May 26, 2022 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
![hurst frye forest floor ghost pipes](https://griffinmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/MelindaHurstFrye_photolucida22_GhostPipes-1.jpeg)
![amber crabbe - thermal pool](http://griffinmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/B5A2788-edited-print-copy-300x200.jpg)
© Amber Crabbe
![hurst frye forest floor ghost pipes](http://griffinmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/MelindaHurstFrye_photolucida22_GhostPipes-1-300x240.jpeg)
© Melinda Hurst Frye, Ghost Pipes
![grew plankton](http://griffinmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/FirstFolio-247x300.jpg)
© Sarah Grew, Portraits of Pacific Plankton
![tree cut konar goldband](http://griffinmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Olaf_untitled-80264-Edit-Edit-300x300.jpg)
© Steve Goldband & Ellen Konar
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© Amber Crabbe
© Melinda Hurst Frye, Ghost Pipes
© Sarah Grew, Portraits of Pacific Plankton
© Steve Goldband & Ellen Konar
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We are excited to start off fall with a new Photo Chat Chat!
Join us online in the Griffin Zoom Room on Thursday October 21st at 7pm Eastern
Our online Photo Chat Chat is a monthly conversation bringing together members of the Griffin community to share their work, ideas and creativity with a broader audience. We are thrilled to bring together these artists who have unique perspectives on creativity and the world they inhabit.
This event is FREE to Griffin Museum members. $10 for Non Members. Interested in Membership and its benefits? See more about what the Griffin offers here.
This month we are pleased to bring together three artists looking at the complexities of our unique interpretation of hair and how it defines us. Join us for a great conversation with Rohina Hoffman, Greg Jundanian and Eileen Powers.
Rohina Hoffman– Hair Stories
© Rohina Hoffman
Rohina is a fine art photographer whose practice uses portraiture and the natural world to investigate themes of identity, home, women’s issues, and adolescence.
Born in India and raised in New Jersey, Rohina grew up in a family of doctors spanning three generations. While an undergraduate at Brown University, Rohina also studied photography at the Rhode Island School of Design and she was a staff photographer for the Brown Daily Herald. A graduate of Brown University Medical School and resident at UCLA Medical Center, her training led to a career as a neurologist.
A skilled observer of her patients, Rohina was instilled with a deep and unique appreciation of the human experience. Her ability to forge the sacred trust between doctor and patient has been instrumental in fostering a parallel connection between photographer and subject.
Rohina published her first monograph Hair Stories with Damiani Editore (February 2019) accompanied by a solo exhibition at Brown University’s Alpert Medical School. Her monograph, Hair Stories, is held in many public collections and university libraries.
Her photographs have been exhibited in juried group shows both nationally and internationally in venues such as The Center for Fine Art Photography, Griffin Museum, Colorado Photographic Arts Center, Los Angeles Center for Photography, Photo LA, and A. Smith Gallery. She has received numerous awards and has been published in Marie Claire Italia, F-Stop Magazine, The Daily Beast, Lenscratch, Shots Magazine, and Edge of Humanity among others. She lives with her husband, three children and two golden retrievers in Los Angeles.
Greg Jundanian – Present.
© Greg Jundanian
Gregory Jundanian focuses on portraiture with a concentration on community. He is currently organizing an archival project called The Armenians of Whitinsville as both a tribute to the community of his birth, and as a way to think about Armenian identity and genocide, i.e., the diaspora.
Eileen Powers – Can You Make Hair for Me?
© Eileen Powers
Eileen Powers is an artist, photographer and writer working in portraiture, digital collage, typography, and performative self-portraiture. A professional communications designer, Eileen’s finds inspiration in the source material of her trade: advertising imagery, stock art, publicity photography and fashion.
After being treated for lymphoma from 2018–20, Eileen underwent a radical shift in identity. Her collaborative art project Can you make hair for me? and Can you make hair? Monochrome bodies of work are an exercise in self-plasticity and resurrection. By re-imagining personal loss, Eileen creates a place for possibility, experimentation and collaboration.
Her work has been exhibited in the U.S. and in Europe, she is the author of a forthcoming collection of essays called Can you make hair for me?, and has been a featured guest on numerous podcasts. She hold an MFA from Lesley University, and studied photography at Maine Media College. And avid doodler, she studied children’s book illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design and currently working on a children’s book, A Day at Litterbox Beach, featuring a feisty feline named Ms. Cheeze.
