In the Griffin@ SoWa Gallery the Griffin Museum highlights all of its exhibitions in all of its galleries.
Magdalena Sole’ Mississippi Delta
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.
K.K. DePaul, Only Child
Photobook 2014
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.”
Kerry Mansfield, Expired
Kerry Mansfield photographs expired library books that “have traveled through many hands, and across county lines until they have reached their final resting place” as a discard and withdrawn from circulation.
Mansfield’s series, Expired, is featured in the Griffin 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.
“The first rite of passage upon learning how to write one’s name was to inscribe it on a library check-out card promising the book’s safe journey and return,” says Mansfield. “I remember reading the list of names that had come before me and cradling the feeling that I was a part of this book’s history and it’s shared, communal experience,” she says.
“[The books in Expired] show the evidence of everyone that has touched them, because they were well read, and often well loved,” says Mansfield. “They were not left on shelves, untouched. Now they have a new life, as portraits of the unique shared experience found only in a library book,” she says.
Kerry Mansfield lives in San Francisco, CA. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in photography. She also studied architecture at California College of the Arts. Mansfield has had exhibitions throughout the United States, Europe, and South America. Her work has garnered several national and international awards including the Lens Culture Single Image Award, First Place IPA in the Fine Art Professional Self-Portrait Category, the Worldwide Photography Gala First Place Storyteller Award and a spot on the Shortlist in the Professional Documentary Portrait category for the 2012 World Photography Organization (WPO) Awards. “Expired “was featured on the New York Times Lens Blog in 2013. The Filter Photo Festival in Chicago awarded this exhibition, at the Griffin Museum.
Bryan David Griffith, The Last Bookstores: Americas Resurgent Independents
Bryan David Griffith explores America’s remaining independent bookstores. In this age when on-line retailers dominate the book ordering terrain, Griffith examines the remaining independents to see what marks their resilience and questions our future should they go away.
Griffith’s series, The Last Bookstores, is featured in the Atelier 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.
“The booksellers I met are passionately committed to sustaining their local communities and keeping the flame of literary culture alive’” says Griffith. “Far from giving up, they’re fighting back,” he says.
“The American Bookseller’s Association, which represents most independents, grew from 1,410 member stores in 2010 to 1,632 in 2013—a fraction of the 5,200 stores in 1991,” says Griffith. “This is the first steady increase in 20 years. Is this the dawn of a remarkable comeback, or a heroic last stand for independent bookstores?” asks Griffith.
Bryan David Griffith lives in Flagstaff, Arizona. He studied engineering at the University of Michigan and followed a career in consulting. Feeling unfulfilled in his job he has pursued a nomadic life and the life of a photographer. He has exhibited world wide including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Phoenix Art Museum. His work is held in public and private collections such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Fort Wayne Museum of Art.
Like the book industry, the last decade has been a time of turmoil for photographers. In keeping with the theme of books—an elegant, functional, and affordable technology threatened by an ever-changing parade of electronic gadgetry—Griffith photographed this project using cameras without electronics on large and medium-format film, a slow but superlative craft in jeopardy. Two of the films he used to create these images have since been discontinued.
Brandon Thibodeaux, When Morning Comes
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.
Jenny Riffle, Scavenger: Adventures in Treasure Hunting
Jenny Riffle has been photographing Riley, a modern day Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and treasure hunter. Riley has been scavenging for treasure since age eleven. Riffle photographs Riley as he hunts utilizing a metal detector in the dirt and on sandy beaches. Riffle then photographs the objects Riley finds and collects.
Jenny Riffle’s Scavenger: Adventures in Treasure Hunting will be featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, MA, January 9 – March 26, 2015. It runs parallel to the theater’s productions of Young and Co. offerings, “Loretta Laroche,” and “That Hopey Changey Thing.”
A reception is February 19, 2014 at 6:30-8:00 p.m.
“I explore the line between documentary and fantasy as I look at [Riley’s] objects, what drives him to continue and the mythology and history of the treasure hunting persona,” says Riffle.
“I express my romantic view of his life and his treasure hunting obsession and choose not to show his daily activities outside of that,” says Jenny Riffle. “By only showing one side of his personality I create a larger than life character. I photograph him in Twain’s spirit, as a mythical adventurer, like Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.”
Mark Twain writes in the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, “There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.”
“A monetary value often can not be placed on hidden riches,” says Paula Tognarelli, executive director and curator for the Griffin Museum of Photography. “It is the journey and the process of seeking treasure in the mundane and forgotten that is alluring.”
Jenny Riffle received her MFA in Photography from School of Visual Arts in 2011 and her BA in Photography from Bard College in 2001. She currently lives and works in Seattle, WA. In 2014 Riffle was chosen as one of PDN’s 30 New and Emerging Photographers to Watch. She received the Aaron Siskind Individual Photographer’s Fellowship grant in 2013.
Erwin G. Markowitz Selections from the Archive
Erwin G. Markowitz has been shooting photographs since he was gifted a Kodak Bullet at age thirteen.
Markowitz was the president and cofounder of Red Knit Mills where he worked with textile manufacturing and oversaw all aspects of design, production and marketing of high quality knitted fabrics for the majority of his career. The influence of textile design is evident in his hand-made prints. “When a print slowly comes to life in a tray of developer, it is magic! It is still always a thrill for me when that image once seen in the viewfinder comes to life in the darkroom,” says Markowitz.
A series of Markowitz’s photographs, Selections from the Archive will be featured in the Hall Gallery of the Griffin Museum December 11, 2014 through December 30, 2014. An opening reception with the artist is also scheduled for December 11, 2014 from 6-8pm.
In my early days of making photographs, Erwin states, “All of my film was processed in a dish or soup bowl in the family linen closet in our New York apartment using the “see-saw” method. Film those days cost about a quarter a roll and the developer that came in a tube with a cork at either end plus one in the middle to separate the two types of chemicals was all of a nickel.”
Erwin G. Markowitz, 91, is an accomplished photographer who has been taking pictures for over 75 years. He’s captured compelling images across North America, Europe and Africa, focusing primarily in black and white photography, particularly shooting and printing nature, landscape, wildlife and scenic prints. “Like most people,” says Markowitz, “my photography often revolves around my other interests and hobbies-primarily those that take me closest to nature. Informal portraits of people in their natural habitat have become an additional focus for me.”
Markowitz has exhibited his work at the Griffin Museum of Photography, The Ward Museum in Maryland and the Fitchburg Art Museum in addition to galleries in Amherst and the Worcester area. He has also won various awards throughout his photography career.
Winter Solstice Exhibition
For the second 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 2014. 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 11, 2014 from 6-8pm. Sales are encouraged and many artists have donated the proceeds back to the Griffin.
