Griffin Main Gallery

The Griffin Museum is thrilled to partner with Maine Media Workshops to present the 2022 Arnold Newman Prize winner Lisa Elmaleh, and finalists Anna Grenvenitis, Rania Matar and Andrew Kung. 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.

Lisa Elmaleh (Promised Land)

Promised Land is a series of portraits of those whose lives have been affected by American policies implemented during the construction of the border wall. In an attempt to shed light on the lives that are impacted, I am photographing along the US/Mexico border from Boca Chica in the Gulf of Mexico to the border of Tijuana on the west coast. I am working with a large format 8×10 camera to create these portraits. Utilizing its slowness as an asset, I am able to spend time with each person who sits in front of my lens, hearing their stories. To create these images, I am volunteering with humanitarian aid groups on either side of the border. I have photographed and worked with migrants, nuns, volunteers, border patrol, groups that leave water on known migrant trails, and groups who search for missing migrants in the desert of the United States.

About Lisa Elmaleh

Lisa Elmaleh is an American visual artist, educator, and documentarian based in Paw Paw, West Virginia. She specializes in large-format work in tintype, glass negative, and celluloid film. Since 2007, she has been traveling across the US documenting American landscapes, life, and culture. Born in Miami, Florida (1984), Lisa completed a BFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2007, during which time she was awarded the Silas Rhodes Scholarship. Upon graduating, she received the prestigious Tierney Fellowship to work on a project that evolved into an in-depth visual documentation of the impact of climate change on the Everglades. The culmination of this project resulted in a book titled Everglades published in 2016 by Zatara Press. Elmaleh’s work has been exhibited nationwide and recognized by the Aaron Siskind Foundation, Puffin Foundation, The Tierney Foundation, among others. Her work has been published by Harper’s Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, CNN, The New York Times, National Geographic, Oxford American, Garden & Gun, and NPR, among others. Lisa travels in truck containing her bed, and a portable wet plate darkroom. She has a traditional black and white darkroom where she prints in West Virginia.

Anna Grevenitis (Regard)

REGARD /ʁə.ɡaʁ/ verb 1. To consider or think of (someone or something) in a specified way. When my daughter was born, I was told that she had the “physical markers” for Down syndrome. A few days later, the diagnosis of Trisomy 21 was confirmed with a simple blood test. Today, years later, Luigia is a lively teenager, yet these “markers” have grown with her, and her disability remains visible to the outside world. As we try to go about our ordinary lives in our community–getting ice cream after school, going grocery shopping or walking to the local library–I often catch people staring, gawking, or side-glancing at her, at us. Even though their gaze feels invasive, I perceive it as more questioning than judging, at least most of the time. With this on-going series REGARD, I am opening a window into our reality. To emphasize control over my message, these everyday scenes are meticulously set, lit up; they are staged and posed. The performers are my daughter and me. The double self-portraits are purposefully developed in black and white, for by refusing the decorative and emotionally evocative element of color, I aim to maintain a distance between us and them. The composition of the photographs expresses routine, domestic acts in which I address the viewers directly: look at us bathing; look at us grooming; here we are at bedtime; this is us on a random day at the beach. In each scene, the viewers are plunged into the outside perspective. At first glance, it may seem that I am offering us as vulnerable prey to their judgment, yet in fact I am guarding our lives, and the viewers are caught gawking–my direct gaze at the camera. My series is very basic in its concept: it shows a child, it shows a mother, it shows them living at home, performing familial acts. Because I believe in the connective power offered by the depiction of domesticity, I hope that REGARD helps the audience rethink some of their assumptions about people living with disabilities and with this, I hope my series finds a humble spot within the movement that helps people with disabilities gain visibility.

About Anna Grevenitis

Originally from France, Anna Grevenitis is a photographer based in Brooklyn, NY. Drawing on the experiences of the domestic to inform her daily practice, she uses her home as a stage and her body and the body of others in her familial sphere as characters to deliver, in the photographs, the essence of what she wants to express about family and the self. For her work, the act of performing is an important step in image making. Nowadays she divides her time between research and creation, and she is interested in building long term projects in photography as an act of establishing visual memory and engaging in social visibility. Grevenitis has been exhibited in the United States and internationally. Her series REGARD has been featured in The New Yorker and more recently has been recognized by the Critic’s Choice Award of Lensculture and the Black and White Award of the Lucie Foundation.

