Griffin Museum of Photography

Lynn Saville, Dark City

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DARK CITY

Photographs by LYNN SAVILLE

 

January 19, 2017__ Lynn Saville describes “dark cities” as places that has been “stripped of their agreed-upon attractions. A city is no longer about its architecture or the people that inhabit it but instead is an empty skeletal set where lights and shadows showcase an uninterrupted dance.”

“Dark City” by Lynn Saville is featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre from February 7th through April 9th, 2017. The opening reception will take place on March 21, 2017 from 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. Additionally, Saville will be teaching a “Twilight Photography Workshop” on March 22, 2017 from 6pm to 9pm at the Griffin Museum. Register today through the Griffin Museum website, limited seats available!

Lynn Saville photographs cities at twilight and dawn or as she describes, ”the boundary times between night and day.” Saville explains, “I began my series titled, “Dark City” to pursue this contrast between aesthetic perception and the subtext of economic distress, a contrast that evoked a disquieting beauty. In effect, I was seeking to capture the ways in which urban places become spaces and vise versa.”

In her photographs she hopes to document buildings and places that have undergone urban decay and renewal in recent years. Award winning Geoff Dyer writes in his introduction titled “The Archeology of Overnight” to Saville’s book, Dark City, “Empty premises become difficult to date so that they seem sometimes to have dropped not only out of time but of history.”
Lynn Saville is a fine art photographer currently based in New York City. She studied at Duke University and Pratt Institute. Saville is known for her photographs of cities and rural settings at twilight and dawn. She has published several books including her most recent book published in fall of 2015, Dark City: Urban America at Night. Saville has taught at New York University, International Center of Photography and will also be teaching a workshop at the Griffin Museum. Saville’s photographs are part of permanent collections, museums and corporations and are also in private collections. Saville is a recipient to numerous awards including, fellowships from The New York Foundation for the Arts and a Premio in the Scanno, Italy Festival of Photography. Saville is currently represented by Gallery Kayafas in Boston, MA and Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York City.

The Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre is open Tuesdays through Saturdays, 1-6 p.m., and one hour before each theater performance. The gallery can be accessed through the Stoneham Theatre’s lobby at 395 Main Street in Stoneham, MA.

Painting and the Dawn of Photography

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Painting and the Dawn of Photography

Interpretations of the landscape were a significant focus of nineteenth-century American art, and reports from geological surveys across the Western territories drove the need for views of an unseen landscape. Artists such as Thomas Moran, who traveled with one of the surveys and produced monumental landscapes of the Rocky Mountains, noted a need to both precisely render what he was seeing, yet also capture the emotional impact of the view, which he termed “the atmosphere.” This line of thought was present throughout nineteenth-century landscapes, where artists sought to depict observed nature while embracing more atmospheric and tonal effects to heighten the emotional impact of the work.

Painting and photography unite in their attempt to evoke both the past and present through atmospheric effect. George Hawley Hallowell’s turn-of-the-twentieth century painted landscapes become emotionally turbulent through the artist’s use of color and pattern. Vibrant purples, pinks, and blues are juxtaposed with patches of light and dark, showing the artist’s interest in tonalism and symbolism. Decades later, the photographs of John Brook render a similar atmospheric visual effect. Brook’s color abstractions reflect his need to infuse his photographs with both a sense of design and spontaneity. His work often straddled figuration and abstraction, with an emotional tone permeating throughout.

Evoking a mood through tonal effects remains a hallmark of contemporary photography, where the sense of capturing a distant memory is made visual through deft use of light and shadow. Depictions of the landscape have always fluctuated between faithful representation and an imagined sublime. Edgar Allan Poe’s assertion that the invention of photography was “the most important, and perhaps the most extraordinary triumph of modern science,” while also deeming the accuracy of the photographic image “miraculous” and magical, underscore the mercurial nature of the medium. Danforth Art is continually building its collection in order to more fully draw connections between media, unite the historical and contemporary, and understand their shared history.

