Griffin Museum of Photography

Andrea Zampitella | In the Blink of an Eye

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I use photography as a means of connection. I use it to look at my life deeply. When I had my two children, I had a new purpose but felt disconnected from my identity. I dusted off my old Canon DSLR and turned my lens towards my growing family. I started to capture the complexities of childhood and document the messy and tender moments of parenthood. My camera gave me a lens and a voice. I try to uncover beauty in the mundane, examine the agony of growing up,and the pure and simple joys of childhood. Through photography I show the relationship between sisters, the shifting tensions and evolving bond between partners and the intensity of parenthood. I take photos of my family to record and to preserve these fleeting moments as honestly as I can.

About Andrea Zampitella

Andrea Zampitella attended the Massachusetts College of Art where she earned a MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies, a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art Education and Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM) and a minor in Small Metals.

Zampitella’s creative reach touches upon sculpture, performance, video, sound design and photography. In her interdisciplinary approach she creates platforms for artists to collaborate with each other. Zampitella has exhibited in galleries and public spaces around Boston including the Decordova Museum and Sculpture Park, The Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, The Boston Children’s Museum, Axiom Gallery, Mobius Gallery and the Griffin Museum of Photography. Currently, she is a Library/Media Specialist at Winchester High School. As an educator, Andrea promotes the cross-pollination of disciplines in her classroom encouraging students to invent and develop experimental art forms.

Zampitella has been mentored by multimedia artists Megan and Murray McMillan, Mary Mattingly and Ellen Wetmore. She has received grants from Massachusetts College of Art, The Boston Children’s Museum, The Winchester Cultural Council, and The Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy.

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The Griffin @ WinCam is located at 32 Swanton St in Winchester, MA. Hours are Monday through Friday 11am to 5pm. You can see more about WINCAM on their website.

Holocaust Remembrance: Memory & Legacy | Beth Burstein, Max Hirshfeld and Loli Kantor

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The Griffin Museum of Photography is honored to present the works of Beth Burstein, Loli Kantor and Max Hirshfeld in commemoration of this year’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The online exhibition, Holocaust Remembrance: Memory & Legacy, presents the projects of three second-generation Holocaust survivors, artists and documentarians whose works explore their unique experiences and familial histories and legacies.

We are thrilled to begin this journey with a poignant statement by Beth Burstein, who as a guest curator, states:

It has been eighty years since the end of World War II, with the last remaining Holocaust survivors now in their 80’s, 90’s, and some over 100 years of age. Time is running out to document their recollections as the victims and witnesses of unspeakable atrocities. For many survivors, the torch has now been passed onto their children, who can continue to tell these stories, as well as express how they have themselves been affected by their parents’ experiences. 

To commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day this year, I am honored to share my family’s story through my project 82598 (the number was my father’s “name” in a subcamp of Dachau.) Joining me are fellow second-generation photographers Loli Kantor and Max Hirshfeld. As children of survivors, we are in the unique position to tell our family histories visually, creatively, and perhaps most importantly, personally. In each of our projects, there are the shared experiences of tragic loss and erasure, searching for and mourning lost families, and honoring our parents. 

Today it is essential that our creative voices be heard. Who would imagine that in 2025 the Holocaust would still be denied, minimized, even glorified. The antisemitic slurs our parents heard growing up in wartime Europe are still being repeated. Holocaust history and testimony, especially personal stories like our own, must continue to be told to counteract this ignorance and misinformation. They can inform current generations, and those to come.

— Beth Burstein, January 2025

Beth Burstein | 82598

82598 is an ongoing photo series I began in 1997 when I first began to explore the experience of being the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, or “Second Generation.”  The experience of being ”2G” is something that has evolved and changed as I have gotten older. What began in my 20’s and 30’s with feelings of grief and longing, now has become an increased sense of urgency to tell my family’s story to ensure this part of our history is neither silenced nor denied, especially in the face of growing antisemitism worldwide.

