Griffin Museum of Photography

Jerry Takigawa, False Food

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Photographer and designer Jerry Takigawa has been a social and environmental advocate since 1969. In his series False Food, Takigawa speaks to the issue of plastics pollution specifically of the Albatross of the Midway Atoll who mistake plastic debris for food and literally starve to death.

Takigawa’s series, False Food, is featured in the Main Gallery at the Griffin Museum April 9 through June 5, 2015. An opening reception with the artist takes place on April 9, 7-8:30 p.m. Jerry Takigawa will give a gallery talk and tour of False Food at 6:00 PM. The talk is FREE.

“[False Food] is a way of taking an overwhelming environmental problem and finding a way to make it personal,” says Takigawa. “I have become acutely aware of the abundance of plastic in my life and in my world. The albatross have provided me with a new awareness of the web of life.”

Takigawa continues, “Creating these images helps me to integrate the tragedy of the [Albatross] with a sense of hope—hope that by telling and re-telling the story—observers may be inspired to act, not to turn away.”

“Jerry Takigawa doesn’t hit us over the head with preachy dialogue on the perils of plastics pollution in the artworks of False Food. Rather, he connects us with the issue more subtly,” says Paula Tognarelli, executive director of the Griffin Museum of Photography. “Through their quiet cadence, Takigawa’s photographs provoke further enquiry into the context of the source materials used. What a paradox it is to discover that such beauty points to the devastation of our oceans caused by industrial civilization,” says Tognarelli. “The photographs of False Food communicate a sense of preciousness as art objects, as well as articulating the dearness of our natural resources.”

Takigawa received a BFA, with an emphasis in painting, from San Francisco State University in 1967. He studied photography under Don Worth. While living in the San Francisco Bay Area, he utilized his art and design skills to help develop a pilot VISTA program (Volunteers in Service to America) in Oakland, California. In 1982, he became the first photographer to receive the Imogen Cunningham Award for color photography. Takigawa has served as past-president of People in Communications Arts (PiCA), a trustee for the Monterey Museum of Art, and currently serves as president for the Center for Photographic Art.

Takigawa’s work is in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Crocker Art Museum, the Library of Congress, the Monterey Museum of Art, The San Francisco Foundation, the University of Louisville, Syntex Laboratories Inc., The Monterey Vineyard, the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, the Imogen Cunningham Trust, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

In honor of Earth Day on April 22, 2015 the museum will be open to the public for FREE all day.

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.

Jay Gould: Escape Velocity

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Jay Gould’s work integrates scientific topics into installation and constructed photographic projects. With “Escape Velocity” Gould has been photographing the tight-knit community of model rocketry enthusiasts. “Drive a good hour outside of nearly every American metropolitan area on a sunny Saturday morning and you may see small chutes of smoke lingering in the sky,” says Jay Gould. “If you are like me, you have even curiously traced these trails from time to time.”

A series of Gould’s photographs called “Escape Velocity,” is featured at the Griffin Museum at Digital Silver Imaging, 9 Brighton St., Belmont, MA, on March 26, 2015 through June 5, 2015. A closing reception will take place June 4, 2015 from 6-8 p.m.

“Many of these explorers are taking their first steps into hands-on science,” says Gould. “These less experienced members are guided by an entire community, in which many members have careers in aerospace.”

“Who hasn’t dreamed of conquering new frontiers,” says Paula Tognarelli executive director of the Griffin Museum of Photography. “It’s the desire to fly and the drive to know what lies beyond that spurs on these rocket explorers. Without curiosity many of us would still be huddled in a European township wondering of what cheese the moon was made.”

Jay Gould is an artist and a member of the faculty at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, Gould received his BFA in photography from the University of Wisconsin and his MFA from the Savanna College of Art and Design. His work has won numerous national awards, such as the Berenice Abbott Prize for an emerging photographer, the Jeannie Pierce Award, and First Place at the Newspace Center for Photography’s International Juried Exhibition. _Gould’s work is widely exhibited around the country making solo and group show appearances at the Fridman Gallery in NYC, the University of Notre Dame, The Julia Dean Gallery in Los Angeles, the Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art, he Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the Griffin Museum of Photography and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. Gould is also a longtime member of the faculty at the Maine Media Workshops and is currently serving as the Chair of the Society for Photographic Education’s Mid Atlantic Region.

