Winchester

Ties That Bind | Threaded Narratives

Posted on January 12, 2023

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.

Anne Piessens | Origin Stories

Posted on January 12, 2023

My parents, older sister and I immigrated to the US when I was an infant. Growing up far away from extended family, I missed what I imagined to be the grounding force of aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents around me.

My parents rarely spoke of their lives in Belgium in the 1940s – 1960s. Eventually I showed my mother a family portrait from her childhood, and asked, “What do you see?” She began to tell me an inter-generational story of feuds over money, alcoholism, infidelity, child abandonment, jealousy, and domestic abuse. This ongoing multimedia series is my interpretation of fragments of family history, primarily as experienced by girls and women.

About Anne Piessens

Anne Piessens is a Boston-based fine art photographer whose work reimagines family history and our relationship with the natural world.

Her current series, Origin Stories, brings elements of magical realism into hand-collaged fragments of family portraits. Past projects include Meliorations, which imagines ways to heal damaged landscapes, and In the Middle of Something, a portrait series about the tween years.

Marsha Guggenheim | Without a Map

Posted on January 9, 2023

How does one move through life with the scars of the past? When I was ten, my mother died unexpectedly from a heart attack. I couldn’t understand where she went or when she would return. Just as I began to comprehend this loss, my father died. I was without support from my family and community. I was lost.

Without a Map reimagines this time that’s deeply rooted in my memories. Visiting my childhood home, synagogue and family plot provided an entry into this personal retelling. Working with family photos, creating new images from my past and turning the camera on myself, I found the means to evoke, reinterpret and address unanswered questions born from early imprints that were buried long ago.

About Marsha Guggenheim

Marsha Guggenheim is a San Francisco based fine art photographer. Her passion is storytelling and using images to re-imagine the past and inspire the present. Marsha spent years photographing and documenting the lives of formerly homeless mothers. This work resulted in the monograph, Facing Forward, highlighting thirty-five women through portraits combined with stories of their life experiences. Over the past five years, Marsha has been working on her series, Without a Map. The project draws on recreating images from memories and ephemera to reconstruct her personal history. Without a Map looks at the life-long impact of loss on a child and how both trauma and joy affect the human soul.

Represented by Corden Potts Gallery, Marsha is a 2021 and 2022 Critical Mass finalist. Her work has been shown in over fifty exhibitions and is included in numerous private collections. Feature articles and interviews range from Black & White Magazine, All About Photo Magazine, Fraction Magazine, F-Stop Photography Magazine and Lenscratch. In 2023, Marsha will be featured in a solo show at The Griffin Museum of Photography and will also participate in a six-artist group exhibition at the Harvey Milk Photography Center in San Francisco.

In the Room Where it Happened : A Survey of Presidential Photographers

Posted on January 6, 2023

Our understanding of the U.S. presidency is largely shaped by images. Photographs of political campaigns, international engagements, historic legislation, and national tragedy, accompany more intimate family scenes and humanizing portraits, each contributing to the global perception of the American presidency for generations to come.

Featuring the work of the official White House photographers Shealah Craighead, Eric Draper, Michael Evans, Sharon Farmer, David Hume Kennerly, Bob McNeely, Yoichi Okamoto, Adam Schultz, Pete Souza, David Valdez and staff photographer Joyce Boghosian, this group has shaped our vision of the presidency for the last 6 decades.

Presidential photography highlights the complex nature of creativity, documentation and portraiture. Each photographers’ perspective and stories provide context for framing important moments, giving viewers a deeper understanding of the challenges and rewards of documenting the presidency, offering a comprehensive and insightful visual narrative of the U.S. presidency through the lens of these dedicated and talented photographers.

Jeffrey Aaronson | The President and the Press

Posted on January 4, 2023

Before social media and the instant upload of images and information, the ability to craft a story, define a narrative was simpler. Time was malleable, able to help and hinder real time reporting. A delay in reporting could be helpful in creating distractions or competing news stories. In 1998, President Bill Clinton was embroiled in scandal and looking to change the story. A trip to China was planned to distract from real time reporting, and show the strength of the Clinton Presidency overseas.

