4–8
Kristin Taylor, Foreword
34 – 41
Austin Pope
10 – 17
Arda Asena
42 – 49
Olivia Alonso Gough + Nico Segall Tobon
18 – 25
Billie Carter-Rankin
50 – 57
Ang Zheng
26 – 33
Jenny Rafalson
58 – 65
Chelsea Emuakhagbon
School of the Art Institute of Chicago Master of Fine Arts in Photography 2020 66 – 73
Ruoqi Wang
98 – 105
Caitlin McCullough 1
74 – 81
William Keihn
106 – 113
Megan Tepper
82 – 89
Delilah Anaya
114 – 121
Stephanie Schwiederek
90 – 97
Alayna N. Pernell
122 – 136
Statements
2
School of the Art Institute of Chicago Master of Fine Arts in Photography 2020
Contents
4–9
Kristin Taylor, Foreword
34 – 41
Austin Pope
66 – 73
Ruoqi Wang
98 – 105
Caitlin McCullough
10 – 17
Arda Asena
42 – 49
Olivia Alonso Gough + Nico Segall Tobon
74 – 81
William Keihn
106 – 113
Megan Tepper
18 – 25
Billie Carter-Rankin
50 – 57
Ang Zheng
82 – 89
Delilah Anaya
114 – 121
Stephanie Schwiederek
26 – 33
Jenny Rafalson
58 – 65
Chelsea Emuakhagbon
90 – 97
Alayna N. Pernell
122 – 136
Statements
Kristin Taylor, Foreword
On several occasions in fall 2019, I walked the short distance from my office at the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago to the graduate photography studios at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. During these visits I temporarily stepped into the worlds of students working toward their MFA degrees and witnessed the ways they use their hands and cameras to tell stories. Each of these artists is wrestling with their individual questions and concerns: Do their images communicate their ideas clearly? How might they ensure their images will be interpreted as they intend? And can they overcome the unease of their personal vulnerability, as they put their lives and family members on view? Each singular artist is thoughtfully approaching respective—and varied—concepts. Their images indicate careful considerations of
5
not only photography’s capacity as a medium, but also the ways their work can produce necessary vocabulary to address something important that has been missing from the photographic discourse. Themes of intimacy and memory emerge in the works of Stephanie Schwiederek, Billie Carter-Rankin, and Olivia Alonso Gough in collaboration with Nico Segall Tobon. Embracing sentimentality at a time when it can be tempting to hide behind irony or detachment, these four artists seek to preserve the lives of people they love or have loved. They depict traces their loved ones have left on both environments and the lives of others. Each of them, in a unique way, asks, “How do we keep this person, this moment, or this object forever?” William Keihn and Austin Pope look at the structures of place in the United States, considering economic and social factors that keep people within walls. Keihn depicts a mythical town in Indiana as a stand-in for larger American ideologies and the structures of capitalism. Pope visits underground clubs, abandoned schools, and the homes of veterans to question the places we inhabit as communities, as well as the places we collectively abandon. Arda Asena, Megan Tepper, and Ang Zheng use portraiture of others and themselves to affirm selfhood. Each of them is attempting to better understand humanness in a way that is grounded in indexing—compiling data on themselves and their subjects. Their images thus function as both documentation and poetic interpretation, logging the details of their lives and their very skin.
