Frank Curran

Portals

As a street photographer, I often include people in my images of the urban environment. But when I unintentionally began this on-going project, in early 2020, the streets were empty. 

In a fortuitous way, this condition forced me to look elsewhere – within windows, storefronts, and at reflections. I discovered that windows can become portals to new worlds. Worlds not bound by narrative or literal constraints as expressed in traditional street photography, but a space where imagination can roam and meaning is ambiguous, subjective or entirely elusive. Some might call it surreal.

About

A graduate of Hunter College and Boston University, early in Frank’s career he studied creative photography with Carl Chiarenza, Stephan Gersh and Chris Enos. He has continued his studies by taking workshops with Emily Belz and Vaughn Sills at the Griffin Museum of Photography.

An assignment photographer for more than 40 years, Frank’s personal photography has begun to take its place alongside his commercial work.

Frank has exhibited work in two person shows at the Trident Bookseller Café on Newbury Street in Boston, and The Brookline Public Library and has appeared in group shows at the Davis/Orton Gallery in Hudson, NY, the A Smith Gallery in Johnson City TX, the Los Angeles Center for Digital Arts, the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA, the Bromfield Gallery in Boston, the Black Box Gallery in Portland OR, the Praxis Gallery in Minneapolis and a Juror’s Choice Award for his image, “Strolling Through the Light Industrial Zone” from the Southeast Center of Photography in Greenville, SC.

Nancy A. Nichols

Photography in the Age of Digital Reproduction

This is a photography project about photography; about the challenge of making pictures in a society awash in images.

Frustrated and overwhelmed by the sheer number of photos I encountered each day, I yearned to make truly unique images.  For this project, I photographed common household items up close to make them look larger than life, printed them digitally and then hand colored them with pastels and pencils. My goal was to make one-of-a-kind pieces of art out of mass-produced consumer objects—many of which are iconic in their own right.

My work was heavily influenced by an essay written almost 100 years ago entitled The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In this classic 1936 article philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin, clearly saw and carefully detailed the dangers that modern printing and photographic processes posed for artists as they began to struggle with something new to them—the near constant reproduction of images of all kinds. Benjamin argued forcefully that something is lost when a handmade piece of art is reproduced by a printing press. He thought that the very act of reproduction reduced the specialness or “aura” of an object. 

To introduce Benjamin’s ideas to a contemporary audience, I asked ChatGPT, an AI chatbot, to elucidate and comment on his article.  A screen recording of that conversation plays continuously on an iPad near the photographs I made—including AI generated advice for restoring the authentic “aura” of an art object. These bot-generated tips stand next to my own efforts to create something unique out of something commonplace; my own effort to make art amidst the constant creation and replication of images and the tsunami of artificiality we all experience every day.

About

Nancy A. Nichols is a photographer, writer, and editor.  She holds an MFA in photography from New England College (2020) and has held editorial positions at The Harvard Business Review and The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour. A Critical Mass top 200 photographer, her work has been featured in shows at the Griffin Museum, A. Smith Gallery, and PhotoPlace Gallery.  She is the author of Lake Effect: Two Sisters and a Town’s Toxic Legacy—a book on the environmental causes of illness. Her next book, Women Behind the Wheel, a history of women and cars, will be published by Pegasus Books in March 2024.

Becky Behar

Tu Que Bivas

Tu Que Bivas is part of a Sephardic blessing my parents often invoked: “May you live, grow, and thrive like a little fish in freshwater.” I am a Sephardic Jew, part of the diasporic population expelled from Spain during the Inquisition in the late 15th century. My family’s migrations have taken us from Turkey to Colombia to the United States. Throughout, we have maintained our Ladino language, Jewish religion, and Sephardic customs.

My photographs explore how my mother and daughter continue to enact these traditions and rituals today. As I contemplate their different ways of preserving and celebrating our history, I consider my own relationship to this heritage and what interpretations my daughter will carry forward.

About

Becky Behar is a photo-based artist born in Colombia and now living in the suburbs of Boston. Her richly choreographed portraits and still lifes investigate motherhood, the passage of time, and what we carry through generations. Behar began photographing her three children as they matured into adults. Her compositions reflect embellished autobiographical and fictional narratives about their transition to adulthood and Behar’s shifting maternal identity as her children left home. With incandescent subject matter emerging from rich shadows, her photographs evoke Dutch oil paintings, replete with symbols of transience, family, and faith. Behar punctuates portraits with still lifes that mark the present-day, rendering plastic bags luminous amongst cherries and figs. Here, home is an idea, not a place.

