The Virtual Gallery

Since 2009, the Griffin Museum has created a gathering space bringing reviewers and photographers together from New England and beyond for two days of discussion, networking, and gaining fresh perspective on one’s work.

The New England Portfolio Reviews (NEPR) serves photographers who are just embarking on their careers and more established photographers, all hoping to reach new audiences and gain fresh perspective on their work.

The online format allows for an expansion of participants in volume and in location including reviewers such as gallerists, book publishers, museum professionals, critics, educators, and advisors from all over the world who provide guidance and potential opportunities to grow artist practices. We are grateful to our reviewers who give their time and expertise to the attendees to further their creative goals.

This online exhibition highlights the diversity of creativity found in each of our participants.

Artists featured in this online exhibition are: Adam Chapin, Amy Giese, Andrew McClees, Barbara Lewin, Carlotta Guerra, Caroline Stevens, Jeremy Chandler, Dafna Steinberg, Dan Nelken, Daniel Szabo, David Comora, Donna Oglesby, Michael Weinstein, Ellen Feldman, Eric Kunsman, Georgia McGuire, Irene Matteucci, Jaina Cipriano, Jean Francois Gosselin, Joshua Holz, Jung S. Kim, Kathleen Tunnel Handel, Kaya Sanan, Kylie Harrigan, Laila Nahar, Lee Varis, Lisa McCarty, Lisa Tang Liu, Madelyn McKenzie, Mahala Mazerov, Marcie Scudder, Marky Kauffmann, Marsha Wilcox, Megan Riley, Melinda Hurst Frye, Michael Page Miller, MK Rynne, Paul Baskett, Peggy Becker, Philip Sager, Rory McNamara, Sandra Buschow, Scott Lerman, Scott Marmer, Sophie Adams, Suzanne Williamson, Victoria Gewirz, Xuan Hui Ng.

This year we celebrate the Griffin Museum of Photography’s dedication to education with a special showcase of the incredible work realized during our Photography Atelier courses. Now in its 40th edition, this portfolio and project development program has aided in the creative endeavors of countless students. We are grateful to them for their participation on this celebratory occasion.

We are grateful to the instructors who gave so much of themselves, the artists who worked shared their creativity, and to everyone who came to openings and artist talks to celebrate these talented students. Sharing your work and ideas with us

For over twenty years, the Photography Atelier at the Griffin Museum has fostered a community of artists and educators dedicated to elevating the art of photography. Through collaborative critique, creative exploration, and personal vision, this program continues to shape compelling photographic work and advance the medium with purpose and passion.

We are so pleased to have many of the over 250 educators and artists highlighted here –

Leah Abrahams, Lisa Neville Ambler, Stephanie Arnett, Peter Balentine, Becky Behar, Emily Belz, Diane Bennett, Robin Boger, Ann Boese, Judy Brown, Michael Burka, Lisa Cassell-Arms, Craig Childs, Annie Claflin, Jamie Collins, David Comora, Lee Cott, Karen Davis, Ileana Doble Hernandez, Dena Eber, Edward, William Feiring, Ellen Feldman, Laura Ferraguto, Roger Galburt, Conrad Gees, Sarah Gosselin, Trelawney Goodell, Marc Goldring, Cassandra Goldwater, Sanford Gotlib, James Hunt, Gregory Jundanian, Alan Kidawski, Michael King, Julie Williams-Krishnan, Lawrence Manning, Bonnie McCormick, Lyn Swett Miller, Judith Montminy, Bonnie Newman, Linda Hammett Ory, Ann Peters, Astrid Reischwitz, Lisa Redburn, Margaret Rizzuto, Darrell Roak, Vanessa R, Megan Riley, Glenn Ruga, Joyce Saler, Gordon Saperia, Becca Screnock, Hope Schreiber, Andy Schirmer, Fran Sherman, Pip Shepley, Tony Schwartz, Sally, Christy Stadelmaier, Joe Staska, Betty Stone, Susan Swirsley, Mark Thayer, Donna Tramontozzi, Carol Van Loon, Amir Viskin, Piet Visser, Heather Walsh, David Whitney, Jeanne Widmer, Julie Williams-Krishnan, Nancy Nichols, Albert Lew.