Eileen and Can you make hair for me? were the subject of a Boston Globe feature:
“Acceptance has been crucial for Powers, who is uncomfortable with the notion of cancer being a battle.”—Cate McQuaid, Boston Globe, May 19, 2021
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It’s time to Photo Chat Chat!
Join us April 15th at 7pm Eastern in the Griffin Zoom Room for a great conversation with four very different stories. We are bringing together the talents of Sheri Lynn Behr, Marcus DiSieno, Beth Lilly and Alex Turner.
Our Photo Chat Chat is a monthly conversation bringing together four members of the Griffin community to share their work, ideas and creativity with a broader audience. We are thrilled to bring together these artists who have unique perspectives on creativity and the world they inhabit.
This event is FREE to Griffin Members. Not a Member? Get more information about our Membership levels.
Here is a look at the artists we are featuring this month.
© Sheri Lynn Behr
Sheri Lynn Behr is a visual artist and photographer based in New York City. Her work often shifts between highly manipulated, digitally-enhanced imagery and recognizable documentary-style photographs. She began her career photographing musicians and celebrities, and her rock and roll photographs were featured in most music publications of the time, and are still collected, exhibited, and published.
© Marcus DeSieno, 62.009730, -6.771640
Archival Pigment Print of a Still from a Surveillance Camera Feed
Year: 2015
Marcus DeSieno is a visual artist who is interested in how the advancement of visual technology continually changes and mediates our understanding of the world. DeSieno is particularly interested in the unseen political ideologies embedded in this technology. He received his MFA in Studio Art from the University of South Florida and is currently the Assistant Professor of Photography at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington.
DeSieno’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at the Aperture Foundation in New York, Paris Photo, The Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece, the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Photo Access in Canberra, Australia, Center for Fine Art Photography, Candela Gallery, Center for Photography at Woodstock, and various other galleries and museums. His work has also been featured in a variety of publications including The British Journal of Photography, Boston Globe, FeatureShoot, GUP Magazine, Hyperallergic, Huffington Post, National Geographic, PDN, Slate, Smithsonian Magazine, Washington Post and Wired. DeSieno was named a selection for Photolucida’s Critical Mass 50 and an Emerging Talent by Lensculture. His first monograph, No Man’s Land: Views From a Surveillance State, was published by Daylight Books in June of 2018.
© Beth Lilly – You Believe in the Goodness of Mankind
Beth Lilly is a fine art photographer interested in telling stories – her own as well as others. Her conceptually driven projects speculate on the interplay of choice, chance and circumstance in the formation of individuals’ identities and the systems they inhabit. Her critically acclaimed performance/interactive project “The Oracle @ WiFi” was published by Kehrer Verlag in 2012. Recent exhibitions include New Mexico Museum of Art, The High Museum of Art, the Zuckerman Museum, Spalding Nix Fine Art, Whitespace Gallery, the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, the Center for Fine Art Photography, and MOCA GA. A Hambidge Fellow, she also received grants from the Fulton County Arts Council, Society for Photographic Education and Atlanta Celebrates Photography. Her work resides in the permanent collections of the High Museum, the New Mexico Museum of Art, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, MOCA GA, the Metropolitan Atlanta Arts Fund and many private collections. In addition to her personal work, sheteaches, curates exhibitions and serves on the Board of the Atlanta Photography Group. Lilly earned an MFA in Photography from Georgia State University and an A.B.J. in Telecommunication Arts from the University of Georgia. She currently lives and farms in Clarkston Georgia.
© Alex Turner, from series Blind River
Alex Turner (b. Chicago, Illinois) combines imaging technologies to highlight sociopolitical and environmental concerns along the U.S./Mexico border. For his recent project Blind River, he won First Place in LensCulture’s Black and White Awards, was named to Photolucida’s Critical Mass Top 50, received SPE’s Innovation in Imaging Award and was a finalist for both the Bird in Flight Prize and Lucie Foundation Scholarship. His work has been exhibited internationally and featured in publications including Lenscratch, Fisheye, Der Greif, Fraction, Tique, C41 and Terrain. He holds an MFA from the University of Arizona and currently lives in Los Angeles, California.
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© Fatemeh Baigmoradi – from the series “It’s Hard to Kill”
© Vikesh Kapoor – Mom’s Diamonds
@ Tokie Taylor- Our Value, Cotton and Gold
© Victor Yañez-Lazcano, Yu (ni de aquí, ni de allá), 2017
40 people are attending March Photo Chat Chat | Fatemeh Baigmoradi, Vikesh Kapoor, Tokie Taylor and Victor Yanez-Lazcano
40 people are attending March Photo Chat Chat | Fatemeh Baigmoradi, Vikesh Kapoor, Tokie Taylor and Victor Yanez-Lazcano
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It’s time to Photo Chat Chat!