6
Alayna N. Pernell, Delilah Anaya, and Chelsea Emuakhagbon all consider how images have the power to educate and the ways their work might engender empathy. Pernell is collecting stories of black lives lost in the supposed safety of one’s own home. On her studio walls, alongside her self-portraits reenacting moments of tragedy, index cards map lives in data points, resembling police files gone unresolved or ignored. Emuakhagbon makes images of her close family members as they move from childhood into adulthood. Her portraits show joy in youth, seeming to endeavor to freeze her subjects in innocence and protect them from racism as their bodies become large enough to be viewed as threats to society. Anaya works collaboratively with her audiences and subjects. In one series she documents people she encounters during her many visits to the US-Mexico border, where she distributes supplies and food and uses her camera to share the stories of individuals who are living without legal protections. In another she creates QR codes to place on Chiquita bananas in grocery stores. If one scans the QR code, they learn about the human rights violations occurring in the banana-growing industry in Central America. Ruoqi Wang and Jenny Rafalson use photography to traverse emotional, geographic, and ephemeral distances. Wang is creating works about a broken connection to her father, using both archival and new imagery to stitch together a picture of a fragmented relationship. Rafalson is creating works about a separation from any one national identity. The prickly pear acts as a metaphor for the
7
idea of being native as she considers how one achieves a sense of belonging to place. Caitlin McCullough’s work defies categorization. She seeks the absurdly humorous, making the case that art can be a relief from the patriarchy. Her reality can be covered in pink, or with googly eyes, and still have depth and purpose. Visiting artist studios is a privilege; face-to-face interactions with others is increasingly rare as, more and more, we connect with one another through screens. Each artist was generous with their time, engaging with me in open conversations about their creative ambitions. The words accompanying these images are excerpts of the artists’ own larger statements, which can be found in the back pages of this book. I hope you feel compelled to read and learn more, so you can experience, as I have, their earnest, distinct, and courageous ways of seeing.
8
Works
9
Arda Asena
‌ the connection and disconnection between mind and body, and how social and psychological stresses of a repressive society affect the physicality.
12
Confrontation (I), 2019 Inkjet print 20 x 25 inches
14
Current, 2019 Inkjet print 20 x 25 inches
16
11
13
Imprint, 2019 Inkjet print 12 x 15 inches
15
Confrontation (II), 2019 Inkjet print 20 x 25 inches
17
Absorbance, 2019 Inkjet print 55 x 42 inches
12
13
14
15
16
17
Billie Carter-Rankin
How long does the personal archive hold its value?
20
22
Sunday’s Best, 2019 Satin print, selenium toner 3 x 3 inches 24
For Ira and Michael, 2019 Satin print, selenium toner 3 x 3 inches
19
21
First Cousins, 2019 Satin print, latex paint 3 x 3 inches 23
Congratulations Michael, 2019 Satin print, selenium toner 3 x 3 inches 25
Clad in White, 2019 Satin print, selenium toner 3 x 3 inches
20
21
22
23
24
25
Jenny Rafalson
‌ using the Prickly pear in a way to define myself as a woman, as a counter to the immigrant.
28
29
Do serve in the Israeli army, 2020 Video excerpt 7 minutes, 42 seconds 30
Don’t wear the clothes brought with you from abroad, 2020 Video excerpt 1 minute, 21 seconds 32
Two Sabra, one is more, 2020 Video excerpt 4 minutes, 48 seconds
27
31
powers of retention, 2020 Video excerpt 28 seconds
33
Two Sabra, one is more, 2020 Video excerpt 4 minutes, 48 seconds
28
29
30
31
32
33
Austin Pope
What does it mean to have abandoned space in your community?
36
37
The (Mis)Education of (Black) Chicago, Ongoing Inkjet print 17 x 22 inches
The (Mis)Education of (Black) Chicago, Ongoing Inkjet print 17 x 22 inches
38
39
The (Mis)Education of (Black) Chicago, Ongoing Inkjet print 17 x 22 inches
35
40
41
No Child Left Behind, Ongoing Inkjet Print 17 x 22 inches
No Child Left Behind, Ongoing Inkjet Print 17 x 22 inches
36
37
38
39
40
41
Olivia Alonso Gough + Nico Segall Tobon
‌ creating an archive that felt sacred because it was ours.
44
46
Untitled, 2019 Gelatin silver print 24 x 36 inches
48
Untitled, 2019 Gelatin silver print 9 x 15 inches
43
45
Untitled, 2019 Gelatin silver print 36 x 24 inches
47
Untitled, 2019 Gelatin silver print 36 x 24 inches
49
Untitled, 2019 Gelatin silver print 36 x 24 inches
44
45
46
47
48
49
Ang Zheng
‌ queer and gender non-conforming young adults, who in their own way rewrite the world and their relationships to it.
