The Virtual Gallery

Laila Nahar | Artistry & Vision in Handmade Photobooks

Posted on July 8, 2025

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.

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

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.

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.

31st Annual Online Members Exhibition

Posted on June 20, 2025

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, Linda Hammet 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

Atelier 2.2025 Online Exhibition

Posted on June 16, 2025

We are pleased to present the work of our inaugural class of Atelier 2 students. Instructor Traer Scott led the class through a year of portfolio development, critique and conversations with professional mentors, book designers, gallerists and editors.

We present the work of Tony Attardo, Judith Donath, Dena Eber, Tira Khan, Kay McCabe, Victor Rosansky, Gordon Saperia, and Li Shen.

Dena Eber: Echoes From the Land

When I moved onto new property in May of 2023, I encountered native ancient energy that at times reflected war and greed but also revealed spirituality and love. The only other time I experienced this was in Israel, the land of my heritage. When I started this artwork, I sought to learn from the energies encrusted in the land; where I live as an inhabitant, my country as an American, and Israel as a Jew. My larger project has each of these places as a part (where I live, my country, Israel), plus an epilogue with reflections for peace. Included are samples from each part.

As the events in southern Israel and Gaza on October 7^th, 2023 unfolded, my work took on new meaning, and I searched for parallels in time, at least 2000 to 3000 years in each place, to better understand human energy, behaviors, and their belief in God. I began to think about my place in time, reflecting on whose land it is anyway. Even though I hold the deed to the land where I live, in my heart I know that I don’t own it. My project is about uncovering the human conflict between wanting a place to call home that expresses one’s roots, and a perceived ownership of land.

My lens reveals small truths that lie in front of me, that a greater understanding of the past embedded in the land is entwined to ultimate peace. Each time I click the shutter, connect to the land, and converse with the spirits of the past, I am committing a political act. As in prayer, I give thanks and ask forgiveness at once.

Judith Donath: Aesthetic Selection

Aesthetic Selection is a fine art series of layered flower images, each composition designed to interpose shape and texture, creating a shifting portrait of floral form and botanical detail.

To make these images, I start by photographing living flowers outdoors in natural light. I combine the chosen photographs as full frames, selectively blending the layers using a spatial-frequency-based process.

Every spring, after the long colorless New England winter, I am entranced by the emergence of green shoots, and find the successive waves of blossoms to be photographically irresistible. This attraction is not surprising, for flowers have evolved to be enticingly beautiful. Rooted in place, plants must lure others to assist their reproductive process, to carry pollen from the stamens of one flower to the pistil of another. The beauty and variety of floral forms is the evolutionary result of the competition to attract various pollinators—insects, birds, and now humans, too—with wildly differing sensory preferences and anatomical abilities.

I am far from alone in finding flowers to be an fascinating subject for art: does the world need another picture of a rose or tulip? Yet this familiarity can make us blind to really looking at them; we often simply recognize them, without really noticing the fantastic structure and detail of even the most common place blossom. My goal with this project is to create images that entice people to look afresh at these remarkable botanical solutions to the dual goals of pollinator attraction and sexual reproduction.

Kay McCabe: Inheritance

Inheritance is a photographic memoir that ruminates on family, culture and our relationship to the things we keep.

We all have stuff that has been given to us from our ancestors. The question is, what do you with it all? Do you use it, store it, give it away? What began as an exercise in downsizing quickly became a reflection on my family’s ethos. As I rummaged, I heard lessons from my parents and realized that each object had a story to tell. Creative, industrious and loving, my family was also bound by an oppressive social code. Some items I cherish and others are a burden to save, yet tossing them feels as if I am abandoning my past.

I have found myself in a rush of memories, some crystal clear and some murky with time. The old green chair that belonged to my father as a boy, too small and too low to be practical, still sits proudly right by the woodstove. Broken sewing machines, used by my mother to dress her five children gather dust in the closet. Her paintings, his ruby red wine glasses, my grandfather’s ornate dishes from a lost generation, wedding photos, baby photos, outdated anatomical drawings and history books- the list of things goes on and on. Each object tells a story and connects the past to the present.

My children are not going to want these heirlooms, yet purging is more difficult than I thought. Like all good memoirs, I hope this reflection resonates.

Li Shen: Into the Unknown

I believe that everyone carries an inner world—a personal, illogical gallery of subliminal life, veiled in dreams, shaped by experience, yet composed of more than memory. Most of the time, this world remains inaccessible, buried beneath waking consciousness. Perhaps it is what psychologists call the unconscious.

