Griffin Museum of Photography

Jenga

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Statement
The Covid lockdown permitted me great deal of time in my garden and for long walks in the parks and Aqueduct trail near my home. I produced this series after observing the alarming decrease of the insect and small mammal population due to habitat changes. These observations made me want to celebrate nature and create Memento Mori to honor these endangered species.

During the Victorian era, photographs called Memento Mori were created to commemorate deceased loved ones. These photos, both beautiful and unsettling, exquisitely posed the dead in their finest clothes and surrounded by their favorite objects. The images were extremely popular in the mid 1800’s and were often the one opportunity to have a permanent likeness of a beloved family member.

For my series, Jenga, I’ve layered botanical and other materials, media and dyes on multiple sheets of glass that are separated by Jenga blocks. With each photo, created in camera, I feel that I too am creating Memento Mori to honor and memorialize insects and other small animals whose alarming decline due to habitat changes, pesticides, deforestation and global warming makes their recognition all the more poignant.  The series is named for the game of stacked blocks that ultimately collapse as supporting blocks are removed, one by one. It’s not hard to imagine our world crashing down like the Jenga blocks as the supports necessary to sustain us are removed.

All the insects or animals used in creating the photographs were either found in my neighborhood or purchased from a company that claims the specimens for sale were farm-raised and died of natural causes. – SR

Bio
Born in Washington, Pennsylvania, Richman now lives in Hastings on Hudson, a suburb of NYC. Her love affair with photography began her freshman year of college when she was forced to pick between art or math as a course elective. To the dismay of her parents who were hoping she would become a lawyer, she majored in Fine Arts with a focus on photography and upon graduation she began a successful career as a commercial photographer in Manhattan.

After years of photographing other people’s visions, she has evolved into an artist and educator. Prior to Covid, she was a teacher at The International Center for Photographer in NYC and is currently a member of the Upstream Gallery in NY.

Richman’s interests lay in observing what others overlook. Her photographs explore the link between existence, decay and loss, and they blur the difference between painting and photography. For the past decade, she has primarily focused on photographing images that explore the damage to our environment by creating images that capture and preserve the fleeting nature of our world. Through art she hopes to inspire people to look beneath the surface and to see something never seen before and to thereby inspire change.

Recent awards and recognitions include Finalist, 2021 Larry Salley Photography Award, ArtsWestchester; Best Of Show, 2020 Non Member National Juried Exhibition, Salmagundi Club; 2020 International Juried Exhibition Soho Photo Gallery. She was a Featured artist in 2021 in F Stop Magazine and in 2020 in Create Magazine. The New York Times and The Washington Post highlighted her work in an article in 2019 titled Elements Provide Inspiration at Architectural Digest Show.

Susan Richman CV
b. 1959, Washington Pennsylvania
Lives in Hastings on Hudson, NY

EDUCATION
George Washington University, Washington D.C. Bachelor of Art 1981
Art Center College of Design Pasadena Cal. Bachelor of Fine Arts 1983

EMPLOYMENT
Educator at International Center of Photography, NYC, NY 2011- present

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2020 Jenga, Upstream Gallery, Hastings on Hudson, NY

2018 Re>Formations, Upstream Gallery, Hastings on Hudson, NY

2017 Ephemeral, Upstream Gallery, Hastings on Hudson, NY

2017 Transient, Martucci Gallery, Irvington, NY

2017 Transient, Upstream Gallery, Hastings on Hudson, NY

2014 Under Glass, Upstream Gallery, Hastings on Hudson, NY

AWARDS
Larry Salley Photography Award; Finalist, ArtsWestchester. Award is for Hudson Valley based photographers with a significant body of work demonstrating outstanding artistic merit.