Jeffrey Aaronson was given an assignment by a major publication to follow the press as they covered President Clinton’s 1998 overseas trip to China, tasked with photographing the press as they followed the president. His photo story was not the images we saw of the President meeting with world leaders, taking a trip on the Li River, or meeting with environmentalists. It was Aaronson’s view of the press coverage and the stagecraft of the trip that became the focus of his lens. His photographs from that trip become a tale of how to build a story within a story, working to contain the vision and perception of the strength and power of the presidency, showcase our stature across the world and redefine the past, while reinterpreting the present.

About Jeffrey Aaronson –

Jeffrey Aaronson was born in Hollywood and raised in southern California. He attended the University of California Santa Barbara and upon graduating moved to Aspen, Colorado where he purchased his first camera. Soon after he began photographing, Jeffrey met mentors, Ernst Haas and Franz Berko, both pioneers in the art of color photography, who supported and encouraged his passion.

Jeffrey’s photographic career began in world of magazines where he worked on assignment for numerous publications from Vanity Fair and TIME to Rolling Stone and The New York Times Magazine. In 2001 he chose a new direction, departing from the tradition of documentary work and moving to a more narrative and conceptually based approach. Since that transition, he has devoted all his energy to long-term personal art projects, which allow him to express a more private vision.

Aaronson’s work has been exhibited in the US, Europe and the Middle East and is represented in numerous private and public collections. In January 2011, Aaronson was recognized by the Forward Thinking Museum as Artist of the Year for his series, Borderland. In addition, Borderland was nominated for the Santa Fe Prize in 2008 as well as selected for Critical Mass’s Top 50. This same work was also included in a group exhibition, HomeLessHome, at the Museum on the Seam in Jerusalem. In 2011 his series Driving Desire was nominated for the Santa Fe Prize and in 2012, work from Driving Desire was exhibited at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and purchased for their permanent collection.

Brianna Dowd | Mother Pearl

Posted on January 4, 2023

Mother Pearl

Mother Pearl is an exploration of a connection I feel to a woman who I have never known. While she and I have never met face to face, we are far from strangers. We are connected through lineage and bloodline; she is a part of who I am. She is beautiful, full of grace, and has a smile that lights up a room. Our relationship is unique, as I can engage with her only through photographs, momentos, and dreams. Her life’s story is a mystery to me, as I have little to no information to pull from. I am left with mere imaginations of this woman, who she is, and her impact on my life. This woman is my grandmother, Margaret Dowd… Mother Pearl.

This body of work is a projection of images recording my innermost desires of what my relationship would have been like with my deceased grandmother, had we been afforded the chance to meet.In this series I have taken a variety of constructivist approaches to photography by staging memories I long to have created with her. Found photographs, personal objects belonging to my grandmother, and pearls are used to emphasize the closeness of her presence felt around and within me, as well as handwritten letters addressed to her, outpouring my emotions as I travel on this journey to know her deeper.

About Brianna Dowd

Brianna Dowd is an NC based artist whose background is in fine art photography and graphic design. She is a 2017 graduate from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro obtaining a Bachelors of Fine Art degree, and is currently pursuing a Masters of Fine Art at the Savannah College of Art & Design.

Brianna is also the founder and CEO of Butterfly Visuals, LLC, a media company providing quality service to creative and goal oriented individuals in the areas of photography, graphic design, website design, promotional design, branding materials, social media content, and more.

Bill Chapman: Illuminating the Archive

Posted on January 1, 2023

Artist Statement

“A friend once commented about my photographs in that I take the hibrow and the lobrow, put them in a blender and see what comes out. If the “American Dream” still exists at all, it presents itself as a fractured dissonance. This is what I seek. The late Chris Killip once told me that our idea of what Ireland looked like came from the brightly hand colored postcards we saw of it. As a youngster, I occupied myself with accordion postcards of a sprightly hand colored America and a Viewmaster. The Viewmaster was a device that enables the viewer to consider two versions of the same image creating a 3-D effect. Vestiges of my exposure to this type of imagery still manifest themselves in some of my work. A great part of my seventy-two years of flippancy and truancy were accompanied by a camera.

