Exploration of the natural world and my desire to document its dynamism drives my photographic practice and draws me to volcanic and geothermal areas. There I can celebrate places of resilience that continue to reject human manipulation, in spite of the dramatic changes currently being imposed on our climate. Although it’s possible to build a boardwalk across a steaming hot spring or construct a roadway that facilitates access to an active volcanic area, the elements in these places refuse to be constrained. Their stubbornness soothes me and represents small victories in the face of massive global change. My moving photographs exemplify how I escape into these otherworldly places and bear witness to their ultimately unknowable power and beauty.
Amber Crabbe holds a Master of Fine Arts in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute and received a Bachelor of Science in Art and Design from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2018 she was awarded a position in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Fellows Program and in 2012 she received the Jack and Gertrude Murphy Contemporary Art Award. She has participated in numerous curated and juried exhibitions at venues throughout the U.S., including the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, the Berkeley Art Center, SF Camerawork, SomArts, the Pacific Film Archive, Gallery Route One, Rayko Photo Center, the Smith Anderson North Gallery, the Gray Loft Gallery, and the Whatcom Museum. She lives and works in San Francisco, California.
Leaving their Mark: Studio Practice
Creativity takes many forms. Performing artists use their bodies, writers elucidate thoughts and put them on paper, and visual artists take their tools to a blank canvas or light sensitive paper. Artists, passionate about their craft are compelled to create exposing the invisible and engaging us in thought, emotion and narrative. We celebrate the tools artists surround themselves with as we create a studio visit through the works of two photographic artists, Chris Rauschenberg and Meggan Gould.
The intimacy of the studio and beautiful chaos of making is a visual feast. Chris Rauschenberg’s series Studio Views fills the gallery with color and creativity. These large scale composites engage us in the details and connection to the art practice of Rauschenberg’s friends and colleagues. Meggan Gould explores the darkrooms of fellow photographers, exposing the tools of the medium used in darkness.
About Chris Rauschenberg
Christopher Rauschenberg was born in New York in 1951, has practiced photographic art since 1957, and has a B.A. in photography from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.
He has had 127 solo shows in eight countries on three continents. His work has also been featured in group shows in six more countries. Available monographs of his work include three books, twenty print-on-demand books and a deck of cards.
His work is held in the collections of 13 major museums.
In 1995, he organized a group of a dozen artists who joined him in a nine year long systematic photographic exploration and documentation of the city of Portland. (PortlandGridProject.com) His second group of a dozen artists completed a second nine year re-exploration and round four is now in progress.
In 1997 and 1998, he took three trips to Paris and rephotographed 500 of the images made of that city by Eugene Atget between 1890 and 1927. (LensCulture interview)
He is a co-founder and past president of Photolucida (a Portland photography festival formerly called Photo Americas). He is a co-founder, co-curator and Board Chairman of Blue Sky Gallery where, over the last 48 years, he has co-curated and co-produced 1024 exhibitions. He is a co-founder and current member of the co-op Nine Gallery. He’s edited and produced around 200 art and photography publications. In 2003, he was the Bonnie Bronson Fellow.
About Meggan Gould
Meggan Gould lives and works in the mountains outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she is a Professor of Art at the University of New Mexico. She received an MFA from the University of Massachusetts – Dartmouth, and a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her work has been exhibited widely in the United States and internationally, and is included in many private and corporate collections, as well as public collections including the DeCordova Museum, the New Mexico Museum of Art, Light Work, and the University of New Mexico Art Museum. Her multifaceted practice uses photography, writing, drawing, sculpture, and installation in an open-ended dissection of vision and photographic tools.
Alanna Airitam: The Golden Age
The Griffin Museum of Photography is thrilled to host The Golden Age in the Sanborn House during our summer renovation. Sanborn House’s hours are Tuesday – Thursday from 11am-3pm, and Friday and Saturday by appointment.
Artist Statement
The Golden Age was created in 2017 to address the invisibility and omission of Black voices from the annals of art history and the revisions of American history. I am driven by a desire to confront the stories and histories of Black people that have been glaringly omitted from Western Art History. Black history has long been held hostage by whiteness, resulting in a predominantly subjugated portrayal of Black individuals throughout art history. This perpetuates the false narrative that Blackness has always been synonymous with servitude. It is this great lie that I feel compelled to address in my work.