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 
2021 30th Anniversary Exhibition, Upstream Gallery, Hastings on Hudson, NY

2021 National Juried Photography Exhibition; Soho Photography Gallery NY, NY

2020 Summer Exhibition, Susan Richman and David Barnett, The Lodge At Woodloch Gallery, Hawley, PA

2020 National Juried Photography On line Exhibition; Soho Photography Gallery NY, NY

2020 From A Seed…The World Of Botanicals 2020; Second Place,New York Center For Photographic Art, NY, NY

2020 Altered States, Pleiades Gallery NY, NY

2020 Female In Focus, The Center For Fine Art Photography, Fort Collins, CO.

2020 Water, International Juried Show; Honorable Mention, New York Center For Photographic Art, NY, NY

2019 Abstracted Reality, Atlantic Gallery, NY, NY

2019 Taking Pictures 2019, Black Box Gallery, Portland, Ore

2019 Glimpses of Our World Juried Exhibition, Salmagundi Club, NY, NY

2018 Abstract National Juried Photo Exhibition, SE Center, Greenville, SC

2018 Red, White and Blue, Upstream Gallery, Hastings on Hudson, NY

2018 Click Juried Photography Exhibition, Blue Door

2018 National Juried Photography Exhibition, Soho Photography Gallery, NY, NY

2017 Art In Our Time, Upstream Gallery, Hastings on Hudson, NY

2017 Ephemeral, Umbrella Arts Gallery, NY, NY

2017 Ephemeral, Affordable Art Fair, NY, NY

2016 River Art Exhibition, Dobbs Ferry, NY

2016 Conversation, Upstream Gallery, Hastings on Hudson, NY

2015 ICP Masters Class, ICP Education Gallery, NY, NY

2015 Hidden Yonkers, Blue Door Gallery, Yonkers, NY

2015 Show and Tell Seven, Blue Door Gallery, Yonkers, NY

2015 Influences, Upstream Gallery, Hastings on Hudson, NY

ART FAIRS
2019 Architectural Design Digest Show, Pier 94, NY, NY

2019 Art on Paper Art Fair, Pier 36, NY, NY

2018 Affordable Art Fair, Metropolitan Pavilion, NY, NY

PRESS
Constructed Images: Group Online Exhibition F Stop A Photography Magazine, February and March Issue

Jackie Lupo: Uncertainty Inspires New Artistic Direction, The Rivertowns Enterprise, vol 45 No#27 October 2, 2020

Kim Cook: Elements Provide Inspiration at Architectural Digest Show, AP, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fox Business News, APNews.com, Foxbusinessnews.com, NWITimes.com, https://www.journalnow.com, March 2019 – Kim Cook March 30, 2019

Art Of Collage Art Of Collage, Nancy Nikkal, vol 1 No#1 October 2018

Jackie Lupo: Photographer Captures Grandeur of Derelict Buildings, The Rivertowns Enterprise, vol 40 No#33 November 2015

The Gallery Scene: Susan Richman, Blogfinger.net, Posted By Paul Goldfinger, October, 2017 On Line

Hillari Graff: Richman’s Photos Yield “Unnatural Beauty” The Rivertowns Enterprise, vol 39 No#2 April 2014

 

View Susan Richman’s website.

 

 

Hard Breath Volume 2

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Project Statement
At the height of the AIDS epidemic experimental drug treatments lead to the invention of modern antiretroviral medications that keep the virus suppressed, but these drugs would have never become available had there not been individuals willing to receive them on an experimental basis. This body of work titled Hard Breath Volume 2 is the second iteration in a series of works exploring the body as artifact and its preservation. In January of 2019 I enrolled as a volunteer in a year-long experimental drug study aimed at treating and suppressing the HIV virus in a way not yet attempted by medical researchers using broadly neutralizing antibodies. During the study I received multiple day-long infusions of two new experimental HIV drugs over several months. To create a record of this process I gave a Polaroid camera to nurses and visitors and asked them to take pictures of me since I was not capable of making a portrait of myself on my own. When I was capable of making photographs on my own during the process I captured my surroundings – hallways, clocks, vials of blood, and the people who helped and supported me. The original polaroid photographs are kept in a red research binder along with thorough original documentation including blood work indicating the detectability of HIV in my body.