Rania Matar (Where Do I Go?)

As a Lebanese-born American artist and mother, my work explores personal and collective identity through photographs of female adolescence and womanhood in the United States where I live, and Lebanon where I am from. However, the past three years have been extremely difficult in Lebanon, starting with the 2019 uprising protesting corruption and inflation, to the coronavirus and months of lockdown that proved disastrous for the country, and finally to the August 4, 2020 Port of Beirut explosions, that caused further catastrophic damage. The country has been spiraling into the abyss since, with shortages of cash, gas, electricity, medicine, and water. My focus shifted to Lebanon. During recent trips to Lebanon, I found hope and inspiration through the younger generation of women. Instead of focusing on destruction, I found myself in awe of them, their creativity, strength, beauty, and resilience, despite all. I felt a sense of urgency in collaborating with them, giving them a voice, and the opportunity and power to express themselves. I found myself focusing on their majestic presence. Every encounter was intense, urgent, and meaningful. The need to hold on to creativity and self-expression felt more important than ever. We were creating the stage together to tell the story – her individual story and our collective story. I saw graffiti on the wall that said in Arabic: “Where do I go” (lawen ruh لوين روح)? These women are at that crossroad. Where do they go? I was their age when I left Lebanon in 1984 during the Civil War. Some are leaving; others cannot afford to go anywhere. I want to empower them and tell their story through collaborative portraiture. This work is in progress. Looking at the images I have made so far, I am absolutely convinced that, despite the current very tough situation, the creativity and resilience of this young generation of women will prevail. This project is for them and for us: the ones who are staying and the ones who have left.

About Rania Matar

Born and raised in Lebanon, Rania Matar moved to the U.S. in 1984. As a Lebanese-born American woman and mother, her cross-cultural experience and personal narrative inform her photography. Matar’s work has been widely exhibited in museums worldwide in solo and group exhibitions, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Carnegie Museum of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Fotografiska, and more. It is part of the permanent collections of several museums, institutions, and private collections. A mid-career retrospective of her work was recently on view at Cleveland Museum of Art, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, and the American University of Beirut Museum. In 2023, she will have 2 solo museum exhibitions of her recently published series SHE at the Huntsville Museum of Art and the Fitchburg Museum of Art. Her images will also be part of a traveling exhibition about Women Artists from the Middle East that opens at LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art). Matar received 2022 Leica Women Foto Project Award, 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship, 2017 Mellon Foundation artist-in-residency grant, 2021, 2011, 2007 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowships, 2011 Griffin Museum of Photography Legacy Award. She is a finalist for the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition with an exhibition at the Smithsonian National Gallery of Art. In 2008 she was a finalist for the Foster Award at the ICA/Boston, with an accompanying solo exhibition. She published four books: SHE, 2021; L’Enfant-Femme, 2016; A Girl and Her Room, 2012; Ordinary Lives, 2009.

Andrew Kung (The All-American)

The All-American II is a photo series that recontextualizes traditional notions of masculinity and belonging. I imagine and construct scenes of strength, intimacy, togetherness between Asian men that I’ve rarely witnessed in an American context – showcasing tender moments that rebel against monolithic constructs of masculinity that have “other-ed” them as weak, undesirable, and not American enough. 

I portray my family, friends, self in spaces deeply personal to me – my current bedroom, my bedroom growing up, parks I used to visit growing up, my current neighborhood – and often times in my own wardrobe, to ultimately reinforce a connectedness with my subjects, my memories, and my journey of self-discovery. The images center on the dignity and diversity of my subjects, my relationship with my subjects, and ultimately my relationship with my own masculinity, all in an attempt to humanize the desexualized Asian American man.

About Andrew Kung

Andrew Kung is a Brooklyn based photographer working across genres to explore themes of race, identity, and belonging. His work imagines tender and intimate moments and recontextualizes how Asian American life is viewed and represented. Andrew’s bodies of work have been featured on Dazed, i-D, Vogue, Artsy, AnOther, NOWNESS, CNN, NBC, and The New York Times and he has worked with selected clients such as Glossier, The New Yorker, L’Officiel, Paper Magazine, Beats by Dre, and HBO. In 2021, he was one of Adobe’s Rising Stars of Photography, an Adobe Creative Residency Fund Recipient, and a Young Guns 19 Finalist; in 2022, he was a Communication Arts Photography Annual Winner and The One Club for Creativity’s COLORFUL Winner. Outside of making images, Andrew has spoken on ABC Live and has guest lectured at various universities, from School of Visual Arts (SVA) to Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), Williams College, American University, Smith College, and The School of The New York Times. Prior to his photography journey, he attended UC Berkeley’s business school and worked in Silicon Valley at LinkedIn.

