Griffin Museum of Photography

Noritaka Minami 1972

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Noritaka Minami has been photographing the Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo for the past four years.

Minami’s series is featured in the Atelier Gallery at the Griffin Museum of Photography July 9th through August 30th, 2015. An opening reception will take place on July 9th, 2015 from 7-8:30pm.

The architect Kisho Kurokawa completed the tower in 1972. “As a building attached with 140 removable apartment units, the Nakagin Capsule Tower embodies the future of urban living as envisioned by Kurokawa in postwar Japan,” states Minami. He also says that, “the building is a reminder of a future that was never realized in society at large and exists as an architectural anachronism within the city.“

Kurokawa’s plan was to mass-produce the capsules. Despite this, the tower is still one of a kind and will more than likely be demolished to make way for a more modern apartment complex. Each 10 foot square unit within the Nakagin Capsule Tower was built identically. Today the units are in various states depicting the personality and needs of the occupants. Minami photographs the apartments from a consistent frontal perspective that speaks to a passage of time and shows a diverted route from the foreseen path envisioned by the architect.

Noritaka Minami is an artist and educator based in Boston. He currently is a teaching fellow at Harvard University in Photography as well as a visiting faculty member at the Museum School. He received a BA in Art Practice from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004 and a MFA in Studio Art from the University of California, Irvine in 2011. He has exhibited widely in the United States, was a recipient of an artist residency from the Center of Photography at Woodstock and his book “1972” will be published by Kehrer Verlag this year.

21st Juried Show: The Peter Urban Legacy Exhibition

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The juror for the Griffin’s Juried show this year was Jim Casper. Jim started LensCulture in 2004 to explore the diverse ways photography is used in the arts, media and daily life in cultures around the world. Since then, Lens Culture has grown to be regarded as a highly valuable, engaging and inspiring resource for photographers, students and art lovers. In 2010, Jim teamed up with international partners to launch the annual LensCulture FotoFest Paris portfolio reviews, which brought together participants from over 45 countries each November. Prior to Lens Culture, Jim served as founder and president of Casper Design Group for 20 years, an international branding and corporate communications design firm based in Berkeley, CA. He currently lives in Paris.

“The 2015 Griffin Awards attracted remarkably diverse, sophisticated and refined submissions from photographers who explore their art across many genres,” says Casper.
The 21tst Griffin Museum Juried Exhibition is on display in the Main Gallery of the Griffin Museum July 9 through August 30, 2015. An opening reception is July 9, 7-8:30 p.m. with exhibit awardee Dave Jordano in attendance. Dave Jordano will do a lecture at 5:00 PM at the Griffin Museum in Winchester. The event is free to members and $7 to nonmembers. It requires an RSVP. The opening reception is free to all but also requires an RSVP. Photographer Lindsey Beal will do a members’ talk at 6:30 pm on July 9, 2015.

Casper also says that, “The 54 photographs in my selection represent a delightful range of approaches — each of which somehow celebrates the idea and the medium of photography itself — as well as the wild worlds we live in physically and in our imaginations. It’s a joy to discover so many creative people who are so fluent in the visual language of photography.”
For the second year the 21st Juried Show is held in honor of the legacy of Peter Urban a celebrated, Boston-based photographer who passed away in 2009 after a long battle with cancer. Urban was renowned for his success in both the commercial and artistic realm. In the spirit of Peter’s success creating a career with a balance of commercial and artistic work, his family has partnered with the Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston and the Griffin Museum of Photography to produce opportunities for other photographers to grow their careers.

Alongside the juried exhibition, the Arts and Business Council is again organizing a series of professional development workshops presented by a diverse range of thought leaders as a legacy to Peter Urban. These workshops will share instrumental ideas, methods and tools to help build the business and legal foundation of a thriving artistic practice.

The Peter Urban Legacy Award went to Dave Jordano. The Arthur Griffin Legacy Award went to Kay Kenny and the Griffin Award went to Susan DeLeo.

The photographers are: Jeremy Ackman, Ron Anderson, Matt Cegelis, Kindra Clineff, Debi Cornwall, Peter Curran, Susan DeLeo, Marcus DeSieno, Francisco Diaz and Deb Young, Corinne DiPietro, Barbara Ford Doyle, Daniel Duarte, Pippi Ellison, Rachel Ellner, Odette England, Ellen Feldman, Hiroshi Imai, Doug Johnson, Dave Jordano, Matthew Kamholtz, Lynn Karlin, Aubrey J. Kauffman, Marky Kauffmann, Steven Keirstead, Kay Kenny, Lee Kilpatrick, Michael Kriegh, Margaret Lampert, Isa Leshko, Cristina Llerena, Richard Coty, Darrell Matsumoto, Charles Mazel, Lisa McCarty, Ralph Mercer, Nick Meyer, Nancy Newberry, Barbara Peacock, Lisa Redburn, Dale M. Reid, Katherine Richmond, Brian Rosa, Russ Rowland, Don Russell, Hope Schreiber, Michael Seif, Wendy Seller, David Shannon-Lier, Marie Triller, Cara Lee Wade, Paul Wainwright, Sandra Chen Weinstein, Dianne Yudelson and Kalman Zabarsky.

