Lafayette City Center Passageway

About the People of Chelsea project –

The People of Chelsea Project was born from a deep love of the city of Chelsea, for its rich culture, vibrant beauty, and resilient community. Just across the harbor and only a bridge away from Boston, yet culturally distinct from its larger metropolitan neighbor, Chelsea is too often overlooked.
This project features and celebrates its residents, businesses, and institutions – from activists to entrepreneurs, from city officials to students, from old timers to newcomers. The People of Chelsea project is a positive mirror to the community and an homage to those who make the city work every day, across ages, experiences, and languages. Particularly during the mire of COVID-19, the project was a meaningful departure from the disaster-oriented media narratives about Chelsea, and each showing of this work became a source of civic pride. Through strong local collaborations, we have highlighted a community that is so much more than its pandemic losses: a Chelsea that is resilient, creative, courageous and just.
As the project has reached new audiences in and beyond Chelsea, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. People have been delighted to see their own images and stories as well as those of their friends, family, and neighbors. That momentum continues to grow as the project evolves. There are many more stories to be shared and people to be made visible.

About Darlene DeVita and Sarah Putnam –

Darlene DeVita has been a professional photographer for 30 years, and a resident of Chelsea, MA for two decades. She began the People of Chelsea Project in 2016. Her early career as one of the pre-eminent wedding photographers in the Boston area fine-tuned her skills photographing people, and this, combined with her innate love of community, is evident in the passion she brings to the People of Chelsea Project. More recently, Dar’s professional photography illuminates the work of local non-profits, schools, and corporations. Her clients have included The Boston Foundation, Athenahealth, La Colaborativa, Vinfen, MAB Community Services, Wentworth Institute of Technology, among others.

Sarah Putnam joined Darlene DeVita on the People of Chelsea Project in 2018, primarily to help in Spanish-speaking situations, conducting and editing interviews, and collaborating on the photographs by providing another set of eyes. Sarah has been in her own right a writer and freelance photographer for national publications and organizations for decades. Her writing has ranged from feature stories to interviews to reviews, her photographs have appeared in magazines and books, been included in both group and solo exhibitions, and she has produced multimedia pieces for the web. She was a Bunting Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute.

The Griffin @ Lafayette City Center Passageway is located at 2 Ave de Lafayette in Downtown Crossing, Boston. The passageway connects Macy’s, the Lafayette Tower offices and the Hyatt Regency, Boston. For more information please contact the museum at 781.729.1158

The Griffin Museum of Photography is pleased to announce Elemental Blues: Contemporary Cyanotypes, an in-person exhibition featuring featuring the works of Anna Leigh Clem, Brett Windham, Bryan Whitney, Julia Whitney Barnes, Sally Chapman and Cynthia Katz. The show features the distinct and innovative works of six New England and Upstate New York-based artists that reveal the versatility of the medium through diverse processes and mixed-media explorations.

This collection of works is on the walls of our satellite location Griffin @ Lafayette City Center Place. Located in Boston’s Downtown Crossing, the address is 2 Ave de Lafayette, Boston, MA 02111 and hours are 6am – 10pm Daily.

Presenting photographs of the Basin Head sand dune system along the Northumberland Strait in Canada, Anna Leigh Clem infuses her eerie landscape with somber drama. Toning her works with foraged botanicals, she creates a tangible connection between each print and the landscape that inspired it.

Brett Day Windham’s delicate watercolor overlays illuminate the unseen rhythms of marine life, rendering fan corals as intricate, arterial compositions that underscore the interconnectedness of all life and consciousness.

Offering an unobstructed glimpse into the unseen, Bryan Whitney unveils the skeletal elegance of flowers through striking cyanotype x-rays. These luminous blueprints expose the intricate structure and delicate beauty inherent in botanical forms.

Cynthia Katz constructs fragmented cyanotypes arranging prints on rectangular grids and diptychs populated by small yet impactful details. The works are a creative approach to abstraction and evoke the elusive nature of memory and dreams.

