║ Jessamyn Lovell ║

© Jessamyn Lovell, Family, 2003

from the series Catastrophe, Crisis and other Family Traditions

© Jessamyn Lovell, Klare Not Listening, 1999

from the series Catastrophe, Crisis and other Family Traditions

© Jessamyn Lovell, Mommy with phone, 1999
from the series Catastrophe, Crisis and other Family Traditions

“There is something about my family that brings me back. I just don’t want them to forget about me out here.
I keep photographing the same place, the same people again and again. Roll after roll goes through my camera and so many questions still go unanswered.
I can’t imagine my life without this project, but I can sense what it used to be is slipping away. I feel myself returning home only to find that everything’s changed.
I think back to when I lived there and took care of them. Now I have to take care of myself. This project keeps them with me.
When I return home, I become overwhelmed with how familiar it all is, even though so much has changed. I remember a piece of myself as soon as I walk through the door. I haven’t come back to photograph, not really. What I want is to be close to them.
I want to go home.”
Jessamyn Lovell

To see this full body of work click here.

║ Amy Montali (Group Portrait – part V) ║

© Amy Montali, Martin, Palmer and Nora, 2003

© Amy Montali, Erin in the blue room, 2004

“These portraits and narrative fragments are produced with a large-format view camera, which requires a slow and formal approach. However, I try to shoot spontaneously as though I am on the street or at a birthday party. I like to fuse the seductive power of studio photography with the energy and emotion of a snapshot.

The work is often collaborative and always improvisational. I choreograph scenes of varying complexity in order to explore real and fictitious relationships and to consider such subtexts as rivalry, desire, guilt, and redemption. I use the colors and shapes of my locations to illuminate and intensify, or invent, psychological states. Then, I wait for the picture.

The camera allows me to stare. In some ways content is secondary to my obsession with photography itself. I am particularly interested in how photography seduces its participants, including me, and how its power differs from that of painting, theater, or film.”

Amy Montali

║ Julie Blackmon (Group Portrait – part IV) ║

© Julie Blackmoon, Saturday, from the series Domestic Vacation, 2005

© Julie Blackmoon, Dinner Party, from the series Domestic Vacation, 2005

“I am the oldest of nine children and now the mother of three. In these photographs, I have explored the life of my family and the lives of my sisters and their families at home. These images are not documentary, but, in various ways, a re-creation of everyday moments that reflect not only our lives today, but as children growing up in a large family.

The stress, the chaos, and the need to simultaneously escape and connect are issues that I investigate in this body of work. I believe there are little sanctuaries that can be found throughout any given day, no matter how ordinary, that reveal meaning. It is in finding these moments amidst the stress of everyday that my life as a mother parallels my work as an artist. The struggle between living in the moment versus escaping to another reality is intense, as these two opposites strive to dominate. As an artist and as a mother, I believe life’s most poignant moments come from the ability to fuse fantasy and reality: to see the mythic amidst the chaos.”

Julie Blackmoon

║ Sage Sohier (Group Portrait – part III) ║

© Sage Sohier, Laine trying on Mum’s evening dresses, Washington D.C., 2004

© Sage Sohier, Pat and Mum discussing my haircut, Brookline, 2004

“This is a series about my mother as she ages, and my relationship with her, that I began to work on in a concerted way in 2000.

For a brief period in her youth, my mother was a model, photographed by Richard Avedon and Irving Penn, and once on the cover of LIFE Magazine. As a child, I grew up as a witness to her beauty: I used to lie on her bed, with the dogs, and watch her try on clothes and study herself critically in the mirror. As I grew older, there was no use competing with her, and so I assumed my position, quite happily, on the other side of the camera.

So, this is about the aging family: how some things never change, and others, inevitably, do. Some of these pictures are re-creations of old family snapshots from my childhood. Most are collaborative, made on a tripod with a self-timer. I hope to continue this series, when I visit with my mother (and sometimes my sister) a few times a year, as long as time and mutual interest allow.”

Sage Sohier

║ Ben Gest (Group Portrait – part II) ║

© Ben Gest, Chuck, Alice & Dale, 2003

© Ben Gest, Alan & Noah, 2002

“My pictures describe tenuous moments between people sharing their lives together in their homes. These ambiguous narratives of personal and simple everyday activities describe the way people sometimes disengage from those closest to them. They are an outgrowth of my interest in photography’s potential to tell the story of human life while considering its ability to create objective truth.

These photographs are creations of familiar and perhaps anticlimactic events. The struggle one faces in maintaining a sense of self is made more difficult because those who affect us most are the very people we love. How do people maintain their own psychological self when the physical space between them is so close?”

