Stefanie Yvens, Grand Rue, May 2010

Pa Bouje Ankò: Don’t Move Again

Pa Bouje Ankò: Don’t Move Again began with the following question; “Can someone from the first world see/photograph within the third world without voyeurism or objectification?” In November 2009, I began to test this query by opening a formal portrait studio in the Grand Rue neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, and inviting members of the local community to have their portraits made. Shot with an 8×10 camera, the photographs follow the example of artists like Mike Disfarmer, James VanDer Zee and Seydou Keita, who used the commercial and utilitarian aspects of their practice to portray their subjects with a consideration and respect that is both clear-eyed and beautiful.

I was highly conscious of everything that stood in the way of a real exchange between myself and those who sat for a portrait; race, class, opportunity and lack of opportunity, the ability to move freely through the world. These things make communication difficult, as they are ever present, but rarely discussed. Because I was aware of the current and past difficulties between Haiti and the United States, I felt compelled to control the context of the images, not show them beyond Haiti, and leave their circulation in the hands of their subjects. I was afraid the images would be misconstrued or changed once they were removed from their original environment, and wanted to avoid enacting the familiar and problematic situation wherein the first world artist takes home a photograph of “the other” as souvenir. What I did not realize at the time was that this very idea – that the context of the images was something I could designate or control – was exactly what I sought to avoid. It was, in fact, both colonial and paternalistic. The context of any artwork is constantly shifting, and the context of these particular images has now shifted again. In addition to whatever they were initially, after the earthquake, the images have become both record and memorial. That event has also shifted the focus of the project, which has evolved to include various rapidly expanding communities in Port-Au-Prince. Reconstruction has introduced a new population: United Nations officials, NGO employees, volunteers, business investors, and local politicians. The first of these non-Haitian subjects I photographed was the U.S. Infantry, in May 2010. Pa Bouje Ankò is at once a request for stillness and an acknowledgement of the impossibility of that request, both for the work and its subjects. The project demands conceptual flexibility, an open mind, and an ability to function in a constant state of flux.

Leni Exavier and Joshue Brounache, Grand Rue December 2009

Gerlot Batravil and his baby, Champ Mars, March 2010

Margaret Denis, Grand Rue, December 2009

Timoun-Rezistans; Leonce Love, Alex Louis, Londel Innocent, Evans Richelieu, Makendy Louis, Grand Rue, November 2009

Jean Pierre Dadel, Champ Mars, March 2010

Michel Lafleur, Ricardo Derival and Casseus Claudel, Grand Rue, March, 2010

Slay DeRosier, Grand Rue, March 2010

Blondine Herard, Polycarpe Racine, Marriot Herard and Dachmine Herard, Grand Rue, December 2009

Bio

Laura Heyman is an artist and curator who has exhibited at The Deutsch Polen Institute, Darmstadt, Germany, Ampersand International Arts, San Francisco, California, Light Work Gallery, Syracuse, New York, P.S. 122, New York, NY, Senko Studio, Viborg, Denmark, and The National Portrait Gallery, London, UK. Her work has been published in Contact Sheet, The Photo Review and Frontiers. She is the recipient of a NYFA Strategic Opportunity Stipend and a Light Work Artist Grant. Her most recent curatorial project, “Who’s Afraid of America” featuring the work of Justyna Badach, Larry Clark, Cheryl Dunn, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Zoe Strauss and and Tobin Yelland, was exhibited at Wonderland Art Space, in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Rubens’ Dogs, 1999

Animals Are Outside Today

In 1928, Henry Beston stated regarding animals in his book, The Outermost House: “They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.” Animals Are Outside Today is a journey examining underneath this net, offering us the chance to contemplate our intersections with animals and consider the multi-layered impact humans have on other living beings. Contradictions define our relationships with animals. We love and admire them; we are entertained and fascinated by them; we take our children to watch and learn about them. Animals are embedded within core human history—evident in our stories, rituals and symbols. At the same time, we eat, wear and cage them with seeming indifference, consuming them, and their images, in countless ways. Our connection to animals today is often developed through assimilation and appropriation; we absorb them into our lives, yet we no longer know of their origin. Most people are cut off from the steps involved in their processing or acquisition, shielded from witnessing their death or decay. This work moves within these contradictions, always questioning if the notion of the sacred, and the primal connection to Nature that animals convey and inspire, will survive alongside our evolution.