Crista Dix asked me to consider the archives of Arthur Griffin, choose eight images of his work and to then create a “call and response” with eight of my own. I am old enough to remember the downtown Boston he captured and recognize other places that Mr. Griffin committed to film. His photographs of Ted Williams are among the most revered in the iconography of sports. This project engaged me with history, photography and a sense of “then and now,’ all aspects of my work that I cherish.” – Bill Chapman

About Bill Chapman

“You’re an American. You know what to do.” -Dr. Ernest Withers

A simple phrase uttered by his mentor describes Bill Chapman’s photography more concisely than the extensive commentary produced over the years about the man and his work. At a very early age, Chapman’s interests in politics, civil rights, baseball and music were tied to a passion for photography. Over the years he has explored each topic — and much more — through both film and digital imagery.

Chapman has traveled throughout America to discover “the cruel radiance of what is,” as Walker Evans phrased it. His photographs have been described as “sardonic but good natured.” America has experienced a daunting number of peaks and valleys in the treatment of its citizenry and the way it represents itself within its own borders. Chapman set out to both befriend and embrace that America through his photographs.

Bill Chapman’s work has been exhibited at The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Gallery Kayafas, Harvard University, The Griffin Museum and many other locations. His images have been published in a wide variety of books, including Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston by Howard Bryant (Beacon Press, 2003), Negro League Baseball by Ernest C. Withers (Harry N. Abrams, 2005), Bluff City by Preston Lauterbach (W.W. Norton & Co., 2019) Rickwood Field: A Century in America’s Oldest Ballpark by Allen Barra (W.W. Norton & Co., 2010). Many publications have also featured Chapman’s images, including: The Boston Globe, The New York Times, Preservation Magazine, University of Budapest, Art New England and ESPN Magazine.

Rohina Hoffman | Embrace

Posted on January 1, 2023

Our shared and common humanity is assumed but not always evident. Making work inspired from my own personal experiences, I look for ways to further and deepen our thoughts on this connection.

In Embrace, Los Angeles based photographer Rohina Hoffman reflects on the theme of uncertainty while combining two of her photographic projects. In Gratitude, made during the pandemic, is a typology of portraits celebrating food and family and how we find comfort in times of unease. Generation 1.75 is a visual memoir of identity, belonging, and the complexities of acculturation.

About Rohina –

Rohina is a fine art photographer whose practice uses portraiture and the natural world to investigate themes of identity, home, adolescence and the female experience.

Born in India and raised in New Jersey, Rohina grew up in a family of doctors spanning three generations. While an undergraduate at Brown University, Rohina also studied photography at the Rhode Island School of Design and she was a staff photographer for the Brown Daily Herald. A graduate of Brown University Medical School and resident at UCLA Medical Center, her training led to a career as a neurologist.

A skilled observer of her patients, Rohina was instilled with a deep and unique appreciation of the human experience. Her ability to forge the sacred trust between doctor and patient has been instrumental in fostering a parallel connection between photographer and subject.

Rohina published her first monograph Hair Stories with Damiani Editore (February 2019) accompanied by a solo exhibition at Brown University’s Alpert Medical School. Her monograph, Hair Stories, is held in many notable public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Getty, Cleveland Institute of Art, and over twenty-five university libraries.

Her second monograph, Embrace, with Schilt Publishing was just released October 2022 (Europe) and January 2023 (U.S.).

In 2021, she was the winner of the Altanta Photography Group’s Purchase Award and several of her prints were acquired by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia.

Her photographs have been exhibited in juried group shows both nationally and internationally in venues such as The Center for Fine Art Photography, Griffin Museum, Colorado Photographic Arts Center, Los Angeles Center for Photography, Photo LA, and A. Smith Gallery. She has received numerous awards and has been published in Marie Claire Italia, F-Stop Magazine, The Daily Beast, Lenscratch, Shots Magazine, and Edge of Humanity among others. She lives with her husband, three children and two golden retrievers in Los Angeles.

Jason Reblando | Field Notes

Posted on January 1, 2023

In an 1895 photograph from the University of Michigan Philippine archives, a smiling Filipina faces the camera, posing in front of lush tropical trees with a hand on her hip. The bottom half of her body is wrapped in an intricate tapestry, and the top half of her body is naked, except for beaded necklaces. Written into the photograph is the title “Young Ifugao Belle, 382.” This image is just one of thousands of photographs
taken by American colonizers who were eager to create a narrative of white saviorism and thus shape the way Americans perceived the Philippines throughout the twentieth century.

I am a Filipino-American photographer and artist, and I have been creating mixed-media photocollages based upon archival images from the American colonial period in the Philippines for my project titled Field Notes. By physically cutting, pasting, and rearranging various elements of images upon images, I aim to deconstruct and critique the colonial gaze, while attempting to reclaim the photographic narrative. In some collages, the cut patterns reference textile-makers across the Philippine archipelago, while in other collages, shapes and silhouettes allude to a problematic colonial past.

Field Notes is a meditation upon the long, complex relationships between the Philippines and the United States, anthropology and photography, and mass media and society. By weaving historical photographs into my own contemporary art practice, I recontextualize archives that codified colonial power dynamics between the United States and the Philippines. Ultimately, I hope that my project will contribute to a growing conversation by contemporary artists who are eager to interrogate the colonizing power of the archive, not only for Filipinos, but for all members of the Global South.

About Jason Reblando –

Jason Reblando is an artist and photographer based in Normal, Illinois. He received his MFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago, and a BA in Sociology from Boston College. He is the recipient of a U.S. Fulbright Fellowship to the Philippines, an Artist Fellowship Award from the Illinois Arts Council, and a Community Arts Assistance Program grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. His work has been published in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times, Politico, Camera Austria, Slate, Bloomberg Businessweek, Marketplace, MAS Context, Real Simple, Places Journal, Chicago Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, and the Chicago Reader. His photographs are collected in the Library of Congress, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Pennsylvania State University Special Collections, the Midwest Photographers Project of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He is currently serving on the Society for Photographic Education Board of Directors (2022-2026) and is an Assistant Professor of Photography in the Wonsook Kim School of Art at Illinois State University.

Liz Hickok | Cycles of Regeneration

Posted on January 1, 2023

“I began my Regeneration series in the spring of 2020 as a way to bring myself and others color and joy during intense and stressful times. Photographing the native wildflowers in my backyard has provided respite, grounding, and peace. I am inspired by the resilience of the iconic California poppies, which can survive in the harshest conditions and are some of the first flowers to return after wildfires.
I use procedural manipulations through the use of the Perlin noise algorithm to alter and distort my photographs, evoking the movements of fire and air. I collaborate with creative technology artist Phil Spitler, who adds a layer of interactivity and sound to the imagery which further brings the artwork to life. The augmented reality experience invites you, the viewer, to walk through the artwork as the flowers flow and move around you. The fluid forms conjure the instability of our current reality, while communicating the power of nature to heal and inspire.” -Liz Hickok

About the Artists –

San Francisco-based artist, Liz Hickok, works in an innovative creative style, mixing low and high tech to create immersive artworks that bring viewers into a whimsical and wondrous space. Using playful materials and intersecting photography, sculpture, video, and installation, Hickok makes art that intermingles science and nature. Her most recent projects use augmented reality and other interactive technologies, inviting her spectators to take a more personal approach to her art, and closing the gap between artist and viewer.

Hickok exhibits nationally and internationally; her work is included in such collections as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Blue Shield of California, and Mills College Art Museum. Hickok’s series, Fugitive Topography: Cityscapes in Jell-O, attracted widespread media attention, receiving coverage in The New York Times, a feature on CBS’s The Early Show, and NPR.

Hickok has developed photomurals for Facebook and Google’s San Francisco offices, as well as for UCSF and Sutter Hospitals. In 2019, she created a site-specific installation for the Surreal Sublime exhibition at the San Jose ICA, and had a large solo exhibition at the Longview Museum of Fine Arts in Longview, TX. In 2020, she was part of the Center of Photographic Art in Carmel’s 8×10 Fundraising Exhibition. She currently has an outdoor photomural on display in Palo Alto, CA which integrates three-dimensional layers of augmented reality video and sound. Liz’s most recent project was an interactive large-scale video projection for Palo Alto’s Code:ART2 festival in October 2021. In 2022, she will have a solo show at Chung Namont Gallery in Noe Valley, San Francisco.

Phil Spitler is a creative technology artist based in San Francisco. He has gained a reputation for his ability to create innovative and unique light-based art, as well as augmented reality and other creative technology installations. Originally from the UK, Phil has always been fascinated by the interplay between art and technology, and has spent much of his career exploring this intersection. He has a keen eye for using light and color to create immersive environments, often incorporating cutting-edge technology to create truly transformative installations.

Winchester

Mother Pearl

About Rohina –

About Jason Reblando –

Footer