Participating in this study and the construction of this photographic record is about making a contribution to the future of HIV treatment – to make it easier for others and perhaps unnecessary one day. This work took on a greater urgency for me in the current wake of the COVID-19 pandemic where the search for a vaccination is at the forefront of medical research. The importance of volunteers willing to put their bodies and livelihoods on the line for the benefit of their fellow humans cannot be ignored. I believe I wouldn’t be alive if there weren’t similarly minded people to develop and test the antiretroviral drugs we have today that keep me alive, and I wish there was more of a record of those who give the gift of their bodies and their stories so that others may hold onto theirs. These photographs are, for me, a small push forward in that direction.

Bio
Logan Bellew is a photographer and installation-focused artist based between Brooklyn, New York and Nicosia, Cyprus. The practice of conserving artifacts, stories, and histories form the conceptual core of his work and uses investigative ideologies and autobiographical experiences to develop the deep personal narrative that concerns his work to this day. He is also an active volunteer with the AIDS Solidarity Movement of Cyprus where he was a representative for AIDS Action Europe and helps facilitate island-wide HIV education, public speaking, testing, and outreach campaigns. Logan is currently working to document the experience of volunteering in medical research before and in the wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Logan earned an MFA in photography from the University of New Mexico and currently teaches at the State University of New York in New Paltz and Arizona State University. His photographs, videos, and installations are exhibited and published internationally including the International Association of Photography and Theory in Cyprus, Primal Sight – a contemporary survey of black and white photography – and the Museum of Modern Art’s artist book collection among others. He is one of the first international recipients of a residency with the Visual Artist’s Association of Cyprus.

Logan Bellew is a recent finalist for the John Chervinsky Scholarship 2020.

CV

Alayna N. Pernell: Our Mothers’ Gardens

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Statement
Throughout history, there has been a unique curiosity to capture and study the Black body, especially those of Black women. Our bodies have continued to be seen as objects to capitalize off of and often times hardly anything beyond that. With these ideas in mind, my practice is currently revolving around two questions. What can visual art tell us about the depiction of Black women throughout history? How have those negative depictions of Black women resulted in our lack of mental and physical care?

I have spent months researching and uncovering suppressed images of Black women held in photographic collections at the Art Institute of Chicago. The images I have found and researched thus far depict the exploitation and violence towards Black women. In my practice, I have excavated, re-photographed, re-captioned, and re-contextualized the original works. By engaging with these images with the intervention of my hands and my body, I attempt to rescue and protect Black women’s bodies and their humanity, and also unearth their stories so that they can be seen and heard. With my ongoing body of work entitled Our Mothers’ Gardens, I beg for more than the visibility of Black women in institutional collections and hopeful reparations. I also desire for the issue around institutions holding and silencing collections of visible and (in)visible violent visual depictions of Black women to be further highlighted.

Bio
Alayna N. Pernell (b. 1996) was born and raised in rural Alabama, USA. In May 2019, she graduated from The University of Alabama where she received her Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art with a concentration in Photography and a minor in African American Studies. She received her MFA in Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in May 2021. Pernell’s practice considers the gravity of the mental wellbeing of Black people in relation to the physical and metaphorical spaces they inhabit. Pernell has had her work published in the 2020-2021 School of the Art Institute of Chicago MFA Catalogue; 2020-2021 School of the Art Institute Department Photography Department Catalogue; and the 1stand 2nd editions of Todo, a graduate student zine. Her work has also been exhibited in various cities across the United States. Pernell was also recently named the 2020-2021 recipient of the James Weinstein Memorial Award.

Alayna N. Pernell is a recent finalist for the John Chervinsky Scholarship 2020.

View Alayna N Pernell’s Website

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Mark Feeney, photo critic of The Boston Globe reviews our current exhibitions at the Griffin.

