The exhibition Return to Riverrun at the Griffin Museum of Photography currently on view is the first major exhibition of John Brook’s photographs since the 1970s.

Below you will find an essay by John Brook himself that describes his ideas behind his photography and book, A Long the Riverrun. In addition, two essays by Jessica Roscio, executive director and curator at the Danforth Museum at Framingham State University provide information on John Brook’s life and Roscio’s thoughts on John Brook’s photographs. Following is information on the portfolio of photographs and a single color photograph produced by the John Brook Archive for purchase.

Join us for two very special panel discussions about the life and work of John Brook.

January 31, 2021 at 4pm – Panel with Lou Jones, Gary Samson, Jessica Roscio and Thom Adams

February 14, 2021 at 4pm – Panel with Thom Adams, Szari Lewis Bourque, Jean Gilbran, David Herwaldt and Pat Nelson.

Preface to A Long the Riverrun by John Brook

Nature dooms us to lives of solitude. One body holds one mind – one set of fears, joys, wounds, needs – and no matter how we try we can never ache, laugh, shudder or yearn in exact unison with another being. We are alone.

But solitude is not loneliness. It is one of the terms on which we accept life. (Another is that our lives have limits in time as well as space.) Solitude is a fact, without emotional color except that which we give it. Some beings accept their oneness and guard against unwelcomed invaders, creating their own ambience, spending their solitude wisely and thriftily, choosing carefully those with whom solitude may be blissfully shared. Those who in terror try to flee from solitude are desperately lonely; they spend their lives in crowds.

It is in loving and in making love that we come as close as we ever can to joining one being with another’s. If we cannot quite achieve identity and unison with another solitude, we can extend the limits of our own. The mind receives another set of senses, the heart another cupful of sorrow and joy. In becoming a half, we become more than a whole. In living beyond ourselves we also live beyond time; each half becomes a third, and our being enters yet another body that will outlive the two halves that made it.

Fantasy is the difference between what we have and what we want. We all dream constantly and we try only a little less constantly to make our dreams a part of what we call reality. We usually succeed; reality is merely the sum of dreams that have been made to come true. (That many of the dreams were bad ones means that the world needs not fewer dreamers but better ones!) Few of us settle for less than we want, although sometimes we confuse what we want with what others have. Why does anyone want less than a world of love?

Coleridge asked: “If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he woke – Ay! – and what then?”

Here are some of the flowers I have gathered in twenty years of traveling between the world others have dreamt and the paradise of my own dreams.

John Brook, 1924-2016

John Brook was born in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, on August 29, 1924. His interest in photography manifested early. Entirely self-taught, Brook began taking and developing photographs when he was twelve years old, encouraged by his father. His first portrait was published in Mademoiselle in 1940.

After graduating from Harvard, Brook officially started his photographic career, opening a portrait studio on Newbury Street in 1946, where he lived for the next 40-plus years. This was a significant step for photography in Boston, a medium that was steadily increasing its presence in museum and gallery exhibitions and collections. Brook began showing his work in Boston’s Sidney Kanegis Gallery in 1955, and exhibited in galleries and museums across the United States and Europe in the first decades of his career.

In 1966 Brook was one of several photographers, including Jules Aarons, Harry Callahan, Paul Caponigro, and Minor White, to exhibit work in a group show at the reopening of the Carl Siembab Gallery on Newbury Street, where Brook showed frequently.

Brook was the inaugural exhibition in a newly designed gallery at the George Eastman House in 1961 and one of twenty photographers shown at the Kodak Pavilion of the 1970 World’s Fair in Osaka, Japan.

He served as the staff photographer for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and received numerous portrait commissions, including Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, Igor Stravinsky, Walter Gropius, and Eleanor Roosevelt, among many others. His photography appeared in Art in America, Modern Photography, Newsweek, LIFE, Vita Fotografica, Camera, among others, and won awards, including the gold medal at the 3rd International Biennial in Milan.

In 1966, the thirtieth anniversary issue of LIFE magazine included the work of twenty of the world’s major photographers, including Brook. He published two books, A Long the Riverrun (1970) and Hold Me (1977), featuring his timeless, romantic, pictorialist views – many shot with lenses that he constructed himself.

Brook’s later years were spent in relative obscurity, full of colorful anecdotes that cannot be verified. However, by all accounts, he lost touch with friends and artists who had known him during his earlier years in Boston. He moved into a rehabilitation center in Brighton, Massachusetts, after an accident in the late 1980s, and died there on July 29, 2016, at the age of 91. – Jessica Roscio

Introduction to John Brook’s Photographs

Brook captured the era in photographs of friends and their families in a style that was independent of trends and distinctively his – soft-focused, with enhanced attention to light and shadow, an emotional connection to the subject, overt symbolism, and a profound consideration of human relationships – which all visually translated to a work of art. His attentiveness to the technical innovations of the photographic process is apparent across multiple series and subjects, in both personal works and commissions. A chance optical aberration in a portrait of a father and child led to his experimentation with lenses, which he would often construct himself. Commissioned portraits have a distinctive soft-focused flair to them, with props reminiscent of an earlier time.

Brook seemed to relish the idea of being of another time. In an anecdote regarding an exhibition at the Carl Siembab Gallery, Brook recalled that Siembab described him as a photographer who took “100-year-old pictures every day.” He often described his work in otherworldly terms, as illustrations of thoughts and fantasies, and not necessarily grounded in reality. In a 1969 exhibition statement, Siembab described Brook’s photographs as images that “confront us with a world that the photographer has dreamt and thereby willed into existence.” Brook wrote of seeking beauty in his works in a way that placed his philosophy in the realm of the social and cultural mores of the late nineteenth-century Aesthetic Movement, whose artists asserted the authority of beauty as the force behind all aspects of daily life.