Julia Whitney Barnes creates lavish and meticulously detailed works on paper, blending watercolor, gouache, ink, and cyanotype. Her pieces, reminiscent of fairy tale sights and sacred geometry, highlight the inherent beauty of our world.

Sally Chapman‘s rhythmic still life compositions capture the diverse objects of our everyday surroundings, creating a unique taxonomy of the organic with the manufactured. Delicate, drawing-like gestures on pastel further swirl through her observations. 

An eclectic representation of cyanotype-making, the artists featured in Elemental Blues explore ideas of visibility and transformation, utilizing cyanotype to reinterpret and reimagine natural and everyday subjects through their techniques.

The Griffin @ Lafayette City Center Passageway is located at 2 Ave de Lafayette in Downtown Crossing, Boston. The passageway connects Macy’s, the Lafayette Tower offices and the Hyatt Regency, Boston.

Jeff Larason’s Boston and Lynn Saville’s New York is a captivating exploration of quiet moments within two bustling urban environments.
This exhibition combines the powerful and evocative urban imagery of Boston photographer Jeff Larason and New York City photographer Lynn Saville. Both artists delve deep into the visual language of cities, capturing moments of solitude and reflection that are often overshadowed by the energy and chaos of urban life. Larason and Saville reveal a serene, reflective, and unexpectedly beautiful side of city life through their unique lenses.

 

Jeff Larason presents a deeply personal perspective of Boston, showcasing its familiar landmarks and lesser-known corners in a way that encourages the viewer to pause and appreciate the city’s quiet, contemplative moments. His work, often framed by strong architectural lines and vibrant tones, captures a timeless quality of the city’s urban life.

 

 

Lynn Saville, a widely renowned photographer known for her mastery of light and shadow, brings her iconic images of New York City into the spotlight. Her photographs of New York explore the intersection of light and the urban environment, often highlighting deserted streets and empty spaces that evoke a sense of tranquility amidst the towering skyscrapers and vibrant energy of the metropolis.

We are pleased to welcome the MFA students at Boston University’s department of Print Media & Photography to the Griffin’s satellite gallery at Lafayette City Center Passageway.

Dialogue presents work by Boston University’s Print Media and Photography MFA class of 2025. In this exhibition, each artist expresses their own artistic voice through an interdisciplinary approach that illuminates the nature of this unique MFA program.

Working in darkrooms, printmaking studios and beyond, the artists employ traditional and experimental techniques that oscillate between a variety of mediums to create a range of thematic dialogues.

Collectively, they explore issues of chance, feminism, identity, society, and politics. As you navigate the exhibition, we invite you to engage in these thematic dialogues, questioning and responding to the narratives contained within this body of work.

About the Artists

Shannon Johnson

I see connections everywhere and identify as a radical feminist in that I am constantly examining life through an understanding of structural patriarchy. It is through this radical feminist lens that I explore issues of feminism, bodily autonomy, social justice, intimacy, trauma, mental illness, and especially sexual violence. Using photography, printmaking, bookmaking, installation, and painting, I seek to explore and understand the relationships between the images, objects, and interpretations of the roles and values of women and our bodies. I collect a variety of materials including books, clothing, linens, and household objects as the foundation for many of these works: turning utilitarian, functional objects into works of art, now made neither functional nor utilitarian.

Text, images, and meanings are revealed and obscured through layers of ink, pastel, and paper, coalescing color, shapes, bodies, and subject matter, holes carefully cut through pages to piece together this web of patriarchy. By creating large impressions, I aim to place the viewer in an intimate space, removing the mask and closing the gap between the private and the public. I use self-portraiture and found images including didactic photography to reveal contradictions and, often unrealistic, expectations of the boxes we have been forced into. Through these different modalities, I aim to create an understanding and urgency regarding the intimate, emotional issue of women’s autonomy and freedom. The driving core of my work is the rallying cry of early feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s, “the personal is political.” I aim for my work to be confrontational, to incite urgency in the viewer. The goal of my work isn’t to soothe or please the viewer, but to create an intense reaction. My work is explicit, and its rawness and obscenity are essential to convey the urgency of my rage and my abiding need for freedom.