Join us February 18 at 7pm Eastern in the Griffin Zoom Room for a great conversation with four very different stories. We are bringing together the talents of Elizabeth Libert, Xuan Hui Ng, George Nobechi and Andy Richter.
Our Photo Chat Chat is a monthly conversation bringing together four members of the Griffin community to share their work, ideas and creativity with a broader audience. We are thrilled to bring together these artists who have unique perspectives on creativity and the world they inhabit.
This event is FREE to Griffin Members. Not a Member? Get more information about our Membership levels.
Here is a look at the artists we are featuring this month.
© Elizabeth Libert, from Series They Will Be Them
Elizabeth Clark Libert is a fine art photographer based in the Boston area. They Will Be Them is a current project of hers that features her two young sons and questions their nature. The work made it to the Critical Mass top 200, and the image Bleeding Hearts was recently acquired for the Fidelity Investments collection.
© Xuan Hui
Xuan-Hui began photography as a form of self-therapy. Nature provided her solace from her mother’s death. Its vastness gave her a sense of perspective while its beauty reignited a sense of wonder and adventure. Initially, the urge to photograph stemmed from an almost desperate desire to preserve those precious moments of nature and prolong the serenity they brought. Overtime, she began to enjoy simply being immersed in nature and marveling at its beauty and magic.
The project, “Metamorphosis”, chronicles her travels to photograph the landscape of Central Hokkaido (Japan) in the past 10 years. She first visited the region with her family when she was 7. Being there conjures up nostalgia for the purity and simplicity of childhood. Photographing it eternalizes the experience.
The past 10 years have been a period of transformation. Her desire to spend more time in Hokkaido led her to move to work in Japan, and eventually leave her finance job. She’s been rediscovering herself and recalibrating the pace and direction of her life. Being in Hokkaido has made it possible. She bears its imprint, artistically and temperamentally. “Metamorphosis” is a manifestation of these changes.
The Japan I Hadn’t Seen is an ongoing project that began in 2015 as I returned to my homeland of Japan for the first time since I made the decision to become a photographer. Although I had grown up in Tokyo until I was eleven, and again worked there for ten years after university, in many ways, I felt like I had not truly seen my country on a deeper level.
I recalled the stories that I read as a child by authors like Kenji Miyazawa, with whom my family had some connections when he was alive. Deep, mysterious, and at times, dark tales like Night on the Galacic Express and Matasaburo of the Wind, along with passages of ancient songs, poetry and history came to mind as I journeyed across the archipelago, camera in hand.
One such story was the story of Urashima Taro, an old fairy tale about a man who rescues a sea turtle, and is taken to a beautiful underwater palace where he is wined and dined for what he thinks is a few days. When he departs to return to his village, the princess of the palace gives him a gift box with an admonition to never open it, but of course, he cannot help himself, and when he opens it, he finds that 100 years had passed by above the sea. He turns into an old man, and everyone who was familiar to him is gone.
When I returned to live in Japan in 2017, many years after I had last lived there and having changed careers entirely, I felt in many ways like the protagonist in this tale. Everything had forever changed. More than ever, I had an appreciation for my home culture, yet I also felt distant, disconnected, and removed from it in many ways. Being from a mixed background in a very homogeneous country, I realized that I would never quite fit in. As I traveled up and down the country, mostly by train, I came to slowly embrace this feeling of isolation I experienced and accept that this would be an essential part of my sensibility.
© Andy Richter – Julien at the Fairy House, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2020
Andy Richter is an award-winning visual artist and storyteller based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He immerses himself in his subject and its wider context, exploring such themes as family, fatherhood, self-transformation, consciousness and spirituality with the heightened awareness that the camera brings.
Andy’s photographs have been exhibited internationally and he has received recognition from American Photography, Photolucida, the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, and the International Photography Awards, among others. He is a multiple time recipient of the Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant. His monograph, Serpent in the Wilderness, based on his half decade long visual exploration of yoga, was published in 2018 by Kehrer Verlag. His clients include The New York Times, National Geographic Magazine, GEO, Time, Smithsonian, Mother Jones, among others.
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It’s time again for one of the Griffin’s popular programs, the Photo Chat Chat.
