Griffin Main Gallery

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

Join us on Thursday June 13th from 6 to 8pm for an Artist Reception to celebrate these talented students’ works and meet their instructors and supporters.

Now in its nineteenth year, this 5-month program connects 12 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.

The participating student artists from Winchester High School:

Mia Cafarella | Sabrina Dorr | Mikayla Ferguson | Maggie Shevland | Bowden Simpson | Julia Valcourt

The participating student artists from Burlington High School:

Sean Cox | Mackenzie Goldsmith | Emersyn Kirchner | Alex McGillivray | Taylor Papagno | Alessia Pedruzzi

Ceding Ground is a view of our changing climate through the eyes of six photographers, all grasping with the question of loss of habitat, groundwater and climate change.  Simon Norfolk’s two series, When I am laid in Earth and Shroud focus on retreating ice in Africa and Europe. Jason Lindsey’s Cracks in the Ice is a metaphorical and scientific look at glaciation. Camille Seaman’s Melting Away exposes us to habitat loss for the penguins of Antartica. Hidden Waters is Bremner Benedict’s look at the water crisis in the Western United States. Ellen Konar & Steve Goldband expose us to climate change through the study of tree rings in Cut Short. Outside the museum we have Dawn Watson’s Alchemy, an abstract look at the elements that surround us and Ville Kansanen’s site specific installations connecting the museum to the surroundings engaging Judkin’s Pond as a partner in his vision to talk about the fragility of aquatic resources.

Simon Norfolk | When I am Laid In Earth & Shroud

Simon Norfolk is a landscape photographer whose work over twenty years has been themed around a probing and stretching of the meaning of the word ‘battlefield’ in all its forms. As such, he has photographed in some of the world’s worst war-zones and refugee crises, but is equally at home photographing supercomputers used to design military systems or the test-launching of nuclear missiles. Time’s layeredness in the landscape is an ongoing fascination of his.

His work has been widely recognised: he has won The Discovery Prize at Les Rencontres d’Arles in 2005; The Infinity Prize from The International Center of Photography in 2004; and he was winner of the European Publishing Award, 2002. In 2003 he was shortlisted for the Citibank Prize now known as the Deutsche Börse Prize and in 2013 he won the Prix Pictet Commission. He has won multiple World Press Photo and Sony World Photography awards.

He has produced four monographs of his work including ‘Afghanistan: Chronotopia’ (2002) which was published in five languages; ‘For Most Of It I Have No Words’ (1998) about the landscapes of genocide; and ‘Bleed’ (2005) about the war in Bosnia. His most recent is ‘Burke + Norfolk; Photographs from the War in Afghanistan.’ (2011).

He has work held in major collections such as The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, The Getty in Los Angeles as well as San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Wilson Centre for Photography and the Sir Elton John Collection. His work has been shown widely and internationally from Brighton to Ulaanbaatar and in 2011 his ‘Burke + Norfolk’ work was one of the first ever photography solo shows at Tate Modern in London.

He has been described by one critic as ‘the leading documentary photographer of our time. Passionate, intelligent and political; there is no one working in photography that has his vision or his clarity.’ He is currently running at a pretty nifty Number 44 on ‘The 55 Best Photographers of all Time. In the History of the World. Ever. Definitely.’

Simon Norfolk’s Shroud was made in collaboration with Klaus Thymann of Project Pressure, “a charity with a mission to visualize climate change.”

Camille Seaman | Melting Away : A Penguins Life

Camille Seaman was born in 1969. She graduated in 1992 from the State University of New York at Purchase, where she studied photography with Jan Groover and John Cohen. Her photographs have been published in National Geographic Magazine, Italian Geo, German GEO, TIME, The New York Times Sunday magazine, Newsweek, Outside, Zeit Wissen, Men’s Journal, Seed, Camera Arts, Issues, PDN, and American Photo among many others, She frequently leads photographic workshops. Her photographs have received many awards including: a National Geographic Award, 2006; and the Critical Mass Top Monograph Award, 2007. She is a TED Senior Fellow, Stanford Knight Fellow as well as a Cinereach Filmmaker in Residence Fellow.