Jason Parent

Born in New Jersey, raised in Upstate New York, and now based in Boston, Massachusetts, Jason Parent is a visual artist and MFA Print Media & Photography candidate at Boston University. With an interdisciplinary skill set, Jason explores the concept of identity.

The hidden and forgotten,
swept under the rug,
buried six feet deep —

A devotion to the exposure of life’s cover-ups inspires my work. Through my interdisciplinary practice, I explore themes of identity, memory, and emotion. Grounded in the excavation of my own existence, my interests expand to issues of gender, sexuality, and the human condition.

Jerry Rodríguez Sosa

Jerry Rodríguez Sosa is an interdisciplinary artist from Brownsville, Texas and Monterrey, México. After earning a BA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Texas at Austin, he worked in data analytics for multiple languages at Apple, followed by an internship in letterpress printmaking at Hatch Show Print in Nashville, Tennessee. Subsequently, he moved to Boston, Massachusetts to pursue his MFA in Print Media and Photography at Boston University.

My art is influenced by my heritage and identity. I primarily work with printmaking, photography, and drawing to explore how these intersections can help me craft personal and cultural narratives. My visual language incorporates bodies, symbolisms, text, photo archives, and geographical landscapes to examine and heal the internalities of my Mexican American, queer experience. 

Susan Swirsley

Susan is a visual artist who has traveled extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. Her diverse travel experiences and background in business and the social sciences offer a rich foundation for her work. The amalgamation of photography with other artistic disciplines, cultures and places opens up fascinating possibilities in her practice.

Currently based in Boston, she is a 2025 MFA candidate in the Print Media and Photography program at Boston University.

I am a photo-based artist who uses historical and contemporary processes to translate digital, film, and camera-less images onto paper, fabric, acrylic, and other surfaces. Resourcefulness, experimentation, and the use of “abandoned” materials such as expired paper and botanical remnants are integral to my practice. I create physical objects, large and small, including handmade books. 
 
My work is focused on the unpredictable intersection of abstract and representational images, weaving them together to create a new reality. I examine and question how photographic images function, what they represent and what we expect of them. Process, materiality, illusion, and the juncture of chance an preservation in photographic images play an important role in my artistic practice. I embrace the principle of chance by using materials (photographic paper and chemicals) in different ways than they are normally intended. This experimentation and element of surprise drives my work and extends to combining photographs with printmaking and painting processes and materials.

Tung Lin Tsai

Tung is a practitioner of everyday life who focuses on the relationship between mundanity and photography. As a photographer, he often incorporates everyday objects into his work. Items such as paper airplanes, plastic bags, office paper, and daily calendars are metaphorically placed in his pieces as political symbols. For Tung, these objects represent not only political language but also the reality of everyday life as a Taiwanese citizen — a citizen of a non-sovereign state. Tung is currently an MFA Photography and Print Media candidate at Boston University, navigating this complex world.

From analog to digital processes, from staged to candid images, I capture the mundane — like flying paper and plastic bags. When my strobes fire, they freeze a split second of reality. A strobe flashes for 1/500 to 1/25,000 of a second, capturing what human eyes can’t perceive. Yet, no matter how fast my strobes are, I can’t freeze this moment of peace. The lightness of everyday life is the true weight of Sisyphus’s rock, eternally rolled uphill. My work, therefore, carries the unbearable lightness of a piece of paper.

In the last days of August, we long for that last bit of summer warmth, to connection with family and hold close that moment of peace and quiet before we all head back into the fall with darker days, colder weather and dispersed family. Time vanishes here, days don’t matter, with days filled with kids splashing in the pool and the nights filled with BBQ, s’mores and ghost stories. Backyards are the American dream, a patch of land we can call our own. Backyards become the gathering space, the place we live outside and filled with individuality.

This Griffin @ Lafayette City Center exhibition in the last days of summer features two artists whose work revolves around the gathering place we call home and the intersection of natural and familial landscapes, urban and suburban living. David Oxton and Gary Beeber create an oasis of color, life and connection to nature in a confined space, suburban backyards. These two artists have given unique vision to how we inhabit the patch of land, urban or suburban.