The Griffin Museum of Photography has selected four photographers from the juried show submissions for future exhibitions in 2015. These photographers are:
Rebecca Clark, Eliot Dudik, Cassandra Klos and Molly Lamb

Lindsey Beal Transmission

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Lindsey Beal’s work usually combines history with contemporary women’s lives and feminism with historical photographic processes. She is interested in the photograph as object and often includes sculpture, papermaking and artist books into her work.

The photographs in Transmission were created using open-source imagery from the Center for Disease Control. The images are microscopic views of bacteria from sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Beal altered the images and then converted the imagery into digital negatives. From these negatives Beal made cyanotypes and embedded the prints in resin within Petri dishes.
Beal’s series, Transmission, is featured in the Griffin Gallery at the Griffin Museum of Photography July 9th through August 30th, 2015. An opening reception will take place on July 9th, 2015 from 7-8:30pm. Dave Jordano will do a talk at 5pm at the museum. The talk is free for members and $7 for nonmembers. The talks and receptions require an RSVP. Lindsey Beal will lead a members’ talk at 6:30pm before the reception. The talk and reception are free and open to the public with an RSVP.

“What once seemed like a scary yet treatable nuisance or temporary problem is becoming a major public-health concern,” says Beal. “Although we should have eradicated these long ago, bacterial STDs continue to exist. Frighteningly, they are beginning to mutate and become drug resistant; gonorrhea specifically has outgrown our current treatments,” she says. “The bacterial STDs [in exhibit] (BV, Chlamydia, Trichomonas, Gonorrhea and Syphilis) can be silent for women and have little to no symptoms for men: they reveal themselves mainly through medical tests. Without testing, the cycle continues: without noticeable symptoms, no treatments are received; without treatments, the infections are unknowingly passed to others.”

Lindsey Beal is a photographer and professor of photography at Rhode Island College and the New Hampshire Institute of Art graduate program. She received her MFA in Photography from the University of Iowa and a certificate in Book Arts at the University of Iowa as well. Her work has been shown at national museums, galleries & universities and included in various public & private collections, including the Kinsey Institute and the Indie Photobook Library. She has been featured on LensCulture, Light Leaked, & 365 Artists and has been published in Diffusion, The Hand, View Camera and 500 Handmade Books Volume Two. She recently earned a travel grant from Duke University and an Honorable Mention for Center Forward 2014 at the Center for Fine Art Photography. She resides in Rhode Island.

Courtesy of Panopticon Gallery

Chris Anthony, Seas Without a Shore

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Los Angeles-based photographer and filmmaker Chris Anthony’s photographs are fashioned from his childhood fiction-filled reading habits. He was drawn to characters from mythology, to mystery and horror stories and to poems by Edgar Allen Poe. His favorite protagonists include deities, devils and demi –gods, hobos, princes, nymphs and fishermen and the seahorse or mythical hippocampi. The title of his exhibition comes from a line in one of Poe’s poems called Dream-Land. “Seas Without a Shore reflects the woes of all those sea-faring nomads, survivors and otherwise peculiar characters marching about and standing for portraits in the ocean surf [in my photographs],” says Chris Anthony.

A series of Anthony’s photographs called “Seas Without a Shore,” is featured at the Griffin Museum at Digital Silver Imaging, 9 Brighton St., Belmont, MA, on June 16, 2015 through September 11, 2015. An opening reception will take place July 23, 2015 from 6-8 p.m.

“I was smitten with Edgar Allen Poe’s imagery,” says Anthony. “I also remember a vintage movie poster that hung on my Aunt Maggie’s living room in Stockholm from the 1934 film, The Black Cat,” he says. “The disembodied heads of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi that zoomed across a blackened vortex of a cat’s silhouette made a huge impact on me. Their facial expressions were terrifying. The poster didn’t scare me though. It thrilled me.”

Chris Anthony creates the props and costumes for the scenes in his photographs. The pieces are a combination of archival pigment prints and wet plate collodion assemblages, a process developed in the mid-19th century. He uses modern day equipment as well as antiquarian processes. The ocean backdrop is Venice Beach in California.

Born in Sweden, Anthony currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. His work has been exhibited in Los Angeles, Stockholm, Brooklyn, Hong Kong, Washington D.C., London, Bath, San Francisco and is included in many private and public collections around the world. Publications that have featured Anthony and his work include the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Photo District News, Eyemazing, Art News, American Photo, Blink, Paper, Photo+, GUP, Fraction Magazine, Nylon, Black Book, Juxtapoz, Zoom, Angeleno, The Huffington Post, Corrierre della Serra and LA Weekly. Clients include Chiat/Day, Sony Playstation, Sony Music, Universal Music Group, Republic Records, Warner Music, Los Angeles Magazine, Hollywood Records, Reprise, Stuttgart City Ballet, Myspace Records, Dell and USC.
The exhibit is open to the public Mondays through Fridays, 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

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.

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.

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.

[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.

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.

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