Griffin Museum of Photography

Jennifer McClure Virtual Gallery

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I have a long history of temporary relationships punctuated by extended periods of isolation. As forty loomed closer, I decided to examine the meltdowns and the patterns to find out where I was responsible. I restaged my memories in hotel rooms, which are as impersonal and unlived in as my romances tended to be. The opening of old wounds unintentionally shed light on current patterns as lines blurred between the past and the present. The hotel rooms (sets that were always surprises) took on a different role: they came to stand for the complete lack of control that I feel in relationships.

I have been chasing an image that doesn’t exist. I am more comfortable dreaming about relationships than being in one. The stories I tell myself about my loves are far more dramatic than the actual shared experiences, and the disconnect between fantasy and reality became increasingly apparent with each staged narrative. This project is a mourning for an entire system that no longer works.

“Amorous passion is a delirium; but such delirium is not alien: everyone speaks of it, it is henceforth tamed. What is enigmatic is the loss of delirium: one returns to…what?”
Roland Barthes A Lover’s Discourse

Jennifer McClure is a fine art and documentary photographer based in New York City. She uses the camera to ask and answer questions. Most importantly, she wants to know why anyone ever gets out of bed in the morning. Jennifer turned the camera on herself after a long illness limited her access to other people. The self-portraits have become for her a way to stay in one piece, a way to be able to collect herself. She is interested in appearances and absences, short stories, poetry, and movies without happy endings.

Jennifer was born in Virginia and raised all over the Southeast. The child of a Marine, she moved frequently and traumatically. Photographs were the proof that she lived in this place, was friends with those people. She decorated her walls with traces of her past. After acquiring a B.A. in English Theory and Literature, Jennifer began a long career in restaurants. She returned to photography in 2001, taking classes at the School of Visual Arts and the International Center of Photography. Her work has been included in several group shows and online publications, and she was recently awarded CENTER’s Editor’s Choice by Susan White of Vanity Fair.

View Jennifer McClure’s Website

Under Glass Candace Gaudiani, Heidi Kirkpatrick, Ryan Zoghlin

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Note: From 7-23 to Sept1st The  Glass Vitrine Gallery is only sowing  the  work of  Heidi Kirkpatrick.

Under Glass, is an exhibition in the Griffin Museum of Photography’s Atelier Gallery glass vitrine, showcasing the work of Candace Gaudiani, Heidi Kirkpatrick, and Ryan Zoghlin. The exhibit will take place June 13 – July 10, 2013. The opening reception is June 13, 2013, at 7 PM with a members gallery talk by John Tunney at 6:15 PM

San Francisco area photographer Candace Gaudiani took photographs out train windows. “Traveling is dreaming,” says Gaudiani, “at least in a train when the monotonous sound of the rolling wheels is gradually carrying the traveler away into a kind of walking coma, and he perceives the landscape flying by as only apparitional: more patches of color than landscapes, more shapes and surfaces than architecture.”

A boxed set of Forty Eight States will be on view at the Griffin and is courtesy of Panopticon Gallery in Boston.

An established fine art photographer and educator based in Portland, Oregon, Heidi Kirkpatrick will exhibit from her body of work Specimens, courtesy of Panopticon Gallery in Boston. Her work explores the female figure, family narratives and contemporary issues of being a woman. Kirkpatrick applies film positives onto objects such as vintage children’s blocks, books, mahjong tiles and tins creating unique photo objects. “My work’” says Kirkpatrick, “is reminiscent of nineteenth century cased images…..where the hinged tins open and close to reveal or conceal the secrets they hold.”

Chicago photographer Ryan Zoghlin will showcase work at the Griffin from his series Aerotones too and Kiddieland. Zoghlin says that the images in Aerotones too are a continuation of his Airshow and Aerotones series. Zoglin says that the work is intended to be carried in ones pocket close to oneself for inspiration, to alleviate stressful parts of the day and to create sentimental value as opposed to monetary value. His Kiddieland images are small symbols of his memories from years of visiting Kiddieland in Melrose Park Illinois

Jill Enfield The New Americans

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As the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, who escaped Germany in 1939 to open camera stores in Florida, Jill Enfield has always been passionate about the immigrant experience.

