12^th Gwangju Biennale, 2018 and others. Her work has been collected by the Seoul Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Busan, the Daejeon Museum of Art, and the Photographic Center Northwest, Seattle.

Working primarily in photography and video, she not only explores the complex aspects of human emotions but also exposes the banal layers underneath consciousness to be absurd. 

Jiyeon Sung

Jiyeon Sung is a contemporary photographer known for her staged photography, which reinterprets everyday scenes in a minimalist way using mise-en-scène elements inspired by theater sets. By placing simple yet symbolic objects and figures, her work visualizes the inner world of modern individuals and explores existential questions. The moments she captures are not frozen in death but suspended in continuous time.

After studying French literature in Korea, she earned a Master’s degree in Photography and Contemporary Art from the University of Paris VIII. In 2006, she received the Promising Artist Award from the Korean Cultural Center in France, and in 2016, she was awarded the 14th Daum Artist Award by the Parkgeonhi Foundation in Korea. Her works are included in the collections of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art – Art Bank, Seoul Museum of Art, Busan Museum of Art, Hanmi Museum of Photography, GoEun Museum of Photography, Société Générale Bank in France, and FRAC Haute-Normandie, among others.

Seongyoun Koo

Seongyoun Koo is a South Korean photographer who challenges conventional perceptions of objects through her still-life photography. By placing unexpected materials in unconventional settings or creating compositions that mimic natural forms, she playfully subverts the inherent meanings and values we attach to everyday things. Her major series include Butterflies (2000), Sand (2004), Flower Pots (2005), Popcorn (2007), Candy (2009–), and Sugar (2015–).

Her work explores how simple contextual shifts can radically alter an object’s meaning. In her Flowers and Butterflies series, she demonstrates how a beautiful butterfly, when placed on a bowl of rice instead of a flower, suddenly becomes an inedible insect. This playful yet critical approach continues in Flower Pots, where she stages scenes of ornamental plants invading human spaces, offering a satirical commentary on humanity’s tendency to view nature as something to control and conquer. Koo later transitioned to constructing artificial landscapes by hand, blurring the line between reality and representation. In Popcorn, she uses popped kernels to recreate delicate plum blossoms, emphasizing their fleeting beauty. In Candy, she meticulously crafts peony flowers—symbols of wishes and prosperity—out of colorful sweets, merging themes of desire and impermanence. In Sugar, she molds decorative objects from sugar, allowing them to melt over time, reflecting on the ephemerality of existence and the fragility of value. Her work often plays with material illusion, where ephemeral substances—whether sugar, candy, or popcorn—are transformed into something visually substantial yet fundamentally transient. The melting sugar sculptures, in particular, resonate as a poetic meditation on time, memory, and the impermanence of human constructs.

Seongyoun Koo lives and works in Seoul, South Korea. She holds a B.A. in Indian Philosophy from Dongguk University (1994) and a B.F.A. in Photography from Seoul Institute of the Arts (1997).

Anna Lim

Anna Lim was born and live in Seoul. She graduated MA from California State University, Fullerton in 1996 and received PhD in Art Photography from from Hongik University in Korea in 2019.

She has won the award the 11th ILWOO Photography Award, Seoul (2020), the Arles Photo Portfolio Review Award (2019), Korean Artist Project Artists (2017), SOORIM Photography Cultural Award (2014), Raising Female Artist Award (2013), Sovereign Art Foundation Asia 30 Artists (2012), Public Art 4070 Project Artist of the Year (2012), New York Gallery Korea Young Artist of the Year (1999). Furthermore, she has held 20 individual exhibitions and more than 50 group exhibitions at home and abroad and has been working steadily so far. In the recent series of works, Anxiety; Weight transferred to images (2022), Anxiety ON/OFF (2020), Anxiety rehearsal (2018), Frozen Hero (2017), Reconstruction of Climax (2011), she visualizes a meta-fictional narrative self-reflective perspective on mass media that distributes images of war weapons and other people’s pain as spectacles, and the viewer who consumes them.