The exhibit is open to the public Mondays through Fridays, 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Susan Goldstein, Bending Time: Antique Photo Collage

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Susan Goldstein has been creating hand assembled collages from vintage photographs, ephemera and discarded objects and printed matter found in flea markets, garage sales and antique stores around the country. For the artist finding the elements to construct these one-of-a-kind art objects is like excavating on an archeological dig.

Susan Goldstein’s Bending Time: Antique Photo Collage will be featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, MA, April 2 – May 31, 2015. It runs parallel to the theater’s productions of “Neville’s Island” and “How to Succeed in Business.”

A reception is May 7, 2015 at 6:30-8:00 p.m.

“The only requirement I have imposed on myself when finding elements to incorporate into my artwork is that each collage includes some element that is a photograph, negative, or other material related to making an image using a camera and film,” says Goldstein.

“I always credit the photographer when known as well as identify the subject used in the artwork if a name or location has been noted on the print,” says Goldstein. “Sometimes a print is signed by the photographer or a portrait is identified by name, but more often than not I am working with nothing more than an anonymous visual record.”

“In Bending Time: Antique Photo Collage, Susan Goldstein assembles images that hint at the absurd, add a touch of surprise for the viewer, and express her wry sense of humor and wit,” says Paula Tognarelli, executive director and curator for the Griffin Museum of Photography. “Each unique art piece evolves from an explorative creative journey.”

Originally from Indianapolis, Indiana where she was born, Susan Goldstein graduated from the University of Colorado, Boulder CO in 1976. After graduate study in Photography, Goldstein has had a varied photographic career. She has worked at newspapers doing freelance editorial work as well as photographing historic architectural sites. All the while in her career Goldstein found time to pursue her fine art personal projects.

Her work is collected in institutions such as the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Museum of Modern Art, Joaquim Paiva Collection, Rio De Janiero, Brazil S.A. She has exhibited widely in Denver, CO where she resides.

Photography Atelier 21

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Photography Atelier 21 will present an exhibit of student artwork from March 5 through March 29, 2015 at the Griffin Museum of Photography, 67 Shore Road, Winchester, Massachusetts, 01890. Photography Atelier is a course for intermediate and advanced photographers offered by the Griffin Museum of Photography and taught by Meg Birnbaum and course assistant, Amy Rindskopf.

On Thursday, March 5, the public is invited to view the artwork and meet the artists at a reception from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.

Photography Atelier 21 members include:
Emily Belz: Memory Lines, photographic sequences connecting space, time and memory; Richard Cohen: Ambiguity of Cityspace, restructured images of urban windows shot in downtown Boston; Jennifer Coplon: Discovering Blackstone Square, a Boston South End park; Vicki Diez-Canseco: Shape Shift: A Part of the Whole; Estelle Disch: Phototransformations; David Feigenbaum: The Shadow Knows; Nancy Fulton: Woodland Light; Trelawney Goodell: A Celebration of Norway; Law Hamilton: Atlantic Waves: Grace and Movement; James Hunt: Spirituality and a Sense of Place: The Quabbin Wilderness; Lee Kilpatrick: A Case of You, a portrait of his sister’s last years before her death; Bonnie McCormick: Too Much Rum, pinhole multiple exposure images of the Caribbean; Vicki McKenna: A Sheaf of Stories, a selection of portraits from Italy; Judith Monteferrante: Glass: Realism to Abstraction; Skip Montello: Reflections of a Quarry Wall; Amy Rindskopf: Edible Geometry, a celebration of the growing season; Andrea Rosenthal: Fleeting Glimpses; Tiziana Rozzo: The Childhood of a Family; Dianne Schaefer: The Light You Cannot See, explorations in infrared photography; Elliot Schildkrout: Lost Memories, the abandoned Lincoln Amusement Park of Dartmouth, Mass; Ellen Slotnick, Quondam; Christy Stadelmaier: Arches; Joe Staska: Unsleeping, images from sleepless nights and 36-hour days; Maria Verrier: A True Self; Carol Van Loon: Barns, a journey back to the landscape of her youth after the death of her mother; Nadine Wallack: Shadows and Silhouettes: Nothing is Explained; Catherine Wilcox-Titus: Returned to Life, a series of still-life photographs.

