Griffin Museum of Photography

Yorgos Efthymiadis, Domesticated: Seeing Past Seduction

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Yorgos Efthymiadis photographs guns from various collections. He finds most guns by referrals. He photographs each gun on carpets, chairs, tablecloths or pillows found in the homes of the collectors.

Efthymiadis’ series, Domesticated: Seeing Past Seduction, is featured in the Griffin Gallery at the Griffin Museum January 14 through March 6, 2016. An opening reception with the artist takes place on January 14, 7-8:30 p.m. Yorgos Efthymiadis has a members’ talk on his exhibition Domesticated: Seeing Past Seduction at 6:15 PM. The talk is FREE.

“When [guns] are seen as antiques, their initial purpose is camouflaged. The viewer, allured and captivated, tends to overlook and forget the past, mesmerized by the weapons’ fine craftsmanship, and artistry,” says Efthymiadis. “Yet, just beneath the surface, their artistic presence is haunted by a past that cannot be changed.” he says.
“The history of violence cannot be erased by transforming weapons into inert objects of beauty or works of art,” he says. “Although not visible, the blood, the mud, the fear and desperation will always be there.”
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Yorgos Efthymiadis lives in Somerville, MA. He graduated from the School of Business Administration and Economics at the Technological Educational Institute in Thessaloniki, GR with an MBA. Later he graduated from the New England School of Photography with a dual concentration in fine art and architectural photography. Efthymiadis is represented by Gallery Kayafas in SoWa. His work has been exhibited at the Danforth Museum, the Photographic Resource Center, Griffin Museum of Photography, The Nave Gallery, Somerville, Cambridge Art Association, San Diego Art Institute, Filter Photo Festival, Chicago, Photo Place Gallery, Vermont, Flash Forward Photography Festival, Boston, The Fence at Photoville, Boston and SohoPhoto Gallery, NY.

Krista Wortendyke, (RE): Media

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(Re): media is an exploration of the way imagery and information from movies, videogames, newspapers, and the Internet come together to form our perception of war. As most have not experienced war, it is the media’s images that have informed our understanding of conflict. Wortendyke’s ongoing work examines violence through the lens of photography.

Wortendyke’s series, (RE): Media, is featured in the Atelier Gallery at the Griffin Museum of Photography January 14th through March 6th, 2016. An opening reception will take place on January 14th, 2016 from 7-8:30pm. Yorgos Efthymiadis will lead a members’ talk at 6:15pm before the reception. The talk and reception are free.

“Explosions are war’s most universal and most spectacular signifiers,” says Wortendyke. “I have made use of these magnetizing [media] images to show not only how the lines between fiction and non-fiction blur, but also to show how a mediated experience can become indecipherable from a real experience.”

Krista Wortendyke is a Chicago-based conceptual artist. She received her MFA in Photography from Columbia College in 2007. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Packer Schopf Gallery and David Weinberg Gallery in Chicago, SOHO20 Gallery in New York, and many other venues across the United States. Additionally, Krista’s work is part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Museum of Contemporary Photography. Krista is currently an adjunct professor of photography at Columbia College Chicago and Northeastern Illinois University.

Photobook 2015

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PHOTOBOOK 2015 is an annual competition open to photographers in the United States and abroad who have self-published a photobook. This competition was offered by Davis Orton Gallery in Hudson NY for the sixth year. The competition results were exhibited at Davis Orton Gallery and thirty-four books are now traveling to the Griffin Museum of Photography. Karen Davis, co-director of the Davis Orton Gallery in Hudson, NY and Paula Tognarelli, executive director and curator of the Griffin Museum of Photography were the jurors for Photobook 2015.

Photobook 2015, is featured in the galleries at the Griffin Museum January 14 through March 6, 2016. An opening reception takes place on January 14, 7-8:30 p.m. Yorgos Efthymiadis has a members’ talk on his exhibition Domesticated: Seeing Past Seduction at 6:15 PM. The talk is FREE.