Mothercraft is an ongoing body of work that uses press photographs culled from flea markets and eBay to reconsider 20th-century depictions of mothers in the US media. Typed and handwritten text, along with date stamps, creased edges, and stains, layer the backs of the photographs. These images are time capsules, showing us the event pictured and the frame through which they were received. The photographs I have collected illustrate movement, both socially and politically, as records of the shifting identity of motherhood and women’s liberation, but also durationally as physical images that were held, touched, and eventually abandoned.

Each photograph in Mothercraft is backlit as I rephotograph it, and the resulting image simultaneously reveals both the front and back of the print. With a sharp focus on the text, the image can fall further into obscurity, blurred and layered with captions and marks. The fragmented captions often slip past their descriptive roles into the more dogmatic territory and reflect the dynamic push and pull between the personal and the political. They offer information ranging from the objective, such as age and location, to the more partial and idiosyncratic details tied to tradition and duty. These images provide a glimpse into the unstable nature of truth and the complex relationship between image and word.

BIO

Toni Pepe creates prints and three-dimensional assemblages from discarded newspaper images, family snapshots, and obsolete photographic equipment, investigating how photography shapes our understanding of time, space, and self. Her practice explores the layers of information a print conveys beyond its image—whether through the presence of text, subtle stains, or crop marks—each detail offering insight into the photograph’s journey and its significance as a physical object. More than static images, photographic prints capture and suspend our likenesses and histories, bearing the marks of time and physical interaction.

Pepe is the Chair of Photography and Associate Professor of Art at Boston University. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions such as the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston, Blue Sky Gallery, and the Center for Photography at Woodstock. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the MFA Boston, the Boston Athenaeum, Fidelity, the Boston Public Library, the Danforth Art Museum, the University of Oregon, Candela Books + Gallery, The Magenta Foundation, and numerous private collections. She was a resident at Frans Masereel Centrum in 2023, a MacDowell Fellow in 2024, and was recently named a Howard Foundation and Evelyn Stefansson Nef Fellow.

In 1916 women were over 60 years into the battle of the American Suffrage Movement. Frustrated by President’s Wilson’s inaction on the matter, The National Woman’s Party decided to put their fate directly into women’s hands by launching a radical campaign that sent hundreds of Eastern suffragists out to the 12 western states where women had the right to vote. Their request was a simple one; put aside all political agendas and cast a protest vote against President Wilson and his fellow Democrats.

Inez Milholland was appointed special “flying envoy” to make a 12,000-mile swing through the west in October leading up to the 1916 Presidential and Congressional election.

Inez, traveling with her sister Vida, delivered some 50 speeches in eight states in 28 days. Battling chronic illness and lack of sleep, her four-week itinerary, brutal even by today’s travel standards, consisted of street meetings, luncheons, railroad station rallies, press interviews, teas, auto parades, dinner receptions, speeches in the West’s grandest theaters, and even impromptu talks on trains while on her way to the next destination.

On October 24th, 1916 in Los Angeles, she collapsed on stage while giving her final public words, “Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?” Her health forced her to stop the tour and she died 30 days later at the age of 30, making her the sole martyr of the American Suffrage Movement. Inspired by her devotion, the movement continued to grow, and ultimately led to the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment.

Standing Together retraces the sisters’ journey as a determined Inez persuaded standing-room-only crowds throughout the west to vote for the enfranchisement of women.

Jeanine Michna-Bales is a fine artist working in the medium of photography. Her work explores our fundamentally important relationships – to the land, to other people and to oneself – and how they impact contemporary society. Her work lives at the intersection of curiosity and knowledge, documentary and fine art, past and present, anthropology and sociology, and environmentalism and activism. Her practice is based on in-depth research – taking into account different viewpoints, causes and effects, political climates – and she often incorporates primary source material into her projects.