A series of her photographs, The New Americans, is featured in the Griffin Museum at the Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, MA, May 23 through July 23. It runs parallel to the theater’s productions “These Shining Lives” and “The Marvelous Wonderettes.”

A reception is June 20, 6-7:30 p.m.

A fine art and commercial photographer, Enfield spent 20 years focusing on still lives and landscapes. Recently, she has turned her attention to portraits.

“As a protest against the profiling and prejudice that has emerged over the last decade, I have been photographing immigrants with the notion that all people who relocate to the United States enrich our hosting culture with their own foreign experience,” Enfield says.

“Just as the immigrants of yesteryear were ignored or treated with suspicion, so, too, are the new Americans,” she says. “We make the same mistakes based on ignorance and fail to perceive the potential of adventurous risk-takers who are more likely than most to transcend the odds and achieve something great. With these strange newcomers arrive new delicacies, art, fashion, architecture, and thought. Every culture evolves because new ideas come in from cultures far away.”

Enfield is working with Mary Panzer, an internationally recognized scholar of photography and its history, on a series about new Americans. Panzer interviews the subjects of Enfield’s portraits, which will be shown at Ellis Island in NY in the fall of 2013.

Enfield has taught hand coloring and non-silver techniques at schools in New York City and throughout the US and Europe. Her work is in collections and has appeared in many magazines around the world.

One of her images was among 42 selected from thousands through the Here Is New York Archive to commemorate the fifth anniversary of 9/11.

Amy Neill Afterglow

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Amy Neill says that at the heart of her work “lies a fascination with state of mind and emotion. These images are a product of memory, imagination, and spiritual essence.”

A series of her photographs, Afterglow, is featured in the Griffin Gallery of the Griffin Museum June 13 through July 10. An opening reception with the artist is June 13, 7-8:30 p.m.

“Just once a year, the coastline of Cape Cod is transformed into an urban oasis of light,” Neill says. “The beaches shift from serene, peaceful landscapes to a labyrinth of social interactions.

“A gypsy-like spirit migrates to this beautiful space, claiming the land as its own and vanishing just as quickly,” she adds. “This urban aspect draws me in; it challenges me to weigh the union of this vast landscape with the taste of a significant human presence. It brings an intimacy into the darkness that reflects an alluring rare energy.”

Neill studied photography at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and later graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design. She lives and works on Cape Cod and has exhibited her work in galleries around the country.

John Tunney gives a gallery talk about his exhibit Jellyfish – which is in the Atelier Gallery — for museum members at 6:15 p.m. June 13, prior to the opening reception for all exhibits.

Ellen Feldman A Dancer in her Studio 1986 -2011

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Ellen Feldman is a fine arts photographer whose on-going emphasis is spontaneity. This is reflected in her street photography and her long-term project photographing a dancer.

A series of her images, A Dancer in Her Studio 1986 – 2011, is featured at The Griffin Museum at the Aberjona River Gallery, 184 Swanton St, Winchester, MA, May 21, 2013 through September 9, 2013.

“Nicole Pierce, modern dancer and choreographer extraordinaire, has been a favorite subject of mine for over 10 years,” says Feldman. “I photograph her on Sunday mornings every few months – sometimes more frequently.

“I’m free to shoot while Nicole puts together her weekly dance class at Greene Street Studios in Cambridge. She doesn’t stop to pose for me, so in a sense my process is the same as when I am photographing in city streets, “ Feldman adds. “I like the spontaneity of the ever-changing present, never quite sure what the next instant will bring.”

All the photos in the exhibit are black and white digital prints, originally from negatives, slides, or a digital source.

Feldman, of Cambridge, MA, has studied photography at the Maine Photographic Workshops, Fine Arts Work Center of Provincetown, and the Photography Atelier, Lesley University. She holds a bachelor’s degree in music from Barnard College and a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from New York University.

Feldman is the photography editor of the Women’s Review of Books, a monthly journal published by Wellesley College, and a member of the Cambridge Art Association, and ‘soupgroup,’ an ongoing collaboration and critique group.

She is also a film scholar. Her paper, The Conversation: A Study in Surveillance, was awarded third place in the 2006 National Paper Prize Competition sponsored by the University Film and Video Association

Feldman’s recent work includes photographing toy characters in urban settings. She also has three self-published books, Les Mysteres de Paris/Paris Mysteries, A Week in Prague: Wall People /Street People; and The Dancer as the Invisible Girl.