She is currently a professor in the Department of Photography and Media at Sangmyung University in Korea.

Soosik Lim

Soosik Lim graduated from Chung-ang University’s Department of Photography and the graduate school of the same university. He expresses various objects that symbolize universal desire using photography through series of works such as Chaekgado (which combined photos of bookshelves with the way in which to create Korean traditional paintings), Picturenary, Mountain, and Room.K. Lim has participated in over 100 group exhibitions and 20 solo exhibitions in many countries, including the U.K., Spain, and Brazil. His works are housed at several museums, such as the Art Bank at Korea’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and Germany’s Reiner Kunze Museum.


Hyundoo Park

Hyundoo Park studied photography at Chung-Ang University’s College of Arts in the early 2000s and later earned an M.F.A. in Photography and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Since then, he has been working on his ongoing series, Goodbye Stranger.

He has received the 8th Park Geon-hi Foundation Next Artist Award and the 1st Surim Cultural Foundation Surim Photography Award. He was also selected for major artist residencies, including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) Goyang Residency, the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) Nanji Residency, and the SeMA Exhibition Support Program. Through his work, Park explores the theme of existential alienation in modern society from various perspectives.

In addition to his artistic practice, he has taught photography at Korea National University of Arts, Chung-Ang University, and Hongik University, educating both university students and the general public.

Sun Hi Zo

Sun Hi Zo (b. 1971) explores loss, memory, and transformation through photography.

Her works, including Daisy; Cosmos Mea (2022) and Frozen Gaze (2020~), examine the boundaries of time, impermanence, and presence. Her Planet (2024~) series investigates material and temporal continuity, presenting decay as a continuous cycle of dissolution and renewal. Recently, she has been working on a desert-based project exploring invisibility and traces. Based in Seoul, she works globally and studied at Yonsei and Hongik University.

She is currently a professor at Kyungil University.

This exhibition is made possible by the generous financial support of the Griffin Directors Circle, Griffin Exhibition Committee and Advisory Council. Additional support from the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea and the Korean Cultural Society of Boston.

Submission for the 31st Annual Juried Members’ Exhibition is open NOW until April 20th, 2025

Our annual Juried Members’ Exhibition is open to all creative artists who use photography as their primary medium. It celebrates still images while also welcoming moving images, installations, public works, and experimental or mixed techniques, all for inclusion in our summer exhibition.

We are so pleased to announce our juror is Ann Jastrab from Center for Photographic Art, Carmel.

Ann M. Jastrab is the Executive Director at the Center for Photographic Art (CPA) in Carmel, California. CPA strives to advance photography through education, exhibition and publication. These regional traditions — including mastery of craft, the concept of mentorship, and dedication to the photographic arts — evolved out of CPA’s predecessor, the renowned Friends of Photography established in 1967. While respecting these West Coast traditions, CPA is also at the vanguard of the future of photographic imagery. Before coming onboard at CPA, Ann worked as the gallery director at RayKo Photo Center and the gallery manager at Scott Nichols Gallery, both in San Francisco.

2024 – 30th Annual Juried Members Exhibiton

See the final selections included for our 30th Annual, juried by Getty Curator, Mazie Harris, here.

Submission Guidelines for 31st Annual Juried Members Exhibition

Our annual call for entry will be open for submissions from March 1st through April 20, 2025, for all creative artists using photography as a primary medium, highlighting still images and including moving images, installation, and public works, experimental and mixed techniques for inclusion in our summer exhibition.

Our annual celebration of our members creativity is juried this year by Ann Jastrab, Executive Director, Center for Photographic Art. The 31st Annual Juried Exhibition seeks entries of diverse themes, styles, and artistry. There is no specific theme, we want to see your best work in the genre or style you create in. 

Application Requirements

* Must be a member of the Griffin Museum of Photography through April 30, 2025.  There is the availability to renew memberships.
* All images must be submitted as jpeg files, sized to 1200 px on the longest dimension, (72 dpi is fine), and in Adobe RGB or sRGB color space only.
* All entries that do not adhere to the guidelines above will be rejected.
* All memberships will be verified before delivery to juror. The jurying will be anonymous.

