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.

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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.

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

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

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

The Griffin Museum of Photography is delighted to showcase a curated selection of dynamic and inventive cyanotypes employing abstract gestures in camera-less photography. With selections made form over 600 submissions, Cyanotype Currents: Contemporary Abstractions in Cameraless Photography offers an exploration of contemporary abstract visual languages in cyanotype-making today. The exhibition presents works from 40 artists working all over the world, featuring artists from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Israel, Netherlands, New Zealand, Scotland, Switzerland, The Bahamas, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Cyanotype Currents:
Contemporary Abstractions in Cameraless Photography

Alan Wyllie • Andrea Moore • Annabel Pretty • Annette Wijdeveld • Ashlee Whitehead • Ben Stezaker • Cristina Sáez • D.E. Todd • David W Simpson • Ella Barnes • Ellen Barratt • Haein Songégé • Holly Sandiford • Jamie Cabreza • Kadra Ochoa • Katama Murray • Kim Herringe • Kristin Linnea Backe • Linda Jarrett • Lisa Helland • Maya Ciarrocchi • Michelle Mansour • Mila Dorfman • Natalie Goulet • Dora Duan • Nelly Haikal • Patricia Gilhooly • Paola Davila • Vanessa Thompson • Yao Tong • Kiyomi Yatsuhashi • Stephanie Cruz Mendez • Sarah Pfohl • Adair Freeman Rutledge • Jenna Meacham • Kristina Sumfleth • Camilla Jerome • Albert Sanchez • Harley Ngai Grieco • Jackson Lang Fischbach

About the Curator

Vicente Cayuela is an artist and photo editor working across various photographic platforms to promote and disseminate photographic work. His work has been exhibited and published by platforms and institutions such as Lenscratch, Fraction, Altiba-9 Contemporary, Analog Forever Magazine, Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, PhotoPlace Gallery, and others. He has received numerous accolades, fellowships, and scholarships, including the Emerging Artist Award in Visual Arts from the Saint Botolph Club Foundation, a Lenscratch Honorable Mention Student Prize, and an Atlanta Celebrates Photography Portfolio Review Equity Scholarship. Since 2023, he has been a juror at the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers’ Scholastic and Writing Awards in the Massachusetts Region. In addition to his artistic practice, he has contributed to the development of exhibitions and exhibition materials at institutions such as the Rose Art Museum, TCNHS, MASS MoCA, and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

The 226th Anna Atkins Birthday Exhibition

To honor Anna Atkins‘ pioneering contributions at the intersection of art, science, and education, the Griffin Museum of Photography and LENSCRATCH Fine Art Photography Daily have co-organized an online exhibition, inviting artists worldwide to showcase their finest cyanotype works in celebration of her enduring legacy. Rooted in Atkins’ fascination with botany and the natural world, this exhibition reflects her era-defining spirit of inquiry and deep curiosity for nature.

The works selected for The 226th Anna Atkins Birthday exhibition pay homage to Atkins’ botanical studies and her artistic exploration of the natural world, focusing mostly on contemporary botanical works and works concerned with aquatic environments.

Due to an overwhelming response — nearly 700 submissions — three additional accompanying exhibitions were curated form the original submission pool, showcasing the great diversity in subject matter of this years call for entry.

• Expanded Cyanotypes: New Directions in Cyanotype Making
• Cyanotype Currents: Contemporary Abstractions in Camera-less Photography
• Blue Outtakes: A Cyanotype Collection.

In addition, we are thrilled to bring part of this exhibition in person to our satellite gallery in Downtown Crossing, Boston, MA. Elemental Blues: Contemporary Cyanotypes, surveying the works of Upstate New York and New England-based artists: Anna Leigh Clem, Brett Windham, Bryan Whitney, Julia Whitney Barnes, Sally Chapman and Cynthia Katz.

Congratulations to the selected artists and thank you to everyone who submitted.
We hope you enjoy looking at these selections as much as we did looking at them.

The 226th Anna Atkins Birthday Exhibition Gallery

In Lieu of Flowers is an ongoing series of memorial portraits of the transpeople murdered in the United States and Puerto Rico due to transphobia, state violence, and neglect. Part mourning ritual and part photograph, I use the roses from my garden and portraits primarily made by the subjects themselves to create a series of anthotypes, images created using photosensitive material from plants and the sun that cannot be fixed, therefore will inevitably fade. This process is an act of devotion and extended witnessing over the course of the days- to weeks-long exposures. When I move the prints from window to window each day to keep them in direct sunlight, I spend time looking into each person’s eyes, connecting with their joy and grieving for their absence. The sun, the source of life, cannot revive them, yet the sunlight that creates each anthotype is the same light that once illuminated each original selfie, connecting us to one another. The resulting work is an examination of community, loss, time, and the impossible effort to extend both the life of my roses and the memory of these stolen lives.