In my conscious mind, I sense the world teetering toward an uncertain future. Climate change, authoritarianism, and other looming crises threaten to unravel what once felt stable. My immediate response is to cling to normalcy, to suppress dread and despair. Yet, these anxieties continue to be processed beneath the surface, emerging in fleeting ways—through dreams, word associations, and slips of the tongue.

Lately, my artistic practice begins with collecting objects—not for their material value, but for their beauty, quirkiness, or quiet insistence. The images in this series are in-camera compositions of these found objects, arranged as small dioramas atop my bedroom dresser rather than assembled digitally. This hands-on approach is integral to my practice, – tactile, real-world constructions giving rise to images that depart from reality.

While I approach each arrangement with intention, often sketching ideas beforehand, the images themselves arise from a deeper place. Certain objects seem to demand inclusion, scratching at the surface of my inner world, insisting on their role within a scene. The resulting photographs feel dreamlike and irrational—fragments of the subconscious made visible. I do not doubt that they are oblique reflections of my suppressed fears, a way for my mind to process what I work so hard to ignore.

For now, my conscious gaze remains averted from the uncertainty ahead, but through these images, the unconscious speaks.

Victor Rosansky:

I create photographs that function like visual symphonies—images that don’t just capture moments but unfold like music over time. By translating rhythmic structures into visual form, I guide the viewer’s gaze much like a composer leads a listener through sound. Whether it’s the order of urban patterns or the vitality of natural chaos, rhythm shapes the emotional tone of my work. My goal is to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary; images that are not just seen but felt.

Even before I press the shutter, I find myself “listening” to a scene—tuning in to its tempo, its dynamics, its emotional tone. Whether it’s the orderly cadence of urban architecture or the unpredictable pulse of nature, each image is crafted to evoke specific emotional responses.

This cross-disciplinary perspective not only sharpens my visual intuition but also invites collaboration—where photographers and musicians can meet in shared creative space, building layered, immersive works that are full of metaphors. For me, rhythm is the connective tissue between image and feeling, sight and sound, stillness and movement—and it is through this rhythm that I find the heartbeat of my art.

Gordon Saperia: Threshold of a Dream

Threshold of a Dream is a series of nonrepresentational landscape images whose origins are deeply rooted in my desire to hold the joyful memory of a specific time and a place. These recollections are guided by imagery seen in my pre-dream state – a phenomenon referred to by scientists as “hypnagogia”. Drifting towards sleep, I often see dimly lit and vaguely familiar landscapes. These visions transform in content and in feel–sometimes quickly and sometimes more slowly. Upon awakening, I have unusually clear memories of them.

The digitally composited images in Threshold of a Dream are complex fusions of elements from my photographs of worldwide landscapes. The process involves replacing one section after another until the entire frame feels both mysterious and congruous. The final form, which can take hours of digital play, blurs the line between photography and painting.

I have walked, photographed, and dreamt in these fantastic places. My hope is that the viewer will take a moment to pause and construct their own story.

Web-based, generative artificial intelligence (AI) was not used to create these images.

Tony Attardo: A Portrait of Place

The American novelist John Steinbeck, reminds us, “You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself”.¹ These words run deep, and bring me back to a very young age when the conversation at our family dinner table wasn’t about food, it was about respect; treating people with dignity and respect no matter what their station in life, what they looked like, where they came from, or where they lived. Today, at 71 years old, this powerful lesson is still the driving force of my photography.

In this body of work, I have created portraits of people’s surroundings and lives in the lesser known small rural and urban places in my home state of New Hampshire. The motivation behind this, and all my work, is to inform, inspire, and to connect cultures and lives that help start conversations about dignity and respect.

These images, a combination of digital monochrome and black and white film, focus on the interplay of light and shadow and detail. They allow the viewer to concentrate on the subjects’ expressions and environment while enhancing an emotional connection.

In each photograph, there are signs of a calm, steady human presence-each with their own character. The buildings serve as a tangible link to the past, offering us a sense of place and continuity, a story of quiet resolve – i.e. a century old granite church, the active brick factory buildings, and a small town hall on a country road. Creating black and white images help transcend time,create emotional depth, and bring people directly into the present.

All of these photographs extend the viewer an invitation into the spaces where one can easily enter and perhaps contemplate who might live here, feel their presence, and imagine their voices. Each photograph, complete with its beauty and complexity, becomes a single thread in a much larger story.

