Shows Archive

Nueva Tierra | New Land – Rodrigo Valenzuela

Posted on February 13, 2024

Rodrigo Valenzuela works in the fields of photography, video, and installation. His artistic vision is based on the contradictory genres of documentary and fiction. In his new exhibition, New Land, Valenzuela showcases a series of recently commissioned desert images on canvas. These images delve into the intersecting themes of home, man-made borders, and dystopia.

About Rodrigo Valenzuela –

Rodrigo Valenzuela (b.Santiago, Chile 1982) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, where he is the Associate Professor and Head of the Photography Department at UCLA. Valenzuela has been awarded the 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography and Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship; Joan Mitchell award for painters and sculptors; Art Matters Foundation grant; and Artist trust Innovators Award. Recent solo exhibitions include: New Museum, NY; Lisa Kandlhofer Galerie, Vienna, AU; Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Eugene; Orange County Museum; Portland Art Museum; Frye Art Museum, Seattle. Recent residencies include: Core Fellowship at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture; MacDowell Colony; Bemis Center for contemporary arts; Lightwork; and the Center for Photography at Woodstock.

The Griffin Museum is excited to announce Rodrigo Valenzuela as our first Cummings Fellow. We are grateful to the Cummings Foundation for their support of the arts and the Griffin Museum. The Cummings Residency program highlights artists of diverse backgrounds and using their specific skill set, work to create a photographically based exhibition as a result of their connection to the Griffin Museum, Winchester and surrounding areas, while engaging in critical dialogues about art and culture with both the youth and adult community they inhabit. Using photography as a bridge to building relationships, the Cummings Fellow creates a series of images opening up the pathways to multicultural understanding and acceptance. The museum and its partners are creating a literacy program centered around imagery, using photography as the tool, working with professional artists to talk about their communities, cultures and new and shared origin stories.

Una mexicana en Gringolandia | Ileana Doble Hernandez

Posted on February 13, 2024

Ileana Doble Hernandez‘s socially conscious and interdisciplinary practice includes photography, video and experimental installations. She sees her practice as a form of activism. Ileana creates multimedia projects that explore issues of gun culture, immigration and the imperialistic practices of the United States, from her perspective as a mother and as an immigrant from Mexico, living in the U.S. for more than a decade. She’s interested in the use of art as a way to provoke and challenge viewer’s preconceived representations. By combining non-traditional methods and materials, Ileana explores ways in which artist and audience collaborate. Through her postcards installation more than 500 postcards have been mailed to U.S. elected officials advocating for gun control. Since 2020 She’s been collaborating with Imaginary Lines Project, an ongoing socially engaged artistic endeavor that allows people to share their immigration journey through the U.S./Mexico border. Her works are part of public and private collections and have been published and exhibited in galleries and museums in North America, Europe and Asia. Ileana is a Studio Resident at the Boston Center for the Arts, a 2023 Boston Arts and Business Council Fellow, a 2021 National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Fellow, and the 2019 College of Art and Design Outstanding Graduate Student from Rochester Institute of Technology.

Los Gringos In elementary school I learned that the American continent is only one, it’s not divided between north and south. For us, people of the United States are not Americans, because America is a continent, not a country. “Los Gringos” is a series of street photographs; some of them taken at parades and marches, with whatever camera available, over the more than twelve years that I’ve been living in the U.S. as an immigrant.What I like more about a photograph is that its meaning depends on the context in which it is experienced and on what it is juxtaposed with. When put together, I see these pictures in a very special way, almost as a diary of “America”. By juxtaposing these as diptychs I point to my nuanced perspective and to situations that feel intertwined. A clash between classes, races, genders and beliefs is still present, as it was many years ago, when Robert Frank took the road.

Pollage (Political + Collage) is a growing body of work of small collage pieces made completely analog and their counterparts as transparencies on lightboxes. At my studio, I browse magazines for hours, cutting pieces of pages (pictures or text) that ‘speak to me’. All these clippings go into my red lid box of cutouts, until ready to be summoned. With time, topics start to emerge in my mind, as I make relations by remembering imagery or phrases that I’ve cut out and relate with a topic I’m interested in. It is then when I start putting things together on a page.

Tokie Rome-Taylor: Reclamation

Posted on January 25, 2024

Tokie Rome-Taylor: Reclamation

Challenging the norms of portraiture, Tokie Rome-Taylor’s work centers themes of ethnography, identity, and representation, as well as their intersections with photography’s influence on perception and public history. In these works, Rome-Taylor photographs children of color as her subjects, calling attention to previous hegemonic histories of the Western gaze. Against opulent backgrounds and adorned in regal attire, her subjects radiate an unwavering majesty, confronting biases and addressing racial gaps in traditional art-historical representation. Rome-Taylor’s work explores the perception of self and belonging, and how these begin in childhood.

