Susan Keiser photographs a family of mechanical dolls after a flood. She tells us “a flood can be an overflow of water or the outpouring of tears.” In each photograph “fresh visions appear, images aggregate into chapters, and the river flows on.”

Susan Keiser’s Flooded will be featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, MA, February 18 – April 26, 2016. It runs parallel to the theater’s productions of “Sorry” and “Sweet Charity.”

A reception is Tuesday, March 29, 2016 at 6:30-8:00 p.m.

“My photographs describe my world, not the day-to-day of it, but the sun-born visions and night-bound terrors that can’t be seen or understood until pictured,” says Keiser.

“I work with a family of four-inch dolls, mass-produced over six decades ago. Once models of conformity, they are now faded and scarred, imbued by years of handling with unique personal histories, memories incarnate,” says Keiser. “I have multiples of each family member, and all have stories to tell, secrets to expose, emotional truths to tell. Intuitive, improvised, my photographs are created entirely in-camera and in available light.”

“Susan Keiser is a storyteller, psychic, and poet,” says Paula Tognarelli, executive director and curator for the Griffin Museum of Photography. “She builds her stories out of water and its power over us and leaves it to the viewer to discern the fiction from fact.”

Keiser was a Senior Editor at Oxford University Press and Manager of the Rock and Native Plant Gardens at The New York Botanical Garden. In addition to her photographic work Keiser has created site-specific sculptures commissioned by public and private institutions, including the Milwaukee Art Museum, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Rockefeller Center in New York, and the International Design Conference in Aspen. A New Yorker, Susan Keiser attended Pomona College and holds a BFA from Cooper Union and a diploma from The New York Botanical Garden’s School of Professional Horticulture. The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, she was a resident teaching artist at the Lincoln Center Institute, curated a collection of handmade paper art for The Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California, and was selected for the viewing program and Artist Registry of The Drawing Center in New York.

Susan Keiser’s photographs have been juried into exhibitions at a wide range of institutions and galleries across the country.