Michna-Bales’s latest photographic essay on the American Suffrage Movement, Standing Together, is featured in the July/August 2020 double-issue of Smithsonian Magazine and will be released as a comprehensive publication and traveling exhibition in the Spring of 2021. Her work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions around the United States, including The Phillips Collection, Moving Walls 23: Journeys at Open Society Foundations, the traveling exhibition Southbound: Photographs of and about the New South, featured in numerous publications and online, and is held in many institutional and private collections. Among other honors, her work was selected for the 2016 Documentarian of The American South Collection Award from the Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke University.

Jeanine Michna-Bales Portfolio

instagram: @JMBalesPhotography

In celebration of her participation as a Guest Critic for our inaugural Handmade Book exhibition (curated by Sangyon Joo from Datz Press), the Griffin Museum of Photography is pleased to present an online exhibition by Laila Nahar. The show centers on three of her projects: Rituals — a set of two books, Face to Faith and Puja — and Lost Space Living In Our Mind. With their complex book structures, vibrant imagery and print manipulation, these visual and tactile feasts take us on a meditative journey through memory, time, and place.

We are thankful to Nahar for deliberately spending time with each book of our Handmade Photobook exhibit, and selecting six of them for a spotlight feature on the Fine Art Photography Journal, LENSCRATCH.

Lost Space Living In Our Minds
Jaya Mishra, Tanveer Khonker & Laila Nahar

Lost Space Living in Our Mind is a handmade artist monograph about living in a place and the experience while revealing the place as both a subject and a collaborator. The book emerged when the novelty, particularity and excitement faded away. It was born from the feelings that seeped in the depths of our soul, into our existence. When acceptance and contradictions of the moment lost its grip on us. It is the sudden deep breath that pauses everything and the moment spreads through our existence. Just the hopping of a little bird, the sudden darkening of the sky in anticipation of monsoon rain, or the woman on the roof taking a moment of pause to look at the sky after hanging the washed clothes. Suddenly we are freed from the moment; something rises like the swelling tide. It is a book when feelings and remembrance become the reflection of each other.

The book starts with the collage from cut-out photos with pastels and text. Delving into scattered memories and realizations, we forged a nonlinear storyline of places embarking on a slow journey. The exploration pushed our inner and outer boundaries, confronting vulnerabilities. It spans across multiple spaces having been interconnected through memories or absence of it. One memory has led to the recollection of another from an entirely different time and place. The places have all bled into a single collage made of vivid yet intangible moments. Perhaps, it is not about a specific place at all, but more about the idea of the place itself. The new context of the experience is created with writings by three protagonists.

© Laila Nahar

© Laila Nahar

© Laila Nahar

© Laila Nahar

© Laila Nahar

Rituals: Face to Faith and Puja
Tanveer Khondker & Laila Nahar

Face to Faith

When religion is reduced to an individual, when the religious rituals and categorizations are taken away; what remains in the heart of a pilgrim? What remains between a man* and the god? Is it still of significance what the man* is called or the God is named? The book attempts to understand and capture the sublime calmness and depth in the connection of a soul to the oneness.

I was trying to grasp and capture what is there in the shades of faith in the pilgrims of the old city of Jerusalem. To me, I see familiar expression on every pilgrim’s face – on the western wall, inside the Dome of Rock and the Church of Holy Sepulchre. It was of deep faith, vulnerability of human existence and, lamenting the loss of ancient cause. The old city has three of the world’s most important religious sites. Just behind the Wailing Wall which is considered the holiest for Jews, I could see the glittering Dome of the Rock, which houses the rock from where Muslims believe the prophet Mohammed ascended  to heaven. And only minutes away is the pilgrim-thronged Via Dolorosa (Way of Sorrows), which follows the Stations of the Cross to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, on the site where Jesus is believed to have been crucified.