Rome-Taylor’s work requires thorough ethnographic and historical research, specifically on the material culture and spiritual practice of enslaved individuals in the 19th century. A distinctive aspect is the depiction of children posing with their family heirlooms. These heirlooms bridge the present to the past, connecting viewers to ancestral stories and traditions. Rome-Taylor’s art becomes a multilayered narrative, not just about individual subjects but a broader exploration of cultural and historical contexts. Through meticulous research and thoughtful composition, she crafts visual stories that transcend time, inviting viewers to reflect on the intricate tapestry of identity and heritage.

As you navigate through these images, ask yourself: how often do you see children of color in historical portraiture? And why -or why not- might that be?

About Tokie Rome-Taylor

Interdisciplinary artist Tokie Rome-Taylor explores themes of time, spirituality, visibility and identity through the foundational medium of photography.

Portraiture, set design, and objects all are a part of Tokie’s photographic practice. Through both digital and alternative processes of image making, textiles, and assemblage, she explores the layered complex relationship African Americans in the diaspora have with the western world.

Rome-Taylor’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally with an exhibition record that includes the, The New Gallery at Austin Peay University, The Hammonds House Museum, The Atlanta Contemporary, the Fralin Museum, The Southeastern Museum of Photography, The Griffin Museum of Photography, SP-Foto SP-Arte Fair in São Paulo, Brazil, and the Zuckerman Museum of Art, amongst others. Her work is held in multiple public and private collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, The Fralin Museum at University of Virginia, and the Southeastern Museum of Photography.

Rome-Taylor is a 20+ year veteran educator and working artist.

To see more of Tokie’s portfolio log onto her website and find her on Instagram @tokietstudio

Mark Peterson | Political Theatre

Posted on January 14, 2024

Over the past ten years I have been photographing the presidential candidates as they lead rallies, meet with voters and plead for their votes. I started just before the government shutdown in 2013 at a tea party rally at the U.S. Capitol. Politicians railed against the president and the Affordable Care Act — a show to get a sound bite into the next news cycle.

Joseph Biden greets supporters
at the BidenFest Pre-Steak Fry 9.21.19

Since then I have followed the political spin as it tilts its way to November. Donald Trump’s entrance into the race, taking control of TV talking heads, making the media his press agent, is true Political Theater.

After a Trump rally in Lowell, Mass., a father said to his sons, “Now that was entertaining.” His sons agreed, chiming in with their favorite lines from Trump’s speech. In New Hampshire after Bernie Sanders gave a speech, he walked down the stage stairs, and when he saw photographers there he stopped and raised an arm in a power salute.

The Honorable Pete Buttigieg, Mayor, South Bend, Indiana
Rev. Al Sharpton and the National Action Network in NYC

I want to pull back the curtain and show these politicians as they really are. Even though they are in plain sight, they can hide behind words and carefully arranged imagery to project their vision of America. I am using my camera to cut through the staging of these moments and reveal the cold, naked ambition for power.

About Mark Peterson –

Mark Peterson is a photographer based in New York City. His work has been published in New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, Geo Magazine and other national and international publications. In 2018 he was awarded the W. Eugene Smith grant for his work on White Nationalism. He is the author of two books Acts Of Charity published by Powerhouse in 2004 and Political Theatre which was published by Steidl in the fall of 2016.His work is collected in several museums including The National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. In 2024 Steidl will published his book The Fourth Wall.

The US Capitol reflected in a puddle in Washington DC 4.4.2021

Mark Peterson’s monograph Political Theatre, published in 2016 by Steidl Verlag Publishing can be found on their website alongside his upcoming book The Past is Never Dead. Find him on Instagram @markpetersonpixs

Transcendence: Awakening the Soul

Posted on January 3, 2024

About Xuan Hui Ng

My name is Xuan Hui. I am from Singapore and currently live in Tokyo.

I began photographing as a form of self-therapy. I was grieving the loss of my mother to cancer. She had been both my confidante and my moral compass. Losing her plunged me into a downward spiral until a chance encounter with nature set me on my path to recovery. Its vastness gave me a sense of perspective while its beauty reignited in me a sense of wonder and adventure. It reminded me that life is beautiful, that there is so much to live for and to explore.

Initially, the urge to photograph stemmed from an almost desperate desire to prolong the serenity that nature brought. Over time, I began to enjoy simply being in the embrace of the forests, lakes and meadows. The Chinese idiom “天时地利人和” speaks to the importance of fortuitous timing (天时), favorable conditions (地利) and the human resolve (人和) to our endeavors. I think this is especially true for my photography because my images are a collaborative effort with nature. I am grateful to be blessed with serendipitous encounters and would like to share these precious tokens of memories with others.