Weary of witnessing the mistreatment of Black people, I needed to see a more truthful version of ourselves represented in a way that balanced out the monotonous, negative stereotypes we are subjected to in the media. This made me pause to try and recall a time in our collective history where Black people had fair and balanced visual representation. This historical meandering took me to The Harlem Renaissance which stands as our age of enlightenment and a great time of Black innovation, creativity, and cultural significance. Born out of the Great Migration and a response to escaping the Jim Crow south, the Harlem Renaissance parallels the Dutch Renaissance that emerged in Haarlem, Netherlands during the Eighty Years’ War. Both periods ushered in the beginnings of modernity and a hope for a more progressive society.
Through The Golden Age, I strive to reclaim the narrative, challenge the existing power structures, and shed light on the richness of Black culture. By intertwining historical and contemporary elements, I hope to foster a greater understanding and appreciation for the contributions of Black people throughout history. This project is not just a reflection of my personal journey but also an invitation to reevaluate the stories we tell and the narratives we choose to perpetuate.
Alanna Airitam is a photographer whose work transcends traditional boundaries, incorporating elements of other materials such as metal, resin, varnish, and gold leaf into her captivating compositions. With a focus on lighting, staging, and processes referencing particular eras in art history, her portraits and still-lifes often takes on a painterly quality that invites viewers to explore hidden histories and stories that have led to a lack of fair and honest representation of Black Americans. Influenced by the power and beauty of Black people, the strength and creativity of women, and the dream of a world where individuals are free to shape their own lives without interference, Airitam finds inspiration in the syncopation of jazz and transportive nature of music, the art of storytelling, and the endless possibility of the human spirit. Her work also draws from the colors, lighting, and scale of 17th-century Renaissance paintings, as well as the legacy of Black studio photographers from the 19th century.
Airitam’s work has garnered recognition and acclaim, with exhibitions at esteemed institutions such as the Center for Creative Photography, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. She has also showcased her art at prominent art fairs, while her work has been collected by institutions and individuals and displayed in galleries across the
United States.
We are grateful to the Cummings Foundation for their support of Alanna Airitam as a Cummings Fellow at the Griffin Museum.
Wig Heavier Than a Boot
Wig Heavier Than a Boot brings together photography and video by David Johnson and poetry by Philip Matthews. As we reveal Petal—a persona as whom Philip writes, and whom David photographs—the project crosses art-making rituals with isolated performances in domestic spaces and pastoral landscapes. Taken together, the images and poems reveal surprising relationships between character, observer, and author. The photographs provide one record of Petal and Philip’s personalities, blurring art-historical feminine / masculine postures and gestures. The poems provide another which elaborates upon the lived experience of performing or, sometimes, obscuring or protecting the self from being seen. Thus, a continuous exchange between photographer and two subjects in one body reflects the complications of power and gender expression through the history of photography.
About the Collaborators
David Johnson is an artist, educator, and curator based in Conway, SC. He received an MFA in Visual Art from Washington University in St. Louis in 2007 and earned his BFA in Studio Art with an emphasis in Photography from Texas Christian University. In 2011, David was awarded the Great Rivers Visual Arts Award from the Gateway Foundation. This biennial award culminated with his 2012 exhibition institutional etiquette and strange overtones at the Contemporary Art Museum in Saint Louis. Wig Heavier Than a Boot, a collaborative project with poet Philip Matthews, was published by Kris Graves Projects in 2019 and was featured at the Fotofest Biennial 2020 in Houston. The University of Texas Press published Johnson’s second book It Can Be This Way Always: Images from the Kerrville Folk Festival in March of 2021.
Art Museum Saint Louis, Mildred Lane Kemper Museum, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, National Building Museum in Washington D.C. and Rathaus in Stuttgart, Germany. His work can be found in the collection at The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. Don’t Take Pictures, the Humble Arts Foundation, Lenscratch, Photo-emphasis and Fraction Magazine have featured his work online. David has curated exhibitions for Center of Creative Arts, Paul Artspace and the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum in St Louis. Currently, Johnson is an Assistant Professor of Photography at Coastal Carolina University.
Philip Matthews is a poet from eastern North Carolina. He is the author of Witch (Alice James Books, 2020) and Wig Heavier Than A Boot (Kris Graves Projects, 2019), a collaboration with photographer David Johnson. Anchored by site-specific meditation and performance, his practice of the past decade has investigated spiritual, queer power, questions of home and ecological shift. He is curious about what happens next.
Philip is the recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Peaked Hill Trust and Hemera Foundation. He has taught at Washington University in St. Louis and Kansas City Art Institute, and from 2013-16 he organized public programs at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, emphasizing artist-driven thinking, cross-disciplinary collaboration and community-directed action.
