June 13 – September 1, 2024
Reception for the Artist – June 22, 6 to 8pm
Catalog of works available
A 29th Annual Member’s Juried Exhibition prize winner, Lynne Breitfeller mesmerized us with her haunting black and white images, engaging in us the mystery of what is and what was. Learning the story behind them engaged us more, bringing technical process, along with emotion and loss and renewal as new objects to the conversation we have with these images. We are thrilled to fill the Griffin Gallery with this work, and produce a catalog of the images and text to be available during the exhibition.
After the Fire: Water Damaged, explores photographs as memory by examining the shape-shifting potential of altered images. As a result of a fire above my studio, water impacted my negatives destroying a third of my archive. Much was discarded, but I retained a collection of the work.
During the pandemic, I rediscovered the kept artifacts. Water on emulsion transformed their compositions and morphed the remains into new forms and meanings shaped by happenstance.
By working with the damaged pieces, I came to terms with the loss of my photographic legacy and saw the images anew. The memory of what was had shifted into something different. Our experience of remembering the past can change each time it is revisited, it is elastic.
This series made me consider ideas of transience and new incarnations, the impermanence of possessions, and memory.
About Lynne Breitfeller
Lynne Breitfeller is a photographer who explores human relationships, memory, loss, transience, and humor in her work. In the series After the Fire: Water Damaged, she examines the shape-shifting potential of altered images. The title refers to the fire that occurred above the artist’s studio, which destroyed her archive. The photographs were forever altered by water on emulsion and transformed into new forms and meanings through happenstance. The physical alteration of these images reflect the idea that our experience of remembering the past can change each time it is revisited. Lynne Breitfeller states, this series made her “consider ideas of transience and new incarnations, the impermanence of possessions, and memory.” The exhibition invites the viewer to reconsider the elasticity of memory and discover new meanings out of “damaged” photographs.
Lynne Breitfeller lives in New Jersey. She received her B.A. in English from William Paterson University and studied photography at the International Center for Photography (NY), Los Angeles Center for Photography (CA), and Maine Media College (MA). After a two-decade career in text book publishing, she returned to the visual arts. Her work has been exhibited at The Griffin Museum of Photography (MA), Center for Fine Art Photography and Colorado Photographic Arts Center (CO), Vermont Center for Photography (VT), Los Angeles Center for Photography, and Marin Museum of Contemporary Art (CA), and Montclair Art Museum (NJ) amongst others. She was recognized in Photolucida’s 2023 Critical Mass Top 50, received first place in Soho Photo National Competition 2023, and was a finalist 2022 Lucie Foundation’s Open Call 2022, Portrait Category. Her work has been featured in Lenscratch, Fotofilmic, Analog Forever, Silvergrain Classics, SHOTS, and All About Photo magazines.