Brook’s works, in both subject matter and style, are also closely aligned with the Pictorialist movement of the turn of the twentieth century. Pictorialists sought to establish photography as a fine art through carefully chosen and idealized subject matter, soft focus, and low tonal gradation. A pictorial landscape was a romantic pastoral escape, and figures symbolized ideals of beauty. Brook’s veneration of the human form closely aligns him with pictorial photography, and he is perhaps most known for his soft-focused representations of the nude. Works appearing in A Long the Riverrun include male and female figures, both alone and together, posed in sun-dappled natural settings. Brook unabashedly sought the beautiful in his work, describing a process where he “found beautiful people, places, and moments in a world that was getting uglier every day.”

In interviews, Brook stated that his work did not have any photographic influences, but it is difficult not to read some photographic history into his subjects, settings, and aesthetics. Besides the formal elements of Pictorialism, there is edginess in his subject matter, particularly in his treatment of the nude, which is immediately reminiscent of F. Holland Day. Brook’s work can be challenging, and he asks us to look beyond the subject that he often provocatively captured with the camera. His use of the symbolic and allegorical tenets of Pictorialism speak to his philosophy that subjects appear as they are found, and represent more than can be seen with the naked eye. He confirmed this for the Boston Review of Photography: “I use whatever optical technique seems best suited to what I happen to be doing, but the character of the image is determined at the moment of exposure and not altered later in the darkroom.” His interest in capturing the unseen places him among the science and mysticism that drove a number of artists working mid-century in Boston, as well as connecting him to a long photographic tradition espousing a desire to visualize the unseen. – Jessica Roscio

 On the occasion of the exhibition Return to Riverrun, the first major exhibition of Brook’s work since the 1970s, the John Brook Archive assembled a portfolio of six of Brook’s photographs from his book A Long the Riverrun available for purchase. The portfolio of six archival pigment prints is accompanied by texts setting the work of John Brook in context. In addition a special color print by John Brook is offered for sale as well. Use the  links below to see more info on John Brook, the John Brook Archive, the portfolio and the special John Brook color print available for purchase.

View the Photographs of the Portfolio and Information for Sale and the Special Color Print for Sale.

Colophon Preface

John Brook Portfolio Biography

John Brook Portfolio Introduction

John Brook Portfolio Acknowledgements

John Brook Portfolio Colophon

Description of the Portfolio

Life Magazine Anniversary Photography issue Dec. 23rd

John Brook Archive

Photography Atelier is a portfolio and project building course for emerging to advanced photographers. Participants engage in supportive critical discussions of each other’s work and leave with a better understanding of the fine art industry and with an ability to edit, talk about and sequence their own work.

The Photography Atelier 31 exhibiton features the photographs by Diana Cheren Nygren, Kathleen DeCarlo-Plano, Gabriel Garay, Cynthia Johnston, Sheryl Kalis, Naohiro Maeda, William Morse, Fern Nesson, Anne Piessens, Darrell Roak, Tony Schwartz and Jeanne Widmer.

Diana Cheren Nygren
Project title: When the Trees Are Gone

“This series imagines city dwellers searching for moments of release in a world shaped by climate change, and the struggle to find a balance between an environment in crisis and manmade structures.”

Kathleen DeCarlo-Plano
Project title: Urban Awareness

“I feel passion for blending scale and geometry, while using available light, shadows, and leading lines to draw the viewer into looking at a city in a more deliberate manner.”

Gabriel Garay
Project title: Chasing Memory

“The connection that I’ve lost with the place I have spent all my life in, with all the change that has happened and is happening in Everett, MA and almost running from this place to grow as a person. I had lost a sense of the place I grew up in – so I found myself chasing what the town used to be to me.”

Cynthia Johnston
Project title: Somewhere in the Middle

“These works are a continuation of an ongoing project exploring the Midwestern geographical and political landscape.”

Sheryl Kalis
Project title: Still

“Still is a study of the unexpected moments I see when no one else is at home.”

Naohiro Maeda
Project title: Origami-Gram

“These photographs are portraits of origami as memory keepers. I bent, tore, arranged and rearranged origamis and became aware that they held the memory of my actions in their delicate physical shapes. The resulting images can appear both two- and three- dimensional, playing with the viewer’s perceptions of flatness and space in both the subject and picture plane.”

William Morse
Project title: Eruptions and Other Patterns

“A tree falls in the forest, followed by an explosion of new life in its shadow.”

Fern Nesson
Project title: All here, all now

“Here, now is all we have. We bring all of our past to the present moment and within us is all of the potential for the future.”

Anne Piessans
Project title: Meliorations

“In her mixed-media series titled Meliorations, Anne Piessens imagines ways to heal damaged landscapes.”

Darrell Roak
Project title: Noble Waterfalls

Tony Schwartz
Project title: Boston’s Chinatown

“Chinatown is the only true immigrant-derived ethnic enclave left in Boston. My interest in this community was sparked by witnessing street scenes identical to those I experienced while visiting China.”

Jeanne Widmer
Project title: An Ode to a Town Village

“This series is my attempt to capture the clash of history and cultures, the textures and mood, and the simple poetic dignity and warmth of an intimate community which can and will be lost.”

See Photography Atelier 31 portfolios. In the meantime see previous years’ Atelier students work.

Artist Statement
Searching for a place to be at peace in the wilderness, my dad bought seven acres of undeveloped land in central New Hampshire in the late 1970s. It wasn’t until 2010 that I became curious about the story of a man named Joseph Plummer, who we were told lived in the same woods during the late 1700s and 1800s. It was said this local legend left his town of a mere 100 people to be in seclusion. Researching and finding very little concrete information about Joseph has paradoxically heightened his presence in my mind and inspired me to seek out what drove him from his life. I uncovered some of his personal belongings and spent summers tracking down the places where he spent his days. Interviews with local residents told of his hostility to “loafers and spendthrifts” and his “mortal opposition to progress, generally.” But the scant information about Joseph only inspires more questions and feeds his local mythology.