This project, now it its 27th year, began with a series of photographs of my father’s uniform which he saved after his liberation from a subcamp of Dachau. He held onto the uniform, which bears his identification number 82598, after liberation and then kept it in a bag on his closet shelf for many years. I had known about it from an early age, and it became my connection to a past that at the time felt unreal. When I knew his uniform was going on loan to the US Holocaust Museum in Washington DC in the late 1990’s, I wanted to photograph it before it left. While photographing, it struck me that it was quite small, something I had never noticed. It was not sized for the adult I knew my father to be, but for a child or a teenager, someone my height. Without thinking, I tried it on and it fit me perfectly. This was when it sank in that my father was just a slight boy of 15 when he was forced to wear this uniform.

Recently, I created three images using the few family photographs my grandfather managed to save and keep hidden throughout the time they were in forced labor at the concentration camp. After the war my grandfather had them made into photo-postcards to send to relatives in the United States, and they were eventually given to my father after he emigrated to the U.S.  I have looked at those images of my father’s family, with my grandfather’s written, heartbreaking messages on the reverse sides hundreds of times since I was a little girl. These, too, serve as my connection to people and a place that have felt inaccessible to me.

In these images I have placed my grandfather’s handwritten message on the front of each postcard as if it is bleeding through from the back side, making it necessary for the viewer to carefully read what is written on each card and uncover the jarring, tragic message each one reveals.

The second half of this “Legacy” project is my photo essay “I Thought It Would Feel Like Home,” which documents a 2005 pilgrimage I made with a small group of cousins to my father’s pre-Holocaust homeland of Lithuania. It combines my photographs from that journey with excerpts from journal entries written while I was there, with historical information about the Lithuanian Jews and their fate.

In documenting and writing about that journey I came face-to-face with the profound loss of a culture and its people, their erasure at the hands of others, and the “memories of memory” that are the only remnants I have to hold onto.

©Beth Burstein, Self Portrait in the Family Heirloom
©Beth Burstein, The Hand Me Down
©Beth Burstein, Family Portrait- My Grandmother Rachel, Age 40, and Aunt Ida, Age 11, at Auschwitz
©Beth Burstein, If These Streets Could Talk, Kaunas
©Beth Burstein, Kerosene Store, Best Quality
©Beth Burstein, Mass Grave, Remains of Jews from the Kovno Ghetto, Kaunas, Lithuania
©Beth Burstein, My great-great-grandparents, Ita and Zalman
Beth Burstein is a photographer in the New York City metro area whose work currently focuses on documenting what has vanished or is destined to be destroyed. Her projects stem from her family history and her own experiences, and her desire to tell these stories which she feels hold a universal connection.
Beth received a BA in Photography from Hampshire College in 1982, where she studied under Elaine Mayes and Jerry Leibling.

Loli Kantor | Selections from Call Me Lola and other projects

Deeply personal, my work speaks to the wider upheavals of the 20th and 21st centuries: love and loss, war and displacement, trauma and bereavement.

As a daughter of Holocaust survivors, I began my work in East-Central Europe in 2002. Initially, I was searching for clues about my own family, visiting my father and mother’s hometowns in Poland, exploring city archives, and seeking a deeper understanding of their histories. From 2005 to 2012, my focus shifted to a more universal perspective—investigating the lives of surviving Jews in Ukraine and Poland, as well as the non-Jews who were instrumental in preserving Jewish culture after the Holocaust and during the Soviet regime that followed. My work during this period centered on the Jewish presence and absence in these regions and was published in 2014 by the University of Texas Press.

Around 2014, I returned to my autobiographical work, delving into family archives and creating new pieces that explored my own story of loss—what I call “My own Holocaust.” This included the loss of my mother at birth, the loss of my father at the age of 14, displacement, and the untimely death of my brother. These experiences culminated in Call Me Lola: In Search of Mother, published by Hatje Cantz Verlag in 2024.

