Griffin Main Gallery

Dominic Chavez is a freelance photographer based in Boston, Massachusetts, but he has spent much of his career on the road working in some of the world’s most challenging places. Chavez has recorded the effects of war in Colombia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Angola; the AIDS crisis in more than a dozen countries in Africa; and the battle to eradicate polio in countries in Africa and Asia. In addition, he has covered stories locally and nationally, focusing on the aftermath of 9/11; homeless populations; and those addicted to drugs.

Chavez’s series, U-TURN, is his newest body of work focused on the landscape and is featured in the Main Gallery at the Griffin Museum April 10 through June 8, 2014. An opening reception with the artist is April 10, 7-8:30 p.m.

"I’ve ventured into places too horrible for words, and horrible enough for pictures, such as a lonely forsaken spot along the border of Ethiopia and Eritrea, where tribal cousins fought as is they were in World War I, charging each other on foot, dying by the thousands, bulldozed into piles, and half-buried by dirt," says Dominic Chavez.

"When I was 19, I tried to photograph trees as if they were people. When I examined the frames, I was disappointed,” said Chavez. “As years have passed, it has become trying for me to distance myself from the difficult stories I shoot when I return home to the United States. Almost unconsciously I made a U-turn. I found myself again drawn to places without people," he says. "But this time, when I raised my camera, the scenes came alive. I saw the embrace of trees on Cape Cod, the weeping rocks of an icy cliff in Utah, and the uncertainty on a mountaintop in Maine, where fog obscured the ocean beneath."

"As a photojournalist Chavez unearths a narrative in nature in his series of photographs called U-Turn" says Paula Tognarelli, executive director of the Griffin Museum of Photography."The story he tells is laden with emotion and portrays the strengths and frailties of the landscape."

In an artist statement Concord resident, David Prifti once wrote that is was his desire to explore his life through the things that shaped his life. These formative elements were his relationships, his memories, his sense of family, rites of passage, aging and death. The creative process that led to all of his photographs was indirectly a very personal journey for him.

Two years ago, David Prifti died at age fifty of pancreatic cancer. He was a dedicated and inspirational photography teacher at Concord-Carlisle High School for twenty-five years. Monika Andersson, Prifti’s widow, recalls that one of David’s famous sayings was “Do something for your art every day!” Andersson recalled Prifti as “vivacious and compassionate”, as “an irrepressible jokester”, “a crazy boisterous guru” and “always busy, and always on the move.” He also had “a quiet depth, and a deep love for life and the people in it.”

An exhibition, culled from a collection of Prifti’s photographic assemblages and wet plate collodion images, Prifti: Drawn by Light, is featured in the Main Gallery of the Griffin Museum January 9 through March 2, 2014. An opening reception is January 23, 7-8:30 p.m.

Of his photographic assemblages Prifti said, “Through the juxtaposition of images, found objects and ephemera, I create autobiographical associations that become symbolic, conveying a sense of personal history and the passage of time.” He also said, “The reusing of old materials allows me to resurrect them into a new form.”

For his wet plate collodion images, some of his first projects were of nature. “He had long been fascinated by trees, and especially those with exposed roots, showing how tenuous life’s hold on survival is,” said Monika Andersson. “He built a darkroom that he could load onto a skiff, and, wearing a set of waders I had bought him at a garage sale, would walk and canoe the river, tugging along the skiff with the darkroom, getting water’s edge access to the many trees along the Assabet river. Some of the trees were fallen; others were with their roots exposed, and gripping onto the edge of the world."

Prifti used wet plate collodion as a vehicle for portraits of his friends, students and acquaintances. He also photographed a community of people who alter their bodies.

Born in Worcester, MA. Prifti received an M.F.A. from Yale University School of Art, New
Haven, CT, and a B.F.A. from Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA. He resided and worked in Concord with his wife and two children.

A gallery talk for museum members by Denyse Murphy – whose exhibit Confluence is featured in the Atelier Gallery – is at 6:15 p.m. January 23, prior to the opening reception for all exhibits.

All photographs courtesy of the Prifti Family Estate, Gallery Naga, Boston, MA and Rice Polak Gallery, Provincetown, MA.

Tired of just hanging mistletoe and wreaths for the holidays? Well, come see something special on our gallery walls. The Griffin has added a members open exhibition for all its members.