Join us November 19th at 7pm Eastern in the Griffin Zoom Room for a great conversation with four very different stories of we are bringing the talents of four unique artists Alanna Airitam, Russell C. Banks, Mary Anne Mitchell and Sam Zalutsky
Our Photo Chat Chat is a monthly conversation bringing together four members of the Griffin community to share their work, ideas and creativity with a broader audience. We are thrilled to bring together these four artists who have unique perspectives on creativity and the world they inhabit.
Here is a look at the four artists we are featuring this month.
© Alana Airitam – Moment of Truth N.1
Questioning generalized stereotypes and the lack of fair and equal representation of people of color in art spaces has led artist Alanna Airitam to research critical historical omissions and how those contrived narratives represent and influence succeeding generations. Her photographic series The Golden Age, Crossroads, White Privilege, and individual works such as Take a Look Inside and How to Make a Country ask the viewer to question who they are and how they choose to be seen. Crossroads is currently on exhibit in our Critic’s Pick Virtual Gallery.
Airitam’s portraits and vanitas are photographed in studio with minimal lighting rendering a painterly quality to her photographs. The archival pigment prints from The Golden Age series are hand-varnished while those in the Crossroads, Take a Look Inside and How to Make a Country series are archival prints encased in resin and placed in hand-welded frames. All works are produced by the artist in limited editions.
Alanna is a 2020 San Diego Art Prize winner, 2020 Top 50 Critical Mass Finalist, and recipient of the 2020 Michael Reichmann Project Grant Award. Her photographs have been exhibited at Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago, Quint Gallery in San Diego, San Diego Art Institute, Art Miami with Catherine Edelman, Athenaeum Art Center in San Diego, and Candela Gallery in Richmond, Virginia. Born and raised in Queens, New York, Airitam now resides in Tucson, Arizona.
© Russell C. Banks, Floating World. Dolphin, 2019
© Mary Anne Mitchell, “Hidden Realms 23”
Mary Anne Mitchell is a fine art photographer working primarily with analog processes. Her most recent series Hidden Realms is shot using wet plate collodion. The images depict situations, often mysterious, which evoke her southern roots. She recently was a finalist in the 8th Edition of the Julia Margaret Cameron Awards and has been invited to exhibit some of this series in the 4th Biennial of Photography to be held in Berlin. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across the country and can be found in private and corporate collections across the US, Dubai, Taiwan, and Canada. She lives in Atlanta, GA.
© Sam Zalutsky, “Meat Rack 11”
As a photographer, Sam Zalutsky won honorable mention with two Meat Rack series photos, #3 and #8, in this year’s SoHo Photo National Competition, curated by Kris Graves. He also presented the series in MANA Contemporary’s Digital Open House. Earlier this year, two images from his Ghost Self Portrait series appeared in shows: “Katherine I,” was selected for the Photographic Center Northwest’s Distinction show, also curated by Kris Graves, and “Nutty with Ghost Self,” was part of “the imperfect lens,” at the A Smith gallery (Johnson City, TX) curated by Michael Kirchoff. Last year, Sam participated in Review Santa Fe and his photo, “Meat Rack 8,” was in the Center for Fine Art Photography’s 2018 Center Forward show (Kris Graves & Hamidah Glasgow, curators).
As a filmmaker, Sam’s new feature, SEASIDE, a revenge thriller with a queer twist, starring Ariana DeBose (Anita, Steven Spielberg’s West SideStory; Alyssa, Ryan Murphy’s The Prom;original Hamiltoncast) won Best Feature Award at the Klamath Film Festival and was a 2019 Gravitas Ventures release. His first feature, YOU BELONG TO ME (Wolfe Releasing), a gay horror story, was shortlisted for the Independent Spirit Award’s Someone to Watch Award and screened at Frameline, Outfest, Palm Springs, San Diego FilmOut (Audience Award, Best First Feature), and NewFest (Honorable Mention). Sam directed on A Crime to Rememberand I, Witness. His short, HOW TO MAKE IT TO THE PROMISED LAND, about a Holocaust role-play game at summer camp, was funded by the Jerome Foundation and premiered on ShortoftheWeek.com. He has created dozens of videos on breast cancer survivors, New York non-profits including Prep for Prep, Reach Prep, and Civic Builders, and campaign videos for New York progressive politicians Biaggi, Jackson, Richardson, and Cabán, with the Creative Resistance. Residencies: MacDowell; VCCA; Fundación Valparaiso. Sam teaches screenwriting in the Spalding University Low Residency MFA in Writing (Louisville), and has taught at NYU, Bennington, and Tec de Monterey (Queretaro). MFA, film, NYU Tisch; BA, Yale.