 

Now is Always

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About Now is Always – 

Now is Always was begun during the Great Depression when my father, Joseph Harold Trachtman (1914-1971), shot a few rolls of film near his father’s drugstore in Center City, Philadelphia. Nearly 90 years later, my sister found the negatives and gave them to me. Working from my father’s original negatives, I’ve combined the people from his neighborhood with my own images, many of which were shot from windows and moving vehicles. NOW IS ALWAYS is our collaboration across time.

My father lived in Philly his entire life, and his images of friends and neighbors are firmly rooted in one place and time: the corner of 19th and Girard during the Depression. My images, on the other hand, are much less rooted. This is probably because I was pretty much on my own after my parents died– my father when I was five and my mother when I was 15. My most vivid memory of my father is his leg, because that’s about all I was tall enough to see of him. His most vivid memory of me? I will never know. And yet in this work we manage to speak.

After my parents died, I was rarely in one place for very long. Often the view out a car or train window felt more like home than wherever I was living. Over time, I’ve developed a kinship with blurred bridges and highways, trestles and roofs, the husks of industrial towns racing by at two or three in the morning. In this work, my father’s life becomes part of these landscapes– our shared and evanescent homes.

There is obviously a personal aspect to Now is Always, but I want the work to be more expansive than a dialogue between the father I didn’t know and the daughter he knew only as a child. In Now is Always, I want to create a feeling of collapsed-yet-expanded time. Yes, I want to see what my father saw, and yes, I want him to see what I see. But I also want the viewer to look at the past, and I want the past to look right back; I want the viewer and the subject to each feel the gaze of the other. And by combining images taken almost a century apart, I also want to seamlessly integrate layers of technology and image-making history: his 1930’s point-and-shoot, my iPhone, his silver-gelatin negatives, my Photoshop files, our shared sunlight and water, the traditions of ink, elbow grease, and an intaglio press.

Now is Always is supported by a grant from the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional support from the Tusen Takk Foundation.

See the work and hear Vaune in her own words talk about Now is Always.

About Vaune Trachtman – 


Vaune Trachtman is a photographer and printmaker whose work honors the methods and tones of historic processes, but without the toxic chemicals. Formerly a master printer of silver gelatin prints and asphaltum-based photogravures, she began to feel that her immune-system was being compromised by those processes. She now makes gravures with little more than light and water. Her images explore the evanescence of dreams and memory— a “fleeting, wondrous, sacred habitation” (Collier Brown, Od Review).

Vaune was born in Philadelphia and attended the Tyler School of Art and Marlboro College. She received her M.A. from New York University and The International Center for Photography. She worked in the imaging department of TIME Inc. for many years. She lives in Brattleboro, Vermont.

CV

View Vaune Trachtman’s Website

Mark Feeney, photo critic of The Boston Globe reviews our current exhibitions at the Griffin.

What Will You Remember

At the Edge of the Fens

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Statement
I grew up at the edge of the fens. The dark, rich soil of this flat land is forever etched in my heart. Perhaps because I was born in late autumn, each year at this time this landscape calls to me. It is a place I have tried so many times to portray in black and white, thinking color to be a distraction. I discovered the latter was not true.

A fews years ago on my annual visit home all the elements came together to make this series. Seemingly in the space of a few weeks my work was done. However, this was far from true.  My projects do not materialize out of thin air. They first linger in the far reaches of my mind. They are the result of looking, and looking again over an extended period of time.

Ultimately, I discovered that what drew me to this landscape is its quiet beauty. It is not a place of grand vistas. It is a place of everyday walks. It is the experience of seeing a splash of yellow in the midst of brown, or watching the dance of red and yellow between green. It is the punctuation of a blue door behind tangled vines, or a bold red door juxtaposed to a post of white. This series is an attempt to capture the extraordinary in the ordinary, and to delight in the music of color whether in nature’s sculptural elements or human.