Behar has exhibited at national and international galleries including solo exhibitions with Kniznick Gallery (Waltham, MA), The Griffin Museum of Photography (Winchester, MA), Workspace Gallery (Lincoln, NE) and at Concord Free Public Library (Concord, MA) where she was an Artist in Residence. This experience allowed her to tailor the exhibit to the venue and teach photography workshops for young adults. Her group exhibitions include the Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts (Providence, RI), Photographic Resource Center (Cambridge, MA), Woodmere Museum (Philadelphia, PA), and FotoNostrum Gallery (Barcelona, Spain). Behar’s work has been featured in A Photo Editor, Float Photo Magazine, Fraction Magazine, The Boston Globe, Jewish Boston and What Will You Remember?.

Behar has received multiple acknowledgements for her work including being a Photolucida Critical Mass top 200 finalist (2020), a finalist for the Griffin Museum of Photography John Chervinsky Emerging Photographer Scholarship (2020), and was an awardee with the 16th Annual Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers (2021). Behar’s most recent honors include a Concord Cultural Council Grant (2022), and a Combined Jewish Philanthropies Grant (2023). This Fall, she will become a Visiting Scholar at Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies Research Center where she will continue to research and develop her photography portfolios. 

Linda Wolk

Juxtapositions

Noun

jux· ta· po· si· tion, ˌjək-stə-pə-ˈzi-shən 

the act or an instance of placing two or more things side by side often to compare or contrast or to create an interesting effect               (merriam-webster.com)

Long looking yields great rewards. It’s like an onion — start with the whole and then peel back to reveal each layer and discover the details. Some are beautiful and some not so pretty but all are interesting.

Flowers are a favorite subject of mine; they are very cooperative models. I photograph them over days and marvel at their beauty and complexity while watching them mature and fade. While creating these images I remembered photographs in my archives. I was inspired to make connections between my current and past work based on shape, color or mood. Take a closer look. What connections do you see? 

About

Linda Wolk is a photographer in the Boston area who takes pleasure in making images that document the world she lives in and how she sees it. She records her family, everyday observances, her love of travel, and the details of her environment with her camera.

Wolk was born and raised in New Jersey but has spent her adult life in the Boston area. A graduate with BS and MA degrees from Boston University and Columbia University she spent time teaching in elementary school classrooms guiding the minds and eyes of her students. For 20+ years she was a member of the MFA Boston’s Department of Education serving as a Gallery Instructor taking students from grades 1 – 12 through the galleries and introducing them to art and the art of looking. Always interested in visual arts but discouraged by art instructors Wolk began studying photography at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA as an adult and discovered that she could make art! She has continued taking classes and workshops in the greater Boston area including ones offered at the Radcliffe Seminars, the Griffin Museum of Photography and the Arlington Center of the Arts as well as workshops given in Costa Rica, Cuba, Iceland and many places in the United States. Currently she is enrolled in the Atelier 37 class offered at the Griffin. Her work has been exhibited at the DeCordova Museum, the Leventhal-Sidman JCC, Lexington’s Cary Memorial Library, the Bedford Public Library and the Lexington Community Center.

Michael King

Flight From Abstraction

In the early 20th century, the Russian artist Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935) painted his seminal work, The Black Square. This painting launched the abstract art movement in which representational forms from the natural world, such as birds, were deliberately obscured from view.   Strolling through modern art galleries I have tried to imagine how the paintings would change if the “birds” were able to reappear from their captivity. In this series, I utilize photomontage to explore the narrow boundary where reality and imagination intersect and birds can escape the rigid confines of abstract painting. 

I have always enjoyed bird photography. Through the years I have taken thousands of avian photographs. Most of the birds in this series, with a few noted exceptions, originated from my own collection where, for years, they have been patiently waiting to join a photography project like this one.

About

Michael King is a Massachusetts based photographer.  He is a retired physicist who worked in diverse fields of optical imaging. King has achievements and inventions in 3-dimensional holographic imaging, electron device photolithography and refractive eye surgery (PRK). A lifelong interest in photographic expression has led him to his present pursuit, using digital photography to explore the intersection between real and imagined realities.

King has exhibited his photos in group and juried exhibitions at venues including the Griffin Museum of Photography (Winchester, MA) the Concord Art Association (Concord, MA), PhotoPlace Gallery (Middlebury, VT), and the Praxis Gallery (Minneapolis, MN). Early in his career he had a hologram accepted into the Museum of Holography in Manhattan which later transferred its collections to the MIT Museum in Boston. 