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Time for one of the Griffin’s most popular programs, the Photo Chat Chat.
Happening online in the Griffin Zoom Room on October 13th, 2020 at 7pm Eastern, we are bringing the talents of four unique artists Anna Mikuskova, Jennings Sheffield, Kyle Souder and Paul Szynol.
Our Photo Chat Chat is a monthly conversation bringing together four members of the Griffin community to share their work, ideas and creativity with a broader audience. We are thrilled to bring together these four artists who have unique perspectives on creativity and the world they inhabit.
Here is a look at the four artists we are featuring.
Anna Mikuskova is our Griffin Critics Pic on our with a House with No Walls.
© Anna Mikuskova
Anna Mikušková grew up in the Czech Republic and is currently based in Maine and upstate New York. Before turning to visual arts, she received an MFA in English literature from Masaryk University in Brno. Mikušková studied photography at Maine College of Arts and Maine Media Workshops. For six years, she apprenticed silver gelatin printing with Paul Caponigro – a cooperation that culminated with several group and two-person exhibitions. Currently, she is an MFA candidate in the Photography and Related Media program at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Her work is held in private collections in the United States and the Czech Republic and has been exhibited in galleries across Maine and New York. In 2020, she was awarded the RIT William A. Reedy Memorial Scholarship and the Pfahl/Richard Stanley Scholarship. Her essays were published in Maine Arts Journal and in the British journal On Landscape.
© H. Jennings Sheffield – Keeping Loved Ones Close
H. Jennings Sheffield is in the Griffin Cloud Gallery and Virtual Gallery with her work Going Away from Here part one and part two. Sheffield was born in Richmond, Virginia. She is a contemporary artist working in lens-based media, video, and sound. Sheffield received her BFA in photography and digital media from the Atlanta College of Art and her MFA from the University of Texas at San Antonio in photography and new media. Her core research is highly concept-driven inspired by memory, moment and time and often utilizes familial imagery to convey both the intimacy and the diverse roles and relationships individuals play within a family unit. The methodologies utilized to create her work can take up to two years to complete. As a result, Sheffield periodically takes on landscape-driven projects that begin with just her responding to the landscape. She is interested in landscapes that tend to be fleeting. Similar to her core research, Sheffield approaches the landscapes looking for and observing changes over time.
Sheffield is currently an Associate Professor of Art at Baylor University. Her photographs and work are in several collections throughout the United States and have been exhibited internationally with her latest work exhibiting at The Print Center in Philadelphia; Houston Fine Art Fair; Colorado Photographic Arts Center; Lens Culture; Living Arts of Tulsa; Cambridge University (UK), and Medien Kultur Haus Wels, Austria.
Paul Szynol was last seen at the Griffin with his series Solitude of Travel.
Paul Szynol is a filmmaker as well as a media and tech lawyer. His films have been featured on the New York Times Op-Docs, the Atlantic, and the New Yorker, and have been shown at festivals internationally, including AFI Docs, Big Sky, Clermont-Ferrand, Doc NYC, Slamdance, and TIFF. His photos have been exhibited in the US and Europe, including ICP in New York City and the Leica Gallery in Warsaw.
© Paul Szynol
Paul was born in Warsaw, Poland, and moved to NYC at the age of 12, the year that the city’s transit fare rose from 75 cents to 90 cents; 33 previously unknown Bach pieces were found in an academic library; and Canon demoed its first digital still camera. Besides New York City and Warsaw, he’s lived in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Alexandria (VA), Berkeley, New Haven, Philadelphia, NJ, DC, and, for shorter periods, Kampala and Berlin. During his seven drives across the US, he’s visited the vast majority of the contiguous states, and, by train, plane or automobile, he’s also visited some 60 countries. He likes stray dogs, fair use, depressing movies, trains, Greene and Kundera, Uganda, open source software, the Oxford comma, and occasionally translating Polish poetry to English.
Paul is a graduate of Columbia University, where he studied history and philosophy, and Yale Law School, where he focused on free speech and intellectual property, and watched a lot of reruns and depressing movies.
