Mona Kuhn: Works

Oculus is a solo exhibition of photographs made from with-inside ancient, living redwoods and sequoias in the American west. These giant trees are hollowed-out from millennia of lightning strikes and fires, and they form apertures to the sky and the canopy above. Though hollow, these trees remain very much alive and their charcoal dark interiors reveal strange shapes that suggest a passage from one recognizable world to another that is like a waking dream. For Rome, every process in picture-making is a vehicle for considering meaning. The choice of black and white materials simplifies chaotic imagery into a form where a new visual order appears. Rome places himself within the trees and uses the openings at the top as apertures, framing the sky. For him, these works are not meant to be photographic descriptions or documentation, but rather a catalyst designed to transport the viewer from a recognizable world into something original and unexpected. Image: H14-PC30-3, Prairie Creek, CA, 2014/21 © Stuart Rome

SLA Art Space is pleased to present "Photography," The exhibition, curated by Francine Rogers and Julia Rothenberg, showcasing the work of Lithuanian photographer Romualdas Požerskis and New York photographer Geoffrey Berliner. While differing in the focal length of their gaze – Berliner is a master of the close-up and Požerskis’ lens is more macro - they both explore intimacy, time, abstraction and documentation through black and white analogue photography. This show includes 19 photographs from Požerskis’ work documenting his subjects against the background of small town life in Lithuania during the Soviet/post-Soviet Era and 18 of Berliner’s portraits of photographic artists and abstract works utilizing the wet plate collodion process.. Both Požerskis and Berliner are preoccupied with the passage of human beings through time. Romualdas Požerskis, one of the best known Lithuanian photographers, was born in Vilnius in 1951 and lives and works in Kaunas, where he teaches the history and aesthetics of photography at Vytautas Magnus University. In the body of work from which we have drawn, he follows and records his subjects in and through historical time, sharing their lifeworld of the street, the town square, the courtyards of Soviet Era housing complexes, marketplaces and homes for the aged. Creating an ethnography in images, Požerskis is an anthropologist who has “gone native” – forfeiting the objectifying gaze of the scientist and the photojournalist’s cool detachment. With this sacrifice he humanizes subjects whose social marginality (the aged in his Last Home series or the touching and elegant portraits of Little Alfonsas, children on the awkward edge of puberty) might be exploited or rendered grotesque or pitiable in the hands of less empathetic photographers. In Požerskis gaze, these subjects and the environments in which they are woven are rendered with the affection and empathy that emerges from a shared sense of community and experience.. Berliner’s portraits also record both the passage of time and an intimate relationships that derive from deep empathy, but his approach is psychological rather than anthropological. Berliner, a native New Yorker who was introduced to photography at an early age, is co-founder and Executive Director of Penumbra Foundation, an arts organization devoted to both historical and alternative photographic processes in New York City. Through Penumbra’s lecture series, workshops, exhibitions spaces, residencies and other programs, Berliner meets a comprehensive range of photographers. Over the last decade, he has utilized the 19th century wet plate collodion process to make tintype portraits of the artists who come through Penumbra. These images are taken with period large format studio cameras, where they are recorded on a metal plate processed by hand. Despite the immediacy of this process (sitters can view their image as they’re being made as a unique hand-crafted direct positive image object), it is also slow and deliberate enough to provide time for interaction with the subject. This is time Berliner savors. It allows for a natural interaction with the subjects, who as photographers, often are interested in learning about this process and thinking and talking about how this historical process might inform their own work and vision. Together Berliner and his subjects reflect on photography and myriad other topics and through this process come to know each other more intimately. While, as Berliner explains, portraits are always a collaborative process, he makes this collaborative dimension manifest. Sometimes, as with the portrait of Samira Yamin, Berliner incorporates aspects of the photographer's process or vision into his portrait.. Like a good ethnographer, Požerskis approaches time longitudinally, spending months or even years with his subjects in their worlds. He produces multiple images of his subjects over time, images which document change and the ravages of history. Berliner’s portraits also record the passage of time, but frozen, in the immediacy of the flesh and the face. Where Požerskis portraits rely on architecture, city streets and landscape to tell the story of time, Berliner’s portraits are close up, set against an empty studio wall and free of any extraneous hints about the subject’s position in time, space and history. Berliner’s time spent with subject in the studio like an analyst with his client in the bland space of a therapist’s office tease out the subject’s story, her history, her evolution. At the same time, Berliner’s process lays bare the individuality and passage of time on the canvass of the subjects’ skin. The orthochromatic nature of the wet plate collodion process itself reveals (sometimes brutally) irregularities, wrinkles, blemishes, freckles, warts, moles that we collect over time. These are highlighted again by the use of the large format camera and the directness of the process – the tintype is one of kind, it cannot be retouched or photoshopped. While much of this exhibition focuses on portraiture, like all great photographers, both Požerskis and Berliner are obsessed with the formal, abstract potential of the photographic medium. We see this in Požerskis experiments with dramatic natural light situations, (as in the photo of the boy with an umbrella), in his painterly monochrome palate and most strikingly, in his wide range of compositional expressions, in which figures are placed sometimes at striking angles and sometimes in harmonious geometrical relationship to architectural and natural elements. Berliner focuses his interest in abstraction in a series presented here in which representational themes are eliminated entirely. Here Berliner is experimenting with form, motion and light without the use of a camera or lens. With these images he moves deftly from interaction with humans to interaction with the chemistry and tools of photography and the essential elements of space time, light and form. These compelling images, juxtaposed with his portraits, suggest, at least to this viewer, a dialectic between the finite and particular nature of the individual and the timelessness and generality of space, form, time and motion.