Plumb’s first monograph entitled Animals Are Outside Today, has just been released by Radius Books. For more info visit their site.

Burying Jack, 2009

Trapped Bird, 2005

buffalo farm, 2008

Fox and Boy , 2001

Procyon Lotor, 1999

St. Scholastica Monkey Fetus, 2009

flamingo, 2000

Pig roast , 2005

Central Park Zoo, 2009

Oiled Sea Turtle, Louisiana, 2010

Daniel ’s Lions, 2005

Elephant House, 2000

Bio

Born and raised in Chicago, Colleen Plumb worked as a graphic designer for several years before earning her MFA in photography at Columbia College Chicago (1999). For the past 14 years she has been working on a series of photographs about animals and the myriad ways that we’ve integrated them into our lives. Her work is held in several collections including the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Milwaukee Art Museum, the Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona Beach, Florida, and Fidelity Investments in Boston. Her photographs are part of the Midwest Photographers Project at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Chicago Project at Catherine Edelman Gallery, and are featured in Photo- Eye’s Photographer’s Showcase. Currently, Plumb has a solo show on view at Jen Bekman Gallery in New York, and in Mayshe will have a solo exhibit at Dina Mitrani Gallery in Miami. Her photographs have been exhibited in numerous one-person and group exhibitions including Museum of Contemporary Photography, Milwaukee Art Museum, van Straaten Gallery in Denver, and Photographic Center Northwest in Seattle. Plumb’s work has appeared in many publications including PDN and HotShoe International, among others. She currently teaches in the Photography Department at Columbia College Chicago. website.

My dream is to realize who I truly am, 2007, Archival Piezo Print

The Live Creature and Ethereal Things

The specific genesis of, The Live Creature and Ethereal Things, was my family’s move to suburban Chicago. I found myself an outsider in a town where I knew no one. This created in me a heightened awareness of how I looked and how people looked at me. I began to experience a conscious and constant feeling of being on display.

The Live Creature and Ethereal Things, chronicles the people that pass in and out of my daily life, including both friends and family, but is primarily comprised of strangers I approach on the street. My interests lie in exploring, in both a physical and emotional sense, the ways in which people choose to present themselves, and their environment, when they know they are going to be on display. Specifically focusing on the nature of longing, self-consciousness and image as a construction. Stylistically the images are inspired by European society portraits, which convey a sense of the sitter as part of a tableau created to be examined. As a culture now in the age of facebook and social networking, we are aware of our projected selves in a new way and the methods by which photographs can be used to shape people’s perceptions. There exists simultaneously the person that we are and the person we want to be, our self-presentation often dealing more with aspirations than reality. Each subject is allowed to dress in any way they would like and choose a setting they feel comfortable in, but the final image is a negotiation between my vision of the individual and the image of themselves they are working to project. At the end of the photo session, I give each subject the opportunity to write down a dream, although they are not required to do so. The dream statements allow for a parallel declaration to be made solely by the subjects, in the form of words rather than through their image. The meaning of “dream” is left up to the subjects to determine.