About Gary Beeber –

Gary Beeber is an award-winning American photographer and filmmaker who has exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the world.  He has had numerous solo photography exhibitions and his documentary films have been screened at over 150 film festivals.  Pfizer Pharmaceutical, Goldman Sachs and Chase Bank are Fortune 500 companies who collect his work.

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About David Oxton –

David Oxton is Massachusetts north shore photographer who creates photographs that blend candid moments with constructed tableaus. Oxton is both a photographer and educator. Images from his Trackside project have been exhibited at Photographic Resource Center, Montserrat College of Art, and Lesley University; and published in Shots Magazine and Cape Ann Magazine.

David was a commercial and editorial photographer for 10 years before concentrating on fine art photo projects. David lives in Beverly and taught photography at The Governor’s Academy in Byfield for 32 years.

The Griffin @ Lafayette City Center Passageway is located at 2 Ave de Lafayette in Downtown Crossing, Boston. The passageway connects Macy’s, the Lafayette Tower offices and the Hyatt Regency, Boston.

Planting Roots, Growing Community is a visual portrait of the powerful connection between the land and our local neighborhoods. In a world that often feels fast-paced and disconnected, community gardens and family farms offer us a sense of belonging, of being grounded in the soil and history of the places we call home. These green spaces represent not only the growth of flowers, crops and shared harvests, but also the growth of our relationship with the land and with each other. These four photographers, Greg Heins, Ellen Harasimowicz, John Rich and Leann Shamash, through their lenses, share the quiet moments, the landscape and beautiful detail of our shared landscape, discover the roots of our local farms, and to celebrate the growth of the communities that tend them.

Greg Heins – Fall in the Garden

“The photographs respond to the sucesses or failures of the ones that came before. The process is visual. The artistic impulse may be driven by age and loss, anger and regret, by a need for play and freedom but the statement is the photographs. 

We do well to remember that there is no part of our equipment and materials – cameras, printers, ink and paper – that is untouched by the exploitation of others. And that our opportunities were not always granted to others of equal or greater abilities. So it behooves us to create work that is as true and honest and faithful to ourselves as it can be. And to remember that the freedom to do this must be seized again and again.

Greed, hatred indifference and love – in wildly unequal proportions – have given us the world in which we live. Soon enough we will be gone from it, individually and collectively. And yet: can it be that something, like an echo, will remain of our attempts to give sense to it all? We must believe it true.” – Greg Heins

Ellen Harasimowicz – Living Like Grass

“We all live in nature, but some live in it more intimately. Small-family farmers make their mark on the land, and the land provides nourishment and income for their families. They are the backbone of American agriculture, but earning a living wage is difficult, and finding hired help is nearly impossible. Operating expenses are rising, weather extremes are causing erratic crop yields, and farmers are aging out. For many, this way of life is vanishing.

I’ve been coming to Willard Farm in Still River, Massachusetts for almost three decades to buy sunflowers, corn, tomatoes, and pumpkins. For nearly 350 years, nine generations of Willards have lived and farmed here, rooted in the same soil as their ancestors going back to the Nashaway people. But three years ago, I noticed fewer offerings at the farm stand. Today, the primary farmer, Paul Willard, is 80 and moves slower. He shares the family farmhouse with his brother Wendell, a cabinetmaker, and Wendell’s wife, Elizabeth, a poet. The title of this project is from one of her poems.

For the last 20 years, I’ve photographed the farm, interested not only in the legacy of this land but also in the details of farm life. During the pandemic, when just about everything shut down, farmers still planted crops, and farm stands remained open. Willard Farm became my refuge and my muse. When I asked Paul what his plans were for the future, he said, “I don’t have any real plans. I think I’m just going to wind down. Keep doing what I’m doing, but less of it, and slower. And someday, slow will be indeterminable from still. And then we’ll be done.” That was three years ago. This spring, Paul sold vegetable plants that he grew in the greenhouses. Then he received some discouraging news from his doctor. Today, the fields are fallow except for a small kitchen garden. Their farm stand has closed. A few months ago, no one, not even Paul Willard, imagined the end was so close.” – Ellen Harasimowicz

John Rich – A Year Above the Gardens

“What I did during the pandemic (from mid-first wave through the Delta variant), was photograph the community gardens near my home in Brookline, from above, every two weeks for one year.