Found Spaces,Contemporary Photography from the Danforth Art Museum Permanent Collection

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Found in Collection
Contemporary Photography from the Danforth Art Museum Permanent Collection

Less than a decade after the public announcement of photography, William Henry Fox Talbot issued the first commercially published book illustrated with photographs, The Pencil of Nature, released in volumes from 1844-1846. The reproduction of the photographic image for commercial publication was significant, for it illustrated myriad ways in which photography could be used and applied to everyday life—among them, an illustration of the natural world, a document of ordinary people, places, and experiences, and a way to capture and preserve what was difficult to observe with the naked eye.

Photography became part of the public imagination in concert with the mid-nineteenth century’s interest in vision and representation. The production of photographic images and their relative availability to a widening audience democratized how one was represented and experienced the world around them in a way that a painting did not. The proliferation of photography created a visual record that purported to show things as they were, although that interpretation has always been in the eye of the photographer and viewer. Contemporary photography continues traditions established in the early years of the medium, a desire to create a complex visual narrative, tell untold stories, and make unexpected connections with ordinary spaces and places.

Found in Collection also comments on the found vernacular object, repurposed when the photographer imbues new meaning in the image. In this vein, everyday spaces—storefronts, houses, hallways, cemeteries—gain new context when inserted into the narrative of contemporary photography. This exhibition, one of two parts, explores the role of the photograph as a recorder of the observed world and contributes to the photographic narrative through the lens of select works from the museum’s permanent collection.

Winter Solstice 2016 Exhibition

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For the fourth year, The Griffin Museum has invited all of its current members to exhibit in the Winter Solstice Exhibition. From across the world, artists entered one piece to be on display for December 2016. Over 140 photographs are represented in the Main Gallery of the Griffin and display a spectrum of genres and processes. The opening reception is Thursday, December 8, 2016 from 6-8pm. Sales are encouraged and many artists have donated the proceeds back to the Griffin.

Zindagi

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On October 6, 2016, the Griffin Museum opens with “Zindagi,” which in its essence is shown under the overarching idea of a celebration of daily life in India and its legacy. The exhibit will feature solo exhibits and 3 videos by five photographers in the Main Gallery of the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA.
The artists are Manjari Sharma, Priya Kambli, Dan Eckstein, Quintavius Oliver and Raj Mayukh Dam.

“Zindagi” will showcase in the Main Gallery of the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA from October 6 – November 27, 2016. An opening reception takes place on October 6, 2016, 7 – 8:30 p.m. From 3 – 7 PM on October 6 there will be artists’ talks.

Octavius Oliver gallery talk/walk at 3 PM
Dan Eckstein gallery talk/walk at 4 PM
Priya Kambli gallery talk/walk at 5 PM
Manjari Sharma gallery talk/walk at 6 PM

Paula Tognarelli, executive director of the Griffin Museum of Photography, says “We do not promise that we will cover all aspects of daily life in India in this exhibition, but we hope that these 5 artists will whet the public’s curiosity for cultural legacy and future exploration.”

Manjari Sharma will be exhibiting 9 large pieces from her “Darshan” series. Ms. Sharma is represented by ClampArt Gallery in New York City. New York based Sharma says of her work that, “Darshan is a series consisting of photographically recreated, classical images of Hindu Gods and Goddesses that are pivotal to mythological stories in Hinduism.” She goes on to say that, “having left a ritual-driven community in India, my move to the U.S. precipitated an enormous cultural shift. It was this cultural paralysis that motivated me to use my one medium of worship–the camera–to study, construct and deconstruct the mythologies of my land.”

Priya Kambli will be exhibiting from her “Color Falls Down” series. Missouri artist, Ms. Kambli is represented by Wallspace Gallery in Santa Barbara California. Says Kambli, “My photographs, which are rooted in my fascination with my parents, visually express the notion of transience and split cultural identity caused by the act of migration. In Color Falls Down these issues are seen through the lens of my own personal history and cultural identity.”

Excerpts from Dan Eckstein’s “Horn Please” will be on view. “Horn Please,” says California artist Eckstein, “could be considered the mantra of the Indian highway, and some version of the phrase is written on the back of practically every truck on the road in India today.” Eckstein’s exhibit features the brightly decorated trucks that ply India’s country’s roads and the men who drive them.

Photographer Quintavius Oliver is exhibiting pieces from his “Love Made Me Do It” series. This project began from a deep desire to leave his Atlanta neighborhood where he felt he was going nowhere. This series is an example of what it meant for him to throw himself head first from home and into the unknown of India.

