September 6 – October 27, 2024
Reception for the Artist – Saturday September 6th, 6 to 8pm
Using a camera or my smartphone to record the events I attend, I capture images of the people around me. Photography these days is so ubiquitous, who even notices? Software then extracts the faces for me, and connects them to a location, date and time, which is used as a title.
I manipulate the images, crop and enlarge the faces, and create a layer of digital glitches and errors to exaggerate the degradation of image I often see in surveillance photos on the news. I also add a custom facial recognition grid. All of this plays with perception and identification. Under the digital noise there is still a person, but reality has been altered on a screen. Size also matters, and these faces are more recognizable when small, so I enlarge the final images for print. (If you can’t see the face in the photograph, try looking at it on your cellphone) Sometimes my subjects don’t even recognize themselves.
My work shifts back and forth between highly manipulated, computer-enhanced imagery and recognizable documentary-style photographs. I know how easily technology can be used to transcend truth, distort reality and produce unintended consequences. Facial recognition seems inescapable, but it is not always accurate, especially with women and people of color. The misuse of these tools is all too possible.
About Sheri Lynn Behr –
Sheri Lynn Behr is a photographer and visual artist currently based in New York City, with an interest in perception, photography without permission, and the ever-present electronic screens through which we view the world. Her project on surveillance and privacy, BeSeeingYou, was exhibited at the Griffin Museum of Photography and released as a self-published photo book, selected by Elizabeth Avedon as one of the Best Photography Books of 2018. She was invited to participate in A Yellow Rose Project, a photographic collaboration of over a hundred women photographers in response to the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment.
Behr’s work was exhibited at the Amon Carter Museum of Art, MIT Museum, Center for Creative Photography, Musée McCord, and the Colorado Photographic Arts Center, among others. Her photographs have appeared in publications world-wide, including Harper’s Magazine, People’s Photography (China), Orta Format (Turkey), Toy Camera (Spain), and The Boston Globe. She received a Fellowship in Photography from the New Jersey State Council of the Arts, a grant from the Puffin Foundation, and, most recently, a New York City Artist Corps Grant in 2021.
And back in the day, she used to shoot rock-and-roll. And Polaroids.