52
dear chris, 2019 archival inkjet print 20 x 130 inches
54
leon, 2019 Archival inkjet print Dimensions vary
56
marcel, 2019 Archival inkjet print Dimensions vary
51
53
55
i’m thinking about you, 2019 Archival inkjet print with paint marker 15 x 20 inches 57
untitled, 2019 Archival inkjet print with paint marker 15 x 20 inches
52
53
54
55
56
57
Chelsea Emuakhagbon
‌ most beliefs and opinions about issues surrounding the topic of social justice to be formed without a basic understanding of the disruptions created within society that has left a gap in-between certain social structures.
60
Cj & Justin (video still), 2019 Digital image Dimensions vary
62
Cj, 2019 Digital image Dimensions vary
64
59
61
Ike, 2019 Digital image Dimensions vary
63
Joe, 2019 Digital image Dimensions vary
65
Bianca & Victor, 2019 Digital image Dimensions vary
60
61
62
63
64
Ruoqi Wang
… he projected his anger of others on me, thundering at me. He said, “You don’t have to come to me anymore.”
68
69
No Way Back 06, 2017–ongoing 11.25 x 7.5 inches Inkjet print on rag paper
No Way Back 07, 2017–ongoing 11.25 x 7.5 inches Inkjet print on rag paper
70
71
No Way Back 08, 2017–ongoing 11.25 x 7.5 inches Inkjet print on rag paper
67
72
73
No Way Back 01, 2017–ongoing 11.25 x 7.5 inches Inkjet print on rag paper
No Way Back 03, 2017–ongoing 11.25 x 7.5 inches Inkjet print on rag paper
68
69
70
71
72
73
William Keihn
… a sober nonlinear portrayal of small-town American life during an era of political and economic fragility.
76
Untitled, 2018–2020 Inkjet print 32 x 24 in
78
80
Untitled, 2018–2020 Inkjet print 32 x 24 in
75
77
Untitled, 2018–2020 Inkjet print 32 x 24 in
79
Untitled, 2018–2020 Inkjet print 32 x 24 in
81
Untitled, 2018–2020 Inkjet print 32 x 24 in
76
77
78
79
80
81
Delilah Anaya
‌ one story out of more than 8 million children in the United States with the same legal circumstances‌
84
New Mexico, 2019 Inkjet print 17 x 22 in
86
87
88
Wetback, New Mexico, 2019 Inkjet print 17 x 22 in
New Mexico, 2019 Inkjet print 17 x 22 in
83
85
New Mexico, 2019 Inkjet print 17 x 22 in
89
New Mexico, 2019 Inkjet print 17 x 22 in
84
85
86
87
88
89
Alayna N. Pernell
Am I able to go out in public and do anything without a fear being unsafe? Am I able to be in the privacy of my home without a fear of being unsafe?
92
93
We Were Getting Our Phone, 2019 Inkjet print 9 x 13 inches
We Were Walking in the Park, 2019 Inkjet print 9 x 13 inches
94
95
When Will My Body Be Seen as Valuable?, 2019 Inkjet print 9 x 13 inches
Does My Body Have Value?, 2019 Inkjet print 9 x 13 inches
96
97
We Were Sleeping in Bed, 2019 Inkjet print 9 x 13 inches
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
Caitlin McCullough
‌ the intersection of humor and horror, and how the two seemingly opposite emotions overlap.
100
101
Scully, You’re Not Gonna Believe This, 2019 Inkjet print 14 x 11 inches
Stories Wanted, Email collectiveabyss @gmail.com, 2019 Inkjet print 42 x 42 inches
102
The Creeping Daisies Are At It Again, 2019 Inkjet print 23 x 18 inches 104
103
Untitled, 2019 Inkjet print 14 x 11 inches
105
Lake Michigan Water Monster, 2019 Inkjet print 23 x 18 inches
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
Megan Tepper
‌ a way to learn and process feelings about my body; feelings that are never replicated two days in a row.
108
110
A Show of Empowerment, 2019 Archival pigment print 20 x 24 inches 112
Laying/Posing for Him, 2019 Archival pigment print 24 x 20 inches
107
109
Mirror/Affection, 2019 Archival pigment print 24 x 20 inches
111
Grab/Desire, 2019 Archival pigment print 8 x 10 inches
113
Untitled (Everyone Does), 2019 Archival pigment print 11 x 14 inches
108
109
110
111
112
113
Stephanie Schwiederek
… aspects of a domestic space, trauma, denial, repression, and the roles they play within a family.