© Kyle Souder
Kyle Souder just recently showcased his work October all Over in the Griffin’s Digital Gallery in May of this year. A Portland, Oregon based photographer, Kyle played bass in math-rock band Duck. Little Brother, Duck! During this time, he toured the US and Japan. It was through these frequent travels, often finding himself on the other side of the camera, that his infatuation with the alchemy of candid photography was rekindled. Kyle prefers to work in the vein of documentary and candid based photography. He is deeply infatuated by the pursuit of serendipitous moments, often finding the camera more capable than his philosophy education in helping to make sense of our shared reality. Kyle recently was awarded a scholarship to attend the CENTER’s 2019 Santa Fe Review.
Kyle is currently working on a book that is an extension of his series October All Over.
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We are so excited to showcase more of our talented artists from our 26th Annual Members Exhibition, curated by Alexa Dilworth.
Join us this Thursday August 13th we see presentations from four photographers followed by a q&a about their work. Dennis Geller, Rachel Jessen, Sandra Klein and Jerry Takigawa. These are the stories we will be seeing and hearing about.
To get tickets to the Photo Chat Chat head to our Events Page.
Introducing our featured artists –
© Dennis Geller, “Mists of Time”
Close your eyes, when open them and look at the first object you see. In that first instant, when you think you are seeing an object, your eye is seeing a smear of colors and brightness. It jumps at least three times, and in each jump only a small bit of the image on the retina is in focus. Light impinging on the retina causes chemical changes, which causes neurons to carry signals to the brain. Each change take time to dissipate, but the eye does not stop moving during that time, so that every spot on the retina is affected by light coming from different parts of the object, causing a cascade of overlapping chemical changes. The images here, motivated by processes of vision, ask the question: What has changed in a scene as we look at it? As we look around us, we don’t actually see the changes, just their effects, but we are aware of them. Calling them out, as these images do, offers a different way to experience the ordinary.
© Rachel Jessen, (Henry County) Notes for Michael at a gas station, New London.
This campaign season, I went back to Iowa, my home state and the first state in the nation to hold caucuses for the presidential primary. Not to cover the candidates, no. I turned my camera away from the politics—the faces and speeches of presidential hopefuls, the conventions and rallies, the moments votes are cast—and toward the people and places of Iowa. I’m making my way through a feat known as the “Full Grassley,” an endeavor named for the long-time Iowa Republican senator wherein candidates make a point to visit each of the Hawkeye State’s 99 counties vying for that coveted caucus victory. I wasn’t looking for support at a local town hall or fish fry—instead, I searched for the stories in the individuals and communities that make Iowa the unique, contradictory, and complicated place it is. From Adair to Jasper to Wright, I’m documenting everything from corn shucking to TrekFest to ghost towns to grandparents, and that which lies between, beyond the campaign trail. My hope is that my photographic Full Grassley results in a distinct perspective of Iowa, one that, while alluding to its political significance within the caucus system, demonstrates the limits of such a lens, and reveals it to be much more than the first state to assert its electoral opinion. It’s a portrait of a place—my home—which continues to exist even after all the TV cameras and politicians have gone.
“In the dark times Will there be singing? Yes, there will be singing. About dark times.” Bertolt Brecht
© Sandra Klein, “Eternal Dragonfly”
Is it possible to portray a grief so deep that it is difficult to endure? For a number of years, I have visited Japan in winter, but this past January, less than a year after the tragic death of my oldest son, I longed to visit this surreal, almost otherworldly land with the anticipation that I could grieve here in a way I couldn’t at home. The stunning snow-covered landscapes I captured for this series, with their muffled silence, hiding almost all color, all vestiges of humanity and the modern world, almost seemed to weep for me. Japan’s unfamiliar religious rituals and ancient objects, with their histories and iconography, affected me deeply. The images in this project straddle the real and surreal. The re-contexualizing of photographs and ephemera, where images are composited to include historical art and objects, reflects my altered state of reality. The materiality of these collages satisfies a need to define my personal despair with a more physical, unique object, as I cut and sew into the photographs as an act of memorializing not only my son, but my own journey into a new reality. Grieving in Japan is a meditation on a life that feels unhinged and unbearable. I experience periods of isolation from all that is familiar as I am pulled far away into the unknown world of loss. And yet, I am reminded, at moments, of the small joys this world reveals, inviting me to experience flashes of utter pleasure, even as I mourn.