—Loli Kantor, January 2024

©Loli Kantor, Between Destinations, 2005
©Loli Kantor, Lublin, Poland, 2017
©Loli Kantor, Self Portrait at the Memorial for the Murdered People of Belzec, My Mother’s Hometown, Poland, 2006
©Loli Kantor, Krakow on the Way to Plaszow, 2004
©Loli Kantor, Belzec – Treblinka
©Loli Kantor, Lviv, Ukraine, 2018
©Loli Kantor, Lublin, Poland, 2018
©Loli Kantor, Regina Huber, Auschwitz Survivor, Solotvino, Ukraine, 2007
Loli Kantor is a photo-artist and documentarian whose work centers on personal, community, and cultural memory. Her works are long-term projects with a depth of content and context.
Her previous completed project centered on Jewish presence and cultural renewal in East-Central Europe, mostly focusing on Poland and Ukraine. As a daughter of Holocaust survivors, her work is deeply personal yet also speaks to current events. This project was published as a monograph entitled Beyond the Forest, Jewish Presence in Eastern Europe by the University of Texas Press in 2014. It followed a previously self-published artist’s book from 2009, There Was a Forest: Jewish Life in Eastern Europe Today, 2005-2008.
Kantor’s work is included in museum collections such as The Museum of Fine Arts (Houston, TX), Galicia Jewish Museum (Krakow, Poland), Lishui Museum of Photography (Lishui, China), and Lviv National Museum (Lviv, Ukraine).
Kantor was born in Paris, France, and raised in Israel. She has been living and working in Fort Worth, Texas, since 1984.

Max Hirshfeld | Sweet Noise: Love in Wartime

Sweet Noise: Love in Wartime is a book of photographs and words about the Holocaust, a subject difficult to grasp and almost impossible to document. It is also a story of love in a time of war, told in a clear voice using compelling black-and-white photographs and simple, evocative language to build a framework around this pivotal moment in history.

Hirshfeld’s parents, Polish Jews who survived Auschwitz, raised him in a small city in Alabama where life in the South of the 1950s and ‘60s was quiet and, on the surface, mostly idyllic. But lurking under the surface was a remarkable yet tension-filled history that fully revealed itself only after he matured and had a family of his own.

He knew the outer perimeters of his parents’ story: the challenges of being Jewish in a place that increasingly alienated them, their individual trajectories as they moved through adulthood, and their chance meeting in a Nazi-created ghetto where they fell in love. But it took a trip to Poland with his mother in 1993 to more fully acquaint him with the depths of their tragedies and the exceptional love story that began in 1943, sustaining them through the war.

Though Sweet Noise features events that began more than eighty years ago, the material is eerily timely.

The material from Sweet Noise: Love in Wartime is excerpted from Max Hirshfeld’s book of the same name, published by Damiani in 2019, and is nearing completion as a traveling exhibition.

©Max Hirshfeld
©Max Hirshfeld
©Max Hirshfeld
Max Hirshfeld is recognized as a master at spotting decisive moments while revealing the warmth and humanity of his subjects. He was born in North Carolina in 1951 and grew up in Decatur, Alabama. After moving to Washington, DC, he studied photography at George Washington University, graduating in 1973. His work has been shown at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Kreeger Museum, and is part of the permanent collection at the National Portrait Gallery. He has won silver and bronze awards from the Prix de la Photographie Paris and been featured in Communication Arts, Graphis, andAmerican Photography.Hirshfeld’s editorial work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, Time, Vanity Fair, and other national publications, and his advertising work has been showcased in campaigns for Amtrak, Canon and IBM, among others. 
This online exhibition was coordinated by Vicente Cayuela for the Griffin Museum of Photography.


Nick Ortoleva | to you, from seoul

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The Griffin Museum is excited to present an exhibition by Nick Ortoleva, featuring photographs exploring identity, memory, place and family ties. This exhibition is located at our satellite location Griffin @ WinCam, located in Winchester through June 29, 2025.