I believe the story of Joseph Plummer parallels my dad’s and now my desire to disappear into the landscape of central New Hampshire. Joseph’s world is an unabashedly romantic view of nature and its sublime power, yet his life and the landscape he inhabited exude the mystery of the unknowable. My dad and I often take long walks in the New Hampshire woods, usually ending up searching for where the hermit lived. While we’ve been to the site of his long-gone home many times, we somehow always get lost along the way – and getting lost seems to be the point. In our modern world when it can be difficult to disconnect, following Joseph’s path into the woods offers a welcome respite. – AW

Bio
Amani Willett is a Brooklyn and Boston-based photographer whose practice is driven by conceptual ideas surrounding family, history, memory, and the social environment. Working primarily with the book form, his two monographs have been published to widespread critical acclaim. Both books, Disquiet (Damiani, 2013) and The Disappearance of Joseph Plummer (Overlapse, 2017), were selected by Photo-Eye as “best books” of the year and have been highlighted in over 50 publications including ​Photograph Magazine, PDN,​ ​Hyperallergic, Lensculture, New York Magazine and 1000 Words​ and recommended by ​Todd Hido,​ ​Elisabeth Biondi (former Visuals Editor of The New Yorker), Vince Aletti and Joerg Colberg (Conscientious), among others.

Amani’s photographs are also featured in the books​ Bystander: A History of Street Photography (2017 edition, Laurence King Publishing), ​Street Photography Now​ (Thames and Hudson), ​New York: In Color​ (Abrams), and have been published widely in places including A​merican Photography,​ Newsweek,​ Harper’s,​ ​The Huffington Post, The New York Times and The New York Review of Books​.​ His work resides in the collections of the Tate Modern, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Oxford University, and Harvard University, among others.

Amani completed an MFA in Photography, Video and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts, NY in 2012 and a BA from Wesleyan University in 1997. In addition to his artistic practice, Amani currently teaches photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston​.

CV
EDUCATION

M.F.A. Photography, Video and Related Media, School of Visual Arts, New York, NY, 2012
B.A. American Studies, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, 1997

SELECTED SOLO AND GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2019
Mutable/Multiple: Format Photo Festival, Derby, England
The Disappearance of Joseph Plummer, The Griffin Museum of Photography
The Disappearance of Joseph Plummer, Fordham University
Showing: Working Families: University of Colorado
Winter Pictures, Humble Arts Foundation

2018
Recent Photo Books, Lesley University, Cambridge, MA
Photography Book Show, Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece
Showing: Working Families: University Art Gallery, California State University

2015
Underground Railroad: Hiding in Place, Adelphi University
Photography Book Show, Athens Photography Festival
In-Public at “Foto Mexico,” Mexico City

2014
Tough Turf: New Directions in Street Photography, Humble Arts Foundation
Camera Club of New York Benefit Auction, New York, NY
Disquiet (solo show), Citibank Cultural Center, Asuncion, Paraguay

2013
Book, Film, Painting – Stuart Pilkington Projects (online)
Family, Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography, Detroit, MI
In Public – In Stockholm, Center for Urban Photography, Stockholm, Sweden
Ideas City Festival, The New Museum, New York, NY
In-Public: On the Street, Bangkok, Thailand

2012
Conscious Things, Picture Space, Bushwick, Brooklyn
The 2nd International Photography Festival, Tel Aviv-Jaffa Port, Israel
School of School of Visual Arts Thesis Exhibition, SVA Gallery, New York, NY
Emerging Artists Auction, Daniel Cooney Fine Art, New York, NY
New York: In Color, Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

2011
From Distant Streets, Galerie Hertz. Louisville, KY
Street Photography Now, Fundacja. DOC. Warsaw, Poland
Street Photography Now, London Street Photography Festival
In-Public, Derby Museum, Format International Photography Festival, Derby, England
Street Photography Now, Uno Art Space, Stuttgart
Street Photography Now, Contributed, Berlin

2010
Street Photography Now, Third Floor Gallery, London
In-Public, Photofusion, London, May 28 – July 9, 2010
13th Annual Friends of Friends Photography Show and Auction

2008
Picturing Cuba (solo exhibition), Cuban Art Space, Brooklyn

2006
Crosswalks: Contemporary Street Photography, Oklahoma City Museum
Here Is New York, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

2003
Life In The City, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

2002
Towards a New Era: Photographs from South Africa, Open Society Institute, Washington DC

2001
Here Is New York, New York, NY
August Art, Raw Space, New York, NY
South Africa, Madiba, Brooklyn, NY
Fort Greene Photo Association, Brooklyn, NY

2000
Fragments, Taranto Gallery, New York, NY

1998
New Photographs, The Park Gallery, New York, NY

MONOGRAPHS

“The Disappearance of Joseph Plummer,” fall 2017, Overlapse, London.
“Disquiet,” spring 2013. Damiani, Italy. Text by Marvin Heiferman.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

2019
Fisheye Magazine Photobook Vol. 3

2018
All the Pretty Pictures: Review Presents Review Santa Fe, Pasatiempo

2017
Bystander : A history of Street Photography, 3rd Edition, Phaidon (forthcoming) 

2015
Exchange Edit, Fototazo, March 2015
“Selfie,” Ain’t Bad Magazine, December 2015

2014
Exhibition Essay, Tough Turf, Humble Arts Foundation, February 2014
Ten Minutes with Amani Willett, This is the What, April 2014
Find Your Beach, The New York Review of Books, October 2014
When the Levee Breaks, The Mockingbird, Fall 2014
Gateway to Freedom, Harper’s Magazine, December 2014

