Griffin Museum of Photography

PHOTOGRAPHING PEOPLE Photographs from the Harvey Stein workshop

Posted on

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 2014 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 2015. Watch for details on our website.

Exhibitors include: Meredith Abenaim, Anne Brooks, Marion Cohen, Cynthia Cole, Anna Gemelli, Cathy Higby, Yair Melamed, Barbara Trachtenberg, Minglun Wang and Maria Zugartechea.

Excerpts from the Photography Atelier Exhibition

Posted on

The Griffin Museum presents excerpts from its Photography Atelier 20 Exhibition at the Lafayette City Center Passageway that links Macy’s with the Hyatt Regency Hotel. The exhibit will run from November 19 through Feb 16, 2015. The Photography Atelier is a course for intermediate and advanced photographers offered by the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA and taught by Meg Birnbaum and course assistant, Amy Rindskopf.

The photographers in this show include:
Bill Davison, Ellen Feldman, Cassandra Goldwater, Sunny Gupta, Claudia Gustafson, Tira Khan, Carol Krauss, Tricia O’Neill, Astrid Reischwitz, Andrea Rosenthal, Ellen Slotnick, and Cindy Weisbart.

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.

Liz Calvi Lost Boys

Posted on

“Ask your brother if he knows my brother. He will know him. He’s terrible….”

Lost Boys depicts young men living in the American suburbs. Their age’s range from 18
to 25, they are from Generation Y. In reverie between youth and adulthood, this
generation has been called the peter pan generation because they’ve had delays into
adulthood and frequently return to their hometowns because of financial hardships. These
are my brothers. Some I knew from my past and others I’ve met recently. Not only do
they embody a generation, but they also epitomize the actions of generations past.

I want to feel what home means to these boys and what it means to feel happiness and
freedom; ideas that we have constructed in relation to the American Dream. These boys
are all in a state of repose in their parent’s homes; not the common trajectory for males in
accordance to the American Dream.

I aim to have the boys dually express a level of vulnerability and tenderness that is often
looked down upon for men. Being a female photographer, I am also questioning the male
gaze to further challenge gender stereotypes.

“If your brother is so terrible then what are you?” I asked this boy casually smoking in
front of me. He took a deep inhale before responding.

“Beloved.” He replied with an exhale. “Or at least that’s what I’d like to be.”

John O. Roy, South Beach

Posted on

For me, photography is the greatest form of self expression. It communicates with my soul; a kind of a “catharsis scream”. This offers me a mental release from my professional career. After using my left brain all day, it is nice to use my right brain to create something meaningful. This brings a yin and yang to my life.

When I pick up my camera after work, I prefer to shoot inanimate objects. Using light, shadows and selective focus, I am attempting to give the objects a life force; allowing them to tell a story. Because of this, I sometimes tend to become lost in my perception of light and shadows. It allows me to constantly visualize different angles and perspectives of spaces and even people around me.

When I photograph people, I am drawn to capturing them in communal areas. I usually try and catch people off guard to create a pensive state of being which is a window into their souls. You would be surprised how much people tend to let their guard down and become relaxed when they think no one is watching. (Ever notice how differently children behave when they know they are being watched?)

I’ve come to this place of artistic expression after experimenting with several other approaches to photography. I finally listened to an art director and a close friend of mine and I redirected my work to reflect my own true artistic expression.

HORACE AND AGNES: A LOVE STORY, ASIA KEPKA AND WRITER LYNN DOWLING

Posted on

It was a hot summer day when Horace and Agnes: A Love Story came to life. A casual meeting with friends, an accordion, a red couch, a squirrel and a horse mask spurred on a photo shoot. The resulting narrative has blossomed into over 100 photographs of Horace and Agnes Groomsby and their friends accompanied by text.

Kepka and Dowling’s series, Horace and Agnes, is featured in the Main Gallery at the Griffin Museum October 14 through December 4, 2014. An opening reception with the artists is October 18, 7-8:30 p.m. A preview exhibition of the series is also on view at the Griffin at SoWa Gallery at 530 Harrison Ave in the South End through October 26th.

“Horace and Agnes met through random circumstance and their love for each other is literally blind,” says Asia Kepka. “They exemplify a fairy tale of what it would be like to fall in love with the right person…just because.”

“All of the characters are inspired by people and stories from Lynn’s and my past and present,” says Kepka. “Sometimes they are inspired by family members and sometimes by strangers we have encountered. The photographs are memories brought to life once again; recreated with as much detail possible to make the viewer become immersed in this magical and unique world,” she says.