King has studied photography at the Griffin Museum, NESOP and the deCordova Museum all located in Massachusetts and at Maine Media.  He holds a Ph.D. in physics from Carnegie Mellon University. 

Anthony Attardo

Stories of Quiet Resolve

“Stories offer an outlet for individuals to defy their anonymity, provide solace, and empower

themselves and others.”  — text from a recent Portland Museum of Art exhibit.

These photographs, made at night, explore the quiet resolve and resiliency of the people who live in  small towns across New Hampshire.  

Although there are no people in these photos, nevertheless they contain signs of a calm, steady human presence—footprints on a darkened basketball court, an empty small airport waiting room, two chairs representing the possible remnants of a past conversation.  

Each photo extends an invitation to the viewer to contemplate who might live in these spaces, to feel their presence, and imagine their voices.  Each one is a small part of a larger story. 

As the American novelist John Steinbeck has said: “You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.”  I hope you can feel the people of these small New Hampshire towns in these photos. 

About

Anthony Attardo is a New Hampshire based photographer. He is passionate about using his camera to illustrate the essence of the day to day found in small urban and rural spaces, and as a means to bring people together.

From an early age, the conversation at the Attardo family dinner table wasn’t about food, it was treating people with dignity and respect no matter where they were in life, what they looked like, or where they came from. Today, this powerful lesson is the driving force of Attardo’s photography. His photographs tell stories from a personal perspective, and his images reveal a belief that respect and humility are the greatest common denominators. 

Attardo’s photographs have been exhibited at the Vermont Center for Photography in Brattleboro, VT, the Kimball Jenkins School of Art in Concord, NH, and the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA. He has studied at the New England School of Photography, the New Hampshire Institute of Art, and the Photography Atelier at the Griffin Museum of Photography. 

He is inspired by Alan Cohen’s words, “Do not wait until conditions are perfect to begin. Beginning makes conditions perfect.”

Betsy Banks

Tangled In Decision

I struggle when making life decisions that require commitment and a leap into the unknown.  Blocked by a tangle of confusion and a fog of uncertainty, I analyze multiple options and uncover risks in each possibility. I never choose one. Instead, I freeze – stuck in the fear of being trapped in a wrong decision.

A couple of looming crossroads recently re-surfaced this clenched place of fragmented and repetitive thinking. I wanted to explore this response to indecision in hopes of loosening its grip. Feeling grounded in nature, I went searching for symbols of my inner world. 

The work that emerged is laced with a sense of loss from decisions made by me not making them. Leaps never taken. How many parallel lives evaporated while I stood still, waiting for the guaranteed right choice to somehow appear? Through this project, I’ve grown to understand more deeply that staying cautiously stuck in my mind doesn’t keep me safe. The risk is not stepping into the unknown; the risk is staying frozen while the opportunity disappears forever. The inherent complexity of the natural world reminds me that I am part of a much larger story – one that rarely reveals itself with clarity. It is the leap that moves the story forward.

About

Betsy Banks is an educator and photographer whose work explores place and connection to the natural world. She often uses multiples to investigate and reveal pattern, transformation, and association. Intrigued by the relationship between people and place, Betsy studied anthropology and environmental science (BA Bowdoin College/MS Miami University) and has focused her career on experiential education, conservation, and community engagement – interests which also inform her photography. Currently located in northeast Ohio, Betsy works at a university civic engagement center, coordinating educational programs that connect college students and the Cleveland community. To share her love of photography, Betsy serves on the steering committee of an organization that promotes photographic arts in Cuyahoga Valley National Park and works as a teaching assistant for Doug Johnson Photography Workshops, exploring beautiful, wild places through photography.

David Brown

Beloved

I first became interested in in my project topic after a group I was traveling with happened upon a rural cemetery.  It seemed extremely well-kept for such a remote location, with an eclectic assortment of colorful and ornate tombstones, memorials, and simple markers.  Plots were covered in flowers, stones in various patterns, flags and medallions, and small ceramic figurines.  Effort went into these publicly held private conversations with the dead, rooted in a mixture of tradition and personalization.  I decided to dive a bit deeper when I got home.

The months preceding my trip had been filled with unexpected loss.  Several childhood friends and a nephew died.  I observed other exchanges with departed friends and family and thought about my own conversations with the dead.  Was I remembering them the way they would have hoped.  How would I be remembered?

The things that are left when others pay a visit to those who have passed on.  These artifacts symbolize a deeply personal and thoughtful ritual that speaks to the connection between we the living and our dearly departed friends and family … and perhaps something more.