2013
Lenscratch, April, 2013
The LPV Show – Episode 10, Spring 2013
How to Start a Project, Fototazo, Spring 2013

2012
LPV Magazine, Issue 5. November, 2012

2011
New York: In Color, Abrams, Fall 2011
Fototazo, The Image, Summer 2011
Fototazo, Portfolio and Interview, Winter, 2011

2010
Street Photography Now, Thames and Hudson, Fall 2010
American Photography 26, November 2010
10ʼ 10 Years of In-Public, Nick Turpin Publishing, Spring 2010

2006
American Photography 23, 2006

2003
Regeneration: Telling Stories From Our Twenties, Tarcher, Spring 2003

2000
Popular Photography, April 2000
The Millennium Photo Project, Smashing Books! 2000

Additional Publication Credits: Adbusters, American Photography, Art in America, BOMB, Popular Photography, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Whitney Museum

SELECTED PRESS

2018
“Yogurt Magazine,” Feature, May
“The Disappearance of Joseph Plummer,” Book Review, Phroom, April
“The Disappearance of Joseph Plummer,” Book Review, Musee Magazine, March
“The Disappearance of Joseph Plummer,” Book Review, Clavoardieno Magazine, March
“Project Spotlight: The Disappearance of Joseph Plumer,” Photo Emphasis, February
“Book Review,” Foto Cult Magazine, January
“Getting Lost in the Woods,” Huck Magazine, January
“The Disappearance of Joseph Plummer,” Book Review, Black and White Magazine, January
“The Disappearance of Joseph Plummer,” Book Review, Conscientious Photo Magazine, January
“Disquiet” feature, This is Paper Magazine, february

2017
“Best Books of 2017,” Photo Eye Books, December
“Best Books of 2017,” Humble Arts Foundation, December
“Best Books of 2017” Elin Spring (Photographic Resource), December
“Moors Magazine,” “The Disappearance of Joseph Plummer” review, December
“Phroom Magazine,” “Disquiet” feature, December
“Don’t Take Pictures,” December
“PH Museum,” Review, December
“Photo Eye – Book of the Day,” December
“Josef Chladek’s Bookshelf,” December
“II Post,” “The Disappearance of Joseph Plummer” Review, December
“II Sole 24 Ore,” The Disapperance of Jospeh Plummer” Review, December
“Photo N Magazine,” December
“PDN Holiday Gift Guide Recommendations” November
“Lenscratch” feature, November
“Phases Magazine” November
“Lifo Magazine” feature, November
“Hyperallergic Interview” November
“Internazionale Magazine” November
“This Isn’t Happiness” November
“Photo Eye” Interview with Adam Bell, October
“Loeil de la Photographie” – Feature, October
“Photo Book Store” Review of “The Disappearance of Joseph Plummer, October
“Le Monde de la Photo” Review of “The Disappearance of Joseph Plummer, October
“The Photo Show” Podcast interview, October
“Creative Boom” Bewitching books for Halloween, October
“Responses Photo” Review of “The Disappearance of Joseph Plummer, October
“Huffington Post” – Interview and portfolio feature, February

2016
“American Photography “ magazine, June 2016
“New Books in Photography” New Books Network, December 2016

2015
“Hiding in Place” on Lenscratch, February 2015
Bleek Magazine, August 2015
We Heart Magazine, November 2015
“Underground Railroad,” Selektor Magazine, October 2015
“Hiding in Place” on Lenscratch, February 2015

2014
Harper’s Magazine,  December , 2014
 Possession Box, We Heart It, August 2014
Street, The Tree Mag, August 2014
Disquiet, Books are Nice!, July 2014
Disquiet, The Angry Bat, June, 2014
Disquiet, Joseph Chladek, May 2014
Disquiet Book Review, MutantSpace, February 2014
Disquiet feature, Broken Spine, February 2014
Disquiet, The New Frame, February 2014
Disquiet, Broken Spine, February 2014
Best Books of 2013, Photo-Eye, January 2014
Best Books of 2013, Mark Power, January 2014

2013
Favorite Books of 2013, Conscientious Photo Magazine, December 2013
Best books of 2013, PDN, December 2013
PDN “Exposures,” October, 2013
Photograph Magazine, Vince Aletti review, September 2013
Paper Journal, Disquiet review, August 2013
LensCulture, August 2013
Fan the Fire Magazine, August 2013
Beauty in Photography, August 2013
Disquiet Book Review, Photo Eye, June 2013
Disquiet Review, Conscientious Photo Magazine, June 2013
Disquiet, Le Journal de la Photographie, June 2013
Book of the Day, PhotoEye, May 2nd, 2013
The Real New York, Complex, Spring 2013
Booooooom, Spring 2013
Disquiet, PhotoHab, Spring 2013
Dark Side of the Moon, Spring 2013
Disquiet, Athena Magazine, Spring 2013
Disquiet, Design You Trust, Spring 2013
Hustle and Bustle, It’s Nice That, Spring 2013
Street Masters, DeviantArt, Spring 2013

2012
Photographs on the Brain, December, 2012
Photographs on the Brain, October, 2012
Verve Photo, March, 2012
Design You Trust, February, 2012
Le Journal de La Photographie, “New York: In Color” Review, February, 2012
The Gaurdian, “New York In Color “Review, February 2012

2011
LEO Weekly, “From Distant Streets Review,” November 2011
The Red List, Winter, 2011

2007
The F Blog, December, 2007

TALKS/PANELS

Hampshire College, Amherest, MA 2017
Adelphi University, New York, 2015
Citibank Cultural Center, Asuncion, Paraguay, October 2014
Camera Club of New York, November 2013
Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, September 2013
School of Visual Arts, August 2013
International Center of Photography, November 2012
School of Visual Arts Commencement Speech, May 2012
Making Photographs in Color, Howard Greenberg Gallery, February 2012

AWARDS

Review Santa Fe, 2016
Alice Beck Odette Scholarship Recipient, 2012
American Photography 23 and 26
Eddie Adams Workshop, 2000

PERMANENT COLLECTIONS

Review What Will You Remember

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. In addition to the winner, the jury selects three finalists each year who are invited to participate in an exhibit at the Griffin Museum of Photography.