Colt dueling pistols, 2010, Archival Piezo Print

David, 2007, Archival Piezo Print

My dream is to be an artist, 2007, Archival Piezo Print

My dream was about a death, 2007, Archival Piezo Print

Peach bedroom, 2009, Archival Piezo Print

My dream is that my entire family can share heaven with me, 2008, Archival Piezo Print

Joe, 2009, Archival Piezo Print

My dream is to be famous, 2007, Archival Piezo Print

Bio

Tealia Ellis Ritter was born in Illinois in 1978. She was given her first camera, a Canon F-1, at the age of six by her father. After attending Columbia College Chicago, where she completed her BA in Fine Art Photography, she earned her MFA at the University of Iowa with a major in Fine Art Photography and a minor in Printmaking. Her work has been exhibited internationally, most recently by Taschen NYC, the Magenta Foundation as a part of Flash Forward 2009, at Humble Arts “31 Under 31” exhibition, the Griffin Museum, The Photographic Center Northwest and in the multimedia project, “Pause to Begin.” She now lives and works in the Chicago area with her husband Dave, their son Finn and dog
Zoe. www.ellisritter.com

Qajar 1

Qajar

In the series Qajar, I tried to reconstruct the atmosphere of a previous era by using old backdrops. My models, chosen among close family and friends, are shown wearing clothes from the turn of the 20th century and are carrying objects, mostly smuggled, into contemporary Iran.

When I was working on this series of photographs, I had just graduated and the duality and contradiction of life at that time provided the motive for me to display this contrast: a woman who one can not say to what time she belongs; a photograph from two eras; a woman who is dazed; a woman who is not connected to the objects in her possession.

Qajar 2

Qajar 3

Qajar 4

Qajar 5

Qajar 6

Qajar 8

Qajar 9

Qajar 11

Qajar 12

Qajar 18

Qajar 22

Qajar 24

Bio

Shadi Ghadirian was born in 1974 in Tehran, Iran. She is a photographer who continues to live and work in Iran. Ghadirian studied photography at Azad University (in Tehran). After finishing her B. A., Ghadirian began her professional career as a photographer. Currently, Ghadirian works at the Museum of Photography in Tehran.

Her work is intimately linked to her identity as a Muslim woman living in Iran. Nonetheless, her art also deals with issues relevant to women living in other parts of the world. She questions the role of women in society and explores ideas of censorship, religion, modernity, and the status of women. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries across Europe, and the U.S.A. She has also been featured in print and electronic media (including the New York Times, Photography Now, the Daily Telegraph, the BBC and others). Her work is in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others. www.shadighadirian.com.

Oe Menia – with me

“I am looking for a place to spend the night. Do you know people who would have a bed, or a couch? I don’t need anything in particular, and I have a sleeping-bag. I prefer not to stay in a hotel, because I don’t have a lot of money and because I want to see the way people live in Russia. Could I stay at your place, perhaps? Thank you very much for your help!”

For three periods of one month, I have let the Trans-Siberian train guide me alongside forgotten villages, from living room to living room. Some Russian words, scribbled on a little piece of paper, allowed me to be welcomed and absorbed in the warm chaos of a family. Accidental encounters led me to the places where I could sleep. The living room, the epicentre of their life, establishes an intimate contact between the Russian inhabitants. In this room, they sleep, eat, drink, cry,… Here everything happens. For a brief moment, I was part of this. Their couch became my bed for one night. This way, I experienced transient, but very powerful, shared moments.

Bio

Bieke Depoorter was born in Kortrijk on the 29th of August 1986. She graduated at KASK in 2009 with a series on Russia, which immediately won some prizes. website.

Jessie Evans-Whinery, homesteader, with her wife Edith Evans-Whinery and their baby.

My Pie Town

My Pie Town reworks and re-imagines a body of images originally photographed by Russell Lee for the United States Farm Security Administration in 1940. Using Photoshop to modify Lee’s pictures, I have created an imaginary, parallel world – a Pie Town populated exclusively by women. In some of my revisions, I have taken male bodies and rendered them to look like masculine women; in others, I have taken pairs of women, shifted their distance and body language, and brought them closer to create a sense of intimacy. In some of the pictures I have created women so masculine, or so ambiguously gendered, that they may not, for some viewers, clearly read as one gender or the other. I’ve also left a few images untouched, allowing for another dimension of re-reading Lee’s work.