Camille Seaman strongly believes in capturing photographs that articulate that humans are not separate from nature.

Bremner Benedict | Hidden Waters

Benedict’s projects center on the role that landscape plays in the human experience – on unseen,  ordinary places –  what they reveal about our attitudes and relationship to the natural world and the potential consequences of what we choose to not to value. Her focus for the last six years has been on drought  climate change and overuse of water in the arid landscapes in North America.

Benedict’s images are at Fidelity Art Boston; Center for Photography, Tucson; Florida Museum of Photographic Arts; New Mexico Museum of Art; Decordova Museum of Art and Sculpture; Harvard’s Fogg Museum; and George Eastman Museum. Solo exhibitions include Florida Museum of Photographic Arts; Griffin Museum of Photography at Stoneham; Texas Woman’s University, Denton, TX; and Philadelphia Print Center. Hidden Waters archive resides in the Museum of Art & Environment, Reno Nevada; Benedict is a member of Blue Earth Alliance and the Long Now.

Awards include: CENTER Santa Fe- Project Launch Award, Juror’s Award, Karen Haas Juror, Conversations with the Land, Center for Fine Art Photography; Massachusetts Cultural Council Finalist; Critical Mass Top 200, 2019; the FENCE, New England; Legacy Award, Griffin Museum of Photography; two Puffin Foundation Grants; artist residencies: Museum of Northern Arizona, Joshua Tree Highlands Residency, Shoshone Artist Residency; solo exhibitions: Florida Museum of Photography, Griffin Museum of Photography – Stoneham, Hess Gallery, Texas Women’s University, and Philadelphia Print Center. 

Jason Lindsey | Cracks in the Ice

Jason Lindsey is a Midwest-based photographer and filmmaker working to interpret science and the human impacts and relationship to the natural world. Lindsey considers himself a poetic activist using his art to drive social change.

Lindsey received his BA in Fine Art from Illinois State University. Lindsey has a 20-year career in advertising and editorial photography with a continued focus on Fine Art Photography. Photo assignments have taken him from the jungles of the Amazon, the Glaciers of Iceland, the Wilds of Alaska, and the waters of Belize. Lindsey is currently the Artist in Residence at Prairie Rivers Network and has photographs in a United Nations Climate Change and The Climate Museum exhibit in New York City and another United Nations exhibit in Paris.

He has been featured in PDN, Communication Arts, and Archive Magazine and was named one of the top 200 Advertising Photographers Worldwide in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. Lindsey’s book “Windy City Wild: Chicago’s Natural Wonders” was published by Chicago Review Press.

Amber Crabbe | I Dreamed We Could Stand Still

Exploration of the natural world and my desire to document its dynamism drives my photographic practice and draws me to volcanic and geothermal areas. There I can celebrate places of resilience that continue to reject human manipulation, in spite of the dramatic changes currently being imposed on our climate. Although it’s possible to build a boardwalk across a steaming hot spring or construct a roadway that facilitates access to an active volcanic area, the elements in these places refuse to be constrained. Their stubbornness soothes me and represents small victories in the face of massive global change. My moving photographs exemplify how I escape into these otherworldly places and bear witness to their ultimately unknowable power and beauty.

Amber Crabbe holds a Master of Fine Arts in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute and received a Bachelor of Science in Art and Design from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2018 she was awarded a position in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Fellows Program and in 2012 she received the Jack and Gertrude Murphy Contemporary Art Award.  She has participated in numerous curated and juried exhibitions at venues throughout the U.S., including the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, the Berkeley Art Center, SF Camerawork, SomArts, the Pacific Film Archive, Gallery Route One, Rayko Photo Center, the Smith Anderson North Gallery, the Gray Loft Gallery, and the Whatcom Museum. She lives and works in San Francisco, California.

The Griffin Museum is thrilled to partner with Maine Media Workshops to present the 2023 Arnold Newman Prize winner Craig Easton, and finalists Dylan Hausthor, Takako Kido and Nziyah Oyo. The Arnold Newman Prize for New Directions in Photographic Portraiture is a $20,000 prize awarded annually to a photographer whose work demonstrates a compelling new vision in photographic portraiture. The Prize is generously funded by the Arnold & Augusta Newman Foundation and proudly administered by Maine Media Workshops + College.