The Prize is generously funded by the Arnold & Augusta Newman Foundation and proudly administered by Maine Media Workshops + College. The Griffin Museum of Photography hosts the annual exhibition of work by the winner and three finalists each October.

2019 Winner:

Louie Palu – Arctic Passage

(CREDIT IMAGE: © LOUIE PALU/ZUMA PRESS)

Louie Palu is a photographer whose work has covered human rights, poverty and war for 28-years. He is a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and Harry Ransom Fellow in the Humanities. He has been awarded numerous awards for his work including multiple NPPA Best of Photojournalism awards, POYi, Pulitzer Center Grants and an Alexia Grant. He has worked throughout the U.S., Canada, Central and South America, Africa, Europe and Asia including covering conflict in Afghanistan (2006-2010), Mexico (2011-2013) and Ukraine (2016). His work has been featured on the BBC, NPR, CBC, Der Spiegel, El Pais, La Republica, National Geographic and The New York Times.
His photographs and documentary films have been featured in numerous museums and festivals internationally including at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and Munich Documentary Film Festival. His work is held in numerous collections including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and National Gallery of Art. He is the author of numerous publications including his recent critically acclaimed books Front Towards Enemy (2017 Yoffy Press), A Field Manual to Asbestos (2019 Yoffy Press). He is currently working on a long-term project on the changing geopolitics of the Arctic, which was featured in the 2019 SXSW Festival Art Installation Program, exhibition at the Visa Pour L’Image photojournalism festival in Perpignan, France and in National Geographic Magazine. More on his work can be seen here www.louiepalu.com

The project Arctic Passage is a series of photographs from the Arctic and an installation composed of large format portraits frozen in ice blocks. Since 2015 I have been working on a long-term photography project related to climate change, which documents the changing lives around Inuit communities in the high Arctic. The project also explores the evolving situation related to the geopolitics of the Polar region and the growing militarization of the Arctic as countries look to capitalize on the melting ice revealing natural resources.

Two years ago I began experimenting with freezing these photographs in ice blocks, then putting them outdoors to melt. The concept came out of a book on the Franklin voyage, which was a British Naval expedition in the 1800’s. Franklin’s two Arctic exploration ships were crushed by the ice and the crews perished succumbing to the Arctic’s severe weather. Their camera was never found and I imagined the photographs frozen and lost somewhere in the ice.

The Arctic is about imagination, because most of us can’t go there we can only imagine it. In some ways we must use imagination combined with science to understand how climate change will affect us. The Arctic is the region in the world where the planet is warming the most rapidly. I felt the need to push the boundaries of traditional portraiture to not only looking and at encountering another person through photography, but experiencing what they are seeing, which is ice disappearing as a part of their identity. I wanted to take the work beyond the image, pixels and paper prints.

In 2019 I submitted a proposal to the SXSW Festival’s Art Installation Program with this concept and it was selected. I installed the work outside in front of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin and made several discoveries. First, the ice block portraits took several unique forms and changed while they melted including forming frost, spider web cracks and water running down (from melting) the faces of some of the portraits. They all eventually fell over due to melting, and the only way I can put this in words is destroyed themselves by shattering on the ground. Attendance to the installation was high and what I found interesting was everyone took photos of the slowly transforming, what some called “ice portraits” and shared it on their social media tagging it related to climate change. The result was viewers documented the changing portraits as the ice melted which made their photographs inclusive to the installation and conversation around people affected by climate change.

Ice defines the Arctic and is as much a part of the identity of the people from there as it is a part of the environment they live in. Fusing ice and images of the people there and how their very identity is slowly vanishing is what I want people to experience. The portfolio submitted is a combination of my photographs and examples of some frozen in ice. Work in this project has been supported by the Harry Ransom Center, Joan Morgenstern, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, National Geographic & Pulitzer Center.

2019 Finalists:

Jess T. Dugan – Every Breath We Drew

Jess T. Dugan is an artist whose work explores issues of identity, gender, sexuality, and community through photographic portraiture. She holds an MFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago, a Master of Liberal Arts in museum studies from Harvard University, and a BFA in photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
Dugan’s work has been widely exhibited and is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the International Center of Photography, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the RISD Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Harvard Art Museums, the St. Louis Art Museum, and many others throughout the United States.
Dugan’s monographs include To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults (Kehrer Verlag, 2018) and Every Breath We Drew (Daylight Books, 2015). She is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, an ICP Infinity Award, and was selected by the Obama White House as an LGBT Artist Champion of Change. She is represented by the Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago, IL. www.jessdugan.com

Every Breath We Drew (2011-present) explores the power of identity, desire, and connection through portraits of myself and others. Working within the framework of queer experience and from my actively constructed sense of masculinity, my portraits examine the intersection between private, individual identity and the search for intimate connection with others. Rather than attempting to describe a specific identity or group – the gender identity and sexual orientation of the individuals varies – Every Breath We Drew asks larger questions about how identity is formed, desire is expressed, and intimate connection is sought.