¹From a recent public exhibit, Portland Museum of Art 2023

Topography of Being Human

Posted on May 30, 2025

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Jean-Yves Gauze: Far from the Eyes, Close to the Heart

Posted on May 23, 2025

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.

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.

Yulia Spiridonova | Unseen Presence: Homeland Hues

Posted on May 22, 2025

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.

©Yulia Spiridonova
©Yulia Spiridonova
©Yulia Spiridonova
©Yulia Spiridonova
©Yulia Spiridonova
©Yulia Spiridonova
©Yulia Spiridonova
©Yulia Spiridonova
©Yulia Spiridonova

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.

Singular Vision | Secondary School Alliance Exhibition

Posted on May 7, 2025

We celebrate the unique and individual narratives from sixteen New England schools with Singular Vision. These incredible students give us a vision of the medium that provides great promise for photography. Whatever creative path they decide to follow, their vision is one we look forward to. Thank you to all the teachers who inspire these students with their creativity and ability to support them with the tools to express their creativity.

A reception for the students will be held at Groton School on Sunday May 18th from 2 to 4pm. The address is 282 Farmers Row, Groton, MA. The exhibit is in the Dining Hall Building, in the Christopher Brodigan Gallery and lobby.

We have highlighted three students here with recognition of first, second and third place, and each school had one student artist receive an honorable mention.

First Place – JIllian Falcione, Stoughton High School

Second Place – Bain Coyne, Milton Academy

Third Place – Elio Franco Harrinzon, Framingham High School

The schools and students shown here – Honorable Mentions and Award Winners are highlighted with *

Arlington High School – Educator – David Moore | Students – *Sol Yudowski, Edallen Severe, Lucinda Thompson, Moshe Goff

Boston Arts Academy – Educator – Guy Michael Telemaque | Students – Isaac Pina, *Jacqui Garcia Peña, James Dickey, Uirbel De Los Santos

Brimmer and May – Educator – Julie Williams Krishnan | Students – Yihao (Ethan) Qiang, Merrin Lindenfelser, *Rory Coleman, Neil Chen

Buckingham Browne & Nichols School – Educator – Andrew Warren | Students – Shirley Zhu, Alec Bailey & Christian Hernandez, *Caroline Kovacs & Alexis Higgins, Christian Hernandez & Caroline Ko

Cambridge Rindge & Latin School – Educators – Debi Milligan, Cindy Weisbart, Amanda Kilton | Students – *Kate Wheatley, Ronan Muellner, Dori Coplon-Newfield, Rachel Dickie

Dana Hall School – Educator – MaryAnn McQuillan | Students – Karen Altenhoff, *Priscilla Miranda, Sana Shinwari, Uthara Iyengar

Framingham High School – Educator – Scott Alberg | Students – Elio Franco Harrinzon, James Gordon, *Esther Meira Marins, Ashton LaBrecque

Groton School – Educator – Blake Fitch | Students – Seb Lewin, *Alejandro Hassan, Grace Best

Lawrence Academy – Educator – Kes Maro | Students – Eyob Hawgood & *Sophie Widmayer

Marblehead High School – Educator – Leah Bordieri | Students – Evan Carroll, Charlie Roszell, Colin Hart, *Grey Collins

Milton Academy – Educator – Scott Nobles | Students – Bain Coyne, LJ Reddicks, Patrycja Pogorzelska, Montserrat Martínez Vindas

Needham High School – Educator – Tiziana Rozzo | Students – *Cole Davison, Connor Manning, Brandon Ah Kee

Norwood High School – Educator – Saquora Lowe-McLaurin | Students – Nathaniel Kravitz, *Maryam Ozodova, Caroline McCraven, Nancy Patel

Stoughton High School – Educator – J.Stansfield | Students – Nathan Adolphe, Jillian Falcione, Andrew Luyiga, *Angelica Barbosa

The Rivers School – Educator – Sophie Lane | Students – Mika Mustafayev, *Olivia Standish, Will Torres, Stephen Yancey

Weston High School – Aimi Lee, Ben Gardner, *Darya Serov and other students

The Winsor School – Educator – Mia Tinkjian | Students – Caroline Specht, Ellaine Ban, Nell Sparks, Keira Finn

Tony Loreti | Illuminating The Archive

Posted on May 1, 2025

As a photographer I have had a lifelong desire to record the daily life around me. This has principally been in Boston and Cambridge. Like the Boston painter Allan Rohan Crite, I have thought of myself as an artist-reporter, motivated to clearly detail what life looked like in this place at this particular time. I have been drawn to the everyday, to ordinary people going about their lives. To me there is wonder in small things .