“Present day life has its complications,” says Paula Tognarelli, executive director of the Griffin Museum of Photography. ”I believe the public is ready for a love story that at the same time is a visual delight for all ages.”

A gallery talk for museum members on Sisters of the Commonwealth by Meg Birnbaum will take place at 6:15 p.m. October 18, 2014, prior to the opening reception for all exhibits at 7 PM.

Unnatural Wonders Photographs by Peter Croteau

Posted on

Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1988 and moving many times through various tract house suburbs, Peter Croteau understands the differences and similarities in the landscape across the United States. He considers himself to be an explorer of mundane spaces looking to transform the everyday into something otherworldly through the use of 8×10 and 4×5 view cameras.

Peter Croteau’s Unnatural Wonders will be featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, MA, October 21 – January 8, 2015. It runs parallel to the theater’s productions of “The Addams Family Musical”, “Meet Me in St. Louis“, “New York Voices” and “Loretta Laroche.”

A reception is November 20, 2014 at 6:30-8:00 p.m.

Peter Croteau creates drosscapes. These are the in-between waste spaces in the landscape. They are formed as a result of sprawl and are in a constant state of flux between use and disuse. “Peter Croteau fashions mountains out of everyday mound hills like clay and salt piles and construction fill,” says Paula Tognarelli, executive director and curator of the Griffin Museum of Photography. “His landscapes are not what they appear to be at first glance. Through perspective and exacting optics, he manufactures a gallery of unnatural wonders.”

“I explore these mundane spaces using the camera as an apparatus that can reframe and order the world,” says Croteau. “I set up a dualistic relationship between earth and sky in order to reference painterly representations of the sublime.”

Peter Croteau received his MFA in Photography from Rhode Island School of Design in 2012 and his BS in Photography from Drexel University in 2010. He currently lives and works out of Providence, RI.

Meg Birnbaum, Sisters of the Commonwealth

Posted on

Meg Birnbaum is a fine art photographer who over the course of three years has followed and photographed the Boston Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. There are 3000 plus Sisters worldwide with eighteen Sisters, Novices, Postulants and Aspirants in the Boston house on Commonwealth Avenue.

Birnbaum’s series, Sisters of the Commonwealth, is featured in the Griffin Gallery at the Griffin Museum October 14 through December 4, 2014. An opening reception with the artist is October 18, 7-8:30 p.m. Birnbaum will do a gallery talk prior to the opening on October 18th at 6:15 PM

“The Sisters immediately welcomed me and appointed me their photo historian,” says Meg Birnbaum. “I watch as they artfully manifest into “avatars” of social activism with the seemingly simple goal of inspiring acceptance, compassion and the desire to shift intolerant perspectives while raising money, predominately for causes within the LGBT community,” Birnbaum says. “Photographs, and the human stories behind them can be tools for supporting social change. I hope that by sharing my photographs of the Sisters with the public, that I am contributing to and echoing their desire to build a better world.”

“The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence were formed in San Francisco in 1979 as street theatre in a backlash to bigotry and eventually the Sisters became a support system for the AID’s crisis,” says Paula Tognarelli, executive director of the Griffin Museum of Photography. “Birnbaum’s intimate portraits of the Boston Sisters reveal the giving spirit of the order. They also give voice to their mission that is We love you. We adore you. We respect you. We protect you. We serve you. We are your sisters.”

Meg Birnbaum has had numerous solo exhibitions internationally and her work is held in major museum collections. She teaches in the Photography Atelier at the Griffin Museum and resides in Somerville, Massachusetts. She has recently been “sainted” by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and is called Saint Meg-A-Pixel.

Lear Levin, Burlesque and Cabaret

Posted on

Lear Levin has been shooting photographs since he bought is first camera – a Speed Graphic – with money from his paper route as a child.
After graduating from The University of Southern California’s Cinema and Drama Schools, he became a director of award winning documentaries, short films and (literally) thousands of TV commercials, one of which, for Prince Spaghetti, is the longest running in the history of the medium. His motion picture film work is preserved in the permanent collection of such institutions as The Museum of Modern Art in New York and The George Eastman House.
A series of Levin’s photographs, Burlesque and Cabaret, is featured in the Hall Gallery of the Griffin Museum October 14, 2014 through December 4, 2014. An opening reception with the artist is October 18, 2014, 7-8:30 p.m.