Best of Show photobooks were awarded to Mara Catalan – Williamsburg: A Place I Once Call Home, Anna Leigh Clem – Grounded, Keron Psillas – Loss And Beauty, and Andi Schreiber – Drift. Exhibitors include: Eldar Akbarov – Déjà vu, William Ash – Earth Water Fire Wind Emptiness: Tokyo Landscapes, Leslie Hall Brown – Through The Garden Of Childhood, Karen Bucher – Shadow Run, Mike Callaghan – Com (Me N Cement Notes),
 
 David Curtis – In The Moment: City Spaces, City Faces,
 Mark Diamond – Limitless World, Mario Digirolamo – Visione,
 Melissa Eder – Sunshine Daydream (Dedicated To Jerry Garcia), Michael B. Endy – Lost Highway: A Photographic Hymn To New Jersey, Jeff Evans – What’s Wrong With This Picture, Bill Gore – SWIPE, 
Paul Hockett – Negative Memory, Michael Hunold – The Stone Room,

 Jaclyn Kain – Postcard Stories, Sachiko Kawanabe – Sononite, Ken Konchel – Architectonic, 
Jack La Forte – The Lost Glove Series, Liza Macrae – Together In A Sudden Strangeness, GE Mckerrihan – Hearing Shadows Call, 
Linda Morrow – A Celebration Of Plums, Michael Nelson – Photos From Cuba, Cynthia O’Dell – 0-6, 
Nick Pedersen – Sumeru,
 Jaye R. Phillips – Into The Dark Of Night,
 Gilbert Rios – Look/See, 
Don Russell – Cowboys Of Color, Dan R Talley – Yesterday’s Coffee, Tomorrow’s Eggs, Andrew MK Warren – Some Pictures, and
 Rosemarie Zens – Carousel Of Time.

There are growing options available for self-publishing a book such as on-demand (blurb, lulu, viovio, iphoto, etc.); small run offset or web printing/publishing firms, binderies. For the competition if photobooks submitted had been hand-made/bound, they had to be available in multiples of at least 25. Entrants could submit up to three different titles that are self-published photography books of any size, format, or style: hard cover, soft cover, case-wraps, landscape, portrait, square, color, black and white.

Submissions were judged on the basis of: cover design, strength of the photography, subject matter of the book, page layouts, editing and sequencing and emotional impact of the overall book. All Submissions had to be original works of authorship created by the photographer who submitted the Submission.

“A photobook relies on the image to form visual sentences,” says Paula Tognarelli, executive director and curator of the Griffin Museum of Photography. “A photobook that is produced well can transport us in time and place just as any book produced with the written word.”

Steven Duede Selections from the Evanescence Series

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In much of my work I’m dealing with subjects that are in a transitory state. The Evanescence series features images from composted organic materials. In this body of work I’m exploring the mechanics of transition through time, neglect and natural decomposition. I hope to establish images that can be beautiful and chaotic. Subjects that in their own specific way function as a part of a transient process. This ongoing series has been developed over the past two years and included are some of the newest selections.

Our thanks to GTI Properties and SoWa Boston for their continued support of the Griffin Museum in bringing this exhibit to the public.

Reception with the artist: Friday, February 5, 2016 from 6-7:30 pm

Harvey Stein Workshop Exhibit-Photographing People

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This exhibition is a direct result of a workshop for the Griffin Museum led by photographer and educator Harvey Stein. The 3-day workshop took place in June 2015 on the streets of Boston. It focused on providing each student knowledge of and experience in photographing people in a variety of ways, including on the street, indoor locations, and in the subject’s environment. The workshop also focused on creating inventive portraits that are personally based and meaningful. Stein juried the images for this exhibition from photographs submitted by workshop participants.

The Griffin Museum will be offering Harvey Stein’s 3-day Photographing People workshop again in June 2016. Watch for details on our website.

Exhibitors include: Kay Aubrey, Robert Bass, William Daniels, Pippi Ellison, Rebecca Field, Vivien Goldman, Sureita Hockley, Helena Long, Judith Panagotopulos, Tiziana Rosso, Eileen Scullen, Shawn Soni, Joe Staska, Anne Umphrey, and David Whitney.