Bio
Born in Cambridge, England, Jacqueline Walters is a fine art photographer based in San Francisco. Since 2009 her work has been exhibited in the San Francisco Bay Area at Corden|Potts Gallery, Rayko Photo Center, Santa Clara University, and The Center for Photographic Arts; in Oregon at LightBox Photographic Gallery; in New York at the SOHO Photo Gallery; in Massachusetts at the Griffin Museum of Photography; as well as many other galleries in the United States, and internationally at the Complesso Monumentale del San Giovanni, Catanzaro, Italy, and The 11th Shanghai International Photographic Festival: Invitation Exhibition, Shanghai, China. Her work has been published in SHOTS magazine, Black and White Magazine, and AAP Magazine. Jacqueline’s work is part of private collections nationally and internationally.

Hear Jacqueline in her own words and see images from her series At the Edge of the Fens

View Jacqueline Walters Website

Mark Feeney, photo critic of The Boston Globe reviews our current exhibitions at the Griffin.

What Will You Remember

Video of reading statement

Mythic Nature

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Statement
In Mythic Nature I create compositions of an imagined world. I am fascinated by statuary in the private and public space. These monuments have been erected to embody the mythos, ideals, and spiritual aspirations of the community. They are tributes to the sacrifice of local heroes, ancient gods, or religious icons and form the basis of my imagery. I digitally remove the statues from their stark plinths and merge them with an envisioned landscape, ensconced in blankets of flowers from manicured formal gardens that contrast the hand-hewn surfaces of statues with the natural world. From these composited images, I create digital negatives which I use to print in the 19th century cyanotype process. Drawn to this technique for its tactile quality, I further add my hand into the image by drawing with pastels. The vertical orientation is a nod to the Asian scroll format and accentuates the upward movement of the statuary and the flowering plants as they both reach for the light and our ideals. – SC

Bio
Sally Chapman is a photographer living in Lowell, MA. After earning a BFA in ceramics and photography from Michigan State University, she worked for over twenty years as a ceramic artist exhibiting widely. When she returned to photography ten years ago, she gravitated towards tactile methods of printing. In her current work, Mythic Nature, she uses the 19th century photographic process, cyanotype.

She has been published in The Hand magazine and has had solo shows at the MIT Rotch Architectural Library, Cambridge, MA; Gallery 93, Brookline, MA; and The Sanctuary in Medford, MA. She won the Excellence in Photography Award at the Rockport Art Association and Museum National Show. She has been included in many group shows including at the Griffin Museum, Winchester, MA; Image Flow Gallery, Mill Valley, CA; Soho Gallery, New York, NY; Photo Place Gallery, Middlebury, VT; and the Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA.

In addition to her BFA in ceramics and photography from Michigan State University, Chapman has studied photography in workshops offered by the New England School of Photography, Griffin Museum, MIT, and Harvard University.

CV
Solo Shows

Art Church – Yards of Faith/Shrines and Altars, The Sanctuary, Medford, MA, Nov. 26 – Jan. 31, 2019
Night Becomes Us, The Art Complex Museum, Duxbury, MA, 2017
Gallery 93: Yards of Faith/ Heritage, Brookline, MA,  Nov. 2- Dec. 29, 2017
Yards of Faith, MIT Rotch Architectural Library, Cambridge, MA, April 5 – May 2, 2016

Group Shows

2021
Soho Photo Gallery’s 16th Intl Alt Processes Competition, Soho Gallery, New York, NY.
Image Flow Gallery, 5th Annual Alternative Process Photography Exhibition, Mill Valley, CA.
Botanical, Photo Place Gallery, Middlebury, VT.

2020
Somerville Toy Camera Festival, Somerville, MA.
Juror: Bill Franson

Online Exhibition 26th Juried Show, Griffin Museum, Winchester, MA.

Corona: It’s All About the Light, Griffin Museum, Winchester, MA.

Primary Source, Griffin Museum Satellite Gallery-Lafayette City Center Passageway, Boston MA.