Cheryle St. Onge – Calling the Birds Home

Cheryle St. Onge, a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow, is the only child of a painter and a physicist. Her work explores the curiosities of how art and science intersect. She received a BFA from Clark University and an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art, where she began working with an 8 x 10 inch view camera. In 1998 after the birth of her third child, she began, Natural Findings, a body of work that examines the familial nature of our innate ties to the natural world. St. Onge’s work has been widely exhibited and is in numerous collections Portland Museum of Art, Portland OR, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX and The University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM. She is the recipient of multiple fellowships and grants. In 2016 her photographs were included in Fraction of a Second, co-published by Radius, Fraction Magazine, 516 ARTS, and UNM Art Museum.She lives in New Hampshire and summers aboard a boat off the coast of Maine with her family.
cherylestonge.com

Calling the Birds Home is a photographic exchange of the energy of life—the give and take of the familial between mother and daughter who have lived side by side on the same New Hampshire farm for decades. Our love was mutual and constant. In 2015 my mother developed vascular dementia, and with that began the loss of her emotions and her memory and the relationship of mother and daughter as we have known it for nearly 60 years. In my mother’s earlier life, she was a painter and then in the final decades she began to carve birds. A carving would begin with her vast knowledge of birds, her research and then after whittling away at chunks of wood. My mother would eventually offer up an exquisite painted out chickadee or barred owl, life size and life like.

I began to photograph her with any camera in reach—an iPhone or an 8×10 view camera as a distraction from watching her fade away, as a counterbalance to conversation with her about death, as a means to capture the ephemeral nature of the moment and of life. I needed happiness and light, and to share the images with others I love.

I started to share the images, first with friends, then on social media. Now, people want to tell me their stories and they want to hear mine. It’s a beautiful back and forth, much like a true portrait.

Because of the dementia, my mother and I no longer can have conversations. But we do still have a profound exchange through photography. She must recall our history and the process of picture making because she brightens up and is always ready to be photographed. My mother does her best and I do mine. And then in turn, I give the pictures away to anyone who will look. It is an excruciating form of emotional currency.

Bryan Thomas – Sunrise/Sunset

Bryan Thomas is a Brooklyn-based photographer and a recent recipient of The Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward Award. Bryan graduated from Dartmouth College and worked at GQ Magazine before returning to graduate school and earning his Master of Arts at Ohio University’s School of Visual Communication. His self-published zine “The Sea in the Darkness Calls,” is held in the libraries of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and, in 2017, the work was recognized by Corey Keller, Curator of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, in CENTER’s Curator’s Choice awards. His work has also been recognized by PDN’s Photo Annual, American Photography, and the NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism as well as exhibited at the Aperture Gallery (NYC), The Museum of The City of New York (NYC), and The Getty Images Gallery (London). Bryan is a regular contributor to The New York Times and has been published by The New Yorker, TIME, Harper’s Magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, Topic.com, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, National Public Radio (NPR), Frontline (PBS), and Harper Collins, among others. www.bryanthomasphoto.com

In the wake of the tragedy in Parkland, Florida, the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School courageously reinvigorated the debate about gun control in the United States. Often lost in the aftermath of mass shooting events however is the stubborn fact that everyday gun violence still accounts for the majority of gun-related deaths in the United States and no segment of the US population feels this more than African American communities across the country. According to the CDC, although African Americans only make up 14 percent of the US population, they account for 57 percent of gun homicide victims. For African American men, ages 15 to 34, there is no cause of death more likely than one that involves a gun. In her 2015 New York Times article, “The Condition of Black Life is Mourning,” the poet Claudia Rankine starkly commented, “Though the white liberal imagination likes to feel temporarily bad about black suffering, there really is no mode of empathy that can replicate the daily strain of knowing that as a black person you can be killed for simply being black.” Nowhere is Rankine’s “condition of black life” more represented than in the custom t-shirt shops of cities such as Chicago, New Orleans, Baltimore, and Miami. In shops across the country, the “Rest in Peace” shirt—custom-made, memorial t-shirts celebrating the life of those lost to gun violence—is a staple of daily life. “Sunrise/Sunset” is a portrait-based project that captures the phenomenon of “Rest in Peace” t-shirts through portraits of loved ones who’ve purchased them in an attempt to visualize the effects of gun violence beyond a singular event, briefly displayed in a late-night news chyron, but instead an accumulation of events that shapes communities in profound and unexpected ways. This body of work seeks to explore the ways in which a simple t-shirt has been transformed into a symbol of the ubiquity of the gun violence that disproportionally plagues African American communities as well as an act of protest against the ways in which African American lives are often misrepresented and, sometimes, entirely forgotten after acts of gun violence. Beneath beautified pictures of brothers, sisters, daughters, and sons, the words “Sunrise” and “Sunset,” alongside the date of a birth and a death, not only memorialize a life cut short, they also give life to a form of protest, worn daily for years to come, of the circumstances that lead to that life’s end; an everlasting symbol fighting against America’s structural impulse to look away.

Thank you to our 2019 Jurors!

• Elizabeth Avedon – Photo Book and Exhibition Designer, Writer and Curator
• Jessica Dimson – Deputy Photo Editor at the New York Times
• Paula Tognarelli – Executive Director of the Griffin Museum of Photography

Stop by the exhibition of work by the 2019 Winner and Finalists at the Griffin Museum of Photography from October 1-20, 2019. There will be an awards reception on the evening of October 10, 2019 7 PM – 8:30 PM at the museum that is free and open to the public. Join us!

The Mission

Arnold Newman had an insatiable fascination with people and the physical world around him. In his work, he constantly explored the boundaries of portraiture and embodied the spirit of artistic innovation. He was also a passionate teacher–he taught at Maine Media Workshops + College every summer for over 30 years.  In honor of Arnold’s legacy as both a photographer and mentor, The Arnold Newman Prize for New Directions in Photographic Portraiture recognizes excellence in a new generation of photographers by awarding $20,000 to a winning photographer and elevating the work of the winner and three finalists in press and through an exhibition at the Griffin Museum of Photography. The prize, the second largest in the United States, is designed to assist the winner in continuing the pursuit of their work and to serve as a launching pad for the next phase of their careers.

The 2020 Call for Entries will open in the Summer of 2020.

History of the Prize

The prize was established in 2009 by the Arnold and Augusta Newman Foundation. Maine Media Workshops + College has proudly administered the prize since 2016. Beginning with the 2017 prize, three finalists are selected each year in addition to the winner. Maine Media partnered with the Griffin Museum of Photography to host an annual exhibition of work by the winner and finalists in 2018.