116
Princess Nightgown, 2019 Inkjet print 16 x 24 inches
118
119
Untitled (Mom’s Letter, Inside Text), 2019 Found family archive 8.25 x 11.75 inches
A Cat Among English Daisies, 2019 Inkjet print 16 x 24 inches
120
115
117
Every Mom…, 2019 Inkjet print 27 x 40 inches
121
Mom in the Backyard, 2018 Inkjet print 24 x 30 inches
116
117
118
119
120
121
Statements
82 – 89
MFA 2021
Delilah Anaya This work gives insight into liminality and exemplifies how our virtues don’t always align with the rule of law. It is also rooted in location, the border and the Rio Grande. This is one story out of more than 8 million children in the United States with the same legal circumstances, Cesar and his four siblings are U.S. citizens, both of his parents are “undocumented.” He lives with his family in a small southwest town of Anthony, New Mexico. The work is titled “In Between.” The U.S. has single handedly changed Central America’s politics and economy with banana interest by murdering farm peasants in military raids, using coups, propaganda to persuade U.S. citizens of Guatemala Communism, to name a few. I want to bring awareness to consumer shoppers of the inhumane legacy of Chiquita by making my own labels for their bananas. I will appropriate Chiquita labels in site specific places like Target, which sells Chiquita from Honduras and Guatemala. A QR code will be on the labels to lead the consumer to a site with information. Photos of Central American migrants I have taken will be graphically designed for the labels, the new name will be Todoquita (take/remove everything).
123
10 – 17
MFA 2021
Arda Asena As a boy growing up in Turkey’s conservative society, I was obsessed with toy horses. A stallion’s strong muscles embodied masculinity. But I associated its long beautiful hair with Barbie dolls, which I was made to feel ashamed for playing with. Early on I learned to compartmentalize my identity between my public self and my private desires and fantasies, inspiring my artistic approach. Having to perform heteronormativity in public, even within my own family—the smallest unit of society—I silenced myself so much that I forgot I had a voice to share. Unable to express my truth, I became an observer. This led me to find my voice through my lens. In 2009, I began having seizures and was diagnosed with generalized epilepsy. Soon after I became interested in visualizing these experiences, both the physical loss of control and the shifting between light and darkness, as a way to explore the unknown. During my seizures I undergo severe convulsions and experience an unconscious state of mind, allowing me to enter an unfamiliar and dark place— both literally and figuratively. Therefore, my practice focuses on the connection and disconnection between mind and body, and how social and psychological stresses of a repressive society affect the physicality. Through my work I attempt to expose alienation in modern sexuality and be an audience to my unknown. As an artist I consider my work to have a form of psychological release, giving access to the unconscious and questioning the familiar.
124
18 – 25
MFA 2020
Billie Carter-Rankin What brings value to the personal archive? How long does the personal archive hold its value? These are the questions I have contemplated over the previous year when I found my grandmother’s images and cards from the mid-20th century. I’ve been questioning the reason for keeping such memories, especially since my grandmother doesn’t remember some of the memories she’s saved. As I’ve been exploring the topic of the archive, I’ve been reprinting my grandmother’s images and using items such as paint and toner to manipulate the images to represent the fading of memory overtime. As I’ve continued this experimentation, however, I’ve discovered more broader questions: What does it mean to have access to an archive? Who has access to the resources to preserve the archive for generations to come? In what other forms does the archive exist besides in an image?
125
58 – 65
MFA 2020
Chelsea Emuakhagbon I have always believed most beliefs and opinions about issues surrounding the topic of social justice to be formed without a basic understanding of the disruptions created within society that has left a gap in-between certain societal social structures. This lack of humanity does not allow for the formation of the bridges needed in order to begin the residual washing of said disruptions. Without a basic understanding of the universal definition of humanity and the purpose it serves in catalyzing the bridge building process, the social structures within our society will remain in pieces.