By end of day, to me, all faces in the sacred sites of Christianity, Jewish and Islam became one – every pilgrim in the congregations or prayers was same to me. It is painful to conceive, for centuries, religions fight over the narratives of Jerusalem and the custody of its stones.

The outside of the book stands as a wall depicting the walled city of Jerusalem while the inside of the accordion shows the pilgrims devoted into rituals from three religion.

*The origin of the word man is gender neutral

© Laila Nahar

© Laila Nahar

© Laila Nahar

© Laila Nahar

© Laila Nahar

Rituals: Face to Faith and Puja

The ritual of puja is founded in religion, but it is far more expansive in the lives of Hindu culture. It runs deep through personal, family and social life. It is the rituals of love, blessings, togetherness and health; the search for enlightenment and depth; seeking meaning to life and death. It is joyous, it is humbling and it is liberating from personal constraints. It is submission to connections to within and to without.

The rituals of puja are means to comprehend and appreciate our spiritual self and the connection to oneness. It is to understand that the pride and individuality is an illusion. It is not that homage is paid to multiple gods but it is to view and experience the oneness through multiple windows.

It is like the soothing translucent aachal of her saree that wraps as all in her warmth.

© Laila Nahar

© Laila Nahar

© Laila Nahar

© Laila Nahar

© Laila Nahar

© Laila Nahar

© Laila Nahar

© Laila Nahar

© Laila Nahar

About the artist –

Laila Nahar is a lens-based artist and bookmaker in California, USA. She lived her life in stark cultural contrast, born and brought up in Bangladesh and eventually migrating to the USA. She is primarily a self-taught photographer and book-artist exploring belonging, memory, cultural and collective identity. Her background from Bangladesh continues to shape her artistic identity and her work goes back to her roots in the Indian subcontinent, namely Bangladesh and India.

Laila’s handmade photo artist booksappeared in several exhibitions, including Griffin Museum of Photography, Photobookjournal.com, UnBound13! Candela Books + Gallery Exhibit and has won several awards, including Lucie Photo Book Prize Independent Category, DUMMY AWARD24 Shortlist, Athens Photo Festival APhF:24 Finalist, 19^th Singapore International Photo Festival Finalist etc. Her books are in permanent collections of several libraries and museums, including University of Colorado Libraries (Boulder), The Fleet Library (RISD), Boatwright Memorial Library (University of Richmond, Virginia), Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), Harvey Milk Photo Book Center amongst others.

Laila attended CODEX 2024 with seven of her handmade artist photo books.

Each year we celebrate our members creativity with our annual members juried exhibition. This year we had an overwhelming amount of exceptional entries, making our decisions difficult to narrow to a select few.

This year, in addition to the 68 member artists on the walls of the museum in Winchester, we are pleased to present an online exhibition highlighting 64 more member artists. Of the over 300 members who submitted photographs, between the in person and online exhibitions we highlight 136 members creativity.

The artists included in our online exhibition are –

Golnaz Abdoli, Barry Berman, Jean M. Bernstein, John Blom, Robin Boger, Christine Breslin, Teresa Camozzi, Jeanne Carey, Jesse Carter, Tom Cawthon, Jaina Cipriano, Bill Clark, Claudia Rippee, Kelly Conlin, Lee Cott, Ashley Craig, Lee Day, Carol Eisenberg, Lawrence Elbroch, Andrew Epstein, Jose Mila Espinoza, Anne Evans, Teri Figliuzzi, Joan Fitzsimmons, Trish Gannon, Lisa Gizara, Adam Gooder, Katherine Gulla, Wenda Habenicht, Al Hiltz, Jeannie Hutchins, Steve Jacobson, Gail Jenner, Cami Johnson, Amisha Kashyap, Kay Kenny, Sasha Knittel, Molly Lamb, Emily Laux, Al Levin, Mark Levinson, Steve Lewent, Anna Litvak-Hinenzon, Lyn Swett-Miller, Benita Mayo, Kay McCabe, Lisa McCord, Lisa Miller, Donna Marie Mironchuk, Laila Nahar, Jose Mila-Espinoza, Linda Hammett Ory, Linda Plaisted, Abby Raeder, Lisa Redburn, Sepand Rezazadeh, Kaya Sanan, Jessica Sarrazin, Lynn Saville, Anastasia Shik, Walter Silver, Ron St. Jean, JP Terlizzi, Robert Tomlinson, Elizabeth Wiese, Marsha Wilcox and Marjorie Wolfe

