Photography Now 2017 exhibition

© Sarah Anthony - 2017 Purchase Award

EXHIBITION DETAILS

PHOTOGRAPHY NOW 2017 November 4, 2017 - January 14, 2018 Gallery reception: Saturday, November 4, 4-6pm

Juried by William A. Ewing

JUROR’S STATEMENT

PHOTOGRAPHY NOW 2017

By William A. Ewing

It was a great pleasure to curate this project, resulting in a presentation of 18 photographers and 47 artworks of great variety, both in subject matter and approach. I admit I like to serve on juries, as a general principle, as it gives me an insight on what’s being produced now; curators tend to be focused on the past, even if it’s the recent past, and most museum curators are dealing with photographers whose careers span 20 to 50 years. Even the photographers we term ‘emerging’ often turn out to have had a decade of work under their belts. So in competitions like this one, attracting more than 400 candidates, allows for an almost ‘up to the minute’ overview of where photography is today, and where it’s headed in the near future.

Some of this jury work is arduous, even depressing, but just as often it is pleasurable and stimulating, and happily for me, this was the case this time.

Juries are seldom given to one person, for obvious reasons: It is felt that a clash of viewpoints and assessments leads to more balanced judgments. In my experience, however, it leads just as often to compromises which are satisfying to no one, and I have been on juries where a curatorial fight-out ends up with a ‘winner’ that no one actually wanted—it’s rather that if ‘you won’t vote for my choice, I won’t vote for yours’. But having a single juror doesn’t mean he or she doesn’t swing back and forth before deciding. Several jurors or one, personal prejudices, even moods, do play a role. I have no doubt another single juror might have come up with a very different selection, though I’d be surprised if there wasn’t considerable overlap. The old cliché of the cream rising to the surface applies.

I admit to bias, though I do attempt to look at each photographer’s work on its own terms. In the case of this particular jury, that meant looking first at each picture, forming a sense of what I think the work is about, then reading the statement. Not everyone is a good writer, so I’ll make allowances for mediocre texts, but I am critical at this stage, asking myself, ‘do the images live up to the explanation or description?’ In some cases, I may feel there is a disconnect at some level–but that it doesn’t matter if the images are strong enough.

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I think most curators would agree with me when I say that what we looking for in these situations is coherence or consistency across a body of work. One or two strong pictures and a dozen poor ones won’t pass the grade. Nor will a hodge-podge of images, jumping around from one subject to another.

Secondly, the overarching idea, or ‘the concept’ mustn’t overshadow the work itself; a particular concept might sound intriguing when put in words, but might easily result in dull pictures.

When I undertook this jury, I had no idea what I would find. Would a few photographers stand head and shoulders above the rest? As it turned out, I was struck by many of the submissions, and I therefore decided to try and reflect this overall richness and dynamism in the final selection. Looking at it now—and I mean as a whole—I think that the contrasts in the variety of styles and approaches makes everyone’s work more interesting; one might say that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts! Photographers are trained to think of their work as wholly individual, and stands entirely alone, but in fact we’re always part of a greater culture with its coherences and its contradictions. It’s heartening to realize we are all part of a community, however fractious we appear at first glance.

So what are the threads of this tapestry? Fact and fiction, each with its practitioners. Figurative work, realism, documentary work—all very much alive. Not surprisingly, given the way our lives unfold today, there is nothing in the way of traditional landscape: what might pass for ‘landscape’ is about the people in it, and how they react to it. Abstraction is another strong thread.

But these are signposts. Best to make one’s own way among the pictures, letting them talk to us or asking our own questions of them, and sometimes letting then stop us in our tracks.

ABOUT THE JUROR From 1977 to 1984 William Ewing was Director of Exhibitions at the International Center of Photography, New York, and from 1996 to 2010 Director of the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, while also teaching at the University of Geneva. He has served on many juries over the years, and shown at a number of international photography festivals, as well as co-curating the New York Photo Festival in 2009. Since 2010 he has worked as a curator for the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, Minneapolis and Lausanne, and since 2015, for the Foundation Carène, Switzerland. He is also currently Director of Curatorial Projects for Thames & Hudson, London.