Nature has been pivotal to my own healing and growth. I dedicate my images to kindred spirits, the weary, the lost and the lonesome. I hope that they can experience the joy I felt when I laid my eyes on these magical landscapes.

Xuan-Hui Ng is a photographic artist from Singapore who currently resides in Japan. Her work is represented by Foto Relevance gallery in Houston, Texas, with her debut solo show Interludes in 2021. Her solo exhibition, Transcendence: Awakening the Soul, at the Griffin Museum of Photography will take place in December 2023.

Ng has been a Critical Mass Finalist in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Her work has been juried into exhibitions at the Davis Orton Gallery, Southeast Center for Photography, Texas Photographic Society, New York Center for Photographic Art, and Fotonostrum’s 17th and 18th Pollux Awards. She is the winner of both series and single image in the Nature category at the 20^th Julia Margaret Cameron Award. She has been an artist lecturer at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Nobechi Creative, Artquest Photo Workshops and various camera clubs. Publications of her work have been featured in What Will You Remember?, fotoMAGAZIN, PetaPixel, ON landscape, forum naturfotografie, Dodho Magazine, CURIOUS Photo blog, Float Magazine, Feature Shoot and Popular Photography (大众摄影）.

In 2022, she was interviewed by BBC World Service’s Cultural Frontline on “Creativity and Mental Health.” She is a contributor to ELEMENTS landscape photography magazine and an instructor for Santa Fe Workshops.

She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Planting Roots : Growing Community

Posted on November 13, 2023

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

Greg Heins – Fall in the Garden

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

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

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

Ellen Harasimowicz – Living Like Grass

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

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

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

John Rich – A Year Above the Gardens

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

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

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

Leann Shamash – Community Gardens

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

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

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

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

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

Arthur Griffin: Winter in Winchester

Posted on November 9, 2023

Arthur Griffin: Winter in Winchester

The Griffin Virtual Gallery – November 9 – December 31, 2023

Happy winter from the Griffin! In honor of the holiday season (and our upcoming Winter Solstice exhibition), we’ve put together this online exhibition spotlighting some of our founder, Arthur Griffin’s works shot in Winchester during the wintertime. Please (virtually) put your hands together for: Winter in Winchester.

Named after the Black Horse Tavern (that still exists today), the town we now know and love as Winchester started its humble origins as the Black Horse Village, emerging around the Converse Mill Pond. William Parsons Winchester, for whom the town was named, never actually stepped foot in his geological namesake, for he passed away before its incorporation as a town in 1850. Arthur Griffin, the namesake of our museum, on the other hand, had the pleasure of calling Winchester home from 1903 to 2001.

Since its incorporation, Winchester has grown substantially both in population and in tradition. From the Epiphany’s annual Christmas Fair to Midnight Madness to the Winchester holiday tree lighting celebration to ice boating (depicted in Griffin’s works below), Winchester is full of winter traditions for all to enjoy.

A winter tradition we hold dear to our hearts at the Griffin is the Winter Solstice Exhibition. This is an annual event where members can submit their own images to be displayed at the museum! (Click here for more information).

Combining some of Arthur’s works, Winter in Winchester captures the history, tradition, and charm of the town. To view more of Arthur Griffin’s works, explore his digital archive here, and in the meantime, take a scroll through past winters in Winchester as you await for this year’s to befall.

Written and researched By: Candy Li, Fall intern 2023

Sarah Sense: Hinushi

Posted on October 28, 2023

“Hinushi is a series of landscape photographs from ancestral homelands woven through colonial maps of the Mississippi River, Gulf of Mexico, and Choctaw allotment land. The blue allotment maps of McCurtain County, Oklahoma (1902, courtesy of the Choctaw Cultural Center) were created after the United States Indian Removal Act (1830). Each drawn parcel indicates allotted land for individual Choctaw Tribal members and includes their name, blood quantum, and age, serving as a government document and form of assimilation into the colonial structure of land ownership, further displacing cultural values and land connectivity. After removal from their ancestral land, Choctaws suffered a long walk to “Indian Territory” or what is now called Oklahoma. Woven together are maps from Oil News (1920, from my research at the British Library, London, England) woven through Broken Bow landscapes, where our family was relocated. Choctaw basket patterns from my Grandma Chillie’s basket of sun and stars are woven through these maps, joining the land with the colonial maps as an act of reclamation. The journaling and mapping are photographs of Lewis and Clark journals taken during my archive research at the St. Louis Historical Society. The Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery Expedition (1804-1806) was funded by the United States government and initiated by Thomas Jefferson after the Louisiana Purchase (1803). These colonial forms of exploring, discovering, and mapping are constructed to manage land and people. The colonial mapping and government allotment structures represent established spaces. Weaving Chitimacha and Choctaw patterns through the maps reclaims space.