Since 2009, nine artists have been awarded the prize:

• 2010 Emily Schiffer
• 2011 Jason Larkin
• 2012 Steven Laxton
• 2013 Wayne Lawrence
• 2014 Ilona Swzarc
• 2015 Nancy Borowick
• 2016 Sian Davey
• 2017 Diana Salcman [finalists: Sophie Barbasch, Daniel Colburn, Jessica Eve Rattner]
• 2018 Viktoria Sorochinski [finalists: Juul Krajer, Francesco Pergolesi, Donna Pinckley]

Statement
For nearly a decade, I have visited farm animal sanctuaries across America to create photographic portraits of geriatric animals. I began this series shortly after caring for my mom who had Alzheimer’s disease. The experience had a profound effect on me and forced me to confront my own mortality. I am terrified of growing old and I started photographing geriatric animals in order to take an unflinching look at this fear. As I met rescued farm animals and heard their stories, though, my motivation for creating this work changed. I became a passionate advocate for these animals and I wanted to use my images to speak on their behalf.

For each image, I strive to reveal the unique personality of the animal I photograph. Rescued farm animals are often wary of strangers, and it can take several days to develop a comfortable rapport with the animals I photograph. I often spend a few hours lying on the ground next to an animal before taking a single picture. This helps the animal acclimate to my presence and allows me to be fully present as I get to know her. In order to be as unobtrusive as possible, I do not bring any studio lighting into the animal enclosures and instead work only with natural light.

Nearly all of the animals I met for this project endured horrific abuse and neglect prior to their rescue. Yet it is a massive understatement to say that they are the lucky ones. Roughly fifty billion land animals are factory farmed globally each year. It is nothing short of a miracle to be in the presence of a farm animal who has managed to reach old age. Most of their kin die before they are six months old. By depicting the beauty and dignity of elderly farm animals, I invite reflection upon what is lost when these animals are not allowed to grow old.

Bio
Isa Leshko is an artist and writer whose work examines themes relating to animal rights, aging, and mortality. Her images have been published in The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, The Guardian, Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, Photograph and Süddeutsche Zeitung. In April 2019, the University of Chicago Press published her first monograph, Allowed to Grow Old: Portraits of Elderly Rescued Farm Animals, which included essays by activist Gene Baur, NY Times bestselling author Sy Montgomery, and curator Anne Wilkes Tucker.

Isa has received fellowships from the Bogliasco Foundation, the Culture & Animals Foundation, the Houston Center for Photography, the Millay Colony for the Arts, and the Silver Eye Center for Photography. She has exhibited her work widely in the United States and her prints are in numerous private and public collections, including the Boston Public Library, Fidelity Investments, the Harry Ransom Center, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Isa—whose full name is Isabell Carmella—grew up in Carteret, New Jersey, in an Italian-American working class family. She received her BA from Haverford College, where she studied cognitive psychology, neurobiology, and gender studies. She spent a decade working for dot.com startups before she discovered her passion for photography. She currently lives in Salem, Massachusetts, with her domestic partner, Matt Kleiderman, and their cats Alfred and Higgins. Isa has also lived in Houston, Texas; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Providence, Rhode Island.

These images appear in “Allowed To Grow Old” published by University of Chicago Press in April 2019.

Isa will have a gallery  talk and book signing on November 21, 2019 from 7 PM – 8:30 PM

Photograph Magazine features Isa Leshko’s Allowed to Grow Old in its Sept/October 2019 issue with a feature by Jean Dykstra.

Website

Allowed to Grow Old

The  Photography Atelier 30 will showcase at the Griffin from September 5 – September 28, 2019. The reception will take place on September 8, 2019  from 4:00 – 6:00 PM.  At the same time Gordon Stettinius’ Miss Americana and Sal Taylor Kydd’s Janus Rising  run from Sept 5 – October 20, 2019 with receptions on September 8, 2019 from 4:00 – 6:00 PM and October 10, 2019.

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, MA 01890.

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 Julie Williams-Krishnan assisting. The talent among the 23members of this group show is varied and inspiring — from our relationship with architecture, photographic gestures, conceptual ideas, abstracted imagery, identity, color, light and objects, the landscape/natural world, metaphor, street scenes and portraits — the show is very satisfying feast for the eyes and soul.”

The 23 photographers of Photography Atelier 30 include: Stephanie Arnett, Larry Bruns, Lee Cott, Sue D’Arcy Fuller, Shravan Elapavuluru, David Feigenbaum, Susan Green, Don Harbison, Jackie Heitchue, Betsey Henkels, J. Jorj Lark, Marcy Juran, Jeff Larason, Frederica Matera, Michele Manting, Michael King, Connie Lowell, Scott Newell, David Poovu, Katalina Simon, Mike Slurzberg, Guy Washburn and Julie Williams-Krishnan.

Stephanie Arnett – Title: Self Portrait in 4 Seasons and 360-Degrees -Stephanie Arnett’s Self Portrait in 4 Seasons and 360-Degrees use spherical panoramic techniques to construct identity from the artist’s perspective.

Lawrence Bruns – Title: Mannequins – Mannequins, that are merged with reflections off of storefront windows which portray the street scenes itself, create mysterious, unexpected and multidimensional images.

Lee Cott – Title: Not Quite Architecture – These impressionist images consider photography as an alternative representation of reality and recollection.

Sue D’Arcy Fuller – Title: The Journey is the Destination -Sue D’Arcy Fuller’s images of maps frozen in ice represent preserving past adventures and explorations.

Shravan Elapavuluru – Title: Contemplate -My project, Contemplate captures moments in space that encourage us to look inwards to find meaning rather than to seek it in what we see.