All members are invited to exhibit a framed photograph at the Griffin Museum of Photography. It should be 16″ x 20″ and under in size. 2D and 3D photo based art accepted.

Sales encouraged and there is an option to donate all proceeds to the Griffin Museum!

In his series, Kontinuum, Magyar uses an unconventional, high-performance digital camera that relies on scanning technology to speak about our urban world and people living an urban life.

Magyar has a fascination with the high-tech tools of our time, but remains devoted to the values of traditional photography.

Operating a machine-vision camera used in mass-production for scientific and industrial image processing, "Magyar catches moments in time and place that can neither be seen with the bare eye nor conventional optical camera," says Hannah Frieser, former Director of Light Work in Syracuse, NY. "The beautiful images combine the aesthetics of classic photography with a technology that redefines our understanding of linear time and singular space in a perfect blend of science and art."

Magyar explains, "The subway trains seemingly suspended in the tunnel are in fact arriving at the station at a at stunning speed. I could capture them moving with my high-speed slit camera that also enables me to achieve complete objectivity. The light is evenly distributed on the carriages, adding an unearthly glow to this urban underworld."

Magyar sees subways as the arteries of a city. "Through these temporary groups of passengers, I wonder about our transiency, see people immersed in their thoughts, but avoiding to reveal anything about themselves. They are stainless to the curious eye. The subways are just as stainless as their passengers."

Taking the Kontinuum project a step further, Magyar uses video and reverses his view. Instead of photographing from the subway platform, Magyar photographs from within the subway car, capturing people with a slow motion camera waiting for the train.

Magyar describes the images as, "An endless row of living sculptures brought together by the same subway line, the same direction, the same intention of taking the train to get caught and carried away by the urban flow. All their motions slowed down, they are graceful and stainless holding their breath, waiting for their train to pull into the station."

Magyar’s works have been exhibited in various solo and group shows internationally including Helsinki Photography Biennial in Finland; Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH) Mixed Media event, the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University; Berlin Selected Artists exhibitions in Germany; the Ethnographic Museum Budapest; Faur Zsofi Gallery in Hungary; Rhubarb Rhubarb in the UK; and Karin Weber Gallery in Hong Kong.

His works are part of collections worldwide, such as Deutsche Bank, the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, and the Bidwell Projects. His photographs have been published in the book Life of Cities by the Graduate School of Design Harvard University, Light and Lens by Robert Hirsch, and in photography magazines including PDN and PQ Magazine in the USA, Flash Art in Hungary, Digital Camera Magazine in UK, and Katalog in Denmark. He lives in Berlin. His work can be viewed at www.magyaradam.com.

The Photography Atelier 18 will present an exhibit of student and faculty artwork from September 12th through September 29rd, 2013. 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 Gallery, 67 Shore Road, Winchester, Massachusetts 01890.

On Thursday, September 12th, the public is invited to attend the artists’ reception from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Work by the Photography Atelier 18 members includes: Bob Avakian’s "Between Night and Day," landscapes from Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod taken between dusk and dawn; Nan Campbell Collins’ "Wildwood" images of the mysterious dimensions of veiled as well as luminous light, shape and form experienced within a wildwood; Diane Rubino Davies’ series of fine art child portraits, "In Plain View;" Sue D’Arcy Fuller’s photo essay tells a story of her own city, Medford, Massachusetts, through images of the people who live, work and praise there; Nancy Fulton’s landscapes at the beginning of the wet in Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania, Africa, "The Rains of Ngorongoro Crater;" Rich Perry’s photographs of the structures of the 1920s and 30s on Route 66 in Oklahoma as they were in March 2013, "Route 66, Oklahoma – The Past in the Present;" Larry Raskin images of the shapes, colors and the play of light reflected in the vehicles we use and see every day, "Reflections on the Move;" Astrid Reischwitz’s "Bedroom Project" which brings intimate spaces into public view; Amy Rindskopf’s images of "Spring in the Greenhouse;" Gail Samuelson’s "Head Shots" – an homage to loved ones which includes vintage hats, WWII shoulder boards, and fake beards; Ellen Slotnick’s "Paradox," interior photographs from abandoned homesteads and farmhouses in North Dakota; Jeanne Wells’ "Winter Gardens,"a series of glass ambrotypes; course assistant Meg Birnbaum’s photographs documenting "The Boston Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence" and instructor Karen Davis’s "Touch," portraits of moments of connection.