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PHOTOGRAPHY NOW 2017 CHECKLIST 1/ SARAH ANTHONY Eric Checking the Rain, 2016 Digital Photograph $250

2/ SARAH ANTHONY Deven in the Snow, 2016 Digital Photograph $250

3/ SARAH ANTHONY Noah in the Stream, 2016 Digital Photograph $250

4/ CEAPHAS STUBBS ...Tongue-Tied..., 2014 Edition 1/3 Archival Inkjet print $1,200

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PHOTOGRAPHY NOW 2017 CHECKLIST 5/ JENNIFER GARZA-CUEN Untitled (Man in Room 3, Eden), 2014 Edition 2/10 Archival Pigment Print $850

6/ JENNIFER GARZA-CUEN Untitled (Female Solo, Eden), 2014 Edition 3/10 Archival Pigment Print $850

7/ JEANETTE MAY Red Phone, 2016 Edition 3/10 Archival Pigment Print $2,100

8/ JEANETTE MAY Green Instamatic, 2016 Edition 4/10 Archival Pigment Print $2,100

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PHOTOGRAPHY NOW 2017 CHECKLIST 9/ JEANETTE MAY Blue iMac, 2016 Edition 1/10 Archival Pigment Print $2,100

10/ ZORA MURFF Levi at 15, 2015 Edition 1/9 Archival Pigment Print $900

11/ ZORA MURFF Wendy at 14 and Sheila at 15, 2014 Edition 1/9 Archival Pigment Print $900

12/ AYUMI TANAKA Wish You Were Here, 2015 Silver Gelatin Print $1,400

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PHOTOGRAPHY NOW 2017 CHECKLIST 13/ AYUMI TANAKA Wish You Were Here, 2015 Silver Gelatin Print $1,400

14/ AYUMI TANAKA Wish You Were Here, 2015 Silver Gelatin Print $1,400

15/ ORESTES GONZALEZ Easter Parade - 2 Women, 2016 Edition 2/5 Digital Photograph $800

16/ ORESTES GONZALEZ Easter Parade - Pedestrians, 2016 Edition 2/5 Digital Photograph $800

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PHOTOGRAPHY NOW 2017 CHECKLIST 17/ ORESTES GONZALEZ Easter Parade - Woman with Phone, 2016 Edition 2/5 Digital Photograph $800

18/ ALEJANDRO LOUREIRO LORENZO Untitled, 2017 Digital C-print $800

19/ ALEJANDRO LOUREIRO LORENZO Untitled, 2017 Digital C-print $800

20/ ALEJANDRO LOUREIRO LORENZO Untitled, 2017 Digital C-print $800

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PHOTOGRAPHY NOW 2017 CHECKLIST 21/ ALEJANDRO LOUREIRO LORENZO Untitled, 2017 Digital C-print $800

22/ CHRISTOPHER PAUL BROWN Katrin as Japanese Girl at Futuristic Store, Radical Play, Katrin Dohse, 06-30-2016ZZLC, 2016 Edition 1/ 5 Giclee print $1,040

23/ CHRISTOPHER PAUL BROWN Untitled, Radical Play, Katrin Dohse, 06-30-2016Z, 2016 Edition 2/5 Giclee print $1,040

24/ LARS ANDERSON Madison #2, 2015 Edition of 10 Archival Inkjet print $450

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PHOTOGRAPHY NOW 2017 CHECKLIST 25/ LARS ANDERSON Rock Island #9, 2014 Edition of 10 Archival Inkjet print $450

26/ SANDRA BACCHI We Are All in This Together #2, 2016 Edition 2/15 Archival Pigment Print $580

27/ SANDRA BACCHI We Are All in This Together #9, 2016 Edition 1/15 Archival Pigment Print $580

28/ SANDRA BACCHI We Are All in This Together #12, 2016 Edition 2/15 Archival Pigment Print $580

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PHOTOGRAPHY NOW 2017 CHECKLIST 29/ JOHN BARNARD Nature Studies Ser. 10 # 9, 2016 Edition of 6 + 2 AP Digital Pigmented Print $400