Connecting Art and Community, the group Shootapalooza is in the Main Gallery highlighting the diversity of craft, the unique perspectives of each of its members and celebrating the art of photography.

The theme for this collection of works is Enlighten, and each artist is speaking to the light and life that creativity brings to each of us.

Participating Artists –

Aline Smithson,  Amanda Smith, Amy Jasek, Angela Johnson, Anne Berry, Ann George, Anne Connor, Aubrey Guthrie, Carolyn Knorr,  Cecilia Broder, Christa Blackwood, DB Waltrip, Diane Fenster,  Donna Moore, DorRae Stevens,  Ellie Ivanova,  Fran Forman,  S. Gayle Stevens, Gina Costa, Ingrid Lundquist,  Jane Fulton Alt,  Jackie Stoken, Jennifer Shaw, Justin Bitner, Kevin James Tully, Kimberly Chiaris, Ky Lewis, Laura Husar Garcia,  Liese Ricketts, Marcy Palmer, Marti Corn,  Melanie Walker, Patricia Delker,  Patricia Bender, Paula Riff,  Rita Koehler, Ronna Schary, Sandra Klein,  Sara Silks,  Shari Rhode Trennert,  Susan Huber, Socorro Mucino,  Tami Bone, Theresa Tarara, Valerie Burke,  Vicki Reed, Vicky Stromee and Yvette Meltzer

The results are in! Over 2,000 images were submitted to our jurors Frances Jakubek and Iaritza Menjivar, and narrowed to 60. Thank you to everyone in our Griffin artist community who submitted images, making this jurying process so difficult.

We are thrilled to showcase this years artists as part of our larger creative artists community.

The artists included (in alphabetical order)

Debe Arlook, Deborah Arsenault, Rachel Boillot, Sally Bousquet, Lynne Breitfeller, Tuan Bui, Annette LeMay Burke, Bill Chapman, Richard S. Chow, Seth Cook, Alexa Cushing, Caroline Dejeneffe, Dena Eber, Yorgos Efthymiadis, Miren Etcheverry, Jo Fields, Karen Finkel-Fishoff, Beth Galton, Victoria Gewirz, Marsha Guggenheim, Andrew Harris, Margaret Hart, William Hamlin, Liam Hayes, Chehalis Hegner, Eileen Homuth Lemonick, Nanci Kahn, Nancy Kaye, Jeff Larason, Hannah Latham, Denise Laurinatis, Lisa Levine, Susan Lirakis, Rob Lorino, Fruma Markowitz, CoCo McCabe, Eric McCollum, Lyn Miller, Amy Montali, Ania Moussawei, Laila Nahar, Jim Nickelson, Caroline Nicola, Harold Olejarz, Annie Omens, David Oxton, Laurie Peek, Heather Pillar, Allison Plass, Robin Radin, Astrid Reischwitz, Georgina Reskala, Katherine Richmond, Mike Ritter, Karin Rosenthal, Claudia Ruiz-Gustafson, Anastasia Sierra, Stefanie Timmerman, Marsha Wilcox and Jonas Yip.

Congratulations to our Award Winners!

AWARDS:

• $1,000 Arthur Griffin Legacy Award – Liam Hayes
• $500 Griffin Award – Anastasia Sierra
• $100 Honorable Mentions (5) – Seth Cook, Margaret Hart, Laila Nahar, Stefanie Timmerman and William Hamlin

Exhibitions Awards –

• Directors Prize – Jason Reblando
• Exhibition Prize –

In addition to our in person exhibition, we have a selection of works in our ONLINE exhibition.  Take a look here for 60 more featured artists from our Griffin Community.

To purchase a catalog featuring the work of both the in person and online selected artists find it in our Museum Shop here.