In two 6-month phases over the past three years, he returned to North Carolina to de-hoard his grandmother’s home and repair the physical and energetic infrastructures of a shared family place. This collaborative work with his mother has laid ground for new writing to take root.
He currently directs programs at Wormfarm Institute, a nonprofit in Sauk County, Wisconsin dedicated to integrating culture and agriculture across the rural-urban continuum. He holds an MFA Writing from Washington University in St. Louis and BA English from Tulane University.
The Other Stories
About Cody Bratt
Cody Bratt (b. 1982) is a San Francisco-born and based artist. His father, a photoengraver, and his mother, a multimedia artist, inspired his love of photography and book making, in particular. He holds a BA in Rhetoric with a formal concentration in Narrative and Image from the University of California, Berkeley (2005). Shying away from a literal approach, Cody’s photography employs primarily non-linear emotional or psychological approaches to exploring subjects and concepts. Unreliable memories, displacement, loss and coming of age feature centrally in Cody’s work.
He has exhibited internationally at Athens Photo Festival, Berlin Art Week, Month of Photography Los Angeles, Griffin Museum of Photography, Colorado Photographic Arts Center, ICP Museum, Brighton Photo Fringe, Filter Photo Festival amongst others. Cody is a 2016 LensCulture Emerging 50 Talent, 2018 PDN 30 nominee and 2019 Review Santa Fe attendee. His most recent series, THE OTHER STORIES, was honored with a 2020 CENTER Awards Director’s Choice Award and a 2020 Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50 distinction. Cody’s first monograph, LOVE WE LEAVE BEHIND, debuted by Fraction Editions in 2018. That series was awarded a 2018 Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50 distinction, named as a finalist for the 2016 Duke University CDS/Honickman First Book Prize and had images selected and published as winners in American Photography 34 (2018).
His work is in public and private collections in several states across the US, as well as Europe. Cody’s work has been published worldwide in print and online venues including PDN, LENSCRATCH, LensCulture, Lomography Magazine, iGNANT, Gente Di Fotografia, Blur Magazine, Aint-Bad, and Float Magazine amongst others.
Marsha Wilcox | Ancient Light
My father used a sextant for celestial navigation on aircraft carriers in the Navy and on family sailing trips. He taught me to see the constellation pictures, stellar landmarks, and stories in the stars. I’ve loved looking at the night sky all my life. As a child I would lie on the grass, or on a snowbank, and look up into the darkness and wonder what was out there; willing myself with all my might to visit the cosmos – hearing the siren song that has called humanity to look to the heavens since the dawn of time.
World issues, politics, relationships, and even my daily routine, fall into perspective against the awesome spectacles in our own galaxy and the universe beyond. I am small and insignificant yet privileged to see and share these wonders.
Using my telescope as a lens, I capture the ancient light of things that are unimaginably old, unfathomably distant, and incomprehensibly vast. They are at the same time delicate and extremely violent; still, and yet constantly changing. Being born, living, and dying at a cadence as slow as they are vast, stars, nebulae, and galaxies echo the terrestrial creation we see around us.
Long exposure photography is the only way we can experience these awe-inspiring celestial scenes. Each final photograph is constructed from individual images captured over many tens of hours. It’s not unusual for the final photograph to contain 100 or more frames. In these images, there is art in the science, and science in the art.
About Marsha Wilcox
The intricate beauty in the universe around us, from a droplet on an autumnal branch to the awe-inspiring patterns and colors in nebulae and galaxies fascinate me.
A course in Night Photography introduced me to the nuances of light and color after the sun sets. In addition to urban landscapes, we photographed the grand Milky Way. The allure of looking deeper into the night sky called me. Using telescopes, dedicated astronomy cameras, and specialized filters, I am able to image ancient light, things unseen with the naked eye.
On clear, calm, nights when the moon is dim, I wheel my telescope out to image the universe. It’s not unusual for neighbors to stop by; it is a privilege to share the night sky with them.
A retired epidemiologist, I also hold an MPS in Digital Photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York. I usually image the night sky outside of Boston in the company of three wonderful Golden Retrievers.
To see more of Marsha Wilcox‘s work, see her website.
Ville Kansanen | Arid Harbingers
A series of site-specific installations and photography by Finnish artist Ville Kansanen creates windows into the fragility of our planet’s aquatic resources. Through his work he creates a mythical connection to the demise of Earth’s bodies of water and the devastating effects of saltwater intrusion.