30/ JOHN BARNARD Nature Studies Ser. 10 # 7, 2016 Edition of 6 + 2 AP Digital Pigmented Print $400

31/ JOHN BARNARD Nature Studies Ser. 10 # 8, 2016 Edition of 6 + 2 AP Digital Pigmented Print $400

32/ LAURIE PEEK Blue-Green Dent, Toyota in RCC Parking Lot, Suffern, NY, 2014 Edition 1/10 Archival Pigment Print $700

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PHOTOGRAPHY NOW 2017 CHECKLIST 33/ LAURIE PEEK Blue-Green Dent, Toyota in RCC Parking Lot, Suffern, NY, 2014 Edition 1/10 Archival Pigment Print $700

34/ TAMAR GRANOVSKY Salton City, California, 2016 Archival Digital Print $300

35/ TAMAR GRANOVSKY North Shore, California, 2015 Archival Digital Print $300

36/ EMILY BERL Ashley, from the series Marilyn, 2013 Artist Proof Archival Pigment Print $850

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PHOTOGRAPHY NOW 2017 CHECKLIST 37/ EMILY BERL Gailyn, from the series Marilyn, 2013 Artist Proof Archival Pigment Print $850

38/ EMILY BERL Jami, from the series Marilyn, 2013 Artist Proof Archival Pigment Print $850

39/ TIANQIUTAO CHEN Zhang Rong, Aspirations of Migrant Children, 2014 Archival Inkjet print $1,000

40/ TIANQIUTAO CHEN Zhang Wanhui, Aspirations of Migrant Children, 2014 Archival Inkjet print $1,000

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PHOTOGRAPHY NOW 2017 CHECKLIST 41/ BEN ARNON Choco Auto Glass, 2017 Edition of 10 + 2 AP Digital Photograph $650

42/ BEN ARNON Tires, 2017 Edition of 10 + 2 AP Digital Photograph $650

43/ BEN ARNON Under the Hood, 2017 Edition of 10 + 2 AP Digital Photograph $650

44/ ADAM BERNARD El Don Cocina Mexicana, 2016 Digital Photograph $1,000

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PHOTOGRAPHY NOW 2017 CHECKLIST 45/ ADAM BERNARD Navarre Trailer Sales Inc., Navarre, Ohio, 2016 Digital Photograph $1,000

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ARTIST STATEMENTS

PHOTOGRAPHY NOW 2017 LARS ANDERSON Lars Anderson’s series Access was developed in a process of observing industrial facilities, but being denied entry through physical barriers. This peeked his interest and sparked his imagination about what might lie within. The barrier itself became the subject matter. As he describes, “While the shrouding of these places erases some visual possibilities, it simultaneously creates interesting new ones, and enables optical performance that changes depending on where the viewer stands.”

Lars Anderson was born and raised in Iowa. He moved to Cincinnati, OH, in 2006 and began photographing the industrial realms of the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys in 2007. His work has been the subject of several solo exhibitions and has been included in various juried group shows and an award-winning publication, the First International Photography Annual (Manifest Press, 2013). www.larsandersonimages.com SARAH ANTHONY Sarah Anthony projects focus on masculinity, coming of age, gender, romance and human relationships. For the past four years she has photographed a group of boys as they navigate their adolescence. During this period she watched as the boys began to cross the threshold into adulthood. The photographs emphasize the push and pull of their bodies and their mindsets as the boys struggle with shedding aspects of their youth and struggle to express their emotions.

Sarah Anthony received her BFA in Photography from Syracuse University.

She works in photography, creative writing and performative mediums. Her photography has been exhibited internationally, most recently in Seoul, Korea.

She is based in Boston, MA, where works as a photo editor and educator. www.sarahanthonyphoto.com

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BEN ARNON Also known as the Iron Triangle, Willets Point is a neglected and abandoned industrial area in Queens, NY without sewer system, running water, paved roads or sidewalks. It has historically been home to Latino and Asian immigrant-owned auto repair shops and scrap metal companies. This project is the story of a largely immigrant community’s fight against eminent domain. In a series of photographs comprised of urban landscapes and environmental portraits of Willets Point workers, the project reveals the human stories that exist behind the metal scraps of neglected urban space.