About the class:
Photography Atelier, in its seventeenth 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 Karen Davis, will be happy to discuss the Photography Atelier at the reception on September 12th with anyone interested in joining the class.

Juror, Kathy Ryan, Director of Photography for the New York Times Magazine says, “The photographers I selected for the 19th juried exhibition of the Griffin Museum have this in common: faith in photography’s ability to tell stories.”

“Their pictures make the reader listen. Some construct fictional narratives to deliver a social critique. Some use classic documentary methods. These photographers aren’t upending the medium,”she says. “They are embracing its documentary powers.”

Ryan served as juror of the 19th Griffin Museum Juried Exhibition, which is on display in the Main Gallery of the museum July 18 through September 1. An opening reception is July 18, 7-8:30 p.m.

Ryan says that “the usual mix of photographic genres was submitted to the competition.”
“Portraiture, landscape, still lives, and interiors are all here,” she explains.

There was a common element that Ryan noticed, too. She says, “Domestic life dominated the submissions and is well represented in this exhibition. There are lots of details of the interiors of homes—refrigerators, TVs, clothing, beds, flowered wallpaper, and windows. Sometimes there are people, presented feelingly.”

Of the Legacy Award recipient Ryan says, “Sarah-Marie Land’s elegant pictures of children in school uniforms are hypnotic thanks to the odd tension between their grown-up poses and warm, innocent surroundings. There is a hint of something sinister—perhaps naughty—behind these simple, precise pictures.”

Julia Cybularz, the Griffin Award recipient, “achieves something unusual,” says Ryan. Of her photographs she says that they are “beautiful pictures of a young girl dueling with a serious medical condition. She doesn’t intend to shock. Yet with exactitude, she portrays the back brace and body cast—the realities of scoliosis. We are surprised, and not surprised, to find that she suffers from the same condition.”

Sarah-Marie Land received the $1,000 Legacy Award. Julia Cybularz received the $500 Griffin Award. Honorable mentions were awarded to Juan Fernandez, Nancy Grace Horton, Mary Kocol, Monika Merva, and Joseph Ow.

The complete list of photographers selected for the exhibition is:
Bob Avakian
Margo Cooper
Francis Crisafio
Julia Cybularz- $500 Griffin Award
Barbara Diener
Steven Duede
Christian Farnsworth
Juan Fernandez- Honorable Mention
Emily Franklin
David Gardner
Eran Gilat
Meg Griffiths
Nancy Grace Horton- Honorable Mention
Daniel Jackson
Becky Jaffe
Phil Jung
Brian Kaplan
Ashley Kauschinger
Stefanie Klavens
John Kobeck
Mary Kocol- Honorable Mention
Alena Kuzub
Molly Lamb
Sarah-Marie Land- $1,000 Legacy Award
Walter Landry
Julie McCarthy
Mary Beth Meehan
Yvette Meltzer
Fabiola Menchelli Tejeda
Monika Merva- Honorable Mention
Charles Mintz
Sarah Nesbitt
Joseph Ow- Honorable Mention
Camilo Ramirez
Suzanne Revy
Michelle Rogers Pritzl
Eleonora Ronconi
Paul Sisson
Elizabeth Swain
Samantha VanDeman
Arthur Zachai
The Griffin Museum of Photography has selected four photographers from the submissions for future exhibitions in 2014:
Paul Adams
Manuel Cosentino
Marjorie Salvaterra
Rafael Soldi

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 eighth year, the 5-month program connects approximately 40 students – 20 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.

During the course of the project, students met with Mary Beth Meehan, a photographer and native of Rhode Island. Meehan’s City of Champions document the city of Brockton and the people who live there. Chelsea native Dominic Chavez talked with students about his work as a Boston Globe photographer and photographing in Africa and Afghanistan.

Students also met with Sam Sweezy, 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, curator of the George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y., and Sweezy gathered with students for a group discussion of the work and a final edit of 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.”

Amy Arbus uses photography to evoke the classical paintings of Picasso, Modigliani, Balthus, and Ingres, bringing the subjects to life.