In addition Raj Mayukh Dam will be exhibiting 3 videos on daily life in India. The three videos feature the people of Sundarban, the last ritual of “Antyesti “and the Festival of Color of Life called “Holi.”

Space

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Curator’s Statement

Space is a multilayered word. It can be an action, feeling, a state of mind or an area with potential. It can be occupied or rented. Space can also be a void. It is the gap between words, teeth, parked cars, or the area beyond earth’s air.

Over time and circumstance society has inhabited space in a variety of ways. Early seventeenth century American colonists chose to live closely to each other by a river and in a ring around a common building. In the mid 1800’s the need for more land spurred expansion past the Appalachian Mountains to the western frontiers. City dwellers view space by the dollar per square foot, country dwellers count acres and the property line defines the suburban boundary. The invention of the skyscraper economized space in land-strapped cities, accommodating more people vertically while working and living in the sky.

The artists responded with varied interpretations of the topic. Some chose a geometric response or produced artistic space. Two photographed private moments of reflection. One photographer depicted the air one breathes and others portrayed the outer reaches beyond earth’s atmosphere. All photographs chosen for this exhibit work together in a unified way to form a narrative on the concept of SPACE. The Griffin Museum of Photography is very proud to be able to share the work of these 37 photographers in exhibition.

The artists included are:
Philip V. Augustine, Garrett Baumer, Robert Collier Beam, Karen Bell, Patricia Bender, Matthew Bender, Anne Berry, Justine Bianco, Meg Birnbaum, Darin Boville, Berendina Buist, Laura Burlton, Joy Bush, Bill Chapman, John Chervinsky, Richard Allen Cohen, Rick Colson, Amy Friend, David Gardner, Jennifer Georgescu, Audrey Gottlieb, Andrea Greitzer, Tytia Habing, Elizabeth Ireland, Marky Kauffmann, Kat Kiernan, Susan Lapides, Honey Lazar, Joyce P. Lopez, Sarah Malakoff, Greer Muldowney, Suzanne Revy, Dana Salvo, Jennifer Shaw, Vicky Stromee, Maija Tammi, and Zelda Zinn.

Our thanks to Lafayette City Center and the Downtown Boston Business Improvement District for their support of the Griffin Museum in bringing this exhibit to the public.

Paula Tognarelli
>A Catalog For Space Is Available

From the series “A Studio in Rajasthan” Artist: Waswo X. Waswo

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Who are you?
WXW:

I’m just a guy from Milwaukee who somehow ended up living in India. My father was in India and China during World War II, as part of the group flying supplies over the “hump” of the Himalayas. He had a photo scrapbook that always intrigued me when I was young. It had large gold letters on top a leather cover that read “CHINA – BURMA – INDIA”. There were small black and white photos inside that my dad took, and those always intrigued me. Later, in school, I fell in love with English Literature an opposed to American Literature. And of course English literature takes you straight to the Raj. I suppose all of this sounds very colonialist, but it’s not. I grew up in the 60s, so I’m a bit of an old hippie. The Beatles’ fascination with India influenced me also, and people like Allen Ginsburg and Peter Orlovsky. Later, Francesco Clemente. Anyway, in 1993 I made my first visit to India, and India has been in my heart ever since. For the past sixteen years I’ve lived here, first in Goa, and later here in Udaipur in Rajasthan, where I keep my home and studio.

When did you first discover your interest in photography and where did it go from there?
WXW:

I started shooting with an old Nikon years back, while attending the now defunct Milwaukee Center for Photography. By the time I was studying at Studio Marangoni in Florence I had switched to a vintage Rolleiflex. My training was as an old fashioned chemical process guy, with heavy emphasis on quality in darkroom technique. My photos were heavily influenced by the movement of Pictorialism. Documentary photography never appealed to me. I would sepia tone my Rolleiflex images and reveled in their chocolaty tones. For me sepia wasn’t nostalgia, but just a beautiful way to present an image. In India this got me in trouble though. When I started to exhibit these images in India I was widely criticized by Indian and European critics for trying to hold India back in some past that lacked modernity. All the weight of Edward Said and post-colonial theory was thrown at me. I was surprised to find that the very images that were thought innocuous in the US caused such a commotion in India.