All About Photo is pleased to present Reclaiming the Muse by Grace Weston RECLAIMING THE MUSE Patriarchy has controlled the narrative for 10,000 years. My staged miniature photography series, RECLAIMING THE MUSE, reframes historic artworks and stories in contemporary terms. In centering women, historically cast as objects of beauty or scorn, I strive to revitalize the muse with agency, furthering the issues important to me as a contemporary female artist. Mythos, power dynamics, gender roles, liberation, empowerment, and self-preservation are explored in this series, all with a deceptively playful overlay. Although I never depict actual people in my photographs, the human psyche is undeniably at the center of my work. I am fascinated by the psychological landscape, our search for meaning and the contradictions of human existence. So many stories, myths and artworks throughout history address these same concerns. I have found much rich source material to inspire my own interpretations for this series. In my research, time and time again, the women in myths, folk tales, the Bible, and elsewhere are held responsible for causing both the world’s ills and the failings of men. This includes their own rapes, which are recounted in mythology with shocking frequency, and are always deemed the woman’s fault, justifying her inevitable punishment. Of course, creating variations and reinterpretations of past tales and depictions is not a novel idea, but rather an age-old tradition, practiced throughout art history. My muses take back their power and tell their own stories. There is a rich well to draw upon from historical representations. We must remember, the old tales are fiction, and it is far past time for the retelling. This series is ongoing. Curator: Ann Jastrab, Executive Director, Center for Photographic Art

A World on The Move: Navigating Borders Amidst Conflict and War by Ada Trillo. Through the lens of a dedicated photojournalist, Ada Trillo’s collection of images chronicles the harrowing journeys of those who chose to remain amidst the chaos as well as those who embarked on the treacherous journey to escape. A powerful and intimate exploration of the experiences faced by individuals caught in the tumultuous upheaval of oppressive border conflicts within their homelands. Step into the world of "On the Run from the Northern Triangle to America" and "The Ones Who Stay in the Heartland of Ukraine," two extraordinary photographic series of the photographer's tireless travels alongside refugees and migrants from Central America to the U.S.-Mexico border. Having dedicated seven years to documenting the plight of Central American refugees, the artist was compelled to extend their lens to the conflict unfolding as the Russian crisis engulfed Kyiv and beyond. Through these photographs, we are invited to reflect on the choices forced upon individuals during times of turmoil and to bridge the gap between disparate worlds shaped by conflict and the pursuit of justice. It underscores the potential of photojournalism to ignite conversations, raise awareness, and drive change by giving a face to those existing on the fringes of conflict, striving for basic human rights. Discover the captivating narrative of Mexican American photojournalist, Ada Trillo, through an immersive exhibition at the Chicago Center for Photojournalism. From September 22 to December 7, 2023, join us on a visual journey as we showcase the remarkable works of this dedicated artist.