The images below are only a small portion of the more than 100 transpeople killed in 2020 and 2021 alone.

Caleb Cole is a Midwest-born, Boston-based artist whose work addresses the opportunities and difficulties of queer belonging. Using collage, assemblage, photography, and video, they bring secondhand objects and media together for chance encounters, deliberately placing materials from different time periods into conversation with one another as a means of thinking about a lineage of queer culture while resisting a singular progressive genealogy. Caleb has received an Artadia Finalist Award, Hearst 8×10 Biennial Award, Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowships, Magenta Flash Forward Foundation Fellowships, and Photolucida Critical Mass Finalist awards, among other distinctions. Caleb exhibits regularly at a variety of national venues and has held solo shows in Boston, New York, Chicago, and St. Louis, among others. Their work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Newport Art Museum, Davis Art Museum, Brown University Art Museum, and Leslie Lohman Museum of Art. Caleb currently teaches at Boston College and Lesley University.

Stas Ginzburg is a multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, NY. He immigrated to the U.S. from Russia as a queer Jewish refugee. In 2006, Ginzburg graduated from Parsons School of Design in NYC, where he studied photography. Since then, his practice has expanded to include sculpture, installation, and performance art. When the protests for racial justice ignited in May 2020, Ginzburg returned to photography to document faces of young activists fighting for Black liberation. He has focused on portrait photography ever since, with an emphasis on the LGBTQIA+ community.

In the fall of 2022, a selection of Ginzburg’s portraits of young queer and trans activists was exhibited at Broward College in Florida. His work was also shown at the Queens Museum and Photoville as part of ‘Live Pridefully, Caribbean Equality Project,’ in 2021 and 2022, respectively. Currently, his photography is on display at the National Portrait Gallery in London as part of ‘Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize’ and Pace University Art Gallery, NY as part of ‘Critical Connections: Protest Photography Past + Present.’

Ginzburg’s images are featured in ‘Revolution Is Love: A Year of Black Trans Liberation,’ a book published by Aperture in the Fall of 2022.

Sanctuary

For the past four years, I have been making portraits of the LGBTQIA+ community during various marches and rallies advocating for the liberation and equality of all oppressed and marginalized peoples. My new series, titled Sanctuary, shifts my focus from the streets to the homes of queer, trans, and non-binary individuals, where they are free to exist in their truth, away from the threat of police violence and the external homophobia and transphobia that remain deeply rooted in our society.

In these new intimate portraits, I highlight the diversity of the queer and trans experience. Abby is the first transgender rabbi and activist from New York City. John is a bisexual young man from Ohio who lost his left eye due to police violence. Jermaine is a queer disabled organizer born with cerebral palsy who rallied hundreds of people to march in support of Black disabled lives in 2020 and 2021. Jeremy fled gender-based violence in their hometown of New Mexico and now lives in a van along the California coast. Pamela is a transgender Latinx sex worker living in Jackson Heights, Queens.

To create these portraits, I spend time with each individual in their living space, engaging in conversation to build trust and understanding. This approach allows me to capture authentic moments that reflect their true selves and the environments they have crafted, giving the viewer an intimate look into the bedrooms and living rooms of the LGBTQIA+ community. The interiors become as important as the people, creating an archive of objects and memorabilia that continue to tell the narrative of the queer and trans experience.

My long-term goal for these photographs is to present them in book form and as a traveling exhibition. I want people from all walks of life to engage with these diverse perspectives of human existence. At this critical time in our country, when trans healthcare and well-being are under attack and are being weaponized for political gain, it is essential for this community representation to exist and be seen.

Jason, 2023

Jason Rodriguez, actor and dancer, with his birds Chichi and Ricki in his childhood bedroom, Washington Heights, NYC, 2023.

Neptunite, 2024

Neptunite, a gender-fluid activist and caretaker, in their living room, Washington Heights, NYC, 2024.

Darian Darling, 2024

Darian Darling, a transgender make-up artist and collector of all things Barbie, in her living room, Central Los Angeles, CA, 2024.

