Griffin Main Gallery

The Photography Atelier 24 will present an exhibit of student artwork from September 8th to October 2nd, 2016. The Atelier is a course for intermediate and advanced photographers offered by the Griffin Museum of Photography. You are invited to come view the photographs at the Griffin Museum, 67 Shore Road, Winchester, Massachusetts 01890.

On Thursday, September 8th, the public is invited to attend the artists’ opening night reception from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Griffin Museum.

Photography Atelier Instructor and Photographer Meg Birnbaum shared, “The Photography Atelier has such a long and rich history, I’m honored to be leading this workshop for emerging photographers with Amy Rindskopf assisting. The talent among the 16 members of this group show is varied and inspiring — from our relationship with nature to sports, portraits, ephemera and still lifes — the show is very satisfying feast for the eyes and soul.”

Work by 2016 Atelier 24 members includes:

Amy Rindskopf: Reflected, portraits of an alternate self; Charan Devereaux: Union Square at Work, photographs from Somerville’s oldest commercial district; Conrad Gees: Bosque Mágico de la Habana: Images taken in Havana’s Forest a metaphor for Cuba today; Cynthia Johnston: Altars, a retrospective exploration of family memories utilizing still life studies; David Poorvu: People in Motion, images of athletes in action; Dennis Geller: Studios: Seeing inside the spaces in which art is created; Edward Boches: The Skateboarder’s Canvas:  Capturing the curves, shadows, angles and inclines of an urban skate park; Joel Howe: Nature Scrolls, landscape experiments with light, shadow, and movement; Kay Corry Aubrey: A Walk along the Swift River on Father’s Day 2016, magical images of rainbow trout; Leah Abrahams: Cubism Revisited,  images re-creating classical Cubist portraiture in photography; Maria A. Verrier: Birds of Sorrow, a visual narrative that explores the universal emotions of grief and the struggle to find meaning in death; Mark Thayer: Defining Wealth, the delicacy of nature finds a foothold in the material world; Meghan Cronin: Wonderful Water, satisfying curiosity with the visualization of every day objects in aqueous environments; Tony Attardo: Collectively Full Circle Images capturing bicycle refurbishment for low income children and teens; Vivian Poey: Trajectories (or where I stand): represents a family history of place, migration and exile; Will Daniels: In Louisiana, images captured while reconnecting with my father in an unfamiliar land.

About the class:

Photography Atelier, in its twentieth year, is a unique portfolio-making course for emerging to advanced photographers. In addition to guidance and support in the creation of a body of work, the class prepares artists to market, exhibit, and present their work to industry professionals.

Each participant in the Atelier presents a final project in the form of a print portfolio, a photographic book or album, a slide show, or a mixed media presentation. In every Atelier, students hang a gallery exhibition and produce work for their own pages on the Atelier website. To see the photography of present and past Atelier students and teachers, please visit www.photographyatelier.org.  Instructor Meg Birnbaum will be happy to discuss the Photography Atelier at the reception on September 8th with anyone interested in joining the class.

The juror for the Griffin’s Juried show this year was Elizabeth Avedon. Ms. Avedon is an independent curator and contributor to “L’oeil de la Photographie,” profiling notable leaders in the world of Photography. She has received awards and recognition for her photography exhibition design and publishing projects, including the retrospective exhibition and book, “Avedon: Photographs 1949-1979″ for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts; and “Richard Avedon: In the American West” for the Amon Carter Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and The Art Institute of Chicago, among many others; as well as curating several exhibitions at New York’s Leica Gallery. In addition, she has also worked with the Menil Collection and the Estate of Diane Arbus. Ms. Avedon wrote the introductory essay for “Vivian Maier: Self Portraits,” a PowerHouse Book. She is an instructor in both the BFA Photography and Masters in Digital Photography departments at the School of Visual Arts, New York and resides in New York City

“These final pictures, including the award winning images,” says Avedon, “sit well with me in the end. Each image has a different voice that takes me on a journey I have not been on before. They whisper and call for me to look again, and isn’t that all we ask and hope for from the medium we love, and the photographs that find us?”

The 22nd Griffin Museum Juried Exhibition is on display in the Main Gallery of the Griffin Museum July 14 through August 28, 2016. An opening reception is July 14, 7-8:30 p.m. The opening reception is free to all.