Ben Gest

║ Jessica Todd Harper (Group Portrait – part I) ║

© Jessica Todd Harper, Self Portrait with Christopher, Papa and Ah-Choo, 2003

© Jessica Todd Harper, Self Portrait with Christopher and my future In-Laws, 2003

“I grew up copying paintings. My mother gave my sister and I first crayons, then charcoal, and finally pastels and watercolors as she plunked us down on the floors of local museums and directed us to pass the time drawing what we saw. Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent and Renoir were my heroes as a kid. When I went to college I became an art history major and fell in love with Vermeer, Memling, Pieter de Hooch and other Northern European artists who at first glance seemed to make paintings about nothing everyday-ness, but whose charged, quiet domestic scenes haunted me afterwards. I was impressed with the many seventeenth century Dutch painters who could at once make an image about an overflowing bowl of just-about-to-turn fruit and a metaphor for the beauty and tragedy of the human mortal experience. One could make the same observation about the children in Sally Mann’s photographs or the empty spaces in Andrew Wyeth’s paintings, both artists whom I also love.

My photographs reflect all these influences. They are about identity, familial relationships and the unspoken things that make up the inner stories of our lives. Sometimes that involves waiting for a “decisive moment” and other times I use Photoshop in a process analogous to combining different sketches for a final painting. In either case I strive to make pictures that rely on their intimacy and intensity to touch on the grander narratives of consciousness and what it means to be alive.”

Jessica Todd Harper

║ Mathew Monteith ║

© Mathew Monteith, Untitled #6, from the Czech Eden series

© Mathew Monteith, Untitled #13, from the Czech Eden series

“Czech Eden is named after an officially protected park in the Czech Republic, a place known for its vertiginous sandstone formations and remarkable natural beauty. However, few of Monteith’s photographs depict this preserve. Instead, most were taken in or around Prague, in his friends’ homes, on the streets, or in small towns where it is as likely to find a centuries-old castle as an ominous nuclear cooling tower looming large. Although it is important to know where these photographs were taken, ultimately their meanings are not contingent upon place. “Czech Eden” should not be viewed as a documentary project. It is not a literal description of life in the Czech Republic but instead an open-ended allegory, one that references old images but articulates a vision of contemporary life that is at times disquieting and humorous.”
Michael Famighetti

to read full article click here
to view Mathew’s full body of work click here

║ Mikhael Subotzky (South Africa – part V) ║

© Mikhael Subotzky, The Mallies Family, Rustdene Township, Beaufort West, 2006

© Mikhael Subotzky, Residents, Vaalkoppies (Beaufort West Rubbish Dump), 2006

to view more of his work click here

║ Pieter Hugo (South Africa – part II) ║

© Pieter Hugo, Rose Brand’s doll collection, 2006
Messina/Musina series

© Pieter Hugo, Jan, Martie, Kayala, Florence and Basil Meyer in their home, 2006
Messina/Musina series

“Musina is the northern-most town in South Africa. It lies on the Limpopo River on the border of Zimbabwe. The town was formerly known as Messina, and in 2002 its name was changed to correct a colonial misspelling of the name of the Musina people who previously lived in the region.Located in the heart of the bushveld with its hunting farms and diamond mine, on the major trucking route north, it attracts a conglomeration of disparate peoples. They are drawn to this town by the opportunities it offers, be it working in the mines or on the farms, policing the porous border, smuggling contraband and alien immigrants, or prostitution.In his photographs of individuals, families, interiors, landscapes and incidental details, Hugo reflects on the wounds and scars of race, class and nationality that persist here, on the border of Zimbabwe, a country in the process of self-destructing. The circumstances of Musina can also be seen as broadly reflective of any community that is confronted by transition.”

to view full series click here

to read an interview about this work click here

║ Wang Qingsong ║

© Wang Qingsong, Tramp, 2004

© Wang Qingsong, Night Patrol, 2005

” I think it is very meaningless if an artist only creates art for art’s sake. For me, the dramatic changes in China have transformed China into a huge playground or construction site. Whenever I go into the city I feel suffocated by the pollution, social contradictions, and so forth. All of these factors contribute to the fact that artists cannot just make art for art’s sake. I think it would be absurd for an artist to ignore what’s going on in society.
I have the right and I’m capable enough to depict the environment in China because I am familiar with this society and it is close to me. Also, I can do it right and I can do it accurately. I admire some photographers like Andreas Gursky. He took some photographs of garbage, which is similar to something you would see in China every day. I just hope to continue making more and better photographs in the future.”
Wang Qingsong

* for full interview click here

║ Justine Kurland ║

© Justine Kurland, Parade Across Dunes, 2001

© Justine Kurland, Cyclone, 2001