Ben Arnon is a New York City-based visual journalist, whose focus is documentary reportage, street portraiture and the impact of human existence on urban landscapes. Ben received an MBA from the UCLA Anderson and a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies in Society & Culture from Emory University in Atlanta. Ben writes frequently for the Huffington Post, offering social commentary on a wide array of topics including visual arts, culture, society, digital media and politics. www.benarnonphoto.com SANDRA BACCHI Sandra Bacchi examines the separation of private and public sphere of daily life, as well as the paradox between personal and social expectations. While living in Manhattan for two years, she observed people sharing the busiest public spaces in New York City: the subway trains. She compared and analyzed the characteristics of different individuals and the relationships between them from an ethnology point of view. Observing the private moments of individuals in the shared public space of the subway led her to appreciate how challenging and complex it can be for members of a diverse population to marry their private and public persona.

Sandra Bacchi is a Brazilian photographer with a degree in photography from Escola Panamericana de Artes in SĂŁo Paulo, Brazil. Her photographs have been published in Brazilian magazines, as well as in the New York magazine Visionaire. She has exhibited in the United States as well as in Brazil and is currently based in Rye Brook, NY. www.sandrajonasbacchi.com

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JOHN BARNARD John Barnard creates a narrative about the tension that exists between nature, consumerism and materialism. The economy relies on millions of transactions everyday. There are cashiers, accountants, inspectors and police to ensure that all of these transactions are completed successfully. All of this is put in place to insure consumers get what they need and desire. Barnard points to the failure in our culture. He directs attention to basic human needs in contrast to creature comforts. He explains, “when we start to satisfy the need for love by buying a new car we are turning our inner emptiness into consumerism and this is where it becomes a social disease.”

John Barnard started out as a painter and twenty-five years ago turned to photography. He earned a BA in studio art at New York City College and an MFA in painting at the University of Washington. He has been based in Brooklyn since 1971. www.johnbarnardphoto.com EMILY BERL Moving to Los Angeles in 2012, Emily Berl became fascinated in the way Los Angeles as a place attracts people chasing their dreams. As she searched for a way to represent this idea visually, she discovered the face of Marilyn Monroe everywhere: T-shirts, murals, magazines. Her image was so ubiquitous that it blended into everyday life. Berl began to think of Marilyn’s story as a symbol for a place where people seek fame, and the way in which the promise and peril of the Hollywood Dream is represented in their life. Berl points out that Marilyn Monroe “is the ultimate symbol of Hollywood, but also a reminder of the downfall that the pursuit of fame can lead to. But despite the darkness her story exemplifies, she represents a place that inspires the imagination and offers a faraway glimmer of hope, generation after generation.”

Emily Berl was born and raised in Washington, DC. She studied art history and photojournalism at Boston University. Her personal work largely focuses on documentary portraiture. In addition to pursuing her own long-term projects, she works as a freelance photographer for clients including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, the Hollywood Reporter, Billboard and Bloomberg Businessweek. www.emilyberlphoto.com 17

ADAM BERNARD In his series Entities, Adam Bernard sets out to establish that “all entities are created with an intended purpose for their existence regardless of their creator. During their lifespan, entities evolve from their creation until their demise.

The intent of my photography is to show the physical appearance of these entities by bringing together time, space, light, color and surface in order to create images that exhibit their appearance “as is” in our current era.

Adam Bernard is a photographer based in Medina, OH, who exhibits his work nationally and internationally. His awards include two individual artist fellowships by the Ohio Arts Council. He has worked as a photojournalist for Sun Newspapers and a photography instructor at the University of Akron. Bernard also participated in the “Midwest Photographers Project” at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College; Chicago, IL. http://theranger.us/ CHRISTOPHER PAUL BROWN Christopher Paul Brown views himself primarily as an alchemist. He is interested in the mundane surface of things “as fodder, as a means or lever, for revealing the deeper, inner energy of that which holds my emotional interest.

Manipulation allows me ready access to the subject’s hidden aspects… In each of my photographs I have used and deliberately misused, in-camera and/or post-production manipulation. With digital photography I shoot promiscuously and playfully, but with a constancy of intent and openness. I expect surprise and serendipity. Post-production is much the same, with play, serendipity, surprise, intent and openness dominating the process.”