How do you use photography to interpret your experience as an American living in India?
WXW:

In 2006 I rented a home in Udaipur in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan. There I built my first Indian photo studio. It was modeled on traditional Indian portrait studios, though the images I hoped to make would be much more funky. Working with a crew of local painters we produced our first linen backdrops. I switched back to a Nikon, and started to shoot digital. The resulting photographs were first printed digitally in black and white, and later were hand-coloured by Rajesh Soni. Finding Rajesh was just super lucky for me. He was very young when we started working together, which has been for ten years now. But he is the grandson of Prabhu Lal Verma, who was once the court photographer to the Maharana Bhupal Singh of Mewar. The skills of hand-colouring photographs had been passed down to Rajesh from his grandfather through the intermediary of his father Lalit. Rajesh is super talented, and we make a good team. There was something about this change in my artistic trajectory that caused a shift among the critical community toward a more positive view. Another thing that happened is that I began a series of semi-autobiographical paintings with an Indian miniaturist painter known as R. Vijay. The miniatures are self-reflective and often humorous. Indians started to love this work. The two bodies of work reflect on one another. It’s been rather a success story ever since.

Who or What inspires you?
WXW:

I’m inspired by beauty. I love landscape, but feel too overwhelmed by landscape to try and capture it. The beauty of people on the other hand I can relate to on a very personal level. For the past five years we’ve had our new studio out in the village of Varda, about a thirty minute drive outside of Udaipur. The villagers are completely wonderful. They help us and have fun with us. It’s fabulous…truly, the things that have happened during our photographic journey over the past ten years in Udaipur have become the stuff of local legend. I may not be world famous, but I’m loved and respected here. India feels like home.

What next?
WXW:

We keep working. Rajesh and I are both a bit of workaholics, and we love to just make things. There is a new series developing. But it’s always a bit hard to predict where the energy will eventually take us. We just work, and see where we go.

Waswo X. Waswo was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the U.S.A. He studied at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, The Milwaukee Center for Photography, and Studio Marangoni, The Centre for Contemporary Photography in Florence, Italy. His books, India Poems: The Photographs, published by Gallerie Publishers in 2006, and Men of Rajasthan, published by Serindia Contemporary in 2011 (hardcover 2014), have been available worldwide. The artist has lived and travelled in India for over sixteen years and he has made his home in Udaipur, Rajasthan, for the past ten. There he collaborates with a variety of local artists including the photo hand-colourist Rajesh Soni. He has also produced a series of loosely autobiographical miniature paintings in collaboration with the artist R. Vijay. These paintings are represented by Gallerie Espace, New Delhi, while the artist’s hand-coloured photographs are represented by Tasveer India. In Thailand Waswo is represented by Serindia Gallery. In Europe the artist is represented by Gallerie Minsky, Paris.

Rajesh Soni was born on the 6th of August, 1981. He is an artist living in Udaipur, Rajasthan, who has become known primarily for his abilities to hand paint digital photographs. He is the son of artist Lalit Soni, and the grandson of Prabhu Lal Soni (Verma), who was once court photographer to the Maharana Bhopal Singh of Mewar. Prabhu Lal was not only a court photographer, but also a hand-colourist who painted the black and white photographs that he produced. His skills of hand-colouring photographs were passed down to Rajesh through the intermediary of his father Lalit.

R. Vijay, son of Mohan Lal Vijayvargiya, was born on the 22nd of March, 1970, and is a grandnephew of the historic Rajasthani painter Ramgopal Vijayvargiya. The artist received little formal training and his miniature painting style has been described as naïve, though his works have drawn attention and praise from various critics throughout India. Early in life R. Vijay was tutored by traditional miniaturists such as Sukhdev Singh Sisodiya and Laxmi Narayan Sikaligar. Later he developed his own style, which has been called an eclectic mix of Persian and Mogul styles, along with a bit of the Company School of Indo-British art. His collaboration with Waswo has lately become the subject of a book, The Artful Life of R. Vijay by Dr. Annapurna Garimella, Serindia Contemporary, Chicago.