Upload through the Café Portal 5 images. SUBMIT YOUR WORK HERE

Eligibility Criteria

ELIGIBILITY: This Call for Entries is open to all active member photographers. Entrants must be members of the Griffin Museum of Photography (with a current membership through April 2025). 

We always welcome new members as part of our family and offer a broad range of member opportunities. While some opportunities are for long distance members like our on-line classes, and programs, we want you to feel like part of our community from wherever you reside.
There is a membership level for Distance Members for those outside of New England. 

Submission Guidelines
Fee – $35 for submission of up to 5 images
Submissions accepted through CaFE – 
Submission period ends April 20, 2025 at 11:59PM Mountain time.
Evaluation Criteria
The Griffin Museum invites member photographers working in all mediums, styles and schools of thought to participate. Experimental and mixed techniques are welcome. We are excited to review all forms of the photographic image, including moving image, installation and public works, experimental and mixed techniques are welcome. The members exhibition celebrates the creativity of all of our members using photography in their practice.
The number of photographs in the exhibition will be approximately 60 photographs.

AWARDS
* $1,000 Arthur Griffin Legacy Award
* $500 GMP Lens Award
* $100 Honorable Mentions (5)
* (2) Exhibition Awards that will take place next June and July 2026.
* (1) Director’s Prize with exhibition and catalog

A catalog of the 31st Members Juried Exhibition will be produced featuring the in person and online artists selected for the exhibition.

An additional 60 artists will be selected for an online digital showcase chosen by the Griffin Museum Executive Director will be produced and available for viewing in the Museum and published in the exhibition catalog. 

Notification and Submission of Artwork:  All entrants will be notified of the results via email in mid-May, 2025. Check your spam or junk folders for this notice.

Exhibition Dates
1 July – 17 August, 2025

Artist Reception – 12 July, 2025 4 to 6pm

Artist Talks & Additional events – TBD

What makes a family? How do we define community? These fundamental questions are explored in the exhibition Nuclear Family, which re-imagines the concept of family, expanding our vision beyond traditional norms through the lens of LGBTQIA+ artists.

Traditional family values. The universal phrase for how we perceive and accept families in public. We are reminded of the standard visual narrative of a family as two heterosexual parents and their children. Family dynamics are complicated, not all of us fit into this vision of perceived perfection. In expanding the idea of family, we see these photographers present honest and authentic portrayals of themselves, their families and the broader community, challenging viewers to confront their own biases and assumptions through fresh eyes. 

Featuring a diverse range of photographic and video works, the exhibition presents a compelling exploration of diverse family structures. Jess Dugan‘s A Letter to My Daughter is a poignant video essay that delves into the joys and challenges of parenthood. Mengwen Cao‘s Liminal Space celebrates the everyday beauty, intimacy, and resilience of queer and trans people of color, with a particular focus on Asian queer identities. Yorgos Efthymiadis‘ Lighthouse Keepers offers a series of intimate portraits of friends in their own spaces, providing a glimpse into the artist’s personal connections and his shared community. Laurence Philomene‘s vibrant and colorful images serve as a visual diary reflecting their environment and their own trans and non-binary identity. Anne Vetter‘s Love is not the Last Room explores themes of gender, attachment, and family through intimate portraits of themselves and their partner. Matthew Leifheit‘s Queer Archives delves into LGBTQIA+ history through objects and archives that remind the community of its origins and those who came before.

These artists utilize photography and video not only to document their lives but also to challenge societal norms and celebrate the diversity of love and family structures. By reclaiming the genre of portraiture, often used to uphold traditional ideals, they create powerful and moving works that resonate with viewers on a deeply personal level.

Nuclear Family was conceived and created by curator and artist Katalina Simon, in collaboration with Crista Dix, Executive Director of the Griffin Museum, and exhibition designer Yana Nosenko.