Brown has been active artist for more than four decades. His early photographs were published in several Chicago magazines, displayed in numerous exhibitions and purchased for the collection of the Standard Oil Company of Indiana. He received a BA in Film from Columbia College and went on to co-found the experimental music groups Random Touch and Bosch. He performed on and released 17 musical products, ranging from vinyl records to CD/DVD packages. My experimental videos were exhibited at many major festivals from 2003 to 2007. Since returning to photography, he has earned various awards, won competitions and had numerous exhibitions. www.christopherpaulbrown.com 18

TIANQIUTAO CHEN Tianqiutao Chen uses photography as a field research method. As part of his recent project he has been observing and photographing migrant workers, who are a highly marginalized and mobile group in Beijing. The diptychs in the project Aspirations of Migrant Children consist of a portrait taken by Chen and juxtaposed with a snapshot taken by one of the children. He describes his portraits as providing context, while the children use the cameras he provides them with to show an unfiltered insider perspective. His process, Chen writes, “is also an action of transferring the discourse power and subverting the traditional subject-object relationship, which is an innovative documentary practice.”

Tianqiutao Chen was born in Shandong, China. He earned a BFA in China at Central Academy of Fine Arts and an MFA in Photography at Rhode Island School of Design. He is an artist, but describes himself as more of a kind-hearted citizen. Social changes are the direct subject matters of his art practice and are also the ultimate goal of it.

JENNIFER GARZA-CUEN Jennifer Garza-Cuen describes her project, Wandering In Place, as a series of locations in the United States that touch on her residual, cultural memory. To be interpreted as a metaphorical memoir or a narrative re-telling of facts and fictions, it is also her discovery of the dreamland that still is America.

Garza-Cuen is a photographer from the Pacific Northwest. She received the prestigious RISD GS competitive grant twice and was awarded the Daniel Clarke Johnson, Henry Wolf and Patricia Smith scholarships. Additionally, she has received fellowships to attended residencies at Light Work, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Ucross, Brush Creek, Oxbow and the Vermont Studio Center. Her work has been exhibited internationally and published in contemporary photography journals such as Musée and Juxtapoz. www.garza-cuen.com

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ORESTES GONZALEZ Midtown NYC’s Fifth Avenue and its environs around Times Square have always served as a barometer of the city’s traditions and moods. It is the country’s town square, a place to show American individuality and freedom of expression.

Gonzalez has been taking pictures there for many years, finding it rich in the opportunities that reinforce its role in American pageantry and tradition.

A former architect, Orestes Gonzalez has been a full time photographer since 2005, working on personal projects that define his role as a chronicler of how current events are tied to history and tradition. The Manny Cantor Center recently featured his artist portraits in a solo exhibition, titled Studio Visit. Other exhibitions include the AI/AP group show Los Diez, which is traveling internationally. His first monotype, Julios House, was published by +KrisGravesProject (2017). www.orestesgonzalezphoto.com TAMAR GRANOVSKY Siren Song is a body of work centered on the desert landscape of California’s Salton Sea, a region that bears witness to human intention, intervention, failure and tenacity, and invites reflection on the nature of place. Repeated attempts to channel waterways, develop agriculture and create resorts beside this accidental “sea” have left scars on the surrounding communities. The sea itself is almost dead as it evaporates and becomes increasingly noxious. In photographing traces of the everyday in the vicinity of this toxic, abandoned lake, Granovsky draws a connection between history and this place where decay and survival coexist. This project, which is personal, subjective and documentary in character, focuses on this seemingly marginalized and neglected American “Western Frontier” and the vestiges of its inhabitants.