With their promise of growth and renewal, the gardens were truly an oasis for me during the isolation of lockdown. I piloted a camera/drone to shoot the terrain from the identical vantage point each time, showing the gardens in moments of bloom, decay, and rest.

By focusing on a landscape transformed through seasonal change and human intervention, these images allow us to connect to the earth and perceive the affirmative power of change.” – John Rich

Leann Shamash – Community Gardens

“A piece of land, 12x by 12x, in the midst of other similarly parceled spots.

What to do in this puzzle of growing spaces? Community gardens are for growing things. Some use the space for bushes and small trees, some for fragrant herbs and many for vegetables.  Some grow a few flowers and add a chair to create a living space in the midst of the field. 

Community gardens are for gardeners, a special breed of people, who each year attempt to defy the odds and grow vegetables, despite attacks of unpredictable weather, insects, disease, and animals that tunnel and jump over fences.  Gardeners are eternal optimists, who love to share their challenges and successes with one another.

I love to garden and to see how things grow, knowing that I fail more than I succeed at growing things. I love to observe what gardeners bring from the world outside of the garden into their spaces to uniquely individualize their space, for isn’t that something we all do in our lives?

Last, gardens, both community and private are nothing more than canvases which we can design and paint how we wish.  These canvases offer us quiet and an escape from the world outside the garden, truly a place to meditate and a place to grow.” – Leann Shamash

We are pleased to welcome the MFA students at Boston University’s department of Print Media & Photography to the Griffin’s satellite gallery at Lafayette City Center Passageway. These five students are the first cohort of the program, and we are thrilled to see their culminating work in this exhibition. On view from October 2, 2023 through January 7, 2024, “Rendering Experiences” combines five artists’ perspectives on how stories of the self are formed, shaped, interpreted, and valued in our world.

About the Artists

Photography has always been a powerful medium for evoking an emotional response in the viewer -whether awe, revulsion, sadness, or joy. By framing the context and using light, shadow, focus and depth of field and visual imagination, the viewer is invited into the world of the artist. The juxtaposition of shapes and lines, the use or absence of color, the dimensionality of a piece, all contribute to creating a moment that can resonate deep within the viewer’s psyche. There is alchemy in both the creation of imagery and in the intimate engagement with a stranger who now views the work. No more interpretation is required; simply stop, notice and engage in self-inquiry. Like a modern-day Rorschach, each of the nine bodies of work begins a conversation of meaning between artist and viewer. As you transit this hallway, pause for a moment to enjoy that brief exchange and take it with you into your day.

The works of nine talented artists are included in this exhibition: Julia Arstorp, Anne Berry, Cathy Cone, Sandra Klein, Joan Lobis Brown, Marcy Palmer, Sara Silks, Vicky Stromee and Dawn Watson all present images to tell stories, ask questions and engage us in visual richness.

The Griffin @ Lafayette City Center Passageway is located at 2 Ave de Lafayette in Downtown Crossing, Boston. The passageway connects Macy’s, the Lafayette Tower offices and the Hyatt Regency, Boston.

Reception for the artists – July 15th, 2023

Artist talks –
September 6th, 2023: Sandra Klein, Anne Berry, Dawn Watson
September 13th, 2023: Marcy Palmer, Cathy Cone, Sara Silks
September 20th,2023: Vicky Stromee, Joan Lobis Brown, Julia Arstorp

The Griffin Museum is excited to bring Ruben Natal San Miguel to Lafayette City Center to celebrate his magnum opus, Women R Beautiful. This solo exhibition featuring the portraits of women Natal San Miguel crosses paths with are stunning. Frank and honest, the women are confident, self aware and direct with their gaze into the lens. This exhibition is featured during Women’s History Month, and we are excited to showcase the diversity and breadth of the female gaze and shared experience of portraiture at its most pure.