The trunks of Coastal Redwoods from California and Live Oak Trees from Avery Island, Louisiana, sit on top of the roots with maps from Lewis and Clark’s journals laid over the trunks and are woven together with a Chitimacha basket pattern. Louisiana maps merge with Oklahoma maps as the two weaving styles collide. My son, Archie, is discretely woven into some of the pieces as he stands in the Broken Bow landscape and is then woven into Tahoe, reflecting on connection after relocation. Maps and archives from the past woven into contemporary landscape photography close a gap of time. Similarly, placing a figure into a landscape can also blend time and represent Indigenous futurism by reclaiming space and re-implementing self into a land of ancestry that was otherwise taken from the ancestors. This process of weaving together past, present, and future broadens the visual experience to something that is felt and not seen, bringing spirituality into the works.” – Sarah Sense

Hinushi Details

About the Artist:

Sarah Sense (b. 1980) lives and works in California. Sense has traveled extensively through the Americas, Europe, United Kingdom and Southeast Asia. Her landscape photography is an essential part of her travel and visual art practice. Sense’s weaving practice began in New York while a master’s student at Parson New School for Design (2003-2005). While director and curator of the American Indian Community House Gallery, New York, Sense catalogued the gallery’s thirty-year history, inspiring her search for Indigenous art internationally. Her world travels were charged with archive research, photo-weaving project that expanded to community programming, international Indigenous artist interviews and the book, Weaving the Americas, A Search for Indigenous Art in the Western Hemisphere.

Jake Benzinger: Like Dust Settling in a Dim-lit Room (Or Starless Forest)

Posted on October 24, 2023

The Griffin Museum is pleased to host Jake Benzinger’s Like Dust Settling in a Dim-lit Room (Or Starless Forest) in our satellite WinCAM gallery.

Artist Statement

Like Dust Settling in a Dim-lit Room (Or Starless Forest) constructs a liminal world that explores the intersection of reality, dream, and memory. Through photography, this body of work functions as a mirror, a reflection of my inner psyche and an investigation of identity, relationships, the domestic, and the natural world.

This process, with its focus on the self, is rooted in an attempt to heal. The exploration of ordinary locations, places devoid of people and often characterized by the presence of flora, have functioned as a refuge in my personal life. By frequenting these places, I began to see them as sets, utilizing them to construct my visions. I imbue them with fragments of the people, places, and memories that inhabit my subconscious.

I fail to find stability in the societal constructs of home and family; so I seek to create it in the natural world. Through the dislocation of these places and the infusion of nature into the domestic, this work constructs a fleeting world that lives in ambiguity. This space is familiar yet still foreign; it is a constructed world that visualizes my deepest desires and greatest fears.

About

Jake Benzinger (he/him) is a photographer and book artist based in Rockland, Maine; he received his BFA in photography from Lesley University, College of Art and Design in Cambridge, MA. His work explores the intersection of dreamscape and reality. Through the dislocation of space, he weaves together imagery to construct a world that exists in the liminal, investigating themes of duality, longing, identity, and the natural world.

He is currently a gallery assistant at Blue Raven Gallery and recently had work featured by Fraction Magazine, alongside exhibiting both internationally and in the greater Boston area. His most recent body of work, Like Dust Settling in a Dim-Lit Room (Or Starless Forest), was recently self-published and has sold out of its first edition hardcover books, with a second coming in November, 2023.

Stephen L. Starkman: The Proximity of Mortality

Posted on October 6, 2023

In Memoriam

In 2021, Toronto-based photographer Stephen L. Starkman was diagnosed with small-cell lung carcinoma. After a series of radiation and chemotherapy treatments, the artist learned the disease had spread to his brain and was incurable. During and after his treatment, Stephen documented his illness in service of his book, The Proximity of Mortality (2022). Combining landscapes, hospital scenes, and self-portraiture with poems and quotes by other cancer patients, the book offers a glimpse into both the physical and psychological ramifications of terminal illness.

The images are vast and moving. They tell a frank and beautiful story, each showing a quiet confrontation with what does -or does not- come after life’s end.

The Griffin Museum is deeply saddened by the passing of this amazing photographer and wonderful human in September of 2023. To honor his legacy and this deeply important volume, we have displayed just some of the images from the book here.

Thank you, Stephen, for all you have given to the world.

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