Winter Solstice Exhibit Members’ Open

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For the third 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 2015. 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 10, 2015 from 6-8pm. Sales are encouraged and many artists have donated the proceeds back to the Griffin.

Julie McCarthy’s – Edna

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Julie McCarthy’s series Edna at Steepletop is a biographical portrait of the late poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay. McCarthy photographed the poet’s home as she left it for over two years.

McCarthy’s Edna at Steepletop will be featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, MA, November 12-January 31, 2015. It runs parallel to the theater’s production of “Christmas on the Air.” A reception is November 19th, 2015, from 6:30-8:30pm. The artist will be present and give an informal talk about the exhibition.

McCarthy focuses on the details that depicted Millay’s bohemian lifestyle, books piled high on tables, a blue box containing a braid of red hair tied with a blue ribbon. “When I finished, I felt that I had been in an intimate conversation with a brilliant and complicated woman,” states McCarthy, “the photographs convey a sense of mystery and time gone by. I chose details of her home that, to me, depicted Millay’s inner life and the dichotomies that describe her character”

“Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poetry commonly regarded the notion of memory. She’s referred to herself in I Think I Should Have Loved You Presently as “a ghost in marble of a girl you knew,” now resonating differently as we meet her through McCarthy’s intimate photographs,” says Frances Jakubek, Associate Director of the Griffin Museum, “The conversation bounces between past and present, temporal and everlasting, a concept that Millay would often reference as something doomed. The typewriter belonging to Millay stands sturdily by the bedside that has been empty for years. The photographs in this series act as another layer of Millay’s observance of death through the objects that outlived her.”

McCarthy grew up in New York City, acquired a BA in Education with the knowledge that she may never want to teach. In other ways, McCarthy spread her knowledge by receiving a Masters Degree in counseling and spent her career in social work, much of that time as a bereavement counselor. Her background in Hospice instilled her interest in learning about other people’s stories and she has used photography as the medium to tell her own.

McCarthy currently lives and works in Stockbridge, MA. She has studied at the Main Photographic Workshops and learned about photography through jobs at local newspapers and workshops around the country. Her work has appeared in national publications such as The Sun, Shots, and has been exhibited at the Monmouth Museum, Norman Rockwell Museum and many others. In 2015, she was the artist in residents at Chesterwood, home of the sculptor, Daniel Chester French.

Meggan Gould Viewfinders

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Albuquerque-based photographer and educator Meggan Gould’s photographs are often fashioned from her considerations of vision and how we look at the world at large as well as how photography is used to document and speak to our surroundings. In “Viewfinders” Gould focuses on the camera apparatus itself. “Histories of looking are embedded in the [viewfinder] glass in the form of dust and scratches; etched and painted lines and text discipline and direct our sight,” says Gould. “Viewfinders are meant to be looked through,” she says. “What happens if our vision is arrested at these thresholds?” she asks. She answers, “Each camera becomes a miniature universe.”

A series of Meggan Gould’s photographs called “Viewfinders,” is featured at the Griffin Museum at Digital Silver Imaging, 9 Brighton St., Belmont, MA, on October 15, 2015 through December 31, 2015. An opening reception will take place November 5, 2015 from 6-8 p.m.

Meggan Gould is an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of New Mexico. She received her MFA from the University of Massachusetts – Dartmouth, and her BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She studied and taught photography at Speos, Paris Photographic Institute. Her photographs have been featured in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally. She was a resident artist at Light Work in 2009.

Patrick Nagatani: Themes and Variations

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For more than 30 years Patrick Nagatani has been sharing his narratives through the photographs he makes. Nagatani’s images take you on fascinating journeys that explore history, personal philosophy, culture, spirituality, fantasy and reality. Images from seven major bodies of work that Nagatani has completed are presented at the Griffin Museum as well as a literary and photographic novel, “The Race,” that he is currently creating with other artists.