Featuring works by Teri Figliuzzi, Evy Huppert, Emily Laux, Leslie Gleim, Laila Nahar, Shelagh Howard, Donna Tramontozzi, Marsha Wilcox, Mandi Ballard and Kym Ghee

Curated by Aline Smithson

This exhibition brings together a group of female photographers who delve into the layered terrain of existence—traversing the visible and invisible, the personal and the cosmic. Their work maps the contours of human presence across time and space: from ancient galaxies to the mountains of Chile and volcanoes in Hawaii; from landscapes etched with memory and transformation to intimate encounters with the human body and self-expression.
The Topography of Being Human draws inspiration from the concept of topography—the detailed mapping of a surface—reimagined here as a metaphor for the human condition. The artists in this exhibition excavate these contours, revealing the emotional, cultural, environmental, and philosophical dimensions that shape who we are.
Their images explore the interconnections between self and other, memory and place, species and system. They examine how environments reflect our histories and how human actions reshape the world around us—from the spread of invasive species to the quiet transformations of a walk in the park.
This exhibition is a celebration of perception and presence—a meditation on our moment in time, our place on Earth and in the heavens, and the feminine perspective on the layered experiences of being human.

Teri Figulizzi – North Woods is a remote sanctuary within Central Park, where the relentless energy of New York City softens into stillness. In the hush following a snowfall, the scene transforms—ephemeral, pristine, and profoundly moving. Through captured images interwoven with metallic threads and delicate papers, I seek to preserve that luminous calm and the serene essence of winter. My work is a tribute to nature’s subtle strength and the fragile, enduring beauty that often goes unnoticed.

© Teri Figluzzi

© Teri Figluzzi

© Teri Figluzzi

© Teri Figluzzi

Marsha Wilcox – Ancient Light
Vincent van Gogh said, “For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.” I have loved looking at the night sky all my life. In this time of relentless news-cycles, political unrest and social turmoil, the majesty of the universe reminds me that although we are insignificant and transient, we are connected to something infinitely larger and timeless.

NGC7380 Wizard Nebula SHO – Hubble palette

NGC7635 Bubble Ha Oiii

Veil Nebula Mosaic RASA NGC6960 HOO

LDN1622 Ha, Lum

M51 LRGB Ha

Donna Tramontozzi – DEEP TIME
Climate change is real, but it won’t destroy the Earth. It will change the Earth, but the Earth will endure as it has endured comets, asteroids, mass extinctions and tectonic shifts. This belief gives me comfort when I feel my boundaries disappear and I become a part of a vast and changing universe.

Approaching Grey Glacier

Dueling Pinnacles

Meeting

Ice and Rock

Movement

Emily Laux – HOME INVASIONS is a speculative narrative about botanical biodiversity. In Home Invasions, I imagine a world in which humans have succumbed completely to “plant blindness,” a British botanical term that refers to the human tendency to ignore plants. At the heart of my creative process is the staging of temporary installations of invasive plants in rooms where the human residents coexist with plant life, either unaware or only vaguely conscious of the intrusion of vines, branches, berries and leaves.