In speaking about her jurying process, Elizabeth Avedon said, “While looking for that elusive essence – what moved me visually or emotionally, what seduced me with a new point of view, striking a fresh chord – I tried to imagine how I would feel in a room with this photograph on the wall, and how I may miss it by its absence there.” Avedon also went on to say that, “Meaningful work resonates regardless of what camera you prefer, what lens you choose, what app you favor, or what paper you swoon over. “Real” photography finds its audience.”



For the third year the 22nd Juried Show is held in honor of the legacy of Peter Urban a celebrated, Boston-based photographer who passed away in 2009 after a long battle with cancer. Urban was renowned for his success in both the commercial and artistic realm. In the spirit of Peter’s success creating a career with a balance of commercial and artistic work, his family has partnered with the Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston and the Griffin Museum of Photography to produce opportunities for other photographers to grow their careers.

Alongside the juried exhibition, the Arts and Business Council is again organizing a series of professional development workshops presented by a diverse range of thought leaders as a legacy to Peter Urban. These workshops will share instrumental ideas, methods and tools to help build the business and legal foundation of a thriving artistic practice.

The Peter Urban Legacy Award went to Lissa Rivera. The Arthur Griffin Legacy Award went to Jennifer McClure and the Griffin Award went to Rebecca Biddle Moseman. Honorable mentions went to Susan May Tell, Ashly Leonard Stohl and Ruben Natal-San Miquel.

The photographers are: Ben Altman, Craig Becker, Sheri Lynn Behr, Norm Borden, Chris Borrok, Joan Lobis Brown, Anja Bruehling, Lynne Buchanan, Lauren Ceike, Tom Chambers, Keith Conforti, Francis Crisafio, Frank Diaz & Deb Young, John Delaney, K.k. DePaul, Norm Diamond, Nicholas Fedak II, Selma Fernandez Richter, Bill Franson, Jennifer Georgescu, Laurent Girard, Tessa Gordon, Tamar Granovsky, Meg Griffiths, Tytia Habing, Suzy Halpin, Amanda James, Yoichi Kawamura, Asia Kepka, Jung S Kim, Karen Klinedinst, Molly Lamb, Yvette Meltzer, Ralph Mercer, Jenna Miller, Andrew Mroczek, Toni Pepe Dan, Jaime Permuth, Zoe Perry-Wood, Camilo Ramirez, John Rizzo, Michelle Rogers Pritzl, Russ Rowland, Lee Saloutos, Wendi Schneider, Raphael Shammaa, Lacey Terrell, India Treat, Dawn Watson, Aaron Wax, Sandra Chen Weinstein, Guanyu Xu and Anna Katharina Zeitler

The Griffin Museum of Photography has selected four photographers from the juried show submissions for future exhibitions in 2016. These photographers are:
Rocio De Alba, Gary Beeber, Timothy Wilson and Ellen Davidson Cantor. In addition to the 2016 exhibitions, the Griffin Museum has chosen Joyce P. Lopez and Elliot Schildkrout to be displayed with the current show in our online virtual galleries. From the selections, Ellen Slotnik will be featured as our Member in Focus for the summer of 2016.

By creating photographic portraits of themselves and their surroundings, students from the Boston Arts Academy and Winchester High School have been exploring their sense of self and place in a unique collaborative program at the Griffin Museum.

In its eleventh year, the 5-month program connects approximately 20 students – from each school – with each other and with professional photographers. The goal is to increase students’ awareness of the art of photography, as well as how being from different programs and different schools affects their approach to the same project.

The students were 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.

Students met with Camilo Ramirez, a photographer and educator in November. Ramirez explained his process of developing a photo project and discussed his photographs of “The Gulf.”

Marky Kauffmann met with students in February and discussed the path of her photography career. She reminded students that work can come from a very personal
place. Students also met with photographer Sam Sweezy. Sweezy is a professional fine
art and commercial photographer and educator who lives in Arlington, MA. He has exhibited at major photography venues including the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY.

Alison Nordstrom, the former curator of the George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y., and photographer Sweezy gathered with students for a discussion of their work and
a final edit for the exhibition.

“In collaboration and through creative discourse these students have grown,” said Paula Tognarelli, executive director of the Griffin Museum. “We are very pleased to be able to share this year’s students’ work. We thank the mentors for providing a very meaningful experience for the students. We also want to thank the Griffin Foundation and the Murphy Foundation, whose continued commitment to this project made learning possible. To paraphrase Elliot Eisner, the arts enabled these students to have an experience that they could have from no other source.’’

The results are on exhibit in PhotoSynthesis XI in the Main Gallery of the Griffin Museum June 16 – July 10. An opening reception is Thursday, June 16, 7-8:30 p.m. It is open to all.

