Winchester

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

Join us on Thursday June 8th from 6 to 8pm for an Artist Reception to celebrate these talented student works and meet their instructors and supporters.

Now in its eighteenth year, this 5-month program connects approximately 20 students with each other and professional photographers, artists and curators. Using photography as a visual language, student’s 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.

The participating student artists from Winchester High School:

Neave Bunting | Claire English | Avery Robinson

The participating student artists from Burlington High School:

Madison Bairos | Lindsay Bullock | Kirsten Dew | Georgia Doherty | Samantha Goneau | Lindsey Lavoie | Alyssa LoCicero | Alex McGillivray | Lily Passaretta | Ava Restivo | Caroline Sciarratta

The students are given the task of creating a body of work that communicates a sense of self and place.  They were encouraged to explore the importance of props, the environment, facial expression, metaphor, and body language in portrait photography.

This year, three photo based artists, Donna Garcia, Anne Eder, Jeremy Dennnis spoke to the students via zoom conference and in person workshop. Donna Garcia will meet the students for an in person review during the exhibition opening at the museum.

Donna Garcia is lens-based artist, filmmaker, curator, art director and educator based in Atlanta, Georgia. Originally from Boston, her work often illustrates a semiotic dislocation that has been organically reconstructed in a way that gives her subjects a voice in the present moment; something they often did not have in the past.  Her images rise above what they actually are and become empathic recreations in a fine art narrative. She often utilizes self-portraiture with motion to provide an indication of the other in her work; a surplus threat to the perpetuity of our modern day grand narratives in defining elements like gender and race.

She has worked as an art director for Ogilvy, NYC, an adjunct faculty member at the Art Institute in Atlanta, a contributing editor of LENSCRATCH and founded the Garcia | Wilburn Fine Art Gallery, where she directed and curated a number of influential exhibitions highlighting the work of emerging and established artists. Garcia and her partner, Darnell Wilburn launched the Modern Art and Culture Podcast. In their first year, they were chosen to become the official podcast of the Atlanta Celebrates Photography Festival, the United States largest, month-long photography festival, held annually in October.

She has exhibited internationally and has had her work published worldwide (donnagarcia.com). She is a 2019 nominee of reGENERATION 4: The Challenges of Photography and the Museum of Tomorrow. Musee de l’Elysee, Lausanne, Switzerland. Emerging Artists to Watch.

Donna Garcia has a Master of Fine Art from the Savannah College of Art and Design and a Master of Science in Communications from Kennesaw State University.

DONNAGARCIA.COM

Anne Eder is an interdisciplinary artist and educator, working in photography, sculpture, and fiction writing. She has been internationally exhibited, awarded, and published, including multiple Julia Margaret Cameron awards in alternative process photography. She is currently faculty at Harvard University, Penumbra Foundation, and is guest faculty at Princeton University, co-teaching with Guggenheim fellow, Deana Lawson. She holds a master’s degree in Photography and Integrated Media from Lesley University College of Art and Design where she studied with Christopher James. Much of her work is experimental and research based, combining historic processes, science, and contemporary conceptual thinking.

Throughout her career she has been an advocate for increased access to the arts, cofounding and operating artist run galleries and programming in the Philadelphia metro area, and the creation of public art is a dedicated part of her practice. She lives in Boston writing fairy tales and catering to her fabulous chihuahua, The Brain.

www.anneeder.com Instagram @darcflower

Jeremy Dennis (b. 1990) is a contemporary fine art photographer and a tribal member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation in Southampton, NY. In his work, he explores indigenous identity, culture, and assimilation.

Dennis was one of 10 recipients of a 2016 Dreamstarter Grant from the national non-profit organization Running Strong for American Indian Youth. He was awarded $10,000 to pursue his project, On This Site, which uses photography and an interactive online map to showcase culturally significant Native American sites on Long Island, a topic of special meaning for Dennis, who was raised on the Shinnecock Nation Reservation. He also created a book and exhibition from this project. Most recently, Dennis received the Creative Bursar Award from Getty Images in 2018 to continue his series Stories.

In 2013, Dennis began working on the series, Stories—Indigenous Oral Stories, Dreams and Myths. Inspired by North American indigenous stories, the artist staged supernatural images that transform these myths and legends to depictions of an actual experience in a photograph.