About the class:
Photography Atelier, in its twentieth year, is a unique portfolio-making course for emerging to advanced photographers. In addition to guidance and support in the creation of a body of work, the class prepares artists to market, exhibit and present their work to industry professionals.

Each participant in the Atelier presents a final project in the form of a print portfolio, a photographic book or album, a slide show, or a mixed media presentation. In every Atelier students hang a gallery exhibition and produce work for their own pages on the Atelier website. To see the photography of present and past Atelier students and teachers, please visit:www.photographyatelier.org. Spring 2015 Instructor Meg Birnbaum, will be happy to discuss the Photography Atelier at the reception on March 5th with anyone interested in joining the class.

Sky at Lafayette

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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 the work of these 41 photographers through this 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 Lafayette City Center and the Downtown Boston Business Improvement District for their support of the Griffin Museum in bringing this exhibit to the public.

Magdalena Sole’ Mississippi Delta

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Magdalena Solé is a social documentary photographer living in New York and now Vermont. She is known for her sensitive expressions of culture through distinctive color artistry. Her photographic projects span the globe from the Mississippi Delta to Japan and Cuba.

Solé’s series, Mississippi Delta, is featured in the Main Gallery at the Griffin Museum January 8 through March 1, 2015. An opening reception with the artists takes place on January 10, 7-8:30 p.m. Magdalena Solé has a gallery talk and tour of Mississippi Delta at 4:00 PM. Brandon Thibodeaux has a gallery talk and tour of When Morning Comes at 5 PM. Bryan David Griffith has a members’ talk on his exhibition The Last Bookstores at 6:15 PM. The talks are FREE.

“My work is about communities at the edge of society,” says Magdalena Solé. “My photographs describe brief moments of human existence, carried by the rhythm of a setting. They convey what is at once simple and vast, passing and constant, ordinary and intangible. What inspires my photographs is light and the hidden spaces it illuminates, especially in immigrant and working class communities.”

“Mississippi Delta is an exploration of the iconic region lying between the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers running from Memphis, TN to Vicksberg, MS, a place that evokes visions of sharecroppers, plantations and of course, the sound of the Blues,” says Solé. “A small wealthy gentry and a large impoverished underclass lives in dilapidated houses and tilted trailers. Its community is very conscious of its own identity and its racial diversity.”

“Solé photographs are rich in color and character,” says Paula Tognarelli, executive director of the Griffin Museum of Photography. “And every image is rendered with respect and dignity.”

A book entitled New Delta Rising, distributed by the University Press of Solé’s Mississippi Delta images was published in 2011. The book received the Silver Award at PX3 Prix de la Photographie, France in 2011. Most recently Mississippi Delta has been selected as a PDN Photo Annual 2011 Finalist. Magdalena Solé is also winner of the Silver Prize 2011 at Slow Exposures, Concord, GA.

Solé founded TransImage, a graphic design studio in New York City creating publications for worldwide markets, attuned to cultural nuances. In 2002 she graduated with a Masters of Fine Art in Film from Columbia University. Her last film, “Man On Wire”, on which she was the Unit Production Manager, won an Oscar in 2009. Over the years she has won numerous awards.

This exhibition is exhibited courtesy of Sous Les Etoiles Gallery in New York City.

Brandon Thibodeaux, When Morning Comes

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Dallas photographer Brandon Thibodeaux has been photographing in the Mississippi Delta since 2009. While his work makes specific reference to the rural black experience, in his work we see themes of faith, identity, and perseverance that are common to us all. Thibodeaux states that these are “the traits of strong men.”

Thibodeaux’s series, When Morning Comes, is featured in the Main Gallery at the Griffin Museum January 8 through March 1, 2015. An opening reception with the artists takes place on January 10, 7-8:30 p.m. Magdalena Solé has a gallery talk and tour of Mississippi Delta at 4:00 PM. Brandon Thibodeaux has a gallery talk and tour of When Morning Comes at 5 PM. Bryan David Griffith has a members’ talk on his exhibition The Last Bookstores at 6:15 PM. The talks are FREE.