It’s been 22 years since I’ve been in Korea. It’s been 22 years since I’ve taken a breath of  this hot humid air. It’s been 22 years since I’ve heard the bustle of the busy city streets filled with vendors and buses and cars whizzing by. I don’t remember my time here, but know that I was here for three months before I boarded a plane leaving Incheon International Airport to Logan Airport in Boston. 

I look to the photographs Mom took on her trip, to get Thomas, my younger brother, from her trip here 18 years ago. I use her fading, 4×6″ prints on some old drug store RC paper 

as these points of reference as I continue to map out the city for myself. Amongst trying to sort out the rush of feelings in the place I was born, I continue to walk, landmark to landmark. As I stomp through the late summer heat, I stop to make notes and photograph, to expand the visual map of the city I have set out to make. I follow an itinerary my map guides me through, stopping into markets and parks to continue to familiarize myself with new sights and smells.

As a note taker, image maker, and writer, I sift and reflect on my experience through notes I’ve jotted down and personal essays, to keep record of my own story and write my piece. My place of origin is a piece of me that I had little information on. Something that I was certain about is that in returning to Seoul to learn about, observe, and understand the contemporary landscape would allow me to continue to discover what place can hold for the individual.

Nick Ortoleva (b. Seoul, Korea) grew up in Central Massachusetts and currently resides in Boston. He received a BFA in Photography from MassArt (24’). 
Ortoleva uses the camera to shape a fragmented narrative that often reflects on personal experiences and  relationships with the communities where he has found kinship. He frequently revisits stories passed down through family, as he continues to write a memoir of his own; warping perception, color, and light. In his most recent work, he explores family archives and returns to Seoul for the first time meditating on what place can hold for the individual, as a means to discover Oneself.

The Griffin @ WinCam is located at 22 Swanton Street in Winchester at WinCam (Winchester Community Access and Media) Hours of opening – 11am to 7pm Monday thru Thursday / 11am to 5pm Friday. Closed on Weekends.

Timothy Hyunsoo Lee | Imprints

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My slanted eyes betray my Western tongue, and in this yellow body of mine I deeply understood the meaning of longing and belonging. My pathway into art stems from the necessity to forge a pathway towards representation – of myself, my identity, but also to translate personal experiences into a conversation that resonates universally. I am interested in the semiotics of childhood artefacts and language, and the significance of this mean-making within abstraction. The mugwort – a central image of my current works – become both an image and a mark; at once referencing one of the first familiar things I encountered as a new transplant to New York City, but also acknowledging how this herb – while culturally significant in Korea for its resilience – exists for those same reasons as an invasive species in the United States. I am interested in image capturing, processing, and transferring, and how the lexicon of photosensitive processes mimics those of immigration. I think a lot about the notion of exposure, which I’ve defined as assimilation, and how exposure works within cyanotype processes to capture time-based documentation of whitening, erasure, and the invisibility that comes with the transience of constant migration.

My practice, and the breadth of my interests, tells a fragmented story constantly reassembling itself – a story of how a boy grew into his body and into his home. A story about migrating, and the rituals and labors of that journey. A story about feeling the politicized, fetishized, and abstracted body so deeply long before learning the vocabulary to describe it. A story about dreaming and finally waking up. 

About Imprints

An imprint is a mark formed by pressing something against another; it is a residue of an interaction past, and serves as a reminder for the future. The works presented in this collection of works are imprints of experiments, exercises, and works that serve as formative reminders and cues to Timothy Hyunsoo Lee’s large-scale practices in image capturing, transferring, preservation and deterioration. His works in image transfer techniques highlights a rebellion to, and rejection of, the manic archival practices of photography in the era of smartphones and the Cloud, and how the deterioration of the image through each subsequent transfer process mirrors the natural deterioration of memories. He is particularly interested in the significance of meaning-making when referential points in representation get increasingly obscure, and how it affects our relationship to the original image, and original memory. Within his works in cyanotype printing – an attempt that documenting the ritual of performance, iterations, and endurance that defines Timothy’s practice in the visual arts, he is particularly interested in how the lexicon of this photosensitive process mimics those of immigration, and thinking about the terminology of exposure as assimilation. His abstractions in cyanotype utilizes exposure lengths to capture time-based documentation of whitening, erasing, and ultimately the invisibility that comes with the transience of constant migration – something that he has deeply felt as a child immigrant in the United States. 