There are two outdoor installations: ‘Mojave Portals’ offers glimpses of desertification as arid fragments of the Mojave Desert. Tiles of desert earth and rocks are linked together, extending from inside the museum onto the surface of Judkins Pond. ‘Salting the Earth’ is a 24-foot-long mosaic of earthen tiles representing soil salinization. The tiles create a visual gradient out of local soil, calcium, limestone, and sand from the Mojave Desert.
Within the museum, a series of photographs titled ‘Airut (Harbinger)’ captures a makeshift tripod suspending an elongated stone, utilized as a mystical instrument for measuring water levels. It is transported to five lakes at succeeding stages of life, creating a solemn procession of the gradual death of lakes.
In totality, Ville Kansanen’s work encourages viewers to contemplate on the fragility and impermanence of water; and the arid forces that lead all landscapes to their unavoidable terminus – the desert.
MOJAVE PORTALS
‘Mojave Portals’ is a mythical representation of the eventual depletion and demise of Earth’s bodies of water. By employing the concept of portals, it visually transports viewers to a time when all bodies of water have dwindled and disappeared. Small tiles of rocks and desert sand are integrated into the surrounding landscape and linked together. They extend from inside the museum out onto the surface of Judkins Pond in the form of earthen rafts. These “portals” subvert our sense of time and place by projecting into the future and the faraway Mojave Desert simultaneously.
SALTING THE EARTH
‘Salting the Earth’ is a simulacrum of the effects of saltwater intrusion on the Eastern Seaboard. A 24-foot mosaic of earthen tiles creates a visual gradient out of local soil, calcium, limestone, and sand from the Mojave Desert. This simulation of soil salinization visualizes the devastating process of desertification and points to the inevitable future of Judkins Pond – and all bodies of water.
AIRUT (Harbinger)
‘Airut (Harbinger)’ portrays the gradual death of lakes in a solemn procession. In a series of five photographs, an installation takes shape by echoing primitive well boring. A makeshift tripod suspending an elongated stone is seen as a mystical instrument for measuring water levels. As the rock is submerged in five different lakes in succeeding stages of life, it transforms into an aniconic object that forebodes rather than measures.
About Ville Kansanen
Ville Kansanen (b.1984) is a Finnish multidisciplinary artist based in California. He works with photography, video, installation- and land art.
His work has been featured in several print- and online publications such as American Photo Magazine, GUP Magazine, SFAQ and Diffusion Magazine. Ville’s awards include a Lucie Award and IPA Fine Art Photographer of the Year. His first monograph was released by Datz Press in 2022. He has exhibited internationally with non-profit and private galleries.
Ville Kansanen is a 2023 Cummings Fellow, and we are grateful to the Cummings Foundation for their support of the Griffin Museum and the artists they exhibit.
Arid Harbingers has also received financial support from the Mass Cultural Council, Winchester Cultural District and Winchester Cultural Council
Dawn Watson | Conjuring Alchemy
I am a seeker. My curiosity drives discovery. My photographs are found through exploration, wandering with my intuition, guided by a sense of play, discovering my source material. I blend unconnected images of the natural elements that are at the core of the ancient art and practice of Alchemy: fire, water, air, and earth, to create a fifth element. I seek a new, a never before.
Transfiguration is a process, an evolution that requires mess and mistakes, misdirection and misinterpretation. It leads to unknown or unimagined manifestations. Is this manifestation the fifth element, or am I?
My photographic work is performative. It is an energetic, kinetic alchemy, a collaboration between physical material and an intuitive conversation with a vibrant presence to engage and provoke.
These pieces explore the elemental, the body, the suspension of belief, forces of nature, higher realms, and the world of symbolic meaning. I lean into light and shadow. I am open to the entire spectrum of experience, while remaining grounded. I hold in my heart both the dark and the light. The vivid hues of color allow me to develop a more dynamic translation of the world beyond the world.
I am drawn to our primal sensibilities, the suspension of belief, forces of nature, higher realms, and the symbolic, in all things.
In Conjuring: Alchemy, I pull from work both old and new, layering one over the other, top over bottom over top, watching and waiting with bated breath for creation to reveal itself.
About the Artist –
After a successful career as a professional dancer/choreographer, Dawn Watson shifted her artistic practice to fine art photography, finding affinity in the visual storytelling offered by both live performance and the photographic image. Watson’s photographic renderings continue to explore transformation through form, space, light, movement and storytelling, as she did as a performer.