The public is welcome to view the exhibit Monday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Please check in with the receptionist.

Photosynthesis VIII

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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 eighth 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.

During the course of the project, students met with Mary Beth Meehan, a photographer and native of Rhode Island. Meehan’s City of Champions document the city of Brockton and the people who live there. Chelsea native Dominic Chavez talked with students about his work as a Boston Globe photographer and photographing in Africa and Afghanistan.

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, 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.”

John Lucas Soviet Restaurant Polaroids

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John Lucas began taking photographs as a young student and continued through his doctoral studies, taking street images of life around him in England and while traveling in Europe, Turkey, and Morocco.

But during the 1970s he gave up serious photography, finding it incompatible with the demands of his scientific career in physics.
Then, on a journey to Russia in 1981, he took a series of Polaroid photographs in a coffeehouse.

" While this project was pursued with characteristic intensity, it took until 2007 to bring it to life through a combination of a strong sense of ‘unfinished business,’ advances in digital processing, and most precious of all, time," Lucas says.

A series of his photographs, Soviet Restaurant Polaroids, is featured at the Griffin Museum at Digital Silver Imaging, 9 Brighton St., Belmont, MA.

The project began when Lucas was in the Russian coffeehouse and used his Polaroid to take a picture of the cake he had been served.

" Within seconds of the camera’s flash I was mobbed with desperate requests for portraits by a clientele steeped in the privations of a Soviet winter," Lucas says. " The demand was clearly insatiable, even with my generous supply of film."

" At this point, I felt I had two choices; to abandon the cake and run, or to impose order on the situation. Without a word of Estonian or Russian, the unique character of Polaroid photography served as my language for convincing an apprehensive waitress to pose for a photograph. This was perceived as our arrangement and the commotion evaporated."

Decades later, Lucas explains, " I set about changing the small images of women and the food they provided into 16-by-20- inch giclee prints, using scale to transform the obsolescent icon of the Polaroid image into a defiant gesture. Rather than restore the original colors I sought dramatic effect through a richer palette."

The Griffin satellite gallery, which had been at 4 Clarendon St. in Boston’s South End, has moved back to its renovated and expanded space in Belmont.
The exhibit is open to the public Mondays through Fridays, 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Elin Hoyland :The Brothers

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When Norwegian photographer Elin Hoyland heard about two reclusive, elderly brothers living together in rural Norway she knew she wanted to collaborate with them on a project about their lives.

A series of her photographs, The Brothers, is featured in the Atelier Gallery at the Griffin Museum April 9 through June 2. An opening reception is April 11, 7-8:30 p.m.

Harald, then 75, and Mathias Ramen, 80, had always shared a house on the small farm where they were born. Neither married.

In addition to running their own farm, they had worked as loggers and carpenters on other local farms.

Harald spent one night in a hotel in Lillehammer, which he called the worst night of his life. Mathias tried working in Oslo for two months, but didn’t like it.

The brothers’ days on the farm provided a predictable and comforting routine. They cut, carried, and burned wood to heat their house. They fed wild birds in some 20 birdhouses. They listened to the radio and read the newspaper.

Harald died from as asthma attack while shoveling snow in frigid temperatures. Mathias continued to live in the house until moving to a home for the elderly.

Hoyland then went back and photographed the empty house. Mathias died in 2007.

"The brothers’ way of life has now almost entirely disappeared in modern Norway," she says.

A book of Hoyland’s work, The Brothers, was published by Dewi Lewis Publishing in the United Kingdom.

Hoyland has freelanced as a photographer for several major newspapers and her work has been exhibited in the UK, Scandinavia, France, and China.

A gallery talk for museum members by Stephan Sagmiller – whose exhibit The Clouds: Experiments in Perception is featured in the Griffin Gallery – is at 6:15 p.m. April 11, prior to the opening reception for all exhibits.

A book The Brothers by Elin Hoyland, published by www.dewilewispublishing.com with an essay by Gerry Badger will be distributed to each attendee to the exhibition reception courtesy of Statoil.

Stephan Sagmiller – The Clouds: Experiments in Perception

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In a project that questions the definition of nature, Stephan Sagmiller juxtaposes photographs of painted skies from dioramas at the Natural History Museum with actual skies photographed throughout the United States.