Higher Pictures restages Carla Williams’ Princeton University Bachelor of Arts thesis exhibition from 1986. The seventy-two intensely personal self-portraits included here were made between 1984 and 1986, two years after Williams began studying photography at age 17. Her professor Emmet Gowin called it the best thesis show in his thirty-six years of teaching. Only a handful of the works have since been exhibited or published. This is the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery. Williams’ images are at once tender and wise, awkward and exhilarating. They reflect a young woman’s burgeoning sexuality and expansive curiosity about the medium. As a Black woman processing a canonical history that positioned so many models, girlfriends, and wives as muses to their photographic ‘masters,’ Williams did not see herself reflected in any of the history books’ most revered images. She was nevertheless absorbing a classic, timeless aesthetic of female representation. Her photographs were made using mostly Polaroid 4 x 5 and instant 35mm film formats. The immediacy of results allowed her to interact with the images at the time of the sitting rather than wait for the darkroom process, lending both an energy and technical looseness to the photographic finish. The images reflect Williams’ creative urgency, her desire to render the likeness in the moment. It would become a signature style in her work. As a child of Hollywood, Los Angeles native Williams grew up with her own portfolio of head shots. She consumed the culture of performance, observing, mimicking, and fantasizing about the reality and representation of adult life, another role, another costume. Aged out of acting by her teen years, Williams would ultimately find her creative refuge on both sides of the camera. The proliferation of selfie-culture in the last decade has compelled Williams to reflect on the populism and popularity of contemporary technologies and self-representation. A lot of my influence at the time was popular culture, so it felt like the right time to see the images in the context of the present and to fill in another important piece of Black women’s contributions to the medium. Williams received her BA in photography from Princeton University and her MA and MFA from the University of New Mexico. She spent the next decades working independently as a photography historian, writer, and editor. She has occasionally participated in publications and exhibitions, but never pursued a creative career.

Edwynn Houk Gallery is pleased to present Abelardo Morell's most recent bodies of tent-camera works, New Ground: In the Terrain of Van Gogh and Monet (2022-23), opening on Thursday, October 19. A reception with the artist will be held on Saturday, October 21 from 2-4pm. Morell's signature tent-camera technique, an expansive part of his practice that has evolved for more than 10 years, reinvigorates the earliest discoveries in optics with a contemporary vision. Using the earliest ancestor of modern photography, the camera obscura phenomenon, the artist has developed a way to project arresting views onto the earth beneath his feet. The resulting works reflect highly intentional marriages of the landscape with the materiality of the ground. Morell's experimental approach not only engages with the photography's ancient history but also with modern painting. Inspired by the plein air practices of van Gogh and Monet, Morell made works in the same locations in France where those artists painted, not recreating their works but rather creating a new, radically modern vocabulary informed by art history. Image: Yew Tree in Monet's Garden, Giverny, France, 2023 © Abelardo Morell

Most of the photography that we view is very literal in its presentation – the images we see are set in front of us as if they are straightforward data. However, some photographers are more interested in the expressive potential of the medium. Barbara Cole, Michael Massaia and Joyce Tenneson have found unique ways to create photographs that are less about showing their subjects in a merely denotative manner, and more about concentrating on the mood, spirit and tonal range of their artwork. The images in front of a photographer’s lens can be captured and presented in a myriad of ways. The traditional tools that photographers have had to work with are focus, depth of field, palette (whether black and white or color,) scale and composition. In general art terms, Expressionism is referred to when an artist chooses to present the world in a subjective manner. He or she allows their sensibilities to reshape and reimagine the subject matter for emotional effect. The artworks have the ability to convey a specific mood and have a visceral effect. Cole, Massaia and Tenneson are practitioners of this experiential form of photography – their images have latent emotional effects.