126
42 – 49
MFA 2020
Olivia Alonso Gough + Nico Segall Tobon Our collaboration started casually as we are both photographers. We wanted to see each other and we wanted to see us together. We wanted to see us taking up space in each others lives. We compulsively made photos of each other, spending our time apart editing the images and sending them back and forth. We got to know each other through image making. We began to build an archive of images and were able to start looking back on the time that we spent and the different ways in which we made pictures together. We were creating an archive that felt sacred because it was ours. Our images are shot on iPhones, in photo booths, disposable cameras, 35mm point and shoots, medium format. We enjoy a non-hierarchy in image making and processing. We are each the viewer, the viewed and the audience. We are taking responsibility for our place in collective queer history-memory making by turning the camera on ourselves and denying a uniform reading of each image so that we may be an honest representation of love, care, and queerness to others and so others might see a part of themselves in these depictions.
127
74 – 81
MFA 2020
William Keihn Verging On Gas City is a native visualization of a contemporary Rust Belt county in East Central Indiana, a meditation on how place performs itself and its history and how photography situates itself in the visual dovetail of fact and fiction. Through environmental portraiture, landscape photography, scenic abstractions and approp riated images, this work offers a sober nonlinear portrayal of smalltown American life during an era of political and economic fragility. As we see so often, definite depictions of culture are swiftly absorbed by neoliberal globalism, inline with its desire to market all of human identity and experience. As mass media depictions and representations of collective identity are codified, they are just as quickly sold back to the very people from which they were lifted. We witness this in the news we read and the products we consume. The aim for this work has been to wriggle beyond didactic modes of address related to the spectacle of deindustrialization and to intuitively direct the viewer toward the periphery of the spectacle— the small daily dramas—allowing for emotional interiority to be recognized in eclipse of the visual statistics of photojournalism and straight documentary’s heavy-handed dogma. Verging on Gas City is an offering of the non-prescriptive, and may be best considered a set of tools with which the viewer is able to build toward their own determinations in a personal search for meaning and purpose under the influence of modern capitalism.
128
98 – 105
MFA 2021
Caitlin McCullough As a photographer, I am drawn to the liminal spaces at the edge of perception. Spaces that the eyes slides easily over. Spaces where things… gather. I collect images of these overlooked places. These collections have featured found, documentary images, in both black and white and color. My color work, most recently completed before my arrival at graduate school, relied on exploring surrounding areas during the blue hours to capture places in transition during transitional times. My current body of work combines these encountered, collected images with images of my own construction. I’m exploring the intersection of humor and horror, and how the two seemingly opposite emotions overlap. Inspired by my own use of humor as a coping mechanism for anxiety and fear, I’m creating a body of work that exists as an amalgamation of found and created imagery. I want to use the duality of photography to speak to the duality of emotions; the fact that photographs are simultaneously truth and fiction. This series is ongoing and I look forward to delving deeper into how these emotions interact.
129
90 – 97
MFA 2021
Alayna N. Pernell Am I able to go out in public and do anything without a fear being unsafe? Am I able to be in the privacy of my home without a fear of being unsafe? Through images, performance and text, Chagrin Melodies navigates through these questions by revealing the perplexity of my awareness of the suspicion and curiosity other human beings have towards the Black female body while simultaneously confronting this futile suspicion. The images contain a duality where confrontation and anxiety meet. Based off of extensive and ongoing research through various archived media reports on harmed Black bodies, I navigate through these ideas and questions through performing the mundane act a Black person was doing before they were harmed. The risk of my body being subject to violence expands as I age. As a Black American woman, I am reminded of this not by the passing of each birthday, but by the passing of each moment. The reality of my body being hyper-surveilled, based off of my race and/or gender, in turn makes me aware and overprotective of my own body.