More about the artists of Nuclear Family –

Mengwen Cao | Liminal Space

“Liminal Space” is a visual meditation on the everyday beauty, intimacy, and resilience of queer and trans people of color, with a focus on Asian queer identities. Through a tender gaze, these images capture moments of becoming and summon futures rooted in joy, connection, and care.

The project began as a way to connect with my community and evolved into an exploration of belonging, healing, and self-love. Each portrait embodies a collaborative process, inviting people to imagine themselves in a way that feels safe, authentic, and expansive. These moments of introspection become portals: spaces where individual transformation and collective belonging can thrive.

In a world that often amplifies extremes, “Liminal Space” aims to normalize queer existence beyond spectacle or struggle. By sharing these tender moments, I hope to offer a counter-narrative—one that embraces the multiplicity of our identities while celebrating the beauty of the in-between.

About Mengwen Cao

MENGWEN CAO (they/them) is an artist, educator and somatic coach creating multimedia portals for personal and collective transformation. Born and raised in Hangzhou, China, they are currently nomadic with roots in New York and Chiang Mai. Weaving their embodied experience as a Chinese diasporic queer into their spiritual and creative practices, they use care and tenderness to explore in-between spaces. They see photography as a vehicle for healing and a tool to visualize the future.

Jess T. Dugan | Letter to my Daughter

Letter to My Daughter is an autobiographical video directed to my five-year-old daughter, Elinor, that centers around my experience with parenthood throughout the first five years of her life. The audio soundtrack is my voice reading a letter to Elinor, and the images are from my personal archive and include snapshots, ultrasound images, and photographs from Family Pictures.The letter is highly personal and addresses a variety of topics, including my expectations around parenthood, the long and circuitous journey of trying to have a child with both known and anonymous sperm donors, the experiences of miscarriage and loss, and my adjustment to parenthood as a queer and nonbinary person. Perhaps most importantly, it tries to put into words the intensity of love between a parent and child as well as the significant personal growth parenthood both inspires and requires.Letter to My Daughter is part of my larger exploration of family. It is in dialogue with my 2017 video,Letter to My Father, which explores my estranged relationship with my father, as well as my long-term series of photographs Family Pictures(2012-present),which focuses on the intimacy of familial relationships, aging, and the passage of time through an extended look at three generations of my family.

About Jess T. Dugan

Jess T. Dugan (b. 1986, Biloxi, MS) is an artist and writer whose work explores the complexities of personhood, relationships, desire, love, and family. While their practice is centered around photography, it also includes writing, video, sound, drawing, and installation. Their work is informed by their own life experiences, including their identity as a queer and nonbinary person, and reflects a deep belief in the importance of representation and the transformative power of storytelling.  

Their work is regularly exhibited internationally and is in the permanent collections of over 60 museums. Their monographs include Look at me like you love me (MACK, 2022), To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults (Kehrer Verlag, 2018) and Every Breath We Drew (Daylight Books, 2015). They are the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, an ICP Infinity Award, and were selected by the Obama White House as an LGBT Artist Champion of Change. 

They currently live and work in St. Louis, MO.

Yorgos Efthymiadis | The Lighthouse Keepers

Whenever I travel back to my country, it feels like I come across a shoebox in the back of my childhood bedroom closet, full of memorabilia I didn’t know were there. As soon as I open the box, an inner whisper says “I will remind you of everything.”

There is an instant rush of fond memories of the house I grew up in by the sea and of the maze-like city I moved to when I got older. But mostly, of family and friends: the people that I care for and who have always been there for me since the beginning. The ones I take for granted.

Growing up, so many of us were queer in our seaside town we joked “it must be in the water.” Some have left, many have stayed. Like everyone else, from the proud “mother” of the village who helped most of us come out, to the sentimental ones that are still hanging onto a past that is no longer there, we are struggling in our own way. Loneliness, isolation, decline. Secrets and regrets. But each one a lighthouse keeper. Strong and resilient, fragile and tender, always there to help, guiding each other through life, and reminding me of where I belong.