Because the images of Lee’s time in Pie Town are available in high resolution form from the Library of Congress, I was able to get close to Lee’s images on a pixel level. For me, working with photographs and editing them so closely in Photoshop is a kind of an intimate act. Zooming in and carving a feminine jaw out of a masculine one, or manipulating the touch of one woman’s hand on another’s shoulder is a way for me to access and merge my desire with figures which would have otherwise remained frozen in time.  I’ve begun to think of Photoshop itself as my medium – I’m fascinated by the fact that it shares qualities with both photography and drawing. This work creates something that reads as a photograph, and is infinitely reproducible like a photograph, but at the same time depends heavily upon the intervention of my hand.

Pie Town, New Mexico. A community settled by about 200 migrant Texas and Oklahoma farmers who filed homestead claims. Scene on a homesteader's farm.

Main Street, Pie Town

The Fae and Doris Caudill family eating dinner in their dugout.

Ann Hesse, homesteader.

Couple at community meeting.

Mildred Anthony, standing by mounted animals which she killed.

Couple at squaredance.

Swing your partner squaredance.

Nell Leathers, homesteader, shooting hawks which have been carrying away her chickens.

Virginia Norris with homegrown cabbage, one of the many vegetables which the homesteaders grow in abundance.

Ruth Leonard secures a calf in her pasture.

Garden adjacent to the dugout home of Jessie and Edith Evans-Whinery.

Jean Norris and wife Virginia Norris, homesteaders and town founders.

Picture of Jean Norris’ old farm home in Oklahoma, hanging in the Norris living room.

Bio

Debbie Grossman is interested in playing with time, re-imagining history, and reviving archival images and documents. She  received an MFA in Photography, Video, and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts, where she won the Paula Rhodes Memorial Prize, and holds a BA in Women’s Studies and Art History from Barnard College. In 2011, she will participate in the Bronx Museum’s Artist in the Marketplace program. Debbie is also a Senior Editor at Popular Photography Magazine, where she is the resident expert on image editing software and technique. Her project “My Pie Town” is represented by the Julie Saul Gallery in New York. www.debbiegrossman.com

Eton College Chapel

Public School

‘Public School’ is an ongoing exploration into the lives of children between the ages of 7 and 18 at elite boarding schools across England. Steeped in tradition and ritual, the schools encourage the adoption of an ideal model of English civility, often at the expense of individuality. These images document the order, control and rigidity of a wellmaintained institution. But behind the glossy facade there is a creeping tension between the antiquated and modern, adolescence and adulthood, labour and conservative.

Headmaster’s Classroom

Fives

Benenden

Library

Oliver

Alexandra

Stowe

Music Room

Chapel

Crossing Slough

Headmaster

Bio

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson is a British photographer based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been commissioned by The New York Times Magazine, Dazed and Confused and Burberry and exhibited at Sasha Wolf Gallery and Aperture in New York. She is currently a post-graduate student in photography at Yale. Artist’s website.

Seaside, 2008

Fisk-Vittori creates work about everyday objects and environments. Arrangements of objects are presented as photographs and installations that question the function, meaning, and history surrounding that object and display. The arrangements feature both deliberate and casual formation that satirize advertisements and lifestyle magazines. Her interest lies in the relationship between art and design, and the parallel between the gallery and ordinary spaces such as the living room. The plant life and natural elements in her work emphasize an awkward relationship between the natural and human-constructed worlds. Familiar objects are presented in situations that reveal material essence and create new visual conversations

Seeds, 2008

Computers, 2010

Composition with Dandelions, 2010

Summer Set, 2010

Nude, 2010

Deleted Scenes, 2009

Curtain, 2009

Venus Ad, 2009

Dirty Feet, 2009

Sunset, 2008

Portal, 2007

Bio

Carson Fisk-Vittori (b. 1987) was born in Austin, Texas. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009 in Interdisciplinary Studies. Her current obsessions include floral arrangement and food packaging. She has been included in group exhibitions nationally.website.