About

Dave Brown is a free-lance photographer based in Dover, MA.  A native of Newburyport, MA, he has lived and traveled the globe courtesy of military service and a technology consulting career.  This has afforded Dave the opportunity to photograph a variety of people and places.  

Dave runs a veteran-owned business that uses digital and drone technology.  He photographs landscapes, gatherings, celebrations, and sporting events.  Through his work Dave seeks connections that will draw the viewer in, combining an interesting subject with the changes offered by varying illumination patterns, settings, and compositions.

Dave is self-taught and continues to evolve his craft through his assignments and encounters.

Chelsea Silbereis

Compassionating – 2023

I love the crush of these children. I’ll just lie on the ground purely for the thrill of feeling them climb me and press me down hard. It feels like full-body contentment, right up until it gets too close. Then it feels like drowning. As a result, I move between availability, aloofness, and irritability even though compassionating continuously is my goal.

Compassionating explores the tension I experience creating a healthy emotional life for my kids over my background of childhood and generational trauma.  I pick up my camera when I’m on the brink of these changeable mood states and I photograph our everyday.

When the emotions get to be too much we turn to the landscape to try and regulate. I see my experience played out in intimate natural scenes: existential dread in the fluff from a milkweed pod, hope in a crisp line of illuminated water along the edge of a late fall berry, the twists and turns of failing and trying again in the gnarls of an old stump.

The resulting series of photographs are built into a handmade book with interactive components that invite the viewer to handle the pages and the photos themselves. The inevitable imprint of their handling feels like my inevitable imprint on my kids; no matter how careful I am, I will leave unintended marks. 

About

Chelsea Silbereis is a photographer exploring themes of family and domestic life, intimacy, and generational trauma living and working near Boston, MA. Chelsea has had a non-traditional photography education including many internet-based photography workshops, having a photographer parent, and self-directed study of 20th-century photographers. 

Her photos have appeared in group exhibitions at The Curated Fridge, PhotoPlace Gallery and she is a current Boston Center for the Arts Resident. 

Chelsea’s commissioned work involves embedding with families to document their real life with an unfiltered and heartfelt lens.

She lives with her husband, 2 kids, a dog and a cat in Belmont, MA and likes to imagine the ghosts of pets past are also members of the household. 

Jena Love

The Unsolvable Conspiracy of Life

The Unsolvable Conspiracy of Life is an exploration of internal dialogues, and the complexities, vulnerabilities, and contradictions found within. Through this deeply personal work, I expose unspeakable fears, the embarrassing, and sometimes damaging thoughts that consume me, and the unanswerable questions that inhabit my brain. By making visible the inner workings and tangled tapestries of my own mind – the neurodivergent mind of a working parent of three young children – I present a case study for the intricate neural patterns and pathways that knit together the landscapes of an individual’s thoughts. Though based on my own viewpoint, this work articulates a more universal experience of the weight and responsibility of life and parenthood – of living lives that are not solely our own.

Using the visual languages of documentary photography and candid snapshots, I create a pictorial framework, reminiscent of a detective’s evidence board, within which I trace the interconnected webbing of both dominant and minor thought processes. Referencing the sporadic, non-linear nature of inner dialogues, the multiple branches of imagery are punctuated with poly bags containing collected samples, found artifacts and fragments of handwritten text containing specific questions, thoughts, and fears and. The installation, set on a recreation of a wall in my home, expresses the unexpected humor and absurdity we face when balancing the complexities of self with the constant, often overwhelming, responsibilities of domestic and professional life.

About

Jena Love is an artist and educator who lives and works in Sullivan County, NY. Though her background is in drawing and painting, she is currently focused on expanding her body of conceptual photography work. In her art, Love explores the complexities, ironies, challenges, humor, and beauty of motherhood. A mother of three, Love often captures herself and her family as the primary models for her images, set within the context of domestic spaces. She uses elements of documentary and typological photography, along with aspects of surrealism and farce to craft images that critically engage with the quotidian nature of family life, finding humor in the mundane. Though approached through the lens of a personal narrative, Love’s art speaks more broadly to the universal and shared experiences of mothers, parents, and children, particularly as situated within an American consumerist culture. Her work has been exhibited in various exhibitions virtually, within the United States as well as internationally. Her work has been featured in numerous publications such as LENSCRATCH, Feature Shoot, and F-stop magazine. She was named one of the 100 female photographers to watch in 2021 by Click Magazine and included in Photolucida’s Critical Mass top 50 of 2022