“I first traveled to the [Delta] in the summer of 2009 because I needed to breathe after my own troubled times,” said Brandon Thibodeaux. “I was in search of something stronger than myself and attended its churches not to photograph but to cry and be redeemed and to just be a part of the place. I was there to listen as I prayed for a revelation.”

“Over the past five years I have witnessed signs of strength against struggle, humility amidst pride, and a promise for deliverance in the lives that I’ve come to know here,” says Thibodeaux. “This is a land stigmatized by poverty beneath a long shadow of racism. I do not wish to overlook this fact but rather look between it for evidence of the tender and yet unwavering human spirit that resides within its fabric.”

“Brandon Thibodeaux’s photographs describe a sort of “splendor” in the ordinary,” says Paula Tognarelli, executive director of the Griffin Museum of Photography. “Thibodeaux’s Delta narrative recalls a spiritual and humane dialogue with the land and its people.”

Brandon Thibodeaux is a freelance photographer for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, Shell Oil and Time. He is a member of the photography collective MJR, based in New York City. His work has been recognized by American Photo Magazine, PDN, and the Oxford American lists him as one of their 100 Under 100, New Superstars of Southern Art 2012. He is the 2014 recipient of the Michael P. Smith Fund For Documentary Photography Grant.

This exhibition is sponsored in part by Critical Mass in Portland OR.

Photobook 2014

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PHOTOBOOK 2014 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 fifth year. The competition results were exhibited at Davis Orton Gallery and forty-two 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 2014.

Photobook 2014, is featured in the Hall Gallery at the Griffin Museum January 8 through March 1, 2015. An opening reception with the artists takes place on January 10, 7-8:30 p.m. Magdalena Solé has a gallery talk and tour of Mississippi Delta at 4:00 PM. Brandon Thibodeaux has a gallery talk and tour of When Morning Comes at 5 PM. Bryan David Griffith has a members’ talk on his exhibition The Last Bookstores at 6:15 PM. The talks are FREE.

Best of Show photobooks were awarded to Miki Hasegawa, The Path of Million Pens; Michael Hunold, SHOOT; Linda Morrow, Calla; and Rebecca Sittler. All the Presidents’ Men. Exhibitors include: Raymond Adams, America Witnessed; Thomas Alleman, The American Apparel; Jim Baab, Instagram Photography 2011-2014; Rosie Barnes, Understanding Stanley; Karen Bell, Color Field; Karin Borghouts, The House of My Childhood Burned Down & I Took Pictures; Lilian Caruana, Rebels: Punks & Skinheads of the East Village 1984-1987; Sebastian Collett, Vanishing Point; Melissa Eder, Bushes and Balls; Andrew Fedynak, In the Light of a Fading Sun; Deena Feinberg, Morning Meditations; Paola Ferrario, 19 Pictures, 22 Recipes; Andrew Frost, The Northeast Kingdom; Preston Gannaway, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea; Richard Gaston, Lancaster City; Cathryn Griffith, Weaving Hopes & Prayers; Anne Howard, All that Remains; Jos Jansen, Seeds: On the Origin of Food Crops; Robbie Kaye, Beauty and Wisdom; Kay Kenny, Into the Night In the Middle of Nowhere; Barbara Ciurej & Lindsay Lochman, Processed Views: Surveying the Industrial Landscape; Robert Lipgar, Returning; Tom Lowe, Mojave Moonlight: A Series of Nightscapes; Bruce Morton, Forgottonia; Alex Nichols, Proof That Nothing Matters; Franc Palaia, NightLife: Shadow Paintings of Richard Hambleton; Mark Parascandola, Carabanchel; Nathan Pearce, Midwest Dirt; Jaye R. Phillips, Pulse; Don Russell, Caught on Wire; Dianne Jaquith Schaefer, Crummett Mountain Farm; Liz Steketee, Family Chronic – Samuel The Fox; Kris Vervaeke, AD Infinitum; Ira Wagner, Superior Apartments; Nicholas Whitman, Sea Shore Sky & Ice; Angilee Wilkerson, Happenings: The Wondrous Prairie; Heidi Woodman, Gold Fever; and Sebastian Zimmermann, Fifty Shrinks.

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.”

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