About Timothy Hyunsoo Lee –

Timothy Hyunsoo Lee is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice explores the relationship between rituals of (in)visibility, community and the abstracted, queer body. Born in Seoul, South Korea and raised in New York City, he received his B.A. in Neuroscience, Biology and Studio Art from Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT) and his MFA in computational arts from Goldsmiths, University of London (UK). Lee’s background in laboratory research and emerging technologies ushers in an empirical approach to investigating the materiality and precision in his practice, his interests in legacies of craft, representation, and labor, that is complemented with the existential urgency of growing up between cultures. Timothy’s works have been exhibited at venues such as the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Orlando Museum of Art, the Studio Museum, The Wallach Art Gallery of Columbia University, The YoungArts Foundation Gallery, Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid, and La Casa Encendida, with a public project with the MTA Arts & Design (New York). He is currently based between Boston and NYC and lectures at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology W20 Art Studios. 

All images Courtesy of the artist and Sabrina Amrani Gallery (Madrid, Spain)

Stas Ginzburg | Sanctuary

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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.

Kyle Agnew | Our Cheeks Blushed Amidst Prairie Grasses

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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.

Jorge Ariel Escobar | Aftertaste

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Aftertaste is a collection of recent lumen prints that explores the ephemeral and nuanced nature of queer relationships. Through portraiture, I photograph several queer men I have encountered in various ways, collaborating with them to create scenes that suggest the aftermath of an intimate encounter.

The work engages with hook-up culture within the queer community, reflecting on the pursuit of immediate intimacy and its complexities. These images aim to capture the intangible “aftertaste” of such encounters—the subtle, lingering moments or personal details that remain in my memory long after we part ways.

The use of lumen prints is both a formal and conceptual choice. The light-sensitive process reflects the fragility of these relationships, as well as the transitory nature of intimacy itself. Through this technique, I aim to romanticize and “queer” these moments, subtly shifting the perspective on these brief instances of intimacy and connection.

The delicate, unpredictable process of creating the prints further evokes the impermanence and vulnerability that often characterize such fleeting encounters.

Read an interview with the artist here.

Jorge Ariel Escobar (b. 1994) is a queer/Latinx image-maker who holds an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was an Ed-GRS Fellow and received the Temkin Exhibition Award. His photographic work focuses on intimacy and desires, highlighting the ephemeral qualities of short-term romantic encounters between queer men while portraying the male form through a softer lens.

Recent solo exhibitions include the Wriston Art Galleries in Appleton, WI, and the Common Wealth Gallery in Madison, WI. Other credits include group exhibitions at the Trout Museum of Art (Appleton, WI), the Center for Fine Art Photography (Fort Collins, CO), Candela Gallery (Richmond, VA), The Image Flow (San Anselmo, CA), and the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago, IL).

He has further attended residencies and workshops at AZULE (Hot Springs, NC), Penland School of Craft (Bakersville, NC), and Anderson Ranch Art Center (Snowmass Village, CO). Jorge’s work is included in the permanent collection at the Museum of Contemporary Photography and was awarded First Place at the TMA Contemporary Exhibition at the Trout Museum of Art.

Jorge currently lives in Milwaukee, WI, where he is a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Follow Jorge on Instagram: @__jorgearielescobar

Nuclear Family

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What makes a family? How do we define community? These fundamental questions are explored in the exhibition Nuclear Family, which re-imagines the concept of family, expanding our vision beyond traditional norms through the lens of LGBTQIA+ artists.

Traditional family values. The universal phrase for how we perceive and accept families in public. We are reminded of the standard visual narrative of a family as two heterosexual parents and their children. Family dynamics are complicated, not all of us fit into this vision of perceived perfection. In expanding the idea of family, we see these photographers present honest and authentic portrayals of themselves, their families and the broader community, challenging viewers to confront their own biases and assumptions through fresh eyes. 

Featuring a diverse range of photographic and video works, the exhibition presents a compelling exploration of diverse family structures. Jess Dugan‘s A Letter to My Daughter is a poignant video essay that delves into the joys and challenges of parenthood. Mengwen Cao‘s Liminal Space celebrates the everyday beauty, intimacy, and resilience of queer and trans people of color, with a particular focus on Asian queer identities. Yorgos Efthymiadis‘ Lighthouse Keepers offers a series of intimate portraits of friends in their own spaces, providing a glimpse into the artist’s personal connections and his shared community. Laurence Philomene‘s vibrant and colorful images serve as a visual diary reflecting their environment and their own trans and non-binary identity. Anne Vetter‘s Love is not the Last Room explores themes of gender, attachment, and family through intimate portraits of themselves and their partner. Matthew Leifheit‘s Queer Archives delves into LGBTQIA+ history through objects and archives that remind the community of its origins and those who came before.

These artists utilize photography and video not only to document their lives but also to challenge societal norms and celebrate the diversity of love and family structures. By reclaiming the genre of portraiture, often used to uphold traditional ideals, they create powerful and moving works that resonate with viewers on a deeply personal level.

Nuclear Family was conceived and created by curator and artist Katalina Simon, in collaboration with Crista Dix, Executive Director of the Griffin Museum, and exhibition designer Yana Nosenko.

More about the artists of Nuclear Family –

Mengwen Cao | Liminal Space

“Liminal Space” is a visual meditation on the everyday beauty, intimacy, and resilience of queer and trans people of color, with a focus on Asian queer identities. Through a tender gaze, these images capture moments of becoming and summon futures rooted in joy, connection, and care.

The project began as a way to connect with my community and evolved into an exploration of belonging, healing, and self-love. Each portrait embodies a collaborative process, inviting people to imagine themselves in a way that feels safe, authentic, and expansive. These moments of introspection become portals: spaces where individual transformation and collective belonging can thrive.

In a world that often amplifies extremes, “Liminal Space” aims to normalize queer existence beyond spectacle or struggle. By sharing these tender moments, I hope to offer a counter-narrative—one that embraces the multiplicity of our identities while celebrating the beauty of the in-between.

About Mengwen Cao

MENGWEN CAO (they/them) is an artist, educator and somatic coach creating multimedia portals for personal and collective transformation. Born and raised in Hangzhou, China, they are currently nomadic with roots in New York and Chiang Mai. Weaving their embodied experience as a Chinese diasporic queer into their spiritual and creative practices, they use care and tenderness to explore in-between spaces. They see photography as a vehicle for healing and a tool to visualize the future.

Jess T. Dugan | Letter to my Daughter

Letter to My Daughter is an autobiographical video directed to my five-year-old daughter, Elinor, that centers around my experience with parenthood throughout the first five years of her life. The audio soundtrack is my voice reading a letter to Elinor, and the images are from my personal archive and include snapshots, ultrasound images, and photographs from Family Pictures.The letter is highly personal and addresses a variety of topics, including my expectations around parenthood, the long and circuitous journey of trying to have a child with both known and anonymous sperm donors, the experiences of miscarriage and loss, and my adjustment to parenthood as a queer and nonbinary person. Perhaps most importantly, it tries to put into words the intensity of love between a parent and child as well as the significant personal growth parenthood both inspires and requires.Letter to My Daughter is part of my larger exploration of family. It is in dialogue with my 2017 video,Letter to My Father, which explores my estranged relationship with my father, as well as my long-term series of photographs Family Pictures(2012-present),which focuses on the intimacy of familial relationships, aging, and the passage of time through an extended look at three generations of my family.

About Jess T. Dugan

Jess T. Dugan (b. 1986, Biloxi, MS) is an artist and writer whose work explores the complexities of personhood, relationships, desire, love, and family. While their practice is centered around photography, it also includes writing, video, sound, drawing, and installation. Their work is informed by their own life experiences, including their identity as a queer and nonbinary person, and reflects a deep belief in the importance of representation and the transformative power of storytelling.  

Their work is regularly exhibited internationally and is in the permanent collections of over 60 museums. Their monographs include Look at me like you love me (MACK, 2022), To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults (Kehrer Verlag, 2018) and Every Breath We Drew (Daylight Books, 2015). They are the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, an ICP Infinity Award, and were selected by the Obama White House as an LGBT Artist Champion of Change. 

They currently live and work in St. Louis, MO.

Yorgos Efthymiadis | The Lighthouse Keepers

Whenever I travel back to my country, it feels like I come across a shoebox in the back of my childhood bedroom closet, full of memorabilia I didn’t know were there. As soon as I open the box, an inner whisper says “I will remind you of everything.”

There is an instant rush of fond memories of the house I grew up in by the sea and of the maze-like city I moved to when I got older. But mostly, of family and friends: the people that I care for and who have always been there for me since the beginning. The ones I take for granted.

Growing up, so many of us were queer in our seaside town we joked “it must be in the water.” Some have left, many have stayed. Like everyone else, from the proud “mother” of the village who helped most of us come out, to the sentimental ones that are still hanging onto a past that is no longer there, we are struggling in our own way. Loneliness, isolation, decline. Secrets and regrets. But each one a lighthouse keeper. Strong and resilient, fragile and tender, always there to help, guiding each other through life, and reminding me of where I belong.

About Yorgos Efthymiadis

Yorgos Efthymiadis is an artist/curator from Greece who resides in Somerville, MA. A board member of Somerville Arts Council and founder of The Curated Fridge, an independent gallery that celebrates fine art photography, Efthymiadis is a recipient of the 2025 James and Audrey Foster Prize, an awardee of the Artist’s Resource Trust A.R.T. Grant in 2024, a finalist for the 2017 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship, and a recipient of the St. Botolph Club Foundation 2017 Emerging Artist Award. This project has been supported by a grant from the Artist’s Resource Trust.

Matthew Leifheit | Queer Archives

Since 2021 Matthew Leifheit has traveled the country visiting and photographing in queer archives. Leifheit describes: “During the 1970s and 80s, independent archives were established by LGBTQ Americans to collect materials that major institutions would not. These materials—pictures, letters, T shirts, protest signs, ephemera, and the like—document queer culture and identity in the 20th century, in relation to the rise of the US gay rights movement. More importantly, they contain the evidence of many peoples’ lives who would otherwise be lost to history, for reasons ranging from homophobia to racial prejudice, sexism and AIDS.”

Leifheit’s Queer Archive asks us to consider what is worth keeping, how histories are made and told, who gets to hold them, and who is able to seek out and find them.
These photographs dramatize the limits of immortality as we attempt to access it through media.

Text by Rachel Stern, Curator, MassArt Museum exhibition, 2024

About Matthew Leifheit

Matthew Leifheit is an American photographer, magazine editor, and professor based in Brooklyn, New York. A graduate of Rhode Island School of Design and the Yale School of Art, Leifheit is Editor-in-Chief of MATTE Magazine, the journal of emerging photography he has published since 2010. Leifheit’s photographs have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Aperture, TIME, and Artforum, and have been exhibited internationally. His work has been supported by residencies at the Corporation of Yaddo and The Watermill Center, receiving grants from the New York State Cultural Council and the Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale, where he was awarded the Richard Benson Prize in 2017. He is currently full-time faculty at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston.

Laurence Philomene |

In recent years, I have challenged myself to take daily pictures to document my evolving sense of self as a non-binary person undertaking hormonal replacement therapy. The resulting photos look at transition beyond the physical, into the intimate and domestic aspects of life viewers are rarely granted access to. Individually, each photo tells the story of a small moment, but when juxtaposed with one another, context is gained and a new, more powerful narrative is created : one of creating a home both within my environment and my body.