“Jerry Takigawa, “EO 9066”
Balancing Cultures is a personal history project that reveals the racism and xenophobia that permeate American culture. The discovery of old family photographs compelled me to express the impact on my family resulting from being incarcerated in WWII American concentration camps. The emotions expressed in this project bring humanity to the historical record. I seek to give voice to experiences my family kept hidden for shame and fear. If silence sanctions, communication is resistance. The process of researching and creating these images greatly informed my understanding of what happened in the past—and what is important going forward. These images are a reminder that hysteria, racism, and economic exploitation became a force during WWII in our country. Xenophobia can live just under the surface of civility and emerge in a permissive environment. Cathy Park Hong wrote in a New York Times article: “After President Trump called the Covid-19 the “Chinese Virus,” in March (2020), the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council said more than 650 incidents of discrimination against Asian-Americans were reported to a website it helps maintain in one week alone.” Decades have passed since Executive Order 9066 was enacted. Many Americans are only now learning of this transgression. There is no scientific basis for race; race and racism are social constructs. Balancing Cultures recalls a dark chapter in American history—censored in part by the Japanese precept of “gaman” (enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity) and the fear that if my family spoke too loudly, it might happen again. I raise my voice today because it is happening again.
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Join us Thursday night July 16th for a chat with four artists participating in our 26th Annual Member’s Exhibition, curated by Alexa Dilworth.
© Yorgos Efthymiadis, “Rusty Door”
There Is a Place I Want to Take You I had an unsettling feeling when I returned, for the very first time after many years abroad, to the place of my origin. Even though I was surrounded by loved ones, friends and family who were ecstatic to see me, there was a sense of non-belonging. After a couple of days of catching up and hanging out, they returned to their routines. I stopped being their center of attention and became a stranger in a foreign land. It was harsh to come home, to a place which I banished in the past, only to realize that I have been banished in return. Time leaves its mark, transforms places, and alters people. Even the smallest detail can make a huge difference to the way things were. After moving away, I had to rediscover what I have left behind. Using my memories as a starting point, I walked down the road that led to my high school, I lay on the sand at the beach, close to the house where I grew up, I nodded to a familiar face I couldn’t quite place and yet they smiled back. All these round-trip tickets to the past, to a place that I once used to belong, reminded me one of Henry Miller’s quotes that always resonated with me: “One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.”
Have always found great comfort in or by the ocean.
The ocean has become the anchor for my current series, Reality & Imagination.
© Leslie Jean-Bart, “The Prayer”
This ongoing series is a body of work of over 100 images that were edited from hundreds of images shot over the past 8 years. The images are squarely rooted in the tradition of Elliott Erwitt, Jay Maisel, Eugene Smith, Lou Draper, and sport photography. They are basically as they are in the instant shot.
I photograph the tide as visual metaphor to explore the dynamic interaction which takes place between the cultures when one lives permanently in a foreign land.
The cultures automatically interact with each other in a motion that is instantly fluid and turbulent, just as the sand and tide. It’s a constant movement in unison where each always retains its distinctive characteristics. This creates a duality that is always present.
The current climate towards immigrants in the US and the present migrant situation in Europe shows that the turbulent interaction between the duality created by the mix of the two cultures does not only manifest itself within the foreign individual but also within that foreign land.
Each of the sections of ‘Reality & Imagination’ explores this cultural duality. The section ‘Silhouette & Shadow’ and ‘Silhouette & Shadow Too’ I give an actual shape to the two cultures as silhouette & shadow, which are both entities that cannot exist without the presence of another. Just as the sand and the tide, a silhouette & or a shadow constantly moves in unison with the object the projected light uses to create it. In that instance, both the object and the shadow always retain each their individual characteristics.
‘Silhouette & Shadow Too’ addresses the phase where immigrants are visible to the dominant society only in limited capacity when needed, and the fact that the potential of enriching the society at large is short circuited.
Personally, the series has permitted me to readily welcome what’s good from both (all cultures in fact) and to let go from each what does not serve me as a human being. It has facilitated me to see at times what’s not readily seen as well as to be at times more present in life. It has given me the understanding that at every point I have the opportunity to act by choosing from within the structures of one of the two cultures what would serve best at that moment.
The constant intermingling of that duality is ever present.
© Loli Kantor, “Travel Document, 1951-1952”
For Time Is No Longer Now: A Tale of Love, Loss and Belonging My mother Lola died in Paris on January 21, 1952, after giving birth to me. My father Zwi died in Tel Aviv of a heart attack, March 1966 when I was 14 years old. My brother Ami died of a cardiac arrest in New York City on Thanksgiving Day, 1998. My immediate family: grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts and uncles perished in the Holocaust. My missing family created deep holes in my life—holes so deep that I have been driven to fill them in through a comprehensive and sometimes fevered search. Studying the archives of my family which I collected and saved through my life I uncover facts and information about my mother my father and my brother that help me to better understand their stories. I travel to the places from which my parents came, to where I was born and my mother died, to where I grew up and to times I barely remember, and even before. This is the soul of my work.These are visual disclosures including historical photographs, letters and documents, as well as new photographic works which I created to insert myself into the story of my lost family.
