Griffin Museum of Photography

Daniel W. Coburn, The Hereditary Estate

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Daniel W. Coburn’s photographs address the tragic events that haunt his family living in the Midwest. Trials involving substance and domestic abuse, suicide and mental illness surface in the imagery as he manifests a narrative from the archive and experiences in his life.

Coburn’s The Hereditary Estate will be featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, MA, June 4-August 23, 2015. It runs parallel to the theater’s productions of “How to Succeed in Business” and “Sisters Summer School Catechism”

A reception is June 24th, 2015, from 6:30-8:30pm. The artist will be present and give an informal talk about the exhibition and the recently published book will be available.

“I collect and manipulate found family photographs in an attempt to amend and correct the idealized narrative present in my own family archive,” says Coburn, “These images are a tangible manifestation of memories and experiences acquired during my journey to adulthood, and function as a supplement to the broken family album assembled by family members.”

“The Hereditary Estate is an honest approach to dealing with severe issues within a family structure. Oftentimes matters likes these are swept under the rug but Coburn embraces the faults and tragedies within his family and acknowledges how they have shaped him,” says Frances Jakubek, Associate Director of the Griffin Museum of Photography. “An avenue of self discovery is uncovered as he repurposes segments of his family’s albums.”

Coburn lives and works in Lawrence, Kansas. Selections from this body of work have been featured in exhibitions at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art and the Chelsea Museum of Art in New York. Coburn’s prints are held in collections at the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), the University of New Mexico Art Museum, the Mulvane Art Museum, the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, and the Mariana Kistler-Beach Museum of Art.

His first artist’s monograph, The Hereditary Estate, was published by Kehrer Verlag in 2015. Daniel’s work has been published widely, most recently appearing in the International New York Times. Coburn received his MFA with distinction from the University of New Mexico in 2013. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Photo Media at the University of Kansas.

Joan Fitzsimmons Plant Life

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Joan Fitzsimmons says that she tries to grow plants. “I attempted to grow wheat grass, later basil, but could only document my failures.”

Fitzsimmons’ series, Plant Life, is featured in the Atelier Gallery at the Griffin Museum of Photography June 11th through June 29th, 2015. An opening reception will take place on June 11th, 2015 from 7-8:30pm. Joan Fitzsimmons will lead a gallery talk for members at 6:15. The talk and reception are free and open to the public.

“Ultimately the seeds did germinate,” states Fitzsimmons. “They did grow, and the plants were beautiful; but ultimately I was unable to sustain them. However, I view them as not just a failure, but also perseverance. Whether they thrive or not, the photographs hold their own enigma.”

Joan Fitzsimmons is a fine art photographer and educator based in Connecticut. She has had solo exhibitions across the United States. Her work is held in many museum collections as well as in private collections.

Joshua White, A Photographic Survey of The American Yard

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Joshua White’s photographs are a typological study of the plants, animals, and insects that he come across in his daily life and travels. He captures the images with his iPhone. He says that the phone tool seems fitting, serving as a way to bridge his distracted life and his love of science and nature.

White’s series, A Photographic Survey of the American Yard, is featured in the Griffin Gallery at the Griffin Museum of Photography June 11th through June 29th, 2015. An opening reception will take place on June 11th, 2015 from 7-8:30pm. Joan Fitzsimmons will lead a members’ talk and at 6:15pm before the reception. The talk and reception are free and open to the public.

“I love hearing the cicadas come out in summer, and getting tobacco juice from a grasshopper on my fingers, and catching lightning bugs in a pickle jar,” says White. “The world is full of intricate, remarkable forms,” he says. “We take for granted our place in nature, trading sensitivity to our surroundings for greater productivity and progress.”

Joshua White is an assistant professor in the Studio Art Program at Appalachian State University. He received his BFA from Northern Kentucky University, and an MFA in Photography from Arizona State University. His work explores scientific themes in a poetic way, using sculpture, photography, and mixed media to investigate memory, mortality, ecology, and sustainability. His images have been shown in national venues such as the San Diego Museum of Natural History’s Ordover Gallery and The Huntsville Museum of Art. Recently his work has been featured widely online in publications such as Scientific American, Wired Magazine, Mother Nature Network, and Gizmodo, among others. He lives in works near Boone, NC with his family.

PhotoSynthesis X

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By creating photographic portraits of themselves and their surroundings, students from the Boston Arts Academy and Winchester High School have been exploring their sense of self and place in a unique collaborative program at the Griffin Museum.

In its tenth year, the 5-month program connects approximately 40 students – 20 from each school – with each other and with professional photographers. The goal is to increase students’ awareness of the art of photography, as well as how being from different programs and different schools affects their approach to the same project.

The students were given the task of creating a body of work that communicates a sense of self and place. They were encouraged to explore the importance of props, the environment, facial expression, metaphor, and body language in portrait photography.

Students met with Nancy Grace Horton, a photographer, educator and resident of New Hampshire. Horton described her artistic path in creating bodies of work and honed her focus on her work Ms. Behaviour.

Students also met with Sam Sweezy, a professional fine art and commercial photographer and educator who lives in Arlington, MA. He has exhibited at major photography venues including the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY.