Optical Shards: Donna Tramontozzi

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During the rush of everyday life, one forgets about the visual beauty that light creates. Donna Tramontozzi’s photographs are a representation of those moments that disappear.

Optical Shards by Donna Tramontozzi, is featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre from November 29, 2016 through February 5, 2017. The opening reception will take place on September 13, 2016 from 6:30- 8:30 p.m.

Tramontozzi says of her work, “When I photograph reflections, I muse on feelings I had forgotten to feel, details I must have missed, dreams I can’t quite recall, conversations I don’t understand, and places I didn’t experience in my rush through life. Just out of reach, but for me, still worth pursuing.”

Currently based in Boston, Tramontozzi has studied at the Santa Fe Photographic workshops and has participated in Atelier 22, 23 and 24 at Griffin Museum of Photography. Her work has also been part of the juried show, Projections! Art on the Brewery Wall, at the Jamaica Plain Open Studios. Her photo has also been featured as the cover of the best selling textbook. Currently, Donna is a corporator on the Griiffin Museum Board of Directors.

Uday Khambadcone Festivals of India

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In the start of 2014, I decided to take a year off from work and travel to India. Though born in India, I had never travelled much within the country. This sabbatical was going to be the perfect opportunity to see and experience this country like never before. Through my travel I was hoping to experience and understand the rich culture, tradition and heritage of India. This project “Festivals of India” is a result of those travels. Through my documentary style, I wanted to tell stories of the people, place and the culture of India. Festivals tell a lot about a culture and India has an abundance of that.

My travels took me from the remote parts of India to the big metropolitan cities. Some traditions were native to a place while others were celebrated throughout the country. During my travels I came across many surprises like witnessing one of the biggest Hindu festival of “Ganesh Chaturthi” being celebrated by a Muslim majority village in central India. Being invited to be part of the breaking of the fast at “Karva Chauth” in northern India, a festival celebrated by married Hindu women fasting from sunrise to moonrise for the safety and longevity for their husbands. During “Durga Puja” festival in Kolkata there was a similar tradition of wishing longevity by Bengali women for their husbands but with a different ritual. Here married Bengali women beautifully dressed in traditional attire smeared Vermilion on the feet of the Goddess Durga and then applied it on each other’s forehead. In Surat, Gujarat I came across thousands of kites flying, celebrating the festival of Uttarayan. This festival marks the most important harvest day in Gujarat when winter ends and summer begin.

This project has helped me experience and understand Indian culture and tradition better. There are still places I have not explored and this project is far from over. I do plan to continue to document and expand my understanding and through my photographs help others experience the festivals and ultimately the soul of India.

Artist Bio:
Uday Khambadkone, born and raised in Mumbai, moved to the US to pursue a degree in Engineering. Though always interested in art, photography came to him accidentally through a darkroom college course in Texas. Travel has always lured Uday to various places to explore the people, culture and their customs: From exploring the Romas in Zenica, Bosnia to Catarina doll making people of Capula, Mexico, from a shelter home for cancer kids in Mumbai, India to an NGO school for mentally disabled kids in Quito, Ecuador. The lens has allowed him to break stereotypes and understand the world better.

Sara Levinson “The Eyes Are Windows To The Soul”

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My interest in photography began and quickly turned into life long passion some thirty years ago. I got my first camera while stay-at-home-mom. I loved roaming the streets, camera in hand, while the kids were in school. I was fortunate to be able to build a small dark room in a basement of my house – my sanctuary – where I spent countless hours working in b/w.
I whole-heartily embraced the digital age, which not only added color to my work, but offered limitless creative possibilities.

I’m mostly a self-taught photographer.

In recent years my main focus has been on travels to distant corners of the world in an attempt to experience, learn and – of course – photograph. Every click of my camera’s shutter turns fleeting moments into permanent records, images impervious to fading, images of diverse cultures, their people, their customs, ceremonies, celebrations and daily lives – images I love to share.

My portfolio “The Eyes Are Windows To The Soul” is a selection of casual, intimate portraits taken while roaming through many remote villages, crowded markets of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Myanmar. I have found, that for most part a friendly smile, a friendly gesture, the camera and most of all respectful curiosity – a universal human condition – is sufficient to establish a welcoming and friendly atmosphere.

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