Nagatani’s exhibition, Themes and Variations, is featured in the Main Gallery, Atelier Gallery and Griffin Gallery at the Griffin Museum in Winchester October 8 through November 29, 2015. An opening reception with the artist takes place on October 8, 7-8:30 p.m. Patrick Nagatani will give a gallery talk and tour of Themes and Variations at 5:00 PM. The talk is FREE for members, $10 nonmembers.

“….For Nagatani, a photograph could be more than a document of reality. He made photographs, used mixed media — always trying to stretch photographic conventions,” says Barbara Hitchcock, curator and organizer of the exhibition Patrick Nagatani: Themes and Variations, an independent Curator and former Curator of the Polaroid Collection.

Patrick Nagatani says, “There’s a certain edge to photography that’s really restricting.” He goes on to say, “It’s a controlled medium, especially in the process. And I just want to throw that control out as much as possible.”

Once a graduate student of Robert Heinecken’s at UCLA, Nagatani’s resistance to the constraints of traditional photographic practice is in keeping with his training. Time spent in Hollywood learning from models and sets for movies, among them Blade Runner and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, also influenced his desire to push boundaries. He envisioned a more expansive, plastic kind of photography.

For his creative photography, Nagatani has received numerous awards, among them, the Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photographer’s Fellowship, The Kraszna-Krausz Award for his book Nuclear Enchantment, the Leopold Godowsky Jr. Color Photography Award, the Eliot Porter Fellowship in New Mexico, the California Distinguished Artist Award from the National Art Education Association, and National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist Fellowships in 1984 and 1992.

A professor of Art and Art History at the University of New Mexico where he taught for 20 years, Nagatani retired in 2006. The Society of Photographic Education conferred upon him the Honored Educator Award in 2008, and, in 2003, New Mexico’s then Governor Bill Richardson presented Nagatani with the “Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts.” Nagatani has served as a panelist for the Illinois Art Council, Southern Arts Federation, Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, California Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He remains an active member of the Atomic Photographer’s Guild.

Patrick Nagatani: Themes and Variations was partially drawn from Desire for Magic – Patrick Nagatani 1978-2008, the exhibition and monograph, curated by Michele M. Penhall, Curator of Prints and Photographs at the University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque. That exhibition traveled to the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles and was exhibited at the Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences of West Virginia.

The Griffin Museum of Photography is pleased to offer a distinctive and expanded version of the initial exhibition.

Dead 50 Years

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The music revolution was a vital and integral component of the sixties San Francisco art scene. Herb Greene photographed the rock musicians and other members of San Francisco’s cultural milieu during the height of its creative productivity. Greene, a friend of many of San Francisco’s most influential musicians, worked as few photographers have: not as a documenter from the outside, but as a participant within the music scene he was photographing.

Many of Greene’s photographs have become signature portraits of these musicians. His revealing portraits of The Jefferson Airplane, Jeff Beck, The Pointer Sisters, The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, Carlos Santana, Sly Stone, Rod Stewart and many others helped create astonishing family album for an entire generation.

A series of Greene’s photographs featuring the Grateful Dead called “Dead 50 Years,” is featured at the Griffin Museum at Digital Silver Imaging, 9 Brighton St., Belmont, MA, on September 21, 2015 through October 9, 2015. An opening reception will take place October 1, 2015 from 6-8 p.m. There will be live music, very light fare and a wine tasting at the opening reception.

Writer, Matt Nannis writes about Herb Greene and his photos of the Grateful Dead in an essay called “Language of the Dead.” He says, “The collected work of one Herb Greene dances upon.…pages comprised [of] ones and zeroes in such a manifest as never before seen. The emotions, the moments, the good times and the hardships of a storied guild of brothers that put the music and those willing to respond to [music] before all other things. Herb Greene was there when the fellowship was spread across Palo Alto. He was there at the peak when they were at their best and most illustrious. He was there at the beginning when they were their subtlest and unostentatious. He captured the glory that sang from their lips and their instruments.”

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