Alison Nordstrom, former curator of the George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y., and Sweezy gathered with students for a group discussion of the work and a final edit of the exhibition.

“In collaboration and through creative discourse these students have grown,” said Paula Tognarelli, executive director of the Griffin Museum. “We are very pleased to be able to share this year’s students’ work. We thank the mentors for providing a very meaningful experience for the students. We also want to thank the Griffin Foundation and the Murphy Foundation, whose continued commitment to this project made learning possible. To paraphrase Elliot Eisner, the arts enabled these students to have an experience that they could have from no other source.’’

The results are on exhibit in PhotoSynthesis X in the Main Gallery of the Griffin Museum June 11 – June 29. An opening reception is Thursday, June 11, 7-8:30 p.m. It is open to all.

Sky at Sowa

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Curated by Paula Tognarelli, executive director and curator of the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA for Duncan Miller Gallery in Santa Monica, California via YourDailyPhotograph.com

Curators’ Statement

Since ancient times Man has been mesmerized by the sky. It has inspired us. We’ve written poems and sung about it,and danced by it. Before understanding, we prayed to it and feared it. Life and tragedy spring from it. We measure our goals against it (sky high) and solve problems because of it (blue skying). The possibilities in life are endless because of it (the sky’s the limit). We have written in it, and rocketed through it, and fallen from it. And alas we have tainted it. The sky can be seen from above and below and it is immense beyond our understanding. We can tell time and find our way by it. It has been described as changing, mocking, moody, vanilla and tangerine. The sky though is not what it seems to be.

The artists of SKY responded with a wide artistic interpretation of the topic giving way to abstract, representational or conceptual interpretations of “Sky” in all forms of light based media.

Thank you to the artists of SKY. The Griffin Museum of Photography is very proud to be able to share excerpts from the original SKY exhibition. What ever happens in life for you, do not ever give up looking upwards.

My thanks go to Daniel Miller of the Duncan Miller Gallery in Santa Monica, California whose vision allowed my dream exhibition to be realized.

The photographers in this show include: Lisa Allen, Janine Autolitano, Karl Baden, Sheri Lynn Behr, Charlie Bidwell, Meg Birnbaum, Amanda Boe, Jeff Boxer, Manuel Cosentino, Lorraine Devon Wilke, Barbara Dorin Hayden, Yorgos Efthymiadis, Lika Fedorenko, Joan Fitzsimmons, Brittonie Fletcher, Jennifer Georgescu, Najib Joe Hakim, Leslie Hall Brown, Alice Hargrave, Carol Isaak, Alyssa Minahan, Susan Keiser, John E. Kelly, Frank Kosempa, Molly Lamb, Susan Lapides, Scott Lerman, Tom Lowe, Jim McKinniss, Yvette Meltzer, Blue Mitchell, Eleanor Owen Kerr, Diane Pirie Cockerill, Anastasia Samoylova, Lynn Saville, Jennifer Schlesinger, Garret Suhrie, Larry Torno, Peter Trieber, Susan Wilson, and Dianne Yudelson

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

[Photo]gogues: New England 2015

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[Photo]gogues: New England is not a definitive study of New England Photography Pedagogues, rather it is a sampling of faculty members from the region. Paula Tognarelli and Frances Jakubek, executive director and associate director of the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA, invited ten photography instructors to exhibit their work during the Flash Forward Photography Festival 2015 in Boston.

The ten invited instructors are:
Lindsey Beal, Rhode Island College, Jesseca Ferguson, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Bill Franson, New England School of Photography, Daniel Mosher Long, Manchester Community College, Sarah Malakoff, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, S. Billie Mandle, Hampshire College, Neal Rantoul, Northeastern University, Thad Russell, Rhode Island School of Art and Design, Matthew Swarts, Community College of Rhode Island, and Mara Trachtenberg, Community College of Rhode Island.

Our sincere thank you to the Lafayette City Center, the Downtown Boston BID, Magenta Foundation and the Flash Forward Festival Boston 2015 for allowing the Griffin Museum to bring [Photo]gogues to Boston for a third year.

Alejandro Durán, Washed Up

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Washed Up Artist Statement
Alejandro Durán

Washed Up is an environmental installation and photography project that transforms the international garbage washing ashore on Mexico’s Caribbean coast into aesthetic, yet disquieting, works. During the course of this project I have identified plastic waste from fifty nations on six continents, all found along a single stretch of coastline in Sian Ka’an, Mexico’s largest federally-protected reserve. I collect this international debris, arrange it by color and form and use it to create site-specific installations. Conflating the hand of man and nature, at times I distribute the objects the way the waves would; at other times, the plastic takes on the shape of algae, roots, rivers, or fruit, reflecting the infiltration of plastics into the natural environment. Beyond creating a surreal or fantastical landscape, these installations mirror the reality of our current environmental predicament. The resulting photo series depicts a new form of colonization by consumerism, where even undeveloped land is not safe from the far-reaching impact of our disposable culture. Although inspired by the work of Andy Goldsworthy and Robert Smithson, Washed Up speaks to the environmental concerns of our time and its vast quantity of discarded materials. The alchemy of Washed Up lies not only in transforming a trashed landscape, but in the project’s potential to raise awareness and change our relationship to consumption and waste. As part of my work, I am also currently creating a Museum of Garbage on location in Sian Ka’an, which will include installations and photographs from the Washed Up series. It will be accompanied by an arts and education program for the children of Punta Allen, the local community in Mexico where I have spent the past 5 years working on this project. We will explore the issue through upcycling lessons, plastic pollution research, a beach clean and other interactive activities. Activism through art and education is an integral part of the Washed Up project and is my way to raise awareness regarding this global Scourge.