Photographs by: Jim Baab, Sudha Basavaraj, Richard Dana, Bill Davison, Yair Egozy, Pippi Ellison, Jim Fesler, Maria Fonseca, David Fox, Tim Heatwole, Moti Hodis, Jerrie Hurd, Doug Johnson, Catherine King, Ryck Lent, Richard Lord, Chris McFarlane, Sepp Meier, Yair Melamed, Ralph Mercer, Thomas Mikelson, Judith Monteferrante, David Parish, Lisa Pelonzi, Lee Post, Larry Pratt, Kathleen Ranney, Karin Rosenthal, Steve Schmidt, Tony Schwartz, Ron St. Jean, Jim Strong, David Thomas. Anthony Wallen, Len Ward, Trish Wright and David Weinberg.

Karin Rosenthal has mentored many on how to photograph nudes in the landscape. Using her students as a base, Karin invited all those who photographed a dancer in his fifties to submit images. Karin juried work from 36 workshop students to create this exhibition in which students and mentor show side by side. The common thread that holds the exhibit together is that the same male model is included in every photograph.

Program Events
May 22 at 3PM Artists’ Dialogue – The Nude: From Object to Subject
Part 1: Teaching the Nude
Part 2: Collaborations

Event Description: Event Description: Arguably the most controversial genre in photography, the Nude is loaded with cultural stereotypes and degrading projections. It also has tremendous potential for wide-ranging, meaningful expression. Karin will discuss her approach to teaching the Nude, followed by workshop students who will dialogue with the model about some of their best collaborations. Joining Karin in conversations about various images in the exhibition will be Jim Baab, Jim Banta, Pippi Ellison, Moti Hodis, Doug Johnson, Ron St. Jean and Tony Schwartz.

June 7 at 7PM Artist Talk -Journeying Within the Human Landscape with Karin Rosenthal

Karin Rosenthal has photographed nudes in the landscape since 1975, finding resonances between body and nature first in traditional photography and, more recently, in digital photography. In this talk, she draws from a variety of series to convey the evolution and range of her motivations and explorations. Using the alchemy of light, water, and the human figure, Rosenthal creates, with one click of the shutter, abstractions and illusions that challenge us to see beyond the predictable.

After almost 20 years this project has come together capturing the photographer’s curiosity and vivid childhood memories. She has photographed the world around her considering the poignancy of childhood and the pathos of aging and relationships. “Portraiture.” as said by Aline Smithson, “is like taking mental photographs from infancy.” In our exhibition, we feature the unique autobiography she has made for herself, where she combines humor and family to create a universal expression.

“Self and Others,” an exhibition featuring the work of Aline Smithson, will showcase in the Main Gallery of the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA from April 7th through May 1, 2016. A reception and book signing will take place on May 1st from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. RSVP is required. Please RSVP here

Also, this reception will kick off the Flash Forward Boston Festival!

Growing up in California, Aline Smithson studied art at the College of Creative Studies, a school within the University of Santa Barbara. Currently, living and working in Los Angeles, she has established a name for herself in the art world. Aline has exhibited through the U.S. and has received a number of awards such as Rising Star Award through the Griffin Museum of Photography for her contributions to the photographic community. In 2015, she was awarded First Place Portraiture in the 7th Edition of the Julia Margaret Cameron Awards for Women Photographers and again received the Julia Margaret Cameron Award in the 8th Edition. Also she is the founder of Lenscratch, a blogzine, where she focuses on different contemporary photographers. In addition, Aline has curated and juried exhibitions for a number of galleries, organizations and online magazines. In 2012 she was overall juror for Review Santa Fe. In 2015 the Magenta Foundation released a retrospective monograph of her Photographs.

In her book, “Self and Others,” she explains, “I studied art in college, focusing on large conceptual abstract oil paintings inspired by Rothko and Diebenkorn, but the one regret that I had as an artist was that I couldn’t paint a meaningful portrait.“

Through photography, Aline was able to express a different form of portraiture, ”As an artist, I try to look for or create moments that are at once familiar, yet unexpected. The odd juxtapositions that we find in life are worth exploring, whether it is with humor, compassion, or by simply taking the time to see them.”

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Guns and bullets have a mutual dependency. A gun without ammo becomes just a blunt object. A bullet without a gun’s hammer and chamber can’t generate energy for directed propulsion on its own. In our exhibition we have fine-tuned the focus to concentrate on ammunition, as the bullet alone seems to be the actual instrument of injury.