2019
Rockport Art Association and Museum National 2019, Rockport, MA. Excellence in Photography Award
Annual Open Arts Juried Exhibition 2019, Amazing Things Arts Center, Framingham, MA.
In God We Trust: Reflections of Religion in America, Hera Gallery, Wakefield, RI.
Somerville Toy Camera Festival, Brickbottom Gallery, Somerville, MA.

2018
Somerville Toy Camera Festival, Washington St. Gallery, Somerville, MA.
Personal Perspective, Darkroom Gallery, Essex Junction, VT.

2017
The Curated Fridge Winter 2017, Somerville, MA- curator Elin Spring

2016
Danforth Art Annual: 2016 Juried Exhibition, Danforth Art Museum, Framingham, MA.
2016 National Prize Show, Cambridge Art Association, Cambridge MA. Juror: Paul Ha
2016 Annual Contemporary Art Survey (ACAS), Lincoln Center, 417 W. Magnolia, Fort Collins, CO.
Sacred and Liturgical Art 2016, Springfield Art Association, Springfield, IL.
The Fine Art of Photography – 2016, Plymouth Center for the Arts, Plymouth, MA.
Photowork 2016, Barrett Art Center, Poughkeepsie, NY.
Juror: Karen Irvine
Atelier 23, Griffin Museum, Winchester, MA.
Blue, Cambridge Art Association, Cambridge, MA.

2015
Reclamation II: Emerging Female Artists, Nave Gallery, Somerville, MA,
14th National Prize Show, Cambridge Art Association: Kathryn Schultz Gallery, Cambridge, MA.

Bibliography

The Hand Magazine, Issue #30, November 2020, pg. 42
The Hand Magazine, Issue #29, July 2020, pg. 22
The Hand Magazine, Issue 25, July 2019, pg. 35
PRINTWORKS print sales newsletter- July issue, 2019

Visit Sally Chapman’s Website

The Shelfie Exhibition

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A “Shelfie” is a photograph of your photobooks on your bookshelves. We don’t think “Shelfie” is a real word. We just thought it was a good word to use for a portrait of your photobooks on shelves. Check out these Shelfies. We hope you enjoy!

See you at our photobook events May 11 through May 17, 2021. Here is the full list of the weeks events.

 

The Birth Book

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Statement
Birth…to originate or be responsible for creating something; delivery, beginning, origin…I am.

The Birth Book is a unique object. The individual images were created on a 3M Color-In-Color copy machine, sewn onto handmade Kozo Japanese paper, and then mounted onto red fabric. The object is a form of an accordion book, using heavy cardboard for the front and back covers.  Red ribbon was added to both covers, and is tied on each side, when the book is closed.

Ancient scrolls, and illuminated manuscripts greatly influenced me in the creation of The Birth Book.  The format of the physical object epitomizes the passage of time and space, within the telling of my story. The unraveling of the scroll provides movement, and exemplifies the connection between the individual pages, as individual frames in a film are connected to create progression within the storyline.

The 3M Color-in-Color photocopier works similarly as the dye-transfer process.  The final image is created by the passing of filters (red, yellow and blue) three separate times. Using the subtractive color process, superimposition on the printing paper was created by colored powder (magenta. yellow and cyan matrixes) adhering to the printing paper via a chemical reaction to heat.  Various knobs and buttons adjusted contrast, saturation, and density of the three-color process.

Bio
Laura Krasnow, born in New York City, has lived and traveled throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia.

In addition to being a freelance photographer, she has worked as an assistant editor in feature films, and been trained in film preservation and restoration. Her artwork has been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, and is in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art, and The Brooklyn Museum.

Her passion is art, science and technology. After obtaining an MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she returned to school to study math, physics and computer science. Laura has attended seminars at the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics, and the Centre for Brain and Mind, both in Canada.


View Laura Krasnow’s website.

Historias fragmentadas

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Statement
For those without roots in a place, memory is essential to maintain a sense of continuity in life. Isabel Allende

Historias fragmentadas is a visual journal that I created over the course of five years. It was fueled by a sentiment of longing and nostalgia after the death of my grandmother, the family story keeper in 2015. This event brought me to look deeper into my past; to explore the paradox of memory and the emotion of loss as a way to reconnect with my Peruvian roots and honor those who came before me.