130
34 – 41
MFA 2020
Austin Pope In 1933, Dr. Carter G Woodson wrote The Mis-Education of the Negro, which articulated how African Americans were being indoctrinated into society rather than being educated. In 2013, Mayor Rahm Emmanuel and Chicago Public Schools closed over 40 schools on the North, South and West sides of Chicago, claiming that they were underutilized and not performing to city/state standards. Each of these schools were primarily serving students of color, with a population of no less than 60 percent Black and Latino students. I began a case study in 2016, revisiting these former school buildings while keeping in mind the following questions: what does it mean to have abandoned space in your community? What impact does closing an institution have on a local neighborhood? The first series The (Mis)Education of (Black) Chicago documents the schools six years after the proposed closures. Some of the buildings have been completely abandoned. Others have been repurposed as upper middle-class housing or charter schools. But in each case, the building an institution on longer serving in its former capacity. The second series, No Child Left Behind examines those negatively impacted by the school closures. Participants from the local community volunteer to have their picture taken in a moment of solidarity and representation.
131
26 – 33
MFA 2020
Jenny Rafalson The term Sabra in Hebrew refers to a Jewish person born in Israel, in contrast to a Jewish immigrant to the county. It came into common use in the 1930s and is compared to its comparison to the thorny desert cactus, with its sweet, soft fruit covered in thorns, suggests that the Israeli Sabra is rough and “spiny” on the outside but soft and sweet on the inside. Following the move to Chicago, the question of belonging re-appears again to me. I started to question my Israeli identity that I took for granted. Am I really Israeli? How Israeli am I? How long does it take to belong? Is it just time? Or is it a spectrum of things? Or is it the opinion of someone with power? What is it belonging? And what is a lack of belonging? These feelings led me to write the Ten Commandments of Changing One’s Identity and attach screen prints of three of them. I’m using the prickly pear in a way to define myself as a woman, as a counter to the immigrant. Even though it’s not a native plant in the Levant, I found it remarkably interesting to compare myself to a plant brought from Central America 500 years ago by the Spanish and whose name was taken from the Arab language to refer to a Jewish person born in Israel. All my life I wanted to be Sabra, I wanted to have roots and belonging, and only here in Chicago, I understood how similar we are. Me and the prickly pear.
132
114 – 121
MFA 2020
Stephanie Schwiederek Two years ago, while searching through my mother’s personal archive, I found a letter written to her. It was postmarked July 1994 and addressed to her while we were just starting out at the Pine Brook Motel. The letter was from one of her sisters in Czechoslovakia (now the Czech and Slovak Republic), where she was born. “Jarka” was written on the back of the envelope, it was the only indication of who it was from. There was no return address. I thought how I never knew much about my mother or her life before moving to America. Growing up, she always seemed aloof, distant, and disconnected from my father’s family and from the people that lived around us. All the Pretty Things is deeper than a documentation of the relationship between my mother and myself, and her space. My work touches on the aspects of a domestic space, trauma, denial, repression, and the roles they play within a family. My mother, now sixty-six, has yet to obtain a green card, or permanent resisdent status, and is confined to a self-imposed exile in her own apartment where she spends most of her days. With this in mind, her home has become a place for solitude, and a fortress of personal repreive. Filled with her trinkets, her kitchy treasures that I see now make her life a little more bright, more “liveable.”
133
106 – 113
MFA 2020
Megan Tepper I am an interdisciplinary artist from Ohio. My practice has been an ongoing exploration of the personal reality of inhabiting a fat body and what that means in regards to interpersonal relationships: namely familial, romantic, the other, and the self. While temporarily halting family work, I have been working through notions of the self through romance, sexuality, and inanimate objects. The images I make of myself are a way to learn and process feelings about my body; feelings that are never replicated two days in a row. I am learning to look closer at the flesh and the lines, curves, and marks that I haven’t paid attention to. In one attempt, I have crafted a life-sized doll. Her name is Meg and she is part myself, part imaginary friend come to life, part lover, and part oversized body pillow. Meg is company to keep, someone to teach self-tenderness, and a surrogate for the relationships I have that are too far away to exist in day-to-day reality. In another, I am making work once more regarding the nature of a new romantic and sexual relationship. This type of work in the past was a direct response to having been told in my formative years that “no boy will ever like me because I am fat.” In contrast, it has become a new exploration of what it means when a boy likes me because I am fat. The images are in part a memento and reminder of intimacy that is possible again.