© Geralyn Shukwit “Victoria”
For the past nine years, Brooklyn-based photographer Geralyn Shukwit has traveled the backroads of Bahia, Brazil, returning to the same communities year after year to form relationships with the families who reside there. O Tempo Não Para, Portuguese for “time does not stop,” is a personal documentation of those interactions and observations, a poetic record of Bahian life that prevails despite economic and environmental hardships. One of 26 states in Brazil, Bahia has a population of about 14 million in a region approximately the size of Texas. The Portuguese named it “Bahia” (“bay”) in 1501 after first entering the region through the bay where its capital, Salvador, is now located. An agricultural community, Bahians reside primarily in the cities and towns on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, where the weather is slightly more forgiving than in Bahia’s harsh, arid interior region, the Sertão. Bahia has one of the highest rates of poverty in the country; mothers often have to fish to feed her children and in many communities, water only arrives by truck. Mostly of mixed European and African lineage, Bahians are overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, and many practice the rituals of Umbanda, Candomblé, and other syncretist religious sects. Cloaked in Bahia’s unique light, Shukwit’s intimate portrayal of daily life in Bahia offers viewers distinctly quiet, in-between moments laden with profundity. Underpinning the collective power of O Tempo Não Para is the photographer’s acute ability to cultivate trust and develop close connections with community members. Set in the extraordinarily colorful landscape of Bahia, a contrasting palette of bright, cool and warm colors, each photograph leaves traces of a culture seeped in the rituals and traditions that bind them.
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It is Photo Chat Chat time!
This is our 26th Member’s Juried Exhibition Edition, showcasing four of our Honorable Award winners. These images captured the eye of the our juror, Alexa Dilworth.
Dennis Geller, Rachel Jessen, Sandra Klein and Jerry Takigawa are the featured artists in this edition of the chat. Each artist has a 10 minute presentation then a q&a follows the presentations.
© Dennis Geller, “Mists of Time”
© Rachel Jessen, (Henry County) Notes for Michael at a gas station, New London.
© Sandra Klein, “Eternal Dragonfly”
“Jerry Takigawa, “EO 9066”
Join us on Thursday August 13th at 7pm Eastern time for a lively conversation from artists on photography and creativity.
At the market, I pick each one up, pulled in by the shapes as they sit together, waiting. I feel its heft in my hand, enjoy the textures of the skin or peel, and begin to look closer and closer. The patterns on each individual surface marks them as distinct. I push further still, discovering territory unseen by the casual observer, a new land. I am like a satellite orbiting a distant planet, taking the first-ever images of this newly envisioned place.
This project started as an homage to Edward Weston’s Pepper No. 30 (I am, ironically, allergic to peppers). As I looked for my subject matter at the market, I found that I wasn’t drawn to just one single fruit or vegetable. There were so many choices, appealing to both hand and eye. I decided to print in black and white to help make the images visually more about the shapes, and not about guessing which fruit is smoothest, which vegetable is greenest.
Artistic Purpose/Intent
Tricia Gahagan
Photography has been paramount in my personal path of healing from disease and
connecting with consciousness. The intention of my work is to overcome the limits of the
mind and engage the spirit. Like a Zen koan, my images are paradoxes hidden in plain
sight. They are intended to be sat with meditatively, eventually revealing greater truths
about the world and about one’s self.
John Chervinsky’s photography is a testament to pensive work without simple answers;
it connects by encouraging discovery and altering perspectives. I see this scholarship
as a potential to continue his legacy and evolve the boundaries of how photography can
explore the human condition.
Growing my artistic skill and voice as an emerging photographer is critical, I see this as
a rare opportunity to strengthen my foundation and transition towards an established
and influential future. I am thirsty to engage viewers and provide a transformative
experience through my work. I have been honing my current project and building a plan
for its complete execution. The incredible Griffin community of mentors and the
generous funds would be instrumental for its development. I deeply recognize the
hallmark moment this could be for the introduction of the work. Thank you for providing
this incredible opportunity for budding visions and artists that know they have something
greater to share with the world.