From juror Iaritza Menjivar –

Iaritza Menjivar, © Elias Williams

While clicking on each image, I was struck by the amount of feelings coming (or blasting) through the screen. At first there was a peculiar sentiment of sadness, or emptiness, perhaps. But the more I looked, the more I understood what I was sensing– life and real emotions. The past couple of years have been at the very least crazy and for many, life-changing. The world around us feels heavy— for the very first time we were asked to stop and feel and there was no escaping that. And now that we have experienced the “pause”, why is there a need to press play again? The photograph of the woman looking at herself, face to face through the reflection of water reminds us what it feels like to look inward. 

This collection of photographs showcases a range of moments; The image of the man surrounded by plastic, playing a piano, living inside a bubble of isolation; The mother and child split between the darkness but connected through the strikes of light illuminating the contrasting moments of motherhood; The culmination of textured landscapes involving nature and man-made structures all standing still in the midst of an estranged world. Or a still-life literally taken apart and threaded back together showing the depth and complexity of everyday moments. Finally, there are images made and manipulated by the artists creating alternate realities.

When viewing photographs as outsiders, we hold subjective opinions. We relate with the work by reflecting the things we are seeing and feeling at that precise moment. In this special moment of bringing the work together, we find that we are connected by this strange time of growth, discovery, and new ways of seeing the world around us. We are bound by the intention behind the work.

Thank you to the Griffin Museum community for always welcoming me. And a special thank you to Paula Tognarelli for the years of guidance and for inviting me as juror for the Annual Juried Members Exhibition with Frances Jakubek.

From juror Frances Jakubek –

Photographs tend to carry a literal way of conveying emotion. Our function as viewers is to build a bridge integrating the artists’ objective with our own interpretation, all while keeping space for new understanding. We recycle our visions of the past into our present and it can be easier to welcome a sensation when you are familiar with it compared to accepting a remote and new feeling. Instead of discarding unfamiliar emotions, what does it look like when they all exist in the same room?
The goal when compiling the members’ show was to expand upon what we consider a photograph and how the images communicate with each other and what the audience may take away. It was important to include a variety of processes, deeply personal tales, political works, and modern considerations of landscape.

What strikes me most about this collection of images is the sense of community, even in solitary moments. Most of the photographs are incredibly intimate and many achieve that without depicting actual bodies. We are welcomed into the lives of these photographers by witnessing their quietest moments, the way they interact with their subjects, and what they’ve decided to keep and render permanent by way of photography. The exhibition has the artists’ fingerprints all over it.
We see subjects laughing, crying, hiding, and declaring their territory. Fantastical landscapes show beside traditional portraits, and all come from a space of self-actualization. We see depictions of growth, the emptiness of change, the thoroughness of distrust, and the joy of storytelling. We invite you to make a little space for sensations that may seem unwelcome at first.

It was very special to work with Iaritza Menjivar to curate this exhibition for an institution we both love and have grown in. Thank you to Paula Tognarelli for giving me a chance, both then and now. With great appreciation for Crista Dix and Ryan Sholtis, I am glad to be part of this Griffin family who is accepting and encouraging of photographers and explorers alike.

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

Join us on June 12th from 4 to 6pm for an Artist Reception to celebrate these talented student works and meet their instructors and supporters.

Now in its seventeenth year, this 5-month program connects approximately 25 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.

Students from Burlington High School –

Lindsay Bullock, Caileigh Connolly, Samantha Goneau, Mary Kate Hayes, Alyssa LoCicero, Alexander McGillvray, Georgia Doherty, Zachary Doucette, Lindsey Lavioe, Caroline Sciarratta, Isabelle James, Paul Fauller and Navya Garg

Students from Winchester High School –

Alex Azzarra, Neave Bunting, Ibny Xian Crookson, Claire English, Marly Exantus, Sophia Lubin, McKenna McDaniels, Athena Wang, Zoe Xanthopoulos

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, two photo based artists, Alanna Airitam and Granville Carroll spoke to the students via zoom conference, and will meet the students for an in person review during the exhibition opening at the museum.

Alanna Airitam

Questioning generalized stereotypes and the lack of fair and equal representation of people of color in art spaces has led artist Alanna Airitam to research critical historical omissions and how those contrived narratives represent and influence succeeding generations. Her photographic series The Golden Age, Crossroads, White Privilege, and individual works such as Take a Look Inside and How to Make a Country ask the viewer to question who they are and how they choose to be seen.