Residencies: Yaddo (2019), Byrdcliffe Artist Colony (2017), North Mountain Residency, Shanghai, WV (2018), MDOC Storytellers’ Institute, Saratoga Springs, NY (2018). Eyes on Main Street Residency & Festival, Wilson, NC (2018), Watermill Center, Watermill, NY (2017) and the Vermont Studio Center hosted by the Harpo Foundation(2016).

He has been part of several group and solo exhibitions, including Stories—Dreams, Myths, and Experiences, for The Parrish Art Museum’s Road Show (2018), Stories, From Where We Came,The Department of Art Gallery, Stony Brook University (2018); Trees Also Speak,Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury, NY (2018); Nothing Happened Here, Flecker Gallery at Suffolk County Community College, Selden, NY (2018);On This Site: Indigenous People of Suffolk County, Suffolk County Historical Society, Riverhead, NY (2017); Pauppukkeewis, Zoller Gallery, State College, PA (2016); and Dreams, Tabler Gallery, Stony Brook, NY (2012).

Dennis holds an MFA from Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, and a BA in Studio Art from Stony Brook University, NY.

He currently lives and works in Southampton, New York on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation.

The Griffin Museum is grateful to all of our tremendous sponsors. Photosynthesis is generously supported by grants from The John and Mary Murphy Foundation, The ENKA Society, and The Winchester Cultural District.

In the darkness of winter, we search for the light. Our Winter Solstice exhibition brings together our community, lighting up the museum with images, ideas, and boundless creativity. We are grateful for our patrons and members. You are the reason we do what we do everyday. Thank you for being part of our circle of friends.

Our Winter Solstice exhibition celebrates the works of our photo community in all of its splendor. We love sharing your vision with the world, and look forward to our annual gathering of images, ideas and vision.

Family Album: Home Is Where the Heart Is

It is intriguing that some artists choose to open their lives to strangers through the art that they create and share with the world. Familial holiday exuberance is one thing, but intimate moments and self-reflection are quite another. Nonetheless, the American Judith Black and Norwegian Bjørn Sterri zealously photograph their family members day after day, year after year, seeking to record the ordinary as well as the significant times in their lives. Through their eyes, we witness an unvarnished chronicle of family, a narrative that can be passed from one generation to another.

 What began in 1979 as a single self-portrait for Judith Black’s graduate work at Massachusetts Institute of Technology evolved into a meditative record of family life – her motherhood, the children’s innocence, teenage self-awareness and, ultimately, their passage into adulthood. Posing in front of a large-format view camera set on a tripod, Black’s subjects are participants in the making of each photograph. They are not stage-managed. They offer themselves with their youthful candor and adolescent complexities to the unforgiving eye of the camera.

The image of Black, nude and pregnant with her first child, predicts the candor and openness of her portraits. Later, we see her partner Rob, as step-father, and her children – Laura, Johanna, Erik and Dylan — gathered with her on the porch, ready to celebrate Mother’s Day; Dylan, sporting a black eye, having just been jumped on the street; and Laura next to David Bowie’s likeness on her closet door.  Black religiously tracks her children’s physical and emotional transformation, but less frequently reveals her own likeness. She is the accomplished, capable presence who is creating a visual diary of her family’s journey through life and who occasionally makes self-portraits at significant, perhaps somewhat vulnerable, moments. “These photographs,” Black states, “are a way for me to remember both the pleasures and pains of being part of and raising a family. Talismans, relics, fetish objects, memory holders – they are mine to touch.”   

For Bjørn Sterri, photographing his family is a passion. Seemingly an ever-present dad, he documents his boys, Jens Linus and Pablo, capturing mischievous behavior, play, tantrums and other distinct markers of childhood. Similarly, he pursues his wife Alejandra with his camera. His mission is to catch her every nuance on film – her warmth, humor, unbridled energy as well the outpouring of love she focuses on him and the children. She is adored.      

Sterri, of course, inhabits this world, too.  Using a small format SX-70 camera, he frequently interjects himself into the camera’s view, appearing as a shadow on a whitewashed wall or next to his child sunning himself on a sandy beach. Sterri becomes part of the background in his photographs of his family. These traces of himself are proof of his existence. 

Adopted at the age of three and a half, he had no knowledge of his roots, so photographing his family is as much about himself as it is about them. By obsessively making formal black-and-white portraits of his family during the last 20 years, he creates his own history. His camera of choice is an 8×10 Deardorff securely placed on a tripod. Sterri repeatedly positions his family in a favorite, natural landscape or gathered in front of walls at home where they stare, occasionally smile, embrace, and make faces at the camera. Mom, Dad and the next generation are side by side. Sterri celebrates these passing moments, yet his mood seems bittersweet. Nothing remains unchanged. The world turns.