A series of her photographs, After Images, is featured in the Main Gallery of the Griffin Museum April 9 through June 2. An opening reception with the artist is April 11, 7-8:30 p.m.

"I chose portraits that I found emotionally intense and heartbreakingly beautiful," says Arbus.

She then photographed actor friends and other models to reflect those paintings.

"Re-enacting a painting requires a very deliberate kind of scrutiny," Arbus says. "It felt like dissecting and re-assembling. I was always too intimidated to create portraits in the style of another photographer, yet ironically with this series, in taking liberties from the original, I feel I was able to make my most unique body of work yet."

"When people first see them, they aren’t sure if they are looking at paintings or photographs."

Arbus describes her technique. "I learned how to create very soft lighting, imitate the skewed perspectives in the paintings and which colors for skin wouldn’t translate well into photography," she says. "It wasn’t until I was on the set that I felt like I knew exactly what I wanted."

"Occasionally, I would know within minutes that a picture wasn’t going to work, that all the elements wouldn’t come together, so I would move on."

Arbus says she and the actors discussed what might have been happening in the life of the subject of the painting to access a level of empathy.

"To me, they are paintings come to life," she says.

As for continuing the series, Arbus says, "I see this particular body of work as being complete, but inevitability it will inform whatever I do next."

Arbus has published four books, including the award winning On the Street and The Inconvenience of Being Born. The New Yorker called her book, The Fourth Wall, her masterpiece. Her advertising clients include Chiat/Day, Foote, Cone and Belding, American Express, Saatchi & Saatchi, SpotCo, New Line Cinema, and Nickelodeon.
Her photographs have appeared in more than 100 hundred periodicals around the world, including New York Magazine, People, Dazed and Confused and The New York Times Magazine.

She teaches portraiture at the International Center of Photography, Maine Media Workshops, and The Fine Arts Work Center.

Arbus is represented by The Schoolhouse Gallery and The Griffin Museum of Photography in Massachusetts. She has had 22 solo exhibitions worldwide and her photographs are a part of the collection of The National Theater in Norway, The New York Public Library, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

This exhibition is sponsored in part by Digital Silver Imaging

Amy Arbus and Gallerist Mike Carroll of the Schoolhouse Gallery in Conversation and Gallery tour at 7 PM on April 12, 2013 at the Griffin Museum of Photography. $7 Griffin Museum and ASMP Members, $10 Students, $20 Nonmembers. (purchase tickets)

The Photography Atelier 17 will present an exhibit of student and faculty artwork from March 7th to March 30th, 2013. 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 gallery, 67 Shore Road, Winchester, Massachusetts 01890.

On Thursday, March 28th, the public is invited to attend the artists’ reception from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Work by other 2013 Atelier members includes: Bob Avakian’s Landscape, Night and Dawn long exposure photographs; Betsy Constantine’s Sculptural Portraits of a Woman in the Autumn of Life; Jorge Galvez’ Self Portraits; Jane Paradise’s Portraits of Dune Shacks of the Peaked Hill Bars Historic district of Provincetown; Amy Rindskopf’s Elementary Vision, The Instant of Recognition – Photographs of Children; Judith Robinson-Cox constructed pictures using cut out shapes, objects and mirrors;; Linda Rogers’ collages of legacy objects, their original owners to present descendants; Gail Samuelson’s Self Portraits: Deconstructing Herself Turning Sixty; Dianne Schaefer’s Metamorphosis of Aging Structures; Alice Shafer’s The Beauty of Barns in Champlain County, Vermont; Dick Simon’s photographs Inside North Korea; Ellen Slotnick’s Ethereal Mood Landscapes; Christy Stadelmaier’s Ancient Colors, Shapes and Patterns from China’s Silk Road; Vicki McKenna chronicles the role of gardens, both formal or wild, large or small, as transitions between the natural and human built landscape, Trelawney Goodell’s multi-frame images of children at play, Assistant Instructor Meg Birnbaum’s portraits of “Sister Frieda Fabulous” of the Boston Order of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence getting ready for a Red Cross fundraiser; Instructor Karen Davis’ Life’s Little Procedures.

About the class:
Photography Atelier, in its seventeenth 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 Karen Davis, will be happy to discuss the Photography Atelier at the reception on March 7th with anyone interested in joining the class.