Yves and Banjo, 2024

Yves, a model, singer, and activist, with his foster pit bull Banjo in his studio apartment, Lower East Side, NYC, 2024.

Paris, 2024

Paris L’Hommie, a transgender artist and performer in her basement apartment, Bushwick, Brooklyn, 2024.

John, 2024

John in his bedroom, River North, Chicago, 2024. John was shot in the face with a bean bag round by a sheriff’s deputy during a BLM protest in Cleveland, OH, in May 2020. He lost his left eye, and his eyelid was reconstructed from the skin of his ear.

Rinor, 2023

Rinor, dancer and voguer, in their room, Ridgewood, Queens, 2023.

Abby, 2024

Abby Stein, a transgender rabbi, activist, and author, in her bedroom in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, 2024. Raised as a boy in an Ultra-Orthodox Hasidic community, Abby left at the age of 21 and transitioned three years later.

Adam, 2024

Adam Eli, activist and an award-winning author, in their living room, Greenwich Village, NYC, 2024.

Jermaine, 2024

Jermaine Greaves, founder and organizer of Black Disabled Lives Matter, in his studio apartment, Downtown Brooklyn, 2024. Jermaine was born with cerebral palsy.

Alexey, 2024

Alexey Kim, a photographer from Kazakhstan, in their bedroom, Harlem, NYC, 2024.

West and Grimm, 2024

West, a transgender man, with his cat Grimm in their living room, Kensington, Brooklyn, 2024.

Armana, 2024

Armana, a Pakistani transgender model, DJ, and activist, in her living room, Harlem, NY, 2024.

Qween Jean, 2023

Qween Jean, a transgender costume designer, activist, and founder of Black Trans Liberation Kitchen, in her workroom, Crown Heights, Brooklyn, 2023.

Maxwell, 2023

Maxwell Vice, an artist, activist, and a DJ, with their dog in their bedroom, Bushwick, Brooklyn, 2023.

Pamela, 2023

Pamela, a Latinx transgender sex worker, in her room, Jackson Heights, Queens, 2023.

Keith, 2024

Keith Parris, an amputee model, author, and make-up influencer in his bedroom, Crown Heights, Brooklyn, 2024. Keith was born without a tibia in his left leg.

Euro, 2024

Euro, a transgender fitness coach, in his temporary housing, East Flatbush, Brooklyn, 2024.

Jeremy, 2024

Jeremy Salazar, a non-binary fashion designer and skater, in their mobile home, outside of Malibu, CA, 2024. Jeremy escaped gender-based violence in their hometown in New Mexico and now lives in a van along the California coast.

In the cannon of photography when queerness is invited to the table to be discussed, it often is observed through the voyeuristic lens of a queer male photographing a fellow queer male in the nude. Though rejoicing in the body and sexual experience that comprises a slice of queer life proves valuable, an over glorification of these images minimizes the complexity of the queer identity. Growing up in the Midwest, queer love was reduced to a purely physical and sexual presence – something deemed disturbing by the hegemonic gaze, I transgress this to propose an expanded view of queerness in the landscape as an embodiment of my experience.

bell hooks puts it best when stating that “[being] Queer’ [is] not as being about who you’re having sex with (that can be a dimension of it); but ‘queer’ as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and that has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.”
What does queer love look like? How can we position queer love as a natural component within our more than human world? How do I tell my partner I love and long for him across hundreds of miles of distance? Through the photographic investigation of the Indiana Dunes, the site of my engagement, and the Iowan prairie, the place me and my partner now reside, I challenge oversimplified views of queer love by expanding naturalist heteronormative narratives of the landscape. Furthering this conversation, my partner and I perform still-lifes in our interior domestic space in search for a view of queerness that implores the romantic, complex, effeminate, and saccharine. Queerness isn’t detached from the landscape but is innate to our world and its inhabitants, from the cellular to the sunset.

Kyle Agnew is an Indiana native and received his BFA in photography from the University of Indianapolis in Indianapolis, Indiana. Kyle’s practice is a colorful, sentimental, cluttered closet where dreams can be written into reality through our imaginations. Kyle often works from a large archive of collective familial objects passed down from their grandmother to his mother, and now to him. They ponder this collection and its authenticity to all aspects of his identity, as well as using it as source material to create new queer fairytales and express a more multifaceted idea of queer love. Through exploration of the motifs and symbols these kitschy objects hold Kyle implores their audience to meditate on ideas of gender signaling, heteronormativity, and the nuances of queer love.