A series of his images, Clouds: Experiments in Perception, is featured in the Griffin Gallery of the Griffin Museum April 9 through June 2. An opening reception with the artist is April 11, 7-8:30 p.m.

“It is often the case that individuals define nature vis-à-vis photographs, paintings, and simulations over their own independent observation,” Sagmiller says.

He says his juxtaposition of painted and actual skies “unsettles the landscape, opening up space for the viewer to reflect.”

“When I put together the skies in the museum and the skies out in the world, they collapsed into one another,” Sagmiller explains. “I saw no reason to continue to delineate between reality and artifice as I had in my previous bodies of work.

“All the clouds I experienced – whether natural phenomena or painted artifice – became equally important. My images were simply fragments of other fragments. No fragment was more authoritative than any other fragment: together they formed a compelling personal collection.”

Sagmiller adds, “It is not possible to entirely untangle the concept of nature from landscape photography, the history of painting, or the romantic ideals often embedded in these forms of representation. However, even a small rupture opens up the possibility for reflection and questioning: What is nature? What do we know about nature? How do we know what we know?”

Sagmiller is a photographer and educator based in New York City. He has a master of fine arts degree from the Rhode Island School of Design.

He gives a gallery talk for museum members at 6:15 p.m. April 11, prior to the opening reception for all exhibits.

For this show, the Griffin created an exhibition catalog. It is available in the museum’s online gift shop. It is one of many upcoming Griffin Museum of Photography publications. All books are being designed by Meg Birnbaum.

Amy Arbus After Images

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Amy Arbus uses photography to evoke the classical paintings of Picasso, Modigliani, Balthus, and Ingres, bringing the subjects to life.

A series of her photographs, After Images, is featured in the Main Gallery of the Griffin Museum April 9 through June 2. An opening reception with the artist is April 11, 7-8:30 p.m.

"I chose portraits that I found emotionally intense and heartbreakingly beautiful," says Arbus.

She then photographed actor friends and other models to reflect those paintings.

"Re-enacting a painting requires a very deliberate kind of scrutiny," Arbus says. "It felt like dissecting and re-assembling. I was always too intimidated to create portraits in the style of another photographer, yet ironically with this series, in taking liberties from the original, I feel I was able to make my most unique body of work yet."

"When people first see them, they aren’t sure if they are looking at paintings or photographs."

Arbus describes her technique. "I learned how to create very soft lighting, imitate the skewed perspectives in the paintings and which colors for skin wouldn’t translate well into photography," she says. "It wasn’t until I was on the set that I felt like I knew exactly what I wanted."

"Occasionally, I would know within minutes that a picture wasn’t going to work, that all the elements wouldn’t come together, so I would move on."

Arbus says she and the actors discussed what might have been happening in the life of the subject of the painting to access a level of empathy.

"To me, they are paintings come to life," she says.

As for continuing the series, Arbus says, "I see this particular body of work as being complete, but inevitability it will inform whatever I do next."

Now Available in the Griffin Bookstore

Now Available in the Griffin Bookstore

Arbus has published four books, including the award winning On the Street and The Inconvenience of Being Born. The New Yorker called her book, The Fourth Wall, her masterpiece. Her advertising clients include Chiat/Day, Foote, Cone and Belding, American Express, Saatchi & Saatchi, SpotCo, New Line Cinema, and Nickelodeon.
Her photographs have appeared in more than 100 hundred periodicals around the world, including New York Magazine, People, Dazed and Confused and The New York Times Magazine.

She teaches portraiture at the International Center of Photography, Maine Media Workshops, and The Fine Arts Work Center.

Arbus is represented by The Schoolhouse Gallery and The Griffin Museum of Photography in Massachusetts. She has had 22 solo exhibitions worldwide and her photographs are a part of the collection of The National Theater in Norway, The New York Public Library, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Digital Silver ImagingThis exhibition is sponsored in part by Digital Silver Imaging

Amy Arbus and Gallerist Mike Carroll of the Schoolhouse Gallery in Conversation and Gallery tour at 7 PM on April 12, 2013 at the Griffin Museum of Photography. $7 Griffin Museum and ASMP Members, $10 Students, $20 Nonmembers. (purchase tickets)

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