Barbara Hitchcock, Independent Curator and former Curator, The Polaroid Collection.

About the Artists

Judith Black received her Master of Science in Visual Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981 and was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1986. She taught in the Art Department at Wellesley College for 25 years. Black’s work has been collected and exhibited in museums, from the Museum of Modern Art, New York to museums, institutions and galleries across the globe.

Bjørn Sterri studied photography at the University of Arts and Craft in Stockholm, Sweden and at Napier University in Edinburgh, Scotland. His photographs have been exhibited across Europe and the Americas, with exhibitions at Museo de la Univesidad de Murcia, Murcia, Spain; Paris Photo, Paris, France; and Museo de la Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina, among others.

Ties that Bind stitches together three unique visions looking at the idea of family and the rewriting of history, myth and personal narratives. These artists work with images and objects, including various materials, with the addition of stitching on found images, personal family photos. Each artist finds ways to change the script, rewrite what has been lost and gain clarity of vision.

We are pleased to bring together three artists each looking at family ties in unique ways.

Carolle Benitah

French Moroccan photographer Carolle Bénitah, who worked for ten years as a fashion designer before turning to photography in 2001, explores memory, family and the passage of time.  Often pairing old family snapshots with handmade accents, such as embroidery, beading and ink drawings, Bénitah seeks to reinterpret her own history as daughter, wife, and mother.

The work of Carolle Bénitah has been published in magazines such as Leica World, Shots Magazine, Photos Nouvelles, Spot, Center for Photography Houston, Foto Noviny, and Lens Culture, among others.  Carolle Bénitah was born in Casablanca (Morocco) and graduated from the Ecole de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne (Paris).  Her series Photos-Souvenirs  was also selected to exhibit in FotoFest’s 2014 Discoveries of the Meeting Place showcase of past Biennial portfolio reviews. We thank Corinne Tapia and Sous Les Etoiles Gallery for working with the museum to showcase Carolle’s works.

Astrid Reischwitz

Astrid Reischwitz is a lens-based artist whose work explores storytelling from a personal perspective. Using keepsakes from family life, old photographs, and storytelling strategies, she builds a visual world of memory, identity, place, and home. Her current focus is the exploration of personal and collective memory influenced by her upbringing in Germany.

Reischwitz has exhibited at national and international museums and galleries including Newport Art Museum, Griffin Museum of Photography, Danforth Art Museum, Photographic Resource Center, The Center for Fine Art Photography (CO), Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts, Center for Photographic Art (CA), FotoNostrum, Dina Mitrani Gallery and Gallery Kayafas.

She has received multiple awards, including the 2020 Griffin Award at the Griffin Museum of Photography and the Multimedia Award at the 2020 San Francisco Bay International Photo Awards. Her series “Spin Club Tapestry” was selected as a Juror’s Pick at the 2021 LensCulture Art Photography Awards and is the Series Winner at the 2021 Siena International Photo Awards. She was a Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50 photographer in 2021, 2020, 2019, and 2016; and is a Mass Cultural Council 2021 Artist Fellowship Finalist in Photography.

Her work was featured in Fraction Magazine, Lenscratch, LensCulture, What Will You Rembember?, Wired Japan, Il Post Italy, P3 Portugal, Aint-Bad Magazine, The Boston Globe, NRC Handelsblad Amsterdam, as well as other media outlets.

JP Terlizzi

JP Terlizzi is a New York City photographer whose contemporary practice explores themes of memory, relationship, and identity. His images are rooted in the personal and heavily influenced around the notion of home, legacy, and family. He is curious how the past relates and intersects with the present and how the present enlivens the past, shaping one’s identity.

Born and raised in the farmlands of Central New Jersey, JP earned a BFA in Communication Design at Kutztown University of PA with a background in graphic design and advertising. He has studied photography at both the International Center of Photography in New York and Maine Media College in Rockport, ME.

JP’s work has been exhibited widely in galleries including shows at The Center for Fine Art Photography, Vicki Myhren Gallery at the University of Denver, The Grin Museum, Tilt Gallery, Panopticon Gallery, Candela Gallery, The Los Angeles Center of Photography, University Gallery at Cal Poly, and The Berlin Foto Biennale, Berlin, Germany, among others.

His solo exhibits include shows at Foto Relevance Gallery (August, 2020) The Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts, Cameraworks Gallery in Portland, OR and Soho Photo Gallery in Manhattan.