Airitam’s portraits and vanitas are photographed in studio with minimal lighting rendering a painterly quality to her photographs. The archival pigment prints from The Golden Age series are hand-varnished while those in the Crossroads, Take a Look Inside and How to Make a Country series are archival prints encased in resin and placed in hand-welded frames. All works are produced by the artist in limited editions.

Alanna is a 2020 San Diego Art Prize winner, 2020 Top 50 Critical Mass Finalist, and recipient of the 2020 Michael Reichmann Project Grant Award. Her photographs have been exhibited at Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago, Quint Gallery in San Diego, San Diego Art Institute, Art Miami with Catherine Edelman, Athenaeum Art Center in San Diego, and Candela Gallery in Richmond, Virginia. Born and raised in Queens, New York, Airitam now resides in Tucson, Arizona.

Granville Carroll (American b. 1992) is a visual artist and Afrofuturist working with digital technology, poetry, and alternative processes to reshape the world. Carroll’s artwork explores photographic representation and vision to understand the process of existence and interpretation. Simultaneously, he explores and expands ideas around racial blackness to encompass spatial blackness, temporal blackness, and spiritual blackness. Carroll highlights the imaginative qualities of the human mind through world building and storytelling to discover new futures and states of being. At the core of his practice is the investigation into metaphysics and the ontology of self and the universe.

Carroll earned a BFA in photography from Arizona State University in 2018, and earned a MFA in photography and related media from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2020. His work has been shown in the United States and internationally. Most recently his work has appeared at the JKC Gallery in New Jersey, Northlight Gallery and Tempe Center for the Arts in Arizona, and in Italy for the Time in Jazz Music Festival. Carroll currently resides in Rochester, NY where he recently completed a residency at the Visual Studies Workshop during Fall 2021. Carroll has been named a 2021 Silver List artist and a 2020 Critical Mass Finalist. His work has been published in a variety of physical and online publications, interviews, and features. Most recently his work was published through What Will You Remember, Brink Literary Journal, Lenscratch, Humble Arts Foundation, and Black Is Magazine.

After working independently, the students meet with esteemed independent curator and scholar Alison Nordstrom, the former curator of the George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y. She and photographer Sam Sweezy met with students for a one-on-one discussion of their work and a final edit was created for the exhibition at the museum.

Once upon a time photographs were revered as truth-tellers.  Today’s world questions that notion. The media saturates the printed page, airwaves, the internet with little if any distinction between fact and fiction. Historical events take place before our eyes, yet there are often dramatically different perspectives in the re-telling. Is history being chronicled…or is it being shaped?

David Levinthal scrutinizes our world – past and present – absorbing, depicting, interpreting, and envisioning events, from the ordinary to the momentous, blurring the line between veracity and fantasy.  Art is about ideas. Art gives us something to think about. This is why David Levinthal plays with toys!

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

About David Levinthal –

Since the early 1970’s, David Levinthal has been exploring the relationship between photographic imagery and the fantasies, myths, events, and characters that shape contemporary American’s mental landscape. His work has been a touchstone for conversations about theories of representation in photography and contemporary art as he has investigated the overlapping of popular imagery with personal fantasy through all of his major series including Hitler Moves East, Modern Romance, Wild West, Desire, Blackface, Barbie, Baseball, and History. In 2018, the George Eastman Museum presented David Levinthal: War, Myth, Desire, the largest retrospective of his work to date accompanied by the most comprehensive publication ever produced on his work. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His work is exhibited widely and part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, The Menil Collection, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Photography Atelier is a portfolio and project building course for emerging to advanced photographers taught by Elizabeth Buckley. 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 Fall 2021 program and we are thrilled to see their work on the walls of the Griffin.

Peter Balentine – City of God

Robin Boger – Traveler

Vicente Cayuela – JUVENILIA

Annie Claflin – Minor Imperfections

Miriam Engelhardt – Musical Moments

Marc Goldring – Trees: Skin Deep

Julie Hamel – Known Unknown

Jack Heller – Sacred Places & Objects 

Bob Holt – Working Rivers of Peterborough, New Hampshire 

Alan Kidawski – A Photographic Quest for Poetic Imagery

Catherine King – Terrible Love

Albert Lew – Faces Behind the Food

Connie Lowell – A Call for Urgency

Lawrence Manning – Murder in Nampa

Leann Shamash – Ta’anit- Fasts

Francine Sherman – Ordinary Moments

Heather Walsh – Fly Over Landscapes