Alejandro Durán – Biography

Alejandro Durán was born in Mexico City in 1974 and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He is a multimedia artist working in photography, installation, and video. His work examines the fraught intersections of man and nature, particularly the tension between the natural world and an increasingly overdeveloped one. He received an MA in Teaching from Tufts University in 1999 and an MFA in poetry from the New School for Social Research in 2001. Durán received En Foco’s New Works Award and was included in the Bronx Bienial of Latin American Art in 2012. He has exhibited his work at the Galería Octavio Paz at the Mexican consulate in New York and he is currently Hunter College’s Artist-in-Residence for 2014-15. His solo show, Washed Up: Transforming a Trashed Landscape, was exhibited at Hunter’s East Harlem Art Gallery in 2015. Publications include Land Art, published in France in 2013, which also includes Andy Goldsworthy, Robert Smithson, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Olafur Eliasson, and Marina Abramovic, among others. Art & Ecology Now was published by Thames & Hudson in 2014 and will include images
from Washed Up, as will Unexpected Art, a publication by Chronicle Books published in 2015. Notable press includes a photo essay published in Germany’s Die Zeit, as well as a feature article in New York’s El Diario/La Prensa and mentions in New York Daily News and The New York Times. Durán has taught youth and adult classes in photography and video since 2002 and has worked as a museum educator at The Museum of Modern Art and The International Center of Photography. He is also a video producer whose clients include MoMA, The Museum of Arts & Design, and Columbia University.

Robert Rindler, Jetsam Jellyfish

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Robert Rindler manufactures sculptures from remains and detritus found in the Outer Cape’s transfer stations. He collects, cleans and assembles the objects he finds into categories based on color, shape and use so viewers have the opportunity to experience and reconsider the objects in a new context. As an installation artist who works within different mediums such as sculpture, photography, printmaker, designer, collector, and educator, Rindler demonstrates these skills with a playful installation of Jetsam Jellyfish.

Rindler’s Jetsam Jellyfish, is featured in the Main Gallery at the Griffin Museum of Photography April 9th through June 5th, 2015. An opening reception will take place on April 9th, 2015 from 7-8:30pm. Jerry Takigawa will lead an artist talk and gallery tour of the Main Gallery exhibition False Food at 6:00pm before the reception. The talk and reception are free and open to the public. The Griffin Museum will be free to all visitors on April 22nd, 2015 in celebration of Earth Day.

With a distinct eye for color, his jellyfish creations aim to ignite dialog “between chaos and order, beauty and danger, humor and gravity, idea and action and color and form,” states Rindler, “I am consistently intrigued by the man-made detritus our society designs and manufactures and is then discarded to live on in our environment forever.”

A graduate of Cooper Union and the Yale School of Architecture, Rindler has had a long and prominent career as an artist, curator and art educator, having served as president of the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, Dean of the Cooper Union School of Art, Associate Provost of The Rhode Island School of Design, Dean of Students at the Boston Architectural Center, and Art Department Chairman at the University of Vermont. He is now a full-time resident of Wellfleet, Massachusetts.

David Welch, Material World

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David Welch constructs totems of waste and the accumulations of materials in our contemporary consumer world. The photographs of these monuments “aim to encourage debate about consumption and the ways in which we feel compelled to consume.”

Welch’s series, Material World, is featured in the Atelier Gallery at the Griffin Museum of Photography April 9th through June 5th, 2015. An opening reception will take place on April 9th, 2015 from 7-8:30pm. Jerry Takigawa will lead an artist talk and gallery tour of the Main Gallery exhibition False Food at 6:00pm before the reception. The talk and reception are free and open to the public. The Griffin Museum will be free to all visitors on April 22nd, 2015 in celebration of Earth Day.

“Material World is my response to our contemporary consumer milieu. By treating artifacts of consumer culture as Duchampian-inspired Assisted Readymades, I photograph assemblages, constructed by my own hand to form monuments and totems that serve as precarious externalizations of culture and social biography,” states Welch.

“These photographs of the totems act as symbolic mirrors and points of reflection for my own, as well as society’s, contemplative and critical gaze.”

David Welch is a fine art and editorial photographer based on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. His fine art photography explores social issues, using large-format photography steeped in conceptual influences from art history and economic theory. His project “Material World” has been widely published and exhibited both nationally and abroad.

David was named one of the Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward winners for 2012 and in 2011 he was selected as one of Photolucida’s Critical Mass top 50 photographers. David is a recent graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design, where he earned his MFA in photography. He lives on the island with his wife and children.

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