The Griffin highlights and celebrates the winner and finalists of the Newman Prize with an exhibition at the museum in Winchester. The finalists are also part of an online exhibition on the Griffin’s website. You can see all the finalists here.

Thank you to the jurors of this years prize – Sarah Leen, Caleb Cain Marcus & 2022 winner Lisa Elmaleh.

Winner – Arnold Newman Prize

Craig Easton – Bank Top

Craig Easton’s work is deeply rooted in the documentary tradition. He shoots long-term documentary projects exploring issues around social policy, identity, culture and community. Known for his intimate portraits and expansive landscape, his work regularly combines these elements with reportage approaches to storytelling, often working collaboratively with others to incorporate words, pictures and audio in a research-based practice that weaves a narrative between contemporary experience and history.

In 2021, Easton was awarded the prestigious title of Photographer of the Year at the SONY World Photography Awards and in 2022 was recognised with an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society.

He has published three monographs – Thatcher’s Children, GOST Books, 2023; Bank Top, GOST Books, 2022 and Fisherwomen, Ten O’Clock Books, 2020.

A passionate believer in working collaboratively with others, Easton conceived and led the critically acclaimed SIXTEEN project with sixteen leading photographers exploring the hopes, ambitions and fears of sixteen-year-olds all around the UK. This Arts Council funded project was exhibited in over 20 exhibitions throughout 2019/2020 culminating in three simultaneous shows in London.

Easton is a regular visiting lecturer at universities and runs workshops both in the UK and internationally.

His prints are widely collected by private individuals & corporations and are held in important museum collections and archives including the FC Barcelona collection, the St. Andrews University Special Collections, Hull Maritime Museum and Salford University Art Collection.

In addition to his personal documentary and art projects, he continues to shoot for editorial & advertising clients worldwide. Advertising and commercial clients include: The National Health Service, Visit Britain, Land Rover, Heathrow Airport, Wagamama, Mazda, John Lewis etc.

Finalists

Dylan Hausthor – “What the Rain Might Bring”

Dylan Hausthor is an artist based on the coast of Maine. They received their BFA from Maine College of Art and MFA from Yale School of Art. They were a 2019 recipient of a Nancy Graves fellowship for visual artists, runner-up for the Aperture Portfolio Prize, nominated for Prix Pictet 2021, a W. Eugene Smith Grant finalist, 2021 Hariban Award Honorable Mention, 2021 Penumbra Foundation resident, 2023 Light Work resident, and the winner of Burn Magazine’s Emerging Photographer’s Fund. Their work has been shown nationally and internationally, and they have three books in the permanent collection at MoMA. They are currently a 2022-2023 Lunder Fellow at Colby College. They work teaching ghost hunting, ritual, photography, and mushroom foraging. To write this biography, Dylan contacted a forensic medium, who suggested that they “seemed like someone who was passionate in the things they believed in and who hides messages in what they have to say”.

Takako Kido – “Skinship”

Born in Kochi, Japan in 1970. She received a B.A. in Economics from Soka University in Tokyo in 1993. After graduating from the International Center of Photography’s full-time General Studies program in 2003, she remained in New York working as a black and white printer and retoucher while also exhibiting and publishing her own work. She returned to Japan in 2008 and currently lives in Kochi Prefecture. She presents her work in solo and group exhibitions both in Japan and internationally. Kido has published a photography book, “The Unseen” in 2021.

Nzingah Oyo – “Of 30 Siblings”

Nzingah Oyo is an American-born, Brooklyn-based visual artist, photographer, and curator. For over two decades, she has created images that celebrate and examine cultural tensions/blends of Islam, American and African cultures. She received an MFA in Photography from Temple University and a BFA from SUNY Purchase. She has taught photography at Temple University and held the role of Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of South Florida. She is a Fulbright scholar and a recipient of the Light Work Artist in Residence program. Oyo has received several Brooklyn Arts Council grants, the Lilly Auchincloss Foundation Award of Excellence in Photography, The Urban Arts Initiative grant in Photography, and awarded a New York Foundation of Arts grant in Photography. She was recently selected for the New York Times Photo Review 2023. Her work has been exhibited in both solo and group shows internationally and nationally. Oyo is currently a freelance photographer, adjunct faculty at The School of Visual Arts, and teaching artist for the Brooklyn Arts Council.