Untitled 2009, from The Gray Line

The Gray Line

Presented in conjunction with Daniel Cooney Fine Art

“The Gray Line,” Kristine Potter’s first solo exhibition at Daniel Cooney Fine Art, culls from images made during the last four years as she has been mining her complex feelings toward the military, a subject which she has long, familial connection. For many generations most of the men in her family earned their living and defined their purpose as military officers. Growing up in this military culture, Potter’s childhood was saturated with orderliness, hierarchy, patriotism and a certain knowledge of “the enemy”. Being a child (and adult) interested in nuance, culture, progressive ideas and non-conformity, she was often at odds with the governing forces in her life.  She says of her childhood, “True respect aside, I struggled to understand war and how one could take command to  engage… I wanted to understand the organization of violence and power, and I yearned to  humanize the tough exteriors of these men against all of the anxieties I felt when thinking of their jobs and of their structure.”

Despite the long line of military men in Potter’s family, her generation has declined to enroll, ending the long lineage.

Continuing her interest in large format portraiture, Kristine has garnered access to West Point Military Academy, an Academy that has trained a number of men in her family and has produced a greater number of high-ranking officers and politicians than any other U.S. military academy. She uses a view camera to produce images of cadets that explore ideas about masculinity, expectation, allegiance, sexuality, vulnerability and death, catching them before they are fully formed soldiers and officers. While traditional portraiture of soldiers serves to show their achievements, excellence and their sense of duty, Potter’s images describe the complicated psychologies under their developing personas. She extracts something uniquely emotional about each cadet while also imposing upon the images certain reservations and attractions she has about soldiers in training. The resulting images balance between the languages of the documentary and of the staged with an effect that provides a compelling counterweight to live-feed coverage of our wars and of traditional military portraiture.

Untitled, 2009 From The Gray Line

Untitled 2009, from The Gray Line

Untitled 2009, from The Gray Line

Untitled 2005, from The Gray Line

Untitled 2009, from The Gray Line

Untitled 2010, from The Gray Line

Untitled 2010, from The Gray Line

Untitled 2009, from The Gray Line

Untitled 2009, from The Gray Line

Bio

Kristine Potter was born in Dallas, Texas in 1977. She earned both a BFA in Photography and a BA in Art History at the University of Georgia in 2000. From 2000 – 2003 Kristine lived and worked as a professional printer in Paris, France. In 2005 she earned her MFA in Photography from Yale University. Potter’s work has been exhibited in Paris, New York City, Miami, Atlanta and Raleigh, NC. She will be having her first major solo exhibition with Daniel Cooney Fine Art in November 2010. Artist’s  website.

Kristina, 22 years old, is the only transgender or male sex worker who works in the street on a regular basis. She has been the victim of numerous incidents of violence, physical as well as emotional and psychological. Skopje, Macedonia 2010

Isolation, Vulnerability and Courage:
Sex Workers in Macedonia

In Macedonia, as throughout the world, sex workers are pushed to the margins of society by a combination of prejudice, discrimination, and violence. Sex workers inhabit a particularly vulnerable position in Macedonian society, facing harassment and violence not only from their clients and pimps, but also from law enforcement officials and other authorities. These abuses include physical violence, illegal detention, compulsory testing for sexually transmitted diseases, and rape, which are compounded by substandard enforcement of law and lack of access to health and support services.  Adding to these challenges are the risks of HIV/AIDS and other STDs, drug addiction, a hostile public attitude, and mass-media harassment. Because of the tremendous negative stigma connected to prostitution in Macedonia, most sex workers are living double lives, concealing the fact that they are sex workers from their families and the communities in which they live. A disproportionate number of street-based sex workers, those most vulnerable, are members of the Roma community, Macedonia’s most harshly discriminated against ethnic minority group. Gay and transgender sex workers are often targeted and further marginalized because of their sexual or gender orientation.