In this series, I create digital photo collages that unsettle the images of the past in a way that allows me to look through the cracks. By tearing, juxtaposing and layering archival family photographs, fragments from my journals, and objects from my childhood, I have shed light on a personal story within an ancestral story that spans generations. I also use staged imagery, mostly self-portraits, to explore moments in my life where I have inhabited liminal spaces, moments of transition and experiences of displacement, both physical and psychological.

This work tells the story of a particular middle-class Peruvian family through my own lens. I have chosen, with these images and writings, to release the voices and the haunting self-discovery that happened when I explored the stories behind iconic family photographs and their legends through my own personal mythology. – CRG

Bio
Claudia Ruiz Gustafson is a Peruvian visual artist based in Massachusetts whose practice engages photography, assemblage, poetry and artist book making. Her work is mainly autobiographical and self-reflective; her cross-cultural experience and Peruvian heritage deeply inform her art making. Claudia’s latest projects explore the stories of her Peruvian ancestors and aspects of her immigrant and liminal experiences.

Claudia has exhibited in museums and galleries across the US and abroad at venues including Danforth Art Museum, Griffin Museum of Photography, Newport Art Museum, Photographic Resource Center, Agora Gallery, Millepiani Gallery and Galleria Valid Foto. She is a 2020 Critical Mass 200 Finalist and 2020 Photo LA Top 20 Finalist.

Claudia has received grants and awards from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Cambridge Art Association, L.A. Photo Curator: Global Photography Awards, PX3 de la Photographie Paris, The Gala Awards, among others and her work has been published in Fraction Media, Black & White Magazine, F-Stop Magazine, Float Photo Magazine, Aspect Initiative and Lenscratch.

Currently she is curator and participating artist of the traveling exhibition Crossing Cultures: Family, Memory and Displacement, a multi-media project made up of artwork created by multi-cultural artists reflecting on identity and diaspora.

She holds a BA in Communications from Universidad de Lima, and a Professional Photography Certificate from Kodak Interamericana de Perú.

View Claudia’s website.

View Mark Feeney’s review in the Boston Globe.

View What Will You Remember’s Review.

Anonymous

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Statement
During a year-long illness, I spent more time looking at photographs in books than making them. A series of anonymous nudes from various sources, all made between 1843-1910 entered my consciousness and kept me restless. It was not just the finality of the title, “anonymous”, but wonder about the relationship between photographer and subject. I found myself dreamily inventing backstories and imagining what they might have been like outside the photographers studio. To satisfy my curiosity, I scanned the original reproduction to digitally remove them from the studio. Then I began creating an alternate place and time. I embroider, and sew clothing as a gesture of renewal and second chances. Each sewn photograph is a unique echo of the original, akin to a distant, imagined descendent. I gratefully acknowledge the collectors and institutions who collected and preserved the original moments. – EB

Bio

Edie Bresler is a longtime artist who investigates chance and randomness with photography. Her multi-faceted projects embracing a gamut of processes and possibilities is a rarity in this era of branded creativity.

Bresler is a recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council fellowship in photography, several Visual Artist Fellowships from the Somerville Arts Council, a Berkshire Taconic Artist Resource Grant, and a New York Foundation for the Arts grant.

Her projects have been featured on Good Morning America and PBS Greater Boston as well as in Photograph Magazine, Lenscratch, Slate, Photo District News, Business Insider, Esquire Russia and many other publications. She is represented by Gallery Kayafas in Boston and her photographs are in the permanent collections of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Danforth Museum of Art and Polaroid Corporation.

Bresler lives in Somerville, MA and is director of the photography program at Simmons University.

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View Edie Bresler’s website.

View Mark Feeney of the Boston Globe’s review.

View What Will Be Remembered’s Review.

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