Tamar Granovsky is a photographer based in Cambridge, MA. Born in Israel, she spent her childhood and young adult years in Canada. Having received an MFA degree from the University of Calgary, Granovsky worked in mixed media sculpture installation and, later, printmaking. While she grew up with a father who always seemed to carry a camera by his side, Granovsky never imagined that she herself would become serious about photography after the age of 50. www.tamargranovsky.com 20

ALEJANDRO LOUREIRO LORENZO Alejandro Loureiro Lorenzo’s series of work begins with spontaneous handmade graphite drawings and photographs documenting discarded materials and overlapping residual architectural and landscape elements. The materials collected are digitalized and manipulated, integrating traditional media as drawing with digital and film photography, subsequently producing imagery that avoids any medium distinction and homogenize the source material. The present works are essentially photographic as all the materials are photographed or scanned. He describes, “I realized that the results seem to have archetypical roots – fundamental imagery that we unconsciously recognize, and that I link to the massive processing of materials that takes place in our current ‘post-industrial’ manufacturing of goods, where some kinds of trash and discarded materials due to its complexity could be looked at as art, not only in shape but in terms of content due to all the complexities and politics behind their creation, and giving us powerful critical tools to analyze current concerns on art production and the reception of it.”

Loureiro Lorenzo is a Galician artist and curator living and working in New York City. He received a BFA in Sculpture from Polytechnic University of Valencia in 2006, and BFA in Painting from Middlesex University London in 2007.

He is is completing his PhD in Art Production and Art Research at Polytechnic University of Valencia. His work has been exhibited in Germany, Spain, and the United States. http://www.alejandroloureiro.com/

JEANETTE MAY “As widely observed, we live in an age filled with devices that make domestic life faster, smarter, easier and more complicated,” Jeanette May describes. Consumers may choose from an astounding number of tech products. Items fill our shopping carts and our homes. The more we yearn to keep current—the newest phone, computer, camera, audio system, espresso maker—the more we produce, consume and discard. Cutting-edge technology becomes outdated, embarrassing, quaint, collectible and finally, antiquated or forgotten. The “Tech Vanitas” photographs confront the anxiety surrounding technological obsolescence.

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“Just as the Dutch Golden Age still lifes portray the abundance afforded a prosperous culture, my “Tech Vanitas” embraces luxury, honors design, and acknowledges the fleeting nature of earthly pleasures. My contemporary vanitas utilize digital photography to capture precarious arrangements of domestic technological ephemera.”

Jeanette May is a photo-based artist using a critical, sometimes playful approach to investigate representation itself. Early training as a painter is evident in her carefully arranged compositions and rich color palette. May received her MFA in Photography from CalArts and her BFA in Painting from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She has been awarded grants, fellowships and residencies from the NEA Regional Artists’ Projects Fund, Illinois Arts Council, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, Ms. Foundation, and Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. Her work is exhibited in galleries and museums internationally. May teaches at the International Center of Photography in New York City and lives in Brooklyn. www.jeanettemay.com

ZORA J MURFF From 2012 to 2015, Zora J Murff worked as a tracker for Linn County Juvenile Detention and Diversion Services in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. As a tracker, he provided services to youths who were convicted of crimes, adjudicated and subsequently ordered to complete probation. “It was my responsibility to have continual contact with them to ensure these expectations are met. Tracking and other similar community-based services are being increasingly used as an alternative to detention facilities. These services, which allow juveniles to stay in their homes, show a higher rate of success than strict incarceration.”

“Through employing ideas of anonymity, voyeurism and introspection, Corrections is an examination of youth experience in the system, the role images play in defining someone who is deemed a criminal, and how the concepts of privacy and control may affect their future.”

Murff is an MFA student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He attended the University of Iowa where he studied Photography and holds a BS in Psychology from Iowa State University. Combining his education in human services and art, Zora’s photography focuses on the experiences of youth in the juvenile justice system and the role of images in the correctional system; 22

specifically how images are used to define individuals who are deemed criminals, and what happens when these definitions are abandoned or skewed. His work has been exhibited nationally, internationally. His work has been published in Vice Magazine, Good Magazine, and PDN’s Emerging Photographer Magazine. In 2015, Zora was selected as a LensCulture Top 50 Emerging Talent.

A portfolio of his work is included in the Midwest Photographers Project through the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. Zora published his first monograph, Corrections, through Aint-Bad Editions (2015). www.zora-murff.com LAURIE PEEK Laurie Peek started her series Car Parts in 2012. Attracted to the light and abstract pattern in a reflection on a parked car door, she began noticing these “paintings” on cars everywhere and set out to collect them. For Peek these dream-like images combine elements of gestural energy from Abstract Expressionism with the bright colors of Pop art in a tribute to the glamour that American society has long associated with the automobile. They are akin to what John Chamberlain was doing with his metal sculptures of crushed cars.