I’ve often wished that photography had existed in distant times – say, in colonial Boston or medieval Europe or ancient Greece – to have a record of everyday life in those eras. Looking at the archive of Arthur Griffin was a real pleasure because it spoke to this interest of mine in the recorded past – even if only decades before my own life. In fact, what made researching his work particularly interesting to me was that the city he captured was at once both so similar and so different from the city I have photographed. (Almost every photograph I chose from the Griffin archive was made in Boston). I found that we often photographed people doing the same things, such as looking at books for sale on a sidewalk, hovering over a car engine, waiting on benches in a train station. And often our subjects were photographed in the same location – North Station, the L Street Bathhouse, the Bunker Hill Memorial – even, at times, framed from almost the exact same spot, decades apart. This caused me to reflect on the evolution of a city; what continues, carries on over the years, and what changes, what is new. There are physical and social aspects of Boston in Griffin’s pictures that are remarkably the same as in mine. But there are also differences – in what has changed in the built environment, in the mix of people who make up the city, and in the city’s changing culture. To continue observing and to continue challenging yourself to make a well-framed image of an expressive human moment in this evolving world – like Arthur Griffin did so successfully – is forever satisfying.

About Tony Loreti

Tony Loreti is a Boston-based photographer and photography educator. Born in Beverly, MA, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Filmmaking from Boston University and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Tony recently retired after teaching photography for twenty-five years at the Cambridge School of Weston. His personal photography has been selected for many juried exhibitions and is in both private and public collections. A significant portfolio of his street photography work has been purchased for the collection of the Print Department of the Boston Public Library, and the Cambridge Public Library has also acquired a large number of prints.

Tony continues to work with film and traditional printing in his personal photography. He is deeply committed to the older form of the medium, particularly because of its tangible nature and the look and feel of gelatin silver prints.

Blue Outtakes: A Cyanotype Collection

Posted on March 10, 2025

Blue Outtakes: A Cyanotype Collection

The Griffin Museum of Photography is committed to providing exposure opportunities for artists through monthly online exhibitions in its Virtual Gallery. While not every submitted photograph fits the curatorial vision for a show, we maintain an active record of noteworthy works that deserve recognition. Here, we highlight a selection of compelling submissions to our Anna Atkins Birthday Extravaganza —cyanotypes that, while perhaps not directly responding to or celebrating Atkins’ botanical achievements, captivate with their unique artistry and vision. The photographs showcase the diversity of subject matter explored by contemporary artists, spanning still life, landscape, and portraiture.

PART I
On the Human Form

Part II
Objects, Forms and Silhouettes

PART III
Landscapes

PART IV
Fauna

Expanded Cyanotypes: New Directions in Cyanotype Making

Posted on March 10, 2025

The Griffin Museum of Photography is delighted to present Expanded Cyanotypes: New Directions in Cyanotype Making, a sweeping online exhibition surveying the current state of contemporary cyanotype-making. The exhibition presents a selection of over 60 artists working all over the world, each one creating unique works utilizing cyanotype as part of their processes.

Expanded Cyanotypes:
New Directions in Cyanotype Making

Aline Smithson • Alberto Sanchez • Allison Calteux • Ana Avramova-Pesheva • Annalise Neil • Adrienne Defendi • Beatriz Bellorin • Beth Herman Adler • Brett Day Windham • Carolina Baldomá • Clara Zaragoza • Claudia Hollister • Chloe Cusimano • Chloe Sailor • Colton Rothwell • Cynthia Katz • Dana Cohen • Edie Bresler • Elizabeth Stone • Emma Backer • Ebru Çiçek • Fruma Markowitz • Hannah Lamb • Heidi Kirkpatrick • Iris Grimm • Isabella Mayson • Jackie Neale • Javier Hinojosa • Jillian Abir MacMaster • Jim Cokas • Joachim Froese • Jolie Zinn • Julia Whitney Barnes • Julie Hamel • Jyoti Liggin • Kate Flake • Katherine Akey • Kaylee Peters • Karen Klinedinst • Lisa Tang Liu • Lou Sturges Wilson • Margo Duvall • Marna de Wet • Margaret Albaugh • Michelle Westmark Wingard • Morgan Ford Willingham • Natali Barbee-Bravo • Nobuko Murakami • Olga Andriyash • Paulo Accioly Lins de Barros • Rob Croll • Ramona Zordini • Sally Chapman • Shir Melech • Teri Figliuzzi • Tina Vincent • Ute Lindner • Yuchen Wang