Porcelain Berry Study

Japanese Knotweed Room

Bittersweet Room

Air Potato Shower

Porcelain Berry Room

Evy Huppert – Atlas of Remembered Dreams explores rediscovering fifty-year-old memories hidden in overexposed, weather-damaged 35 mm black and white film rolls holding images from a 10,000- kilometer nine month backpacking road/rail/ferry trip from Ireland to India on $5/day. Unable afterwards to print from the resulting almost opaque, disappointing negatives, I left them to curl their way into old age in an old family trunk for decades. Then, entering old age myself and becoming the family archivist, I realized a digital film scanner and digital editing tools might open these analog images. One by one, a hundred scans of curly negatives slowly became a hundred windows to the past. Memories of each place and event I had recorded on the long eastward road surfaced like remembered dreams, gritty and foggy, often filmed through the dirty windows of trains, busses, and ferries. The project is ongoing.

Departure, Inshere

Fortress, Heraklion

Women and Babies, Macedonia

Train from the Train, Turkey

Tea House, Herat, Afghanistan

Shelagh Howard – The Secret Keepers were created through seven stages of editing, printing, reworking and reprinting: an intentionally arduous process mirrors the average of seven attempts it takes to permanently leave an abusive partner.

Combining digital long exposures, tintypes and sliver prints, this project guides us into discussion about intimate partner abuse, including psychological abuse and coercive control, moving this epidemic out of the shadows and into the light.

These images embody not only what is difficult to put into words, but also what it’s not safe for me to say. Holding secrets in their silent embrace, they reveal only what we are brave enough to see, containing answers to questions that we must find the courage to start asking.

Faultlines

Illusory Truth

No Hard Feelings

Such Great Heights

Truly Madly Deeply

Laila Nahar – Lost Space Living in Our Mind is about living in a place and the experience while revealing the place as both a subject and a collaborator. The photographs emerged when the novelty, particularity and excitement faded away. It was born from the feelings that seeped in the depths of our soul, into our existence. When acceptance and contradictions of the moment lost its grip on us. It is the sudden deep breath that pauses everything and the moment spreads through our existence. Just the hopping of a little bird, the sudden darkening of the sky in anticipation of monsoon rain, or the woman on the roof taking a moment of pause to look at the sky after hanging the washed clothes. Suddenly we are freed from the moment; something rises like the swelling tide. It became a book when feelings and remembrance become the reflection of each other.

backwards and forwards

The shadow of the friend

A present through past

Into the blur

Home walks with me, Away walks with me

Kym Ghee – Unsilenced is a documentation of the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, West Virginia, using multiple segments of images to expand the storytelling. This decaying institution, located in the midst of wild Appalachian Mountains, is a site where beauty and tragedy coexisted for the people who were committed to the institution, particularly women. Walking through the grounds, there is a strong but silent presence of the women who were too often committed not for madness, but for annoying their husbands, resisting the roles society prescribed to them, defying the expectations of their time. Labeled as insane, many were never released, living out their lives and dying within the asylum’s walls, forgotten and unheard.

No Privacy

Little Sad Secrets

Whitewashed

Group Project

Wash Away My Sins

Mandi Ballard – Shift
Through:
creation of images and objects, I am on a journey to express the intangible.
Following a pathway alone, exploring the Mystery.
 The struggle is me.

Leslie Gleim – Life of the Land is an ongoing body of work from Hawai‘i Island that tells the story of Earth’s evolution through a bird’s-eye perspective, photographed from a helicopter. It unfolds as a creation story — showcasing the land’s fiery birth, transformation, and rebirth. It speaks of the land’s beginnings, transformation, adaptation, and resilience — where past and present converge to raise questions about the future. This landscape becomes a microcosm, reflecting the natural and human forces shaping the fate of our planet.

Life of the Land I

Life of the Land II

Life of the Land III

Life of the Land IV

Life of the Land V

The Griffin Museum of Photography is pleased to present Far from the Eyes, Close to the Heart, an online exhibition featuring the work of Ivorian-Rwandan conceptual artist and photographer Jean-Yves Gauze. Gauze’s project is an emotional elegy honoring his mother and a profound exploration of memory, permanence and erasure. Blurring photographs of family albums, Gauze’s opaque images makes visible the emotional weight of a lifetime marked by loss, grief and continued healing.