Bullet Points, an exhibition featuring the work of Deborah Bay, Christopher Colville, Garrett Hansen and Sabine Pearlman, will showcase in the Main Gallery of the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA from January 14 through March 6, 2016. An opening reception takes place on January 14, 7-8:30 p.m. Yorgos Efthymiadis will give the members’ talk at 6:15 PM on his exhibition “Domesticated: Seeing Past Seduction.” The talk is FREE.

“The paradox at work in each photographers’ body of work shown in “Bullet Points” is that there is an allusion to beauty while indirectly stirring, for the viewer, contrasted ideas of chaos, death, and destruction,” says Paula Tognarelli executive director of the Griffin Museum of Photography “Since ancient times the act of violence has held our attention, sometimes to the point of desensitization as in the Roman arena,” she says.

About “The Big Bang” Deborah Bay says, “Although I did not intend to make an overt statement about gun violence, the [bullet shot through plexiglas] clearly depicts the immense amount of energy released on impact, requiring little imagination to realize their effect on muscle and bone.”

Photographer Christopher Colville says, “In the long term I want this work to be a more open look at our cultural obsession with violence.”

Each of Garrett Hansen’s “Void” images is created from individual bullet holes from targets he finds at gun ranges. Hansen says, “While shooting is fundamentally a destructive act, by bringing these holes into the darkroom, enlarging them and then processing and printing the results, I am able to balance this destruction with creation.” He also says, “The viewer is presented with something that speaks to the sublime – they are both attractive and terrifying at the same time.”

Sabine Pearlman’s cross-sections of World War II ammunition raise a variety of opposing responses. Pearlman says, “[Ammo is] the intersection of stunning beauty, frightening amorality, exquisitely lethal, exacting craftsmanship, and a whole host of other contradictions.” She also says, “The surprising anatomy and beauty of cross sections reflects a world of intention back at us. It’s a look under the hood, by which you come to realize that each design is very goal-oriented. With some of them, it’s like getting a glimpse into the psychology of warfare. The images are mesmerizing and also tragic.”

Deborah Bay is a Houston artist. She holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from The University of Texas at Austin. She has exhibited throughout the U.S., most recently at wall space gallery in Santa Barbara, Vanderbilt University and the Phoenix Art Museum. The British Journal of Photography has featured her work on its cover, and her images have appeared in a variety of national and international publications. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz.

Born in 1974 in Tucson Arizona Christopher Colville received his BFA in Anthropology and Photography from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri and his MFA in Photography from the University of New Mexico. He currently lives in Phoenix, Arizona. He has taught in multiple institutions including as a visiting Assistant Professor at Arizona State University as well as working as the photography editor for Prompt Press. His work has been included in both national and international publications and exhibitions. Recent awards include the Ernst Cabat Award through the Tucson Museum of Art, Critical Mass top 50, the Humble Art Foundations New Photography Grant, an Arizona Commission on the Arts Artist Project Grant, a Public Art Commission from the Phoenix Commission on the Arts and an artist fellowship through the American Scandinavian Foundation. His work has been reviewed in national and international publications including the L.A. Times, Boston Globe and GUP Magazine.

Garrett Hansen graduated from Grinnell College as an economics and political science major. He completed his MFA in photography at Indiana University and has taught at several universities in the United States and in Asia. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Photography at the University of Kentucky. Hansen has exhibited in the United States, Europe, Indonesia, and Japan.

Sabine Pearlman is an Austrian born photographer currently living in Los Angeles, California. In 2013 she received the LensCulture Emerging Photographer Award for her AMMO series. The series went viral and has since been featured by PHOTO+ Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, National Geographic, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail, WIRED, Der Stern, Esquire (UK), NEON Magazine (France), World of Knowledge (Australia), among many others. Her work has been exhibited internationally, most notably at PYO Gallery South in Seoul, Korea as a solo exhibition, entitled “Fatal Beauty.“

Boston Globe Article by Mark Feeney

Elin Spring highlights “Bullet Points”

Three artists highlighted in The Winchester Star

For the third year, The Griffin Museum has invited all of its current members to exhibit in the Winter Solstice Exhibition. From across the world, artists entered one piece to be on display for December 2015. Over 140 photographs are represented in the Main Gallery of the Griffin and display a spectrum of genres and processes. The opening reception is Thursday, December 10, 2015 from 6-8pm. Sales are encouraged and many artists have donated the proceeds back to the Griffin.