134
66 – 73
MFA 2021
Ruoqi Wang This book project is about my birth father. I developed a narrative through multiple original texts and more than 100 photographs made on damaged, burnt, wash-out, and bleached photographs.
Before this project, I had almost no connection to my father
for two years. It was not until April 2017, my aunt suddenly told me that his second marriage was not as good as it first seemed, but plunged him deeper into debt and more emotionally isolated. So after a lot of psychological struggles, I finally decided to call my father and remove him from my WeChat blacklist. He was very happy that we could get back in touch and welcomed me to get to know more and photograph his current life. However, on the fourth visit, he projected his anger of others on me, thundering at me. He said, “You don’t have to come to me anymore.”
135
50 – 57
MFA 2020
Ang Zheng I moved to the United States when I was twenty, and began learning English as a second language through the study of literature. Reading informed my understanding of how the world around me worked, and catalyzed my engagement with aspects of the world that were meaningful to me. My training in writing enabled me to formalize thought into text and contextualize my work in the legacy of others. This experience with the English language through literary criticism taught me that other possibilities, other languages affect me. Photography affects me. Its immediacy, its difficulty, its intractability, its stillness, its temperature at which I read the fantastic lives of the others, many of whom have offered me comfort and courage, whose works have made possible my own photographs, my own secret desires… All of photography’s contradictory complexities destabilize my relationship to reality and fantasy and offer another possibility of being in this world. Therefore I photograph. Through photography I engage with the world—people, things, scenes that are meaningful to me—and I weave my photographs with texts that reflect on these engagements. Many subjects of my photography are queer and gender non-conforming young adults, who in their own way rewrite the world and their relationships to it—a way of being and writing that I am coming to terms with. I introduce written text onto my prints at times, tracing the outline of the subject, delineating my process of relating to these worlds and the difficulties inherent to it, and formalizing my wavy relationship to the world. These photo-texts combine two formal languages that I acquired in order to reconstruct my world, afford me opportunities to re-engage with many worlds outside of mine, and in turn rewrite me. 136
137
Directed by Aimée Beaubien
Edited by Kristin Taylor
Designed by Shelf Shelf
Aimée Beaubien is an assistant professor in the department of photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, IL.
Kristin Taylor is the curator of academic programs and collections at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, IL.
Shelf Shelf is a publishing imprint and collaborative deisgn practice operated by Lucas Reif and Austin White in Chicago, IL.
Thank you to all artists in the MFA Photography program at SAIC for their work and contributions.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or retransmitted in any form or by any means, electronical or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writin from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Thank you to Kristin Taylor for the time spent learning about each artist through studio visits. Thank you to Aimée Beaubien for the time spent facilitating the production of the annual catalog publication.
1
10 – 17
… the connection and disconnection between mind and body, and how social and psychological stresses of a repressive society affect the physicality.
18 – 25
How long does the personal archive hold its value?
26 – 33
… using the Prickly pear in a way to define myself as a woman, as a counter to the immigrant.
34 – 41
What does it mean to have abandoned space in your community?
42 – 49
… creating an archive that felt sacred because it was ours.
50 – 57
… queer and gender non-conforming young adults, who in their own way rewrite the world and their relationships to it.
58 – 65
… most beliefs and opinions about issues surrounding the topic of social justice to be formed without a basic understanding of the disruptions created within society that has left a gap in-between certain social structures.
66 – 73
… he projected his anger of others on me, thundering at me. He said, “You don’t have to come to me anymore.”
74 – 81
… a sober nonlinear portrayal of small-town American life during an era of political and economic fragility.
82 – 89
… one story out of more than 8 million children in the United States with the same legal circumstances…
90 – 97
Am I able to go out in public and do anything without a fear being unsafe? Am I able to be in the privacy of my home without a fear of being unsafe?
98 – 105
… the intersection of humor and horror, and how the two seemingly opposite emotions overlap.
106 – 113
… a way to learn and process feelings about my body; feelings that are never replicated two days in a row.
114 – 121
… aspects of a domestic space, trauma, denial, repression, and the roles they play within a family.
SAIC
Master of Fine Arts in Photography 2020
2