Watson’s solo exhibitions include the Griffin Museum of Photography and The Los Angeles Center for Photography. Her work has been seen in juried exhibitions in the United States and Europe, including the Center for Fine Art Photography, Davis-Orton Gallery, Tilt Gallery, Tang Teaching Museum. Features online and in print include amongst others Diffusion X Magazine, Elizabeth Avedon Journal, Lenscratch, SXSE Magazine and What Will You Remember. Her work is held in private collections and is on permanent display at The Lodge at Woodloch.
Watson graduated with Honors in Dance from Skidmore College and has studied photography at ICP, Maine Media and Santa Fe Workshops among others. She was a member of Find Your Vision/Sandi Haber Fifield critique workshop from 2012-2022. Based in Hastings on Hudson, NY, Watson continues her long association as board member of regional environmental organization Scenic Hudson.
Janice Koskey | Illuminating the Archive
Illuminating the archives of Arthur Griffin
I was delighted to have been invited by Crista Dix to study the archives of Arthur Griffin, choose works from among his nautical photographs, and match them to my own.
To begin this process, I repeatedly scrolled through Mr Griffin’s varied array of photographs of beach, wharf, and waterfront. As I perused these images, certain ones would jump out at me as if there were some thing familiar about them that connected his vision to mine.
One image that I was particularly drawn to was a young child looking out over the beach from the shore. It reminded me of my childhood years spent on Lynn beach and how much the ocean is a part of me. As it turned out, that image was made by Arthur’s wife, Claire Griffin. I feel that it holds the heart of a mother within it.
Once I had chosen my six images, I kept each one in mind while I took a stroll through my own shoreline archives. From there it was easy to zero in on one or two of my images that seemed to dance with theirs. I truly enjoyed comparing and contrasting my subtle and vibrant-colored, contemporary digital photos with the monochromatic photos made in the dark room of the past.
During this process I learned that though cameras and methods of development may have changed, each photograph produced then and now contains beneath the surface a deep love and appreciation for the ocean as well as the moods and gestures of the vessels and humans depicted nearby. These feelings will be held permanently in the souls of the photographers as well as within each photograph we have made.
I hope you enjoy the connections that link past and present in this exhibit and share our gratitude for Arthur Griffin, founder of the Griffin Museum of Photography.
About Janice Koskey
Janice Koskey has lived a lifetime with a camera close at hand. She was given her first Brownie as a child, worked in a dark room in college, and during her long career in the Lynn Public Schools utilized photography in her classroom before taking up digital photography upon her retirement in 2008. More recently she has focused her study on what lies behind the photograph, the connection between individuals and their art.
Though she has attended dozens of photographic workshops and classes, Janice’s favorite source of learning and encouragement comes from the Greater Lynn Photographic Association where she received a NECCC service award has led an Artistic Vision group.
Janice has published articles in the Journal of the Photographic Society of America on contemplative and travel photography and through PSA she makes presentations in person locally and via Zoom around the country and the world.
As a member of the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Galleries at Lynn Arts, Marblehead Arts Association, and Rockport Arts Association and Museum, Janice exhibits her work regularly, has won various awards, and her photographs have found their place in many comfortable homes.
Our Town 2023
The Griffin is celebrating the beauty of Winchester in Summer of 2023.
In the insightful “Preface” for a collection of his Three Plays, renowned playwright Thornton Wilder advocated for finding “a value above all price for the smallest events in our daily life.” Inspired by the profound themes explored in Wilder’s play of the same title, the Griffin Museum of Photography is thrilled to present, Our Town, a public art installation and community exhibition. Echoing Wilder’s poignant reflection on beauty found in the simple places, we invited the residents of Winchester to discover the extraordinary moments within the ordinary spaces we call home.
Combining landscapes, still-lifes, portraiture, and more, Our Town invites you to witness individual moments woven into a broader community narrative of Winchester.
The photographers included in the exhibition are (in alphabetical order)
Alex Li, Amanda Cobbold, Amy Murgatroyd, Andrea Zampitella, Bill Chapman, Christine Fratto, Danielle Marquardt, Deborah Johnson, Frank Tadley, Hope Pashos, Janice Eyden, Katalina Simon, Mario Moreira, Mark Flannery, Michael Burka, Patty Mihelich and Thomas Hardjono.
Our Town is made possible by the generous support of our sponsors: the The Winchester Cultural District, Winchester Cultural Council and the En Ka Society.