Project Statement
I was a three-month-old baby when I lost my mother, a woman of Rwandan descent. I never had the chance to know her personally, but her memory lives on through a family photo album passed down from my grandmother. Growing up without her was a painful journey, marked by years of grief. It wasn’t until All Saints’ Day in 2023, when my father first took me to her grave, that I began the process of healing. This pivotal moment helped me confront my long-held sorrow.

Inspired by Mame-Diarra Niang’s Léthé series on memory and forgetting, I reinterpreted my mother’s archived photographs. By scanning and blurring them, these portraits now stand as an abstract testament to her dual existence: both physically absent yet eternally present in my heart. This cathartic series, Far from the Eyes, Close to the Heart, reflects my healing journey and honors my mother’s memory through photography.

Far from the Eyes, Close to the Heart #10

Far from the Eyes, Close to the Heart #2

Far from the Eyes, Close to the Heart #9

Far from the Eyes, Close to the Heart #6

Far from the Eyes, Close to the Heart #8

Far from the Eyes, Close to the Heart #7

Far from the Eyes, Close to the Heart #4

Far from the Eyes, Close to the Heart #5

Far from the Eyes, Close to the Heart #3

Far from the Eyes, Close to the Heart #1

Artist Biography
Jean-Yves Gauze (b. 1997, Côte d’Ivoire) is an Ivorian-Rwandan conceptual artist and photographer based in Abidjan. He began his artistic journey with photography and further developed his skills through the Africa Foto Fair workshops curated by renowned photographer Aida Muluneh. Through a conceptual and critical approach, Gauze’s work explores the dynamic interplay of digital technologies, visual culture, and memory in shaping our relationship with images. His work has recently gained recognition in esteemed publications such as No! Wahala Magazine, Tender Photo, and Quadro Magazine.

The Griffin Museum of Photography is pleased to present an online exhibition featuring photographs by Russian artist Yulia Spiridonova. Her project, Unseen Presence: Homeland Hues documents the upheaval caused by the Russian military intervention in Ukraine. Her images illuminate the challenges and resilience of Russian expatriates in the midst of international conflict by photographing the Russian diaspora in Boston.

Unseen Presence: Homeland Hues

When Russia announced the beginning of its “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine—a euphemism the government uses for war—any opposition to the aggression became a punishable offense. Most of my friends and I felt we had no choice but to leave the country as a sign of protest. Our communities were uprooted and scattered across different continents, countries, cities, and time zones. Many of us have lost our jobs, and our lives revolve around problems with visas, passports, work permits, and financial instability.

We live in a perpetual state of insecurity, but are unwilling to return home out of fear of being drafted into the army, or jailed for our artwork or comments on social media. In the extensive history of repression, dating back to the philosophers’ ships which transported expelled intellectuals in the early days of the USSR, Russian immigrants living in exile have faced the ongoing challenge of performing a constant act to camouflage their identity and remain invisible.

Feeling alienated under these precarious living conditions, I am rebuilding my community by photographing members of the current Russian diaspora in Boston. I find them through Telegram chats and occasional events. Since a lot of the people I photograph have legal issues being present in the US, I ask them to collaborate on how much they are willing to reveal their identity. I photograph them in neutral territory—streets, parks, parking lots, or studios—in places that are anonymous and empty.

The events of last year thrust us into a nomadic lifestyle. Without a clear sense of how long we can stay, most of us do not have much with us. We try to blend in by mimicking natives, yet everyone can identify our accent. My work is a visual study of the Russian community—identifiable, present, and opaque at the same time.

About the artist

Yulia Spiridonova is a multimedia lens-based artist, working across photography, collage, and installation. She holds a Post-Baccalaureate certificate and an MFA in Photography from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where she earned the Abelardo Morell Thesis Prize (2024). She received fellowships from Anderson Ranch (2023) and MASS MoCA Studios (2024). Based in Boston, she currently works as a Teaching Assistant at Harvard’s Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies.