Griffin Museum of Photography

Honor Thy Mother

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Rocio de Alba poses in a series of humorous and processed self-portraits, which shows us different contemporary mothers in current modern families. Current statistics confirm that the diversity of family structures are affected by many situations including the rise in divorce rate, interracial unions and legalization of same sex marriages. These statistics support the change in the mother prototype.

By taking humorous and dynamic self-portraits, Rocio explores what mothers should look like in the progression of the “modern family”. Statistically, the diversity of modern family structures is caused by divorce. She uses these facts and her own experiences as a base to her concerns and questions.

De Alba’s ongoing series, “Honor Thy Mother,” is featured in the Atelier Gallery at the Griffin Museum of Photography from June 6st through September 3rd, 2017. An opening reception will take place on July 13th, 2017 from 7-8:30PM. Event is free and open to the public.

Rocio de Alba shares, “In my early twenties my pious old fashion Hispanic parents divorced. Years later they confessed their most devoted accomplishments were sparing us the un-pleasantries associated with step-parents. Yet almost immediately my mother began a relationship with a man… and my father courted many women. Baffled, I witnessed my strict marital ethics unravel through the adults that enforced them and seamlessly integrated into what is referred to as the “modern family”.” In these self-portraits, de Alba uses props and minor Photoshop edits to transform herself into these numerous characters which “[focus] on the gamut of the contemporary mother archetype. Rocio herself has undergone broken relationships and separated children. She says, “As the evolution of a progressive family dynamic ensued, it revolutionized societal doctrines that enforced what mothers should look like and instead made mothers reinvent themselves unconventionally and with disregard to social biases.”

Rocio de Alba is a fine art, multimedia and conceptual photographer based in Queens, New York. She received her BFA from The School of Visual Arts and is an award winning book designer and handmade book instructor. Her work has been featured on many platforms including CNN Photos, New York Magazine, and the New York Times Lens. Her work has been part of different group exhibitions including at The Center for Fine Art Photography in Colorado, Blue Sky Gallery in Oregon, and at the Vermont Center of Photography. Her handmade book has earned a finalist position and was displayed at the Festival Documental in Barcelona. On April 2017, the book was also selected for the INFOCUS Exhibition of Self-Published Photo Books at the Phoenix Art Museum.

Grace Weston: The Long Night and Neo Noir

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Grace Weston creates narrative photography in her studio with staged vignettes that address psychological themes.

“The Long Night” and “Neo Noir” by Grace Weston are featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre from June 13th through August 13th, 2017. The opening reception will take place on June 13, 2017 from 6:30pm – 8:00pm. Weston will be giving a talk at the reception at 6:30pm.

“As an artist working in the genre of staged photography,” Weston notes, “I construct, light, and photograph miniature, staged vignettes in my studio to address the questions and contradictions of life, both large and small. Like other photographers who have staged their scenes, I am attracted to the open possibilities the “blank canvas” offers, using the camera to construct and express my narratives.” In the series, “The Long Night,” Weston’s use of isolated figures, directed studio lighting, and selective focus points to the nostalgic genres of film noir and 1930s spy films. Although there may not be humans depicted in her photographs, “…the human psyche is undeniably at the center of [her] work.”

A 2015 Artist Trust Fellowship Award recipient (Washington), Grace was nominated in both 2014 and 2012 for Portland Art Museum’s Contemporary Northwest Art Awards (Oregon). In 2012, her work was received with acclaim in her first European solo show at Paci Contemporary in Brescia, Italy. Grace received honorable mentions in the International Kontinent Awards 2013 and Center Forward 2013. She was a finalist in PhotoEspana’s Descubrimientos 2009 (Spain) and one of the Whatcom Museum 2008 Photography Biennial’s “Nine to Watch” (Washington). The Oregon Arts Commission honored Grace with an Individual Artist’s Fellowship in 2006. Public collections include those of the Portland Art Museum, University of Oregon, Seattle Public Utilities Portable Artworks Collection, Photographic Center Northwest, Portland Community College, 4 Culture King County, and the City of Seattle. She has exhibited widely in the United States, as well as in Europe and Scandinavia. Her work has been featured in print magazines in Italy, Spain, China, and the Netherlands, as well as on many international online magazines. Grace’s work is included in the book Microworlds, published in 2011 by Laurence King Publishing (UK).

Grace has also been commissioned to create her unique style of staged narrative photography in the editorial world, illustrating writings in “O the Oprah Magazine” and “Discover Magazine”, and creating the cover imagery for CDs, books and several city magazines, including “Portland Monthly”, “Seattle Metropolitan”, “Pittsburgh Magazine”, and Seattle’s weekly paper “The Stranger”.

Originally from New Jersey, Grace has lived most of her life on the West Coast, currently residing in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and biggest cheerleader, architect Michael Payne, and their two cats, who remain indifferent.

Grace Weston is represented by wall space gallery, Santa Barbara, CA

Bosque “Magico” de la Habana

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Conrad Gees’ “Bosque “Magico” de la Habana,” takes place in the forest of Havana, Cuba. For 6 days in a multi-year project, Gees roamed the streets hoping to document the people and changes in the city since the announcement of a renewed relationship between the United States and Cuba. Magic began in his photographs when Gees found the entrance to the forest park.

Gees’ “Bosque “Magico” de la Habana,” will be on display in the Griffin’s satellite gallery, The Griffin@SoWa at 530 Harrison Ave from May 6 through July 7, 2017. A reception will take place on June 2, 2017 from 6-8 PM.

“The true beauty of the park,” says Gees,” lays in its deepest recesses where over the years vines and new growth have combined with old growth, forming strange enchanted creatures and structures that have a life of their own. The forest appeared to me to be a metaphor for Cuba today, a beautiful and surreal mixing of old and new.”

Gees’ work has been exhibited in solo shows at The New England School of Photography, The Center for the Arts Natick, and Baldwin Hill Art and Framing Gallery, as well as group shows at The Griffin Museum of Photography, the Providence Center for Photographic Arts, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Smith College.  His work has also been published in University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Fine Arts Magazine.  Most recently he completed the Photography Atelier Program at the Griffin Museum of Photography.

Conrad Gees currently resides in Natick, MA.

Disturbing the Spirits

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Disturbing the Spirits

Trees teach us about belonging; they remind us that life doesn’t need permission to prevail. Trees are sanctuaries. If we listen closely, we can learn the ancient law of life. They are seen as powerful symbols of growth, decay and resurrection. They have played a prominent role in many folktales and legends and have been given deep and sacred meanings. But, a tree’s longevity can lull us into a false sense of immortality. It is this very impermanence that I long to understand through my photographic explorations. There is an ineffable natural beauty…. too great to be expressed or described in words

In this series I am using imagery to convey my “feelings” about the state of nature, the nature of trees, and how to express their connection to past, present and future. By obscuring a portion of the image through a veil, I strive to heighten the remaining reality through discovery and reflection.

Can Artists Heal Nature

As human actions impact the natural environment, can artists heal nature? Does art bring “special powers” to the table? If so, what are they? What is ‘art’? What is ‘nature’? What needs healing? What arrogance! Disturbing the Spirits deals with both reality and time (past/present/future) and my growing attachment to the healing powers of the natural environment. My life has taken a turn over the last four years. I returned to my place of birth in the US Midwest after leaving my home of 20 years. I left my California home with a range of emotions, from deep regret, loss and grief to longing and anticipation of what was to come; there is a new life brewing within.

I have been searching for meaning in my new life and have taken solace in the nature of this region…. its ever-changing seasons bring about an awareness of the fleetingness of life. I have an obsession with disappearance, of revealing only bits of reality and obscuring the rest through a veil of obscurity.

Ellen Jantzen

www.ellenjantzen.com

I was born and raised in St. Louis, but moved to California in 1990 to attend FIDM in downtown Los Angeles. Here, I obtained an advanced degree in Fashion in1992. After working at Mattel Toy Co. as a senior project designer, I became disillusioned with the corporate world. Having been trained in computer design while at Mattel, I continued my training using mostly Photoshop software.

As digital technology advanced and newer cameras were producing excellent resolution, I found my perfect medium. It was a true confluence of technological advancements and creative desire that culminated in my current body of work.

– Ellen Jantzen

Ellen Jantzen is represented by Susan Spiritus Gallery in Newport Beach, CA, Bruno David Gallery in St. Louis and Qlick Editions in Amsterdam.

The Last Stand

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“As a youngster on Cortes Island, in Canada’s Pacific Northwest, I walked daily through the woods to catch the school bus, passing by remnants of the old growth forest. These giant looming stumps, peering through the second growth trees as far as I could see, seemed an ominous presence. They remain so.

Five generations of my family have been a part of the forest industry in British Columbia from falling old growth trees and clear cutting to contributing to local sustainable harvest initiatives and environmental responsibility. My great grandfather and great uncle, in providing for their families and future, fell many of the actual trees whose remnants you now see in these photographs. It was in this familial context, filtered through the contemporary environmental crisis and thoughts of personal responsibilities in that regard, that the seeds of this series were sown.

As this project began the iconic remains of the old forest first served as a meditation on the human- altered landscape but soon evolved into a metaphor for the natural world, contemporary globalized culture and the essential incompatibility of the two. This incompatibility is evident in the forests through the historical lens of conflicting cultural and social attitudes. British Columbia’s aboriginal people harvested trees as needed by their local communities over the millennia – a truly sustainable approach reflected in the majestic forests found by the arriving Europeans. Colonists added an overriding attitude of “commodification” to activities in the forests, extracting timber for sale into the expanding global market and contributing to serious concerns about the long-term sustainability of forest ecosystems.

The cognitive dissonance arising from this dilemma of participation in, and yet responsibility for, the fouling of one’s own nest was a dominant theme guiding the creation of these photographs. This discomfort from holding conflicting beliefs or ideals, and perhaps more importantly where it leads one, remains a key motivator in my work.

Although the pattern of progress and disaster has been repeated throughout human history, the urgency I now feel in our globalized world is one of scale…a scale said to be so vast, perhaps nearing a point of no return. No doubt evolution is progressing as it should, which brings some measure of comfort, yet I cannot help but feel apprehension for the life my family will lead in the not-too-distant future.”

View the LensCulture video on “The Last Stand”.

b. 1969, Campbell River, BC, Canada
Lives and works in Victoria, Vancouver and on Cortes Island, BC, Canada.

David Ellingsen is a Canadian photographer and environmental artist creating images of site-specific installations, landscapes and object studies that speak to the natural world and Man’s impact upon it. Ellingsen acts as archivist, surrealist and storyteller as he calls attention to the contemporary state of the environment both directly and through conceptual, subversive commentary about our consumerist society. Ellingsen’s images engage questions around the transience and temporality of existence and his thematic subjects are marked by simplicity, empathy and a wounded sense of humanity’s fate.

Ellingsen began his artistic career studying the craft of photography at a trade institute, through apprenticeships and then working as a freelance editorial and advertising photographer with clients that included the New York Times Magazine, Mens Journal, CBC Radio Canada, Telus and MTV/Nickelodeon. Simultaneously, Ellingsen was exhibiting his personal artwork within public and private galleries in Canada, the USA, and Asia and appearing as a guest speaker and instructor at educational institutions in British Columbia such as the Emily Carr University of Art + Design and Langara College. Ellingsen continued this hybrid path for 12 years and then in 2013 focused fully on his artistic practice.

Ellingsen’s photographs are part of the permanent collections of the Chinese Museum of Photography and Vancouver’s Beaty Biodiversity Museum and have been shortlisted for Photolucida’s Critical Mass Book Award, awarded First Place at the Prix de la Photographie Paris and First Place at the International Photography Awards in Los Angeles.

Ellingsen lives and makes his work in Canada’s Pacific Northwest, moving between Victoria, Vancouver and the farm where he was raised on the remote island of Cortes.

CONTACT

www.davidellingsen.com david@davidellingsen.com

Kalacharam

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Kalacharam

The Bindi Collection and Morning Poetry

Photographs by Julie Williams-Krishnan

“Kalacharam” means “culture” in the south Indian language Tamil. Under this primary theme, Julie Williams-Krishnan presents two exhibitions: The Bindi Collection,  and Morning Poetry.

Williams-Krishnan’s series, “The Bindi Collection” and “Morning Poetry,” are featured in the Griffin @ the Colson Gallery in Easthamton, MA. March 21 – May 21, 2016.

Williams-Krishnan has been traveling regularly to Chennai in south India since 2007. These trips are made to visit her husband’s family, who is based in Chennai. As a Caucasian originally from a small town in Pennsylvania, Williams-Krishnan says, “I use photography as a way to observe, process, and celebrate my growing familiarity with my south Indian family and the region. The three bodies of work on display here are all shot in the family home, where Tamil is spoken, Brahmin traditions are strictly observe my understanding of a place that is my home, but even after all these years, remains fascinating.”

In Hindu tradition, the third eye is referred to as the “the eye of knowledge,” the seat of the “teacher inside.” This is denoted with a dot or mark on the forehead between the brows. It is a state of having deeply personal, spiritual or psychological significance. In The Bindi Collection, Williams-Krishnan has photographed her mother-in-law’s bindis after she wears them. She sticks them to the wall to re-use another day – a habit shared by Hindu women throughout India. Williams-Krishnan discovered this custom upon her first visit to her husband’s family home. The Bindi Collection has been photographed over several years in Chennai, India and London, United Kingdom. Currently comprised of twenty images, the collection is trace evidence of a growing relationship and understanding between mother and daughter-in-law, as well as social commentary and anthropological study. Once Amma realized Williams-Krishnan was photographing her bindis, she began to remove them from the walls prior to visits. They are now a rare and precious find.

Morning Poetry was photographed one morning in and around the family home. As prayers were being said, and food was being prepared, Williams-Krishnan breathed in the morning, with all its blessings, and wondered around the house responding to the call of the day.

Julie Williams-Krishnan holds a MA in Photographic Studies from the University of Westminster in London, UK. Based in Boston Massachusetts since 2010, Julie lived in London, UK for more than 16 years and has traveled to more than 60 countries. She is the Director of Programs at the Griffin Museum of Photography.

Traces

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Delving into the past has long been a passion for photographer Ellen Toby Slotnick. It began with photographing on archaeological excavations, and then photographing the recovered artifacts. Years later, Slotnick is still photographing what has been left behind: abandoned churches, schools, farmhouses and the artifacts they hold. Fine art photographer, Slotnick started out as an archaeological photographer in Israel documenting excavations and photographing finds for publication. Her current work, Traces, reflects her early interest in what is left behind, in this case, in Rugby ND where individual farms are rapidly disappearing. Slotnick’s fascination with Rugby began in 2013 and called her back for the next three years.

Ellen Toby Slotnick’s  Traces will be featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, MA, April 11 – June 11, 2017. A reception will take place on April 11 from 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM. Traces runs parallel to the theater’s productions of “Gabriel” and “MacBeth and I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spagetti.”

 

“Each vacated farmhouse, church or school I came upon was vacated for basically the same reason. Economics,” says Ellen Toby Slotnick. She goes on to say, “The business of farming has become such that it is far more cost-effective to farm square miles rather than square acres. So consortiums were formed and fields were planted where families had lived. The families moved into town. The remnants of the lives that inhabited the structures make each and every building tell its own story,” she says.

Ellen’s work is held at the Danforth Museum of Art, Newton-Wellesley Hospital and in private collections internationally. She is a 2016 Finalist in Critical Mass, an international portfolio online competition.

Ellen holds a BS degree in photography from Rochester Institute of Technology. She also holds an MBA from Simmons College in Boston.

Return to the Clouds

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The Griffin Museum of Photography Brings Fran Forman to Massachusetts State House

 

The Griffin Museum of Photography is proud to announce that we have been invited by Senator Jason Lewis to exhibit at the Massachusetts State House. The Griffin has chosen Watertown artist Fran Forman to exhibit Return to the Clouds. The exhibit is the 12th installment of a new Senate effort to showcase local art from across Massachusetts outside of the Senate Chamber at the State House in Boston.

Return to the Clouds exhibition will run at the Massachusetts State House from March 18, 2017 – June 1, 2017. An opening reception will be April 27, 2017 from 3-5 PM. The exhibition will be shown in Room 426 of the State House which is the room where the Senate will temporarily meet in spring due to renovations of the Senate Chambers and the Lobby where exhibits usually take place.”

“The Griffin Museum of Photography is one of our region’s most impressive cultural institutions and a treasured Winchester destination,” said Senator Jason Lewis.  “I’m thrilled that the Griffin Museum will have the opportunity to showcase an exhibit at the State House to give the entire Commonwealth a taste of our local flavor.”

The Executive Director of the Griffin Museum of photography Paula Tognarelli is the curator of the exhibition “Return to the Clouds.” She says, “We are excited to exhibit Fran Forman once again as her last exhibition with us was in 2008.” Tognarelli says more about the exhibition. “Much of what Fran Forman speaks to in her artwork is humankind’s relationship to the past, to history and myth, our animal brethren and the concept of hope. The bird-cage shows itself in many of Forman’s images due to her influence by the surrealist artist, René Magritte.  The bird is a reoccurring character in her narratives that speak to freedom, escape and the natural world.”

Fran Forman received her BA from Brandeis University in sociology and art, an MSW in psychiatric social work, and an MFA from Boston University. Forman is a Resident Scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis and represented by Pucker Gallery in Boston, AfterImage, Dallas TX and Susan Spiritus, Los Angeles, CA. A monograph, “Escape Artist, the Art of Fran Forman,” was published in 2014 from Schiffer Books. Curator and designer Elizabeth Avedon selected it as one of the best photo books of 2014, and it won first prize in an international juried competition selected by 21st Editions.

The Massachusetts State House is located
at 24 Beacon St., Boston, MA 02133. The exhibition is open to employees and guests and special events made specifically for the exhibit. For reception enter through the Hooker entrance. Go through metal detector. Take elevator to the 4th floor. Room 426.

Faded Elegants

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April 26, 2017 (Winchester, MA) “Faded Elegants,” are photographs of objects that throughout the years have been left to decay; objects that have lost their “nobility or usefulness”. Even in their deterioration though, Wilson sees them as metaphors of the past, artifacts that were once important and beautiful.

Wilson’s series,“Faded Elegants,” is featured in the Atelier Gallery at the Griffin Museum of Photography from June 1st through July 4th, 2017. An opening reception will take place on June 8th, 2017 from 7-8:30PM. Event is free and open to the public.

In Wilson’s statement, he thoroughly explains image by image that “The tattered dictionaries [in the photographs] are perhaps metaphors for the precarious state of printed reference material. The amazingly dog-eared pages of these books convey decades of utility as tools for crossword puzzle solving.” Some objects in the photographs refer to historical places. For example Wilson explains, “Writing on the Wall, taken at Old Schwamb Mill, shows the marks of where a worker penciled important measurements on a wooden wall board for the factory note-taking in the late nineteenth century.”

Wilson’s photographic process and analysis is of much importance in the finalized photograph. Wilson explains, “One extremely satisfying aspect of making photographs is my continuing late career growth in skill and vision. Paintings inform my visual literacy in the same way classical photographs do. [These visual references] obscure the boundaries between painting and photography.”

Timothy Wilson has had a dual career as an educator and fine art photographer. In 1966, Wilson received a bachelor’s degree in English at Boston University. He later received his master degree in Education at Antioch Graduate Center for Education. He then began his career as an elementary and secondary teacher and administrator in local public schools. He was also a curriculum specialist with the Massachusetts Department of Education. For several years, he taught both English and darkroom photography. Simultaneously he was also working on his personal photo projects. He built his own darkrooms where he printed both color and black and white photos. During this work trajectory, he also taught himself how to mount, mat and frame his own work. Timothy Wilson has had solo exhibitions including, the Field Gallery on Martha’s Vineyard. Wilson has been part of many group shows, such as Galatea Fine Art Gallery, Cambridge Art Association, Panopticon Gallery and “People of Somerville: Portraits and Lives” at the Somerville Museum in 1989, where he was also recipient of a Municipal Arts Grant. Timothy has recently been honored at the Cambridge Art Association, where he continues to host critiques for artists.

 

Steven Keirstead

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In Quarries of New England, Steven Keirstead creates photographic diptychs and triptychs of abandoned rock quarries in the six New England states. Most of the early stone quarries ceased operations due to a change in construction techniques and road materials and the quarries reverted to a natural state. The last active New England quarry closed in 1963.

Keirstead’s series, Quarries of New England, is featured in the Atelier Gallery at the Griffin Museum of Photography from April 6th through May 28th, 2017. An opening reception will take place on Sunday, April 9th, 2017 from 4-6 PM. Keirstead will do an informal talk on his exhibition at 3:15 PM on April 9, 2017.

Keirstead says that his photo series “documents the rebirth of abandoned quarries as something else, as wildness reclaims what industry left behind.” He goes on to say that, “Slowly, human alterations to the landscape were obscured, but not erased. Vegetation grew back, open pits filled with water, iron and steel tools rusted, and wooden derricks rotted.”

Steven Keirstead was born in Saigon, lived Chiang-Mai, Thailand with his family for several years and all returned to their North Carolina hometown of Brevard. Keirstead received a B.A. in Biology/Art and Art History as well as a BFA from Rice University in Houston, Texas. Currently, Keirstead works as a biologist at Harvard University’s Knowles Undergraduate Teaching Laboratories, supporting labs in Life Sciences. He resides in Boston.

Steven exhibited in the group show Light and Vision 2 at the Rice Media Center during FotoFest 2010, in Fresh Works at Flash Forward Festival Boston 2011, in New England Scapes in 2011 at Gallery Seven in Maynard, Massachusetts, and at auctions for the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University. Steven organized a solo exhibit of his Quarries of New England portfolio at The Blue Hill Public Library in Maine in June 2015, and recently showed triptychs of Boston alleyways at night in the group exhibit Night Becomes Us at the Art Complex Museum in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Keirstead avidly continues his photographic endeavors.

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