RUBEN NATAL-SAN MIGUEL is an architect, fine art photographer, curator, creative director and critic. His stature in the photo world has earned him awards, features in major media, countless exhibitions and collaborations with photo icons such as Magnum Photographer Susan Meiselas. Gallery shows include: Asya Geisberg, SoHo Photo, Rush Arts, Finch & Ada, Kris Graves Projects, Fuchs Projects, WhiteBox Gallery, Station Independent Projects Gallery, LMAK Gallery,  Postmasters Gallery  Rome  & NYC  and others. His work has been featured in numerous institutions: The New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Griffin Museum of Photography, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, African American Museum of Philadelphia, The Makeshift Museum in Los Angeles, University of Washington, El Museo del Barrio and Phillips Auction House and Aperture Foundation. 

International art fair representation includes: Outsider Art Fair, SCOPE, PULSE, Art Chicago, Zona Maco, Mexico, Lima Photo, Peru and Photo LA. and Filter Photo Festival in Chicago Ill.  His photography has been published in a long list of publications, highlights: New York Magazine, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Time OUT, Aperture, Daily News, OUT, American Photo, ARTFORUM, VICE, Musee, ARTnet and The New Yorker, PBS and NPR. In 2016, Ruben’s Marcy’s Playground was selected for both the Billboard Collective and website for Apple. His photographs are in the permanent collections of El Museo Del Barrio in NYC, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, NY, The Contemporary Collection of the Mint Museum Charlotte, North Carolina, The Bronx  Museum for the Arts, School of Visual Arts, NYC, The Fitchburg Museum of Art, Massachusetts, The North Carolina Museum of Art at Raleigh, NC., The Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, The Studio Museum of Harlem and The Museum of The City of NY, The Provincetown Art Museum, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Museum Center at Vassar College and The Museum of Fine Arts , Boston, MA. 

The Griffin @ Lafayette City Center Passageway is located at 2 Ave de Lafayette in Downtown Crossing, Boston. The passageway connects Macy’s, the Lafayette Tower offices and the Hyatt Regency, Boston.

In history and art, the still life image is ubiquitous and synonymous with masterworks of art. A collection of objects, filled with meaning, beauty, life and transition. This collection of images looks at how we value our things, how we engage with our objects, craft them into art.

Stephanie Shih’s Asian American Still Life and Matt Siber Collective Consciousness look at the way we imbue preconceived notions of what the object holds, and how we re-envision that object in a new context.

We see objects of importance through family lines with the works of Parrish Dobson and Beth Galton. Yorgos Efthymiadis looks at how a singular object can obtain mythic proportion in both personal and public persona. Rebecca Horne’s constructions defy dimension, organic and structural textures at odds but also symbiotic. Stefanie Klavens series How We Live looks at our surroundings, and Vicente Cayuela‘s Juvenilia explores the way we gravitate to objects at any age, especially as we grow in an emotional and intellectual context. Jo Ann Chaus uses object as introspection. Her use of images and object create entire personas we as viewers can indulge in, question and dream of the possibilities of who we are and who we want to be.

Crafting a typology, Jennifer Booher shows us Beachcombing, while Marcy Juran‘s Humble Beauty takes a closer look at what is often discarded or missed in simple organic form.

The eleven artists who share their work with us look at the myriad ways of showcasing objects of importance. In a world of clutter, we find beauty, in a landscape of objects we see a microcosm of identity, statements of personality and ultimately open to interpretation the items we hold close. In each photograph, each visual construction and unique still life animates ideas, invent connections, shares ideas and showcases a depth of understanding of the photographer illuminating their subject.

The Griffin @ Lafayette City Center Passageway is located at 2 Ave de Lafayette in Downtown Crossing, Boston. The passageway connects Macy’s, the Lafayette Tower offices and the Hyatt Regency, Boston. Hours are open between 9am and 9pm. Saturday and Sunday access is limited by entry through Macy’s and the Hyatt Regency.