Creativity takes many forms. Performing artists use their bodies, writers elucidate thoughts and put them on paper, and visual artists take their tools to a blank canvas or light sensitive paper. Artists, passionate about their craft are compelled to create exposing the invisible and engaging us in thought, emotion and narrative. We celebrate the tools artists surround themselves with as we create a studio visit through the works of two photographic artists, Chris Rauschenberg and Meggan Gould.

The intimacy of the studio and beautiful chaos of making is a visual feast. Chris Rauschenberg’s series Studio Views fills the gallery with color and creativity. These large scale composites engage us in the details and connection to the art practice of Rauschenberg’s friends and colleagues. Meggan Gould explores the darkrooms of fellow photographers, exposing the tools of the medium used in darkness.

About Chris Rauschenberg

Christopher Rauschenberg was born in New York in 1951, has practiced photographic art since 1957, and has a B.A. in photography from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.

He has had 127 solo shows in eight countries on three continents. His work has also been featured in group shows in six more countries. Available monographs of his work include three books, twenty print-on-demand books and a deck of cards. 

His work is held in the collections of 13 major museums.

In 1995, he organized a group of a dozen artists who joined him in a nine year long systematic photographic exploration and documentation of the city of Portland. (PortlandGridProject.com) His second group of a dozen artists completed a second nine year re-exploration and round four is now in progress. 

In 1997 and 1998, he took three trips to Paris and rephotographed 500 of the images made of that city by Eugene Atget between 1890 and 1927. (LensCulture interview) 

He is a co-founder and past president of Photolucida (a Portland photography festival formerly called Photo Americas). He is a co-founder, co-curator and Board Chairman of Blue Sky Gallery where, over the last 48 years, he has co-curated and co-produced 1024 exhibitions. He is a co-founder and current member of the co-op Nine Gallery. He’s edited and produced around 200 art and photography publications.  In 2003, he was the Bonnie Bronson Fellow.

About Meggan Gould

Meggan Gould lives and works in the mountains outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she is a Professor of Art at the University of New Mexico. She received an MFA from the University of Massachusetts – Dartmouth, and a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her work has been exhibited widely in the United States and internationally, and is included in many private and corporate collections, as well as public collections including the DeCordova Museum, the New Mexico Museum of Art, Light Work, and the University of New Mexico Art Museum. Her multifaceted practice uses photography, writing, drawing, sculpture, and installation in an open-ended dissection of vision and photographic tools.

We are pleased to present the portfolios of the Photography Atelier 37 creative artists.

Photography Atelier is a portfolio and project building course for emerging to advanced photographers taught by Jennifer McClure and Emily Belz. Participants engage in supportive critical discussions of each other’s work and leave with a better understanding of the industry and an ability to edit and sequence their own work.

Instruction in the Atelier includes visual presentations based around an assignment which is designed to encourage experimentation in both subject matter and approach. Students learn the basics of how to approach industry professionals to show their work and how to prepare for a national or regional portfolio review. There is discussion of marketing materials, do-it-yourself websites, DIY book publishing and the importance of social media. Students learn the critical art of writing an artist’s statement and bio.

The students here were part of our year long portfolio development program from Fall of 2022 to Spring 2023 and we are thrilled to see their work in the main gallery at Winchester.

Students of Jennifer McClure:

Betsy Banks | David Brown | Judith Donath | Laura Ferraguto | Jami Goodman | Donald P. Johnson | Margaret Lampert | Jena Love | Lyn Swett Miller | Chelsea Silbereis

Students of Emily Belz:

Anthony Attardo | Diane Bennett | Frank Curran | Cassandra Goldwater | Michael King | Becky Behar | Nancy Nichols | Diana Nygren | Gordon Saperia | Linda Wolk

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.