“I used to be a regular visitor to The Old Howard Theater in Boston’s Scully Square in the 1950’s and I snuck into the Globe Theater in Atlantic City New Jersey prior that time when I was only 13 years old,” says Lear Levin. “During my college days I frequented The New Follies Theater on Main Street in Los Angeles, where as an aspiring filmmaker, I often hung out backstage with the cast in the hope of some day making a film on Burlesque. I never did make that film. However, when I retired from motion pictures and took up still photography, Platinum and 3-Color Gum Printing, it seemed natural for me to finally explore what the colorful backstage life might have looked like during the old days of Burlesque.”

While directing from the Bayous to Bangladesh for film and television, Levin also continued his personal vision of fine art photography. His series, “Burlesque and Cabaret” is an evocation of Weimar Berlin and Backstage at ‘Minsky’s,” New York City, circa 1930’s. Levin’s regard for past as well as the his feel for archival, textural printing techniques continues in his darkroom where he finishes his work using methods such as Gum Dichromate and Platinum/Palladium to create the hand-made images reminiscent of late nineteenth and early twentieth century photography. His three and four-color gum dichromate and platinum/palladium prints will be featured at the Griffin Museum.

Levin has exhibited his work at Iris Gallery in Boston, Moss & Moss Gallery in San Francisco, Davis Orton Gallery and in a group show at CCCA gallery, Hudson NY.

Meg Birnbaum will give a members’ talk at 6:15 PM before the exhibit opening on October 18, 2014 at 7 PM.

Asia Kepka, Bridget and I

Posted on

Asia Kepka is a creative in all senses of the word. Whether on assignment for Time Magazine or photographing a personal project, Kepka approaches all efforts with exuberance and out of the box thinking. She brings humor and light-heartedness to most everything she touches.

Kepka’s series, Bridget and I, is featured in the Atelier Gallery at the Griffin Museum October 14 through December 4, 2014. An opening reception with the artist is October 18, 7-8:30 p.m.

“This series of large format self portraits is my visual journal,” says Asia Kepka. “Little did I know, when I first set up my 4×5 camera, that this project would become a place where I would note and record the stories of my life. These stories are of life, death, love, loss, my family, my past, present and future,” she said.

“I grew up in Poland and while there as a child I wanted to be a nun,” says Kepka. “Thirty -something years later I am now an immigrant, an artist, and a gay woman. Through Bridget and I I am trying to tell my story and the story of my mother and grandmother, whose lives had a strong influence on me. Also by putting myself into the images, the roles of Narrator, Observer and Subjects are blurred. This allows me to explore many issues in a slow and cathartic process, quite often unexpectedly.”

“Asia has been shooting herself with Bridget for ten years since she found her on craigslist and bought her for $100. Recently Kepka decided that the project would come to an end,” says Paula Tognarelli, executive director of the Griffin Museum of Photography. “During our exhibit, Asia Kepka reveals the last image shot for this series. The image is called The Last Supper. It is a bittersweet moment for the audience as we have enjoyed the Bridget series tremendously. Nothing lasts forever as we all know so well. Kepka has changed and with that comes the desire to tell some different stories”

A gallery talk for museum members by Meg Birnbaum will take place at 6:15 p.m. October 18, 2014, prior to the opening reception for all exhibits.

Stu Rosner, Pentimento

Posted on

The urban landscape has changed much since the era when “Post No Bills” was the rule of the land. Graffiti in the city is now commonplace and has taken hold globally. Stu Rosner has found an unexpected treasure in street art. Where some see the destruction of private property, Rosner sees a Pollock or a Chagall.

A series of Rosner’s photographs of graffiti called “Pentimento,” is featured at the Griffin Museum at Digital Silver Imaging, 9 Brighton St., Belmont, MA, on October 14 through January 8, 2014. A reception and informal talk with the artist will take place November 13, 2014 from 6-8 p.m.

Growing up in Greenwich Village, New York near his father’s store, Rosner learned that people should not put posters or advertisements on city walls. “For the most part people complied and buildings remained unadorned,” says Rosner. “In the decade that spanned the mid ‘60s-70’s, we began to see enormous social/political/cultural change due in part to the Vietnam War and opposition to same, the Civil Rights movement, political assassinations, sex, drugs, and rock and roll, the emergence of punk and the nascent stirrings of rap,” he says. “In New York, a thousand murals and tags bloomed; it was a phenomenon that spread internationally and quickly. Suddenly it was on walls, on entire lengths of subway cars, in doorways, on panel trucks; graffiti was ubiquitous. Public opinion was split between outrage and admiration.”

Stu Rosner splits his time between fine art and commercial photography. He resides in Cambridge, MA with his new rescue dog.

MENU