Building upon my previous long-term projects documenting the lives of sex workers in New York City, I spent several weeks in the spring of 2010 photographing and recording the stories of sex workers in Macedonia. I collaborated closely with Healthy Options Project Skopje (HOPS) to create the body of work, spending many days at their drop-in center, joining the outreach team in the streets and in the Roma community, and visiting sex workers in their homes. I recorded hours of audio interviews and conversations with the people I photographed, as well as the sounds of the streets and rooms where they live and work. Because of the sensitivity of the topic and the previous negative exposure sex workers have suffered in Macedonian media, it was essential to me to not only work closely with HOPS, but also to discuss the project directly with the sex workers themselves. Almost all of the people I photographed in Macedonia were eager to tell their stories but asked that I conceal their identities from the viewer; they wanted to be seen and heard but were terrified of being exposed. Theirs are stories of fear, isolation and vulnerability, but also of survival and courage in the face of relentless abuse and alienation.

Condoms litter the ground in the street where sex workers service their clients. Skopje, Macedonia 2010

Alija, 20 years old, lives with and works for a pimp whom she says she is in love with, but also wants to leave because he is violent and controlling. Skopje, Macedonia 2010

Suto Orizari, otherwise known as Shutka, is the only municipality in the country where Roma people make up a majority of the population. A disproportionate number of street-based sex workers, those most vulnerable, are members of the Roma community, Macedonia’s most harshly discriminated against ethnic minority group. Skopje, Macedonia 2010

Kristina reported being raped by a client to men who identified themselves as police officers. The men recorded her with a cell-phone camera as she described the attack and later posted the video on youtube. Nothing was done about the reported attack. Skopje, Macedonia 2010

Dunja, 23 years old, lives with her parents, brother and one year-old son. Since her husband has been in jail she has been working in the street five nights a week to support her entire family. Skopje, Macedonia 2010

Sabina's aunt plays with her son while a cousin looks on from the doorway of Sabina's home. Sabina, 28 years old, has five children, four of whom live with her in a one-room house in Shutka. She began sex work when she was 15 years old, stopping when she was married and starting again when her husband went to prison. Skopje, Macedonia 2010

Boban, 25 years old, sees clients in the apartment where he lives. He has a serious boyfriend who does not know he is a sex worker. Skopje, Macedonia 2010

Dunja. Skopje, Macedonia 2010

The ruined wall of an old nightclub where a gay male sex worker was beaten by a client. Strumica, Macedonia 2010

Anja, 26 years old, has been struggling with heroin addiction for years. She suffered nerve damage in her leg because of a severely infected abscess caused by injecting with a dirty needle. Strumica, Macedonia 2010

Marinela, 31 years old, a former sex worker and drug user, is now the coordinator of one of HOPS' drop-in centers. Strumica, Macedonia 2010

Bio

Tiana Markova-Gold is a freelance documentary photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. She received a New York Times Scholarship to attend the full-time Photojournalism Program at the International Center of Photography in 2006-07. She has traveled extensively, documenting social issues with a particular focus on women and girls.  Tiana’s photographs have been recognized in numerous photography contests including Pictures of the Year International, New York Photo Awards, PDN Photo Annual, American Photography and the International Photography Awards.  Her work has been included in exhibitions at Sasha Wolf gallery, New York Photo Festival, HOST gallery in London, England and the Lumix Festival of Young Photojournalism in Hannover, Germany.

Since the spring of 2007, Tiana has been working on an in-depth project about the lives of women in prostitution in New York City. In January 2009 she traveled throughout Asia on a photography fellowship from the Johnson & Johnson Foundation, photographing social services projects in nine countries across the region. In April and May 2009 she traveled to Nigeria and Brasil as the recipient of a fellowship from Global Fund for Children and the Nike Foundation, documenting the work of several local organizations whose aim is to empower, protect and educate adolescent girls and young women. She is a 2010 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Photography and 2010 recipient, with writer Sarah Dohrmann, of the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University for If You Smoke Cigarettes in Public You Are a Prostitute: Women and Prostitution in Morocco. www.tianamarkova.com.