Looking for the extraordinary in the ordinary, the metal hoods, roofs, bumpers and doors are canvases for my photographic “paintings.” Their bright colors, scrapes and dents speak to me and present enigmatic landscapes of the imagination, refracting reality, waiting quietly in plain sight to be discovered by those who are willing to slow down and observe these hidden vistas in a busy world.

As a photojournalist in NYC, Laurie Peek has covered issues like toxic dumps, crime, politics, negligent landlords, as well as anti-nuke and other protest movements for publications that included The Village Voice, Brooklyn Paper, City Limits, The Progressive and New York Times. Peek has exhibited widely in the Hudson Valley and New York City metro area, where she is active in local civic and environmental causes. She holds an MFA in Photography from the Visual Studies Workshop/SUNY Buffalo. www.lauriepeek.com

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CEAPHAS STUBBS Ceaphas Stubbs’ photographs are an exploration in narrative weight and meaning, as well as black sexuality and pleasure. His works function in a space at the intersection of photography, sculpture and painting, where the images move back and forth between different meanings. His compositions rely on the principles of sculpture such as volume and gravity, principles of photography such as light and perspective, and principles of painting such as color. The painterly quality is both a critique and a declaration of the power and value of iconography, while the three dimensionality of the photographs is an invitation for conversation; an entry point to investigate associations and signifiers that subvert ritual and evoke nuance through color, space and imagery.

Ceaphas Stubbs earned a BA from Rutgers University and an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. He completed a residency at Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. He was the recipient of a Christopher Lyon Memorial Award in 2013 and was nominated for the Dedalus Foundation MFA Fellowship. In 2013, Stubbs gave artist talks at the SALT Institute in BeyoÄ&#x;lu District, Istanbul, Turkey, and at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. His works have been reviewed in the New York Times, EXPOSE and AGAVE Magazine. In 2016, Stubbs had his first international exhibit at the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (CICA) Museum in South Korea. Since 2014 Stubbs has taught photography, animation and digital media at Brookdale College, the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey and Lycoming College. www.ceaphas.com

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AYUMI TANAKA “At times in my day-to-day life, I find myself stumbling over reminders of days gone by. Partly formed of memory rise up from a forgotten abyss within, surrounding me like a powerful fragrance and rocking my emotions to the core. In these moments, I am seized with the desire to gather and collect, to retrieve what has been lost and weave it into something whole. I spent my childhood in a small village in the mountains of Japan. As a child, I ached to leave my home, to become an adult and discover the person I truly was. I dreamed of taking myself to a place where I was known by no one, where I could sing and dance to my heart’s content without interruption. Now that I am no longer a child, it has occurred to me how this desire has led me to abandon traces of my past, effectively unmarking myself with the scent of my own recollection. My aim with this project is to reconstruct the half-remembered memories of my childhood based on clues from the emotional elements associate with my childhood memories, as well as the symbols that exist in photographs I keep as mementos. Three-dimensional dioramas, composed of overlapping multiple layers of photo collages, have been assembled and photographed to illustrate landscapes of my memory.”

Ayumi Tanaka’s work has been shown internationally at exhibitions including United Photo Industries Gallery, Tokyo Institute of Photography, Pictura Gallery, LOOK3 festival of the Photographs and Athens Photo Festival. Her work has been published numerous magazine including at New York Times, Blow Photo, PHat Photo, Lettre International, LensCulture, GUP Magazine and Feature Shoot.

She was awarded an ICP Director Fellowship in 2010, Grand prix at Tokyo International Photography Competition 2013, Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50 and Feature Shoot Emerging Photography Award 2014, PDN’s 30 2016 New and Emerging Photographer to watch and New York Art Foundation Fellowship 2016. She received a BFA from Osaka University of Arts in Japan and studied at the International Center of Photography. She lives and works in NYC. http://ayumi-tanaka.com/

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