About Yorgos Efthymiadis

Yorgos Efthymiadis is an artist/curator from Greece who resides in Somerville, MA. A board member of Somerville Arts Council and founder of The Curated Fridge, an independent gallery that celebrates fine art photography, Efthymiadis is a recipient of the 2025 James and Audrey Foster Prize, an awardee of the Artist’s Resource Trust A.R.T. Grant in 2024, a finalist for the 2017 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship, and a recipient of the St. Botolph Club Foundation 2017 Emerging Artist Award. This project has been supported by a grant from the Artist’s Resource Trust.

Matthew Leifheit | Queer Archives

Since 2021 Matthew Leifheit has traveled the country visiting and photographing in queer archives. Leifheit describes: “During the 1970s and 80s, independent archives were established by LGBTQ Americans to collect materials that major institutions would not. These materials—pictures, letters, T shirts, protest signs, ephemera, and the like—document queer culture and identity in the 20th century, in relation to the rise of the US gay rights movement. More importantly, they contain the evidence of many peoples’ lives who would otherwise be lost to history, for reasons ranging from homophobia to racial prejudice, sexism and AIDS.”

Leifheit’s Queer Archive asks us to consider what is worth keeping, how histories are made and told, who gets to hold them, and who is able to seek out and find them.
These photographs dramatize the limits of immortality as we attempt to access it through media.

Text by Rachel Stern, Curator, MassArt Museum exhibition, 2024

About Matthew Leifheit

Matthew Leifheit is an American photographer, magazine editor, and professor based in Brooklyn, New York. A graduate of Rhode Island School of Design and the Yale School of Art, Leifheit is Editor-in-Chief of MATTE Magazine, the journal of emerging photography he has published since 2010. Leifheit’s photographs have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Aperture, TIME, and Artforum, and have been exhibited internationally. His work has been supported by residencies at the Corporation of Yaddo and The Watermill Center, receiving grants from the New York State Cultural Council and the Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale, where he was awarded the Richard Benson Prize in 2017. He is currently full-time faculty at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston.

Laurence Philomene |

In recent years, I have challenged myself to take daily pictures to document my evolving sense of self as a non-binary person undertaking hormonal replacement therapy. The resulting photos look at transition beyond the physical, into the intimate and domestic aspects of life viewers are rarely granted access to. Individually, each photo tells the story of a small moment, but when juxtaposed with one another, context is gained and a new, more powerful narrative is created : one of creating a home both within my environment and my body.

Growing up, the only access I had to queer history was through photography books I borrowed at the library. In lieu of institutional recognition, a lot of our history as marginalized folks is passed down through self-documentation as a means of reclaiming our narrative, which is something that’s always been fascinating to me. I think of the freedom to create our own story as an integral part of embodying queerness.

About Laurence Philomene

Laurence Philomene is a non-binary artist from Montreal (b.1993) who creates colourful photographs informed by their lived experiences as a chronically ill transgender person. Their practice celebrates trans existence, and studies identity as a space in constant flux via highly-saturated, cinematic, and vulnerable images.

Laurence’s first monograph Puberty – in which the artist self-documents two years of their life as they undergo hormonal replacement therapy – was published in 2022 by Yoffy Press.

Anne Vetter | love is not the last room

Vetter’s series “Love is Not the Last Room” is made in collaboration with the artist’s family—their parents, their brothers, and their partner. It is an examination of play and leisure, tension and freedom. Through photographs, Vetter processes how they learned to relate in their most intimate connections, and how they relate now. This project explores queer familial relationships, and uses Vetter’s own gender fluidity as a lens to examine the gendered experiences of their family members.

About Anne Vetter

Anne Vetter (b. 1994) lives and works in California and Massachusetts. They are currently a MFA candidate at UCLA (2026). They are a Jewish-American artist. Their work is focused on play, permission, desire and performance. 

We are pleased to partner with Digital Silver Imaging to print the images for the exhibition.