David Feigenbaum – Title: I am my Hands – Feigenbaum’s images invite the viewer to give more than ordinary attention to poses of the human hand, its mirrored reflection, and objects that fall within its grasp.

Susan Green – Title: The Light You Left Behind –The Light You Left Behind explores the concept of home with an abstraction of bold colors and shapes from otherwise ordinary settings and of discovering magic in the mundane.

Don Harbison – Title: Found Father – “These photographs attempt to express the emotional turmoil of reconstructing my father’s last years of life sixty-seven years later. Creating these images has helped me discover and establish a new relationship with a man I never knew, my father.”

Jackie Heitchue – Title: The Poetry of Mushrooms – These tiny vignettes portray mushrooms in domestic scenes meant to tell stories of a real or imagined past.  Each portrait is a prayer, a spell I cast in search of feelings remembered or wished for.

Betsey Henkels – Title: Floral Disarrangement – “My photographs celebrate the beauty of the undersides, stems, spikes and samaras of trees and flowers”.

L. Jorj Lark – Title: Reflections, Refractions, and Interactions – L. Jorj Lark photographs the nexus between humans and environment in an effort to comprehend consequences.

Marcy Juran – Title: Myth, Memory, and Violets – “Myth, Memory and Violets is a visual re-imagining, exploring iconic moments and imagery of my family mythology, creating a metaphoric narrative set in the context of my native New England.”

Jeff Larason – Title: Andre and Elizabeth -Reimagining the love of Andre and Elizabeth Kertesz, together again

Frederica Matera – Title: The Woods at Faraway – Exploring and documenting a rain forest on the coast of Maine.

Michele Manting – Title:  Innocence Lost -Using the vehicle of an American Doll knock-off, the project explores a range of dissonances arising among and because of the expectations, perceptions and two-dimensional realities within  a throw-away society.

Michael King – Title: René Magritte and the Art of Illusion – Michael King’s portraits portray his son, Adam, trespassing in the surrealistic world of the painter René Magritte.

Connie Lowell – Title: Motion – Youth in Cars – Youth in Cars explores how young adults grow up in cars as they transition from dependence to independence and adolescence to adulthood.

Scott Newell – Title: Sand patterns at Crane Beach – The physical elements in the environment are somewhat randomly shaped by living and natural forces, occasionally resulting in evocative patterns.

David J. Poorvu – Title: Hiding in Plain Sight – Most of us recognize lichens on trees and rocks, but their amazing variety of shapes, colors and textures can only be seen when magnified. They are not plants but a composite organism of fungi and algae/bacteria.

Katalina Simon – Title: The Land Beyond the Forest –  The Land Beyond the Forest is a series of rural tableaux depicting a fading way of life in rural Transylvania.

Mike Slurzberg  –  Title: Festival – Festival follows a music festival in Western Massachusetts over several years, looking at the audience as a small, temporary city.

Guy Washburn – Title: Les équivalents de la rivière – The project is an inquiry into the the subtler, deeper voice of the water.

Julie Williams-Krishnan – Title: Yesterday’s Flowers – Yesterday’s Flowers is a series of photographs of flowers that were used in the family home in South India for daily prayers.

Photography Atelier Website

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

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

In its fourteenth 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 Tara Sellios, a Boston artist who received her BFA in photography with a minor in art history from the Art Institute of Boston in 2010. Recent solo exhibitions include Sinuous at C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, Testimony at Blue Sky Gallery, Portland and Luxuria at Gallery Kayafas, Boston. She is a Massachusetts Cultural Council fellowship recipient and was named an emerging photographer to watch by Art New England magazine. Tara is represented by Gallery Kayafas and currently lives and works in South Boston.

Asia Kepka met with students in February and discussed her photography journey especially her project “Horace and Agnes”. Kepka studied set design in Lodz, Poland. A graduate of New England School of Photography in Waltham, MA, she has worked for such publications as Wired, Fortune, Time, The New York Times Magazine, and many more. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums in the United States and Europe.

Alison Nordstrom, the former curator of the George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y., and photographer Sam Sweezy gathered with students for a one-on-one discussion of their work and a final edit was created for the exhibition at the museum.

“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 and teachers for providing a very meaningful experience for the students. We also want to thank the Griffin Foundation and the John and Mary Murphy Educational 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  Photography Atelier 29 will showcase at the Griffin from March 7 – April 4, 2019. The reception will take place on March 10, 2019  from 4:00 – 6:00 PM.  Ralph Mercer’s Myths and Jennifer Georgescu’s Mother Series also run from March 7 – April 4, 2019 with receptions on March 10, 2019 from 4:00 – 6:00 PM. The Chervinsky Award presentation will take place at 6-6:15 PM on March 10, 2019.

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, MA 01890.

Photography Atelier Instructor and Photographer Emily Belz said, “It has been my immense pleasure to work with the photographers of Atelier 29. Seeing each student’s individual work evolve over the 12 weeks of the course was inspiring; many risks were taken and boundaries pushed, and the resulting portfolios showcase the diverse interests and talents of these 21 photographers. I am honored and humbled to have taken part in the evolution of this work, and to lead the Atelier, a workshop with such a long and meaningful history for photographers in the Boston area and beyond. My thanks to Dennis Geller for his stellar assistance during the course, and to the Griffin Museum of Photography for providing emerging-to-advance photographers the incredible opportunity to build their work and present it to the public in the Museum’s galleries.”

The 21 photographers of Photography Atelier 29 include: Anthony Attardo, Carole Smith Berney, Becky Behar, Terry Bleser, Ann Boese, Dawn Colsia, Frank Curran, Tim H. Davis, Mark Farber, Dennis Geller, Sarah Gosselin, Janis Hersh, Tira Khan, Bruce Magnuson, Amy Pritchard, Astrid Reischwitz, Darrell Roak, Leann Shamash, Susan Swirsley, Amir Viskin and Jeanne Widmer.