Growing up, the only access I had to queer history was through photography books I borrowed at the library. In lieu of institutional recognition, a lot of our history as marginalized folks is passed down through self-documentation as a means of reclaiming our narrative, which is something that’s always been fascinating to me. I think of the freedom to create our own story as an integral part of embodying queerness.

About Laurence Philomene

Laurence Philomene is a non-binary artist from Montreal (b.1993) who creates colourful photographs informed by their lived experiences as a chronically ill transgender person. Their practice celebrates trans existence, and studies identity as a space in constant flux via highly-saturated, cinematic, and vulnerable images.

Laurence’s first monograph Puberty – in which the artist self-documents two years of their life as they undergo hormonal replacement therapy – was published in 2022 by Yoffy Press.

Anne Vetter | love is not the last room

Vetter’s series “Love is Not the Last Room” is made in collaboration with the artist’s family—their parents, their brothers, and their partner. It is an examination of play and leisure, tension and freedom. Through photographs, Vetter processes how they learned to relate in their most intimate connections, and how they relate now. This project explores queer familial relationships, and uses Vetter’s own gender fluidity as a lens to examine the gendered experiences of their family members.

About Anne Vetter

Anne Vetter (b. 1994) lives and works in California and Massachusetts. They are currently a MFA candidate at UCLA (2026). They are a Jewish-American artist. Their work is focused on play, permission, desire and performance. 

We are pleased to partner with Digital Silver Imaging to print the images for the exhibition.

Kevin Bennett Moore | Meditations in an Emergency

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Meditations in an Emergency

Influenced by my own queer experience and ideals of mid-century American culture, my work investigates a familiar environment that alludes to something more enigmatic. Creating vignettes of this space and time allows for the images to exist in reality or remain fictitious. 

Initially making work about control of the environment, I am able to create a safe space for the narrative to unfold; purposely diverting from what we may consider conventional. The characters become distant protagonists as the work allows the viewer to respond as a voyeur.

“Meditations in an Emergency” explores quiet amongst chaos. By focusing on themes of disaster and tragedy I am able to address the human condition; attempting to thrive in times of turmoil.

About Kevin Bennett Moore

Kevin Bennett Moore (b. 1996) is an artist living and working in Boston. His self-portrait based projects largely discuss queerness by utilizing the past to talk about current politics. Moore is influenced greatly by films of the 1950s & 60s, gender performativity, and ideals of mid-century American culture. He graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design with a degree in photography (BFA ’20)

Matthew Finley | An Impossibly Normal Life

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Imagine a world where it doesn’t matter who you love, just that you love. 

An Impossibly Normal Life is an artifact from another world, a more loving, inclusive one where who you love is of little societal importance. This fictional story, centered on my imagined uncle’s idealized life, is created from collected vintage snapshots from around the world. 

Four years ago, my mother offhandedly mentioned that I had an uncle who may have been gay, but he died not long after I was born. Hearing this revelation for the first time, nearly thirty years after I had struggled to come out to my disapproving family, sent my mind spinning. The thought of a family member so close to me going through some of the same things I did inspired me to create this story. 

Instead of returning to the hiding or shame of most pre-1970’s queer stories, a reality of how our world was (and in some cases, still is), I have created an alternate history where fluidity in gender and sexuality is the societal norm. Re-contexualizing found photographs and creating a new narrative, my Uncle Ken’s life becomes full of acceptance, friends and love, and shows anyone struggling with identity today the joy of what could have been and can still be.

About Matthew Finley

Based in Los Angeles, Matthew Finley’s work has shown in solo and group shows in galleries across the U.S. He has pieces in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago, MOAH, Lancaster, and the Center for Fine Art Photography. His current project An Impossibly Normal Life recently received Center Santa Fe’s 2024 Personal Award as well as the Center for Photographic Art’s 2024 LGBTQ+ Artist Grant.

To learn more, please visit Matthew’s website at: http://mfinleyphoto.com/

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