Angelika Kollin’s captivating photograph Everyday Saint Lucy won first place in this year’s International Photography Competition. FMoPA is delighted to be able to present a selection from “Everyday Saints” and from her tender “Song of Psalms” series. Kollin is self-taught and engages with her passion for photography and art as a tool for the exploration of interhuman connections and intimacy. The direction of her work is driven by her lifelong yearning to understand and gain a deeper perspective on human loneliness and suffering, as well as the role faith plays in overcoming it. Born in Estonia, she has spent eight years living in African countries, exploring the same topics in various cultures and economic conditions. Angelika’s work has been recognized by Lensculture (1st prize winner, 2020/finalist, 2022), BIFA (1st Place, 2021), Lucie Foundation (finalist, 2020), and PHMuseum (finalist, 2020), among others. Her work has been exhibited at Helsinki Foto festival, Lensculture group exhibition in New York, Cape Town (solo), OFF Foto Festival in Bratislava, FotoNostrum gallery in Barcelona, and The International Photographer group exhibition in Berlin.

The Center for Photographic Art is proud to present Collecting Light: 1973-2023, a solo exhibition by renowned photographer Michael Kenna. In celebration of Michael’s fiftieth year as a photographer, CPA partnered with Nazraeli Press to create this retrospective exhibition which includes some of the artist’s most beloved images as well as some that may not be as familiar! We’re honored that Michael will be here in person to discuss his career and sign copies of his latest beautiful monograph. About the book: In celebration of Michael Kenna’s fiftieth year as a photographer, Nazraeli Press is thrilled to announce the publication of Michael Kenna: Photographs and Stories. This gorgeous new monograph, beautifully printed on Japanese Kasadaka paper and bound in custom deep blue cloth, is limited to 2,000 casebound copies. It is published in association with the Center for Photographic Art to coincide with a traveling exhibition opening at their historic Carmel, California exhibition space in November 2023. Kenna has selected one image for each year beginning 1973 (when he enrolled in the Banbury School of Art, right after leaving seminary boarding school) and for each subsequent year. Following the “Photographs” section is “Stories”, in which Kenna writes a brief text about each photograph in the book, and how the making of it related to his own life’s situation at the time. Michael Kenna is arguably the most influential landscape photographer of his generation. Often working at dawn or during the night, he has concentrated primarily on the interaction between the ephemeral atmospheric conditions of the natural landscape, and human-made structures and sculptural mass. Over ninety books and catalogs have been published on his work. His exquisite, hand crafted, silver gelatin prints have been exhibited throughout the world and are included in such permanent museum collections as The National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; The Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai; and The Victoria and Albert Museum, London. In 2022, Mr. Kenna was made an Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture. “This book is a journey, navigating places foreign and familiar, winding through black and white scenes full of spacious calm. It is a great pleasure to look at these images, to feel that maybe everything is going to be alright after all, that the world isn’t such a bad place, and magic still exists. There is a reassuring quality to these photographs, and I, for one, am grateful for Michael Kenna’s half century of watching the light and recording his vision.” — From the Introduction by Ann Jastrab

Creativity takes many forms. Performing artists use their bodies, writers elucidate thoughts and put them on paper, and visual artists take their tools to a blank canvas or light sensitive paper. Artists, passionate about their craft are compelled to create exposing the invisible and engaging us in thought, emotion and narrative. We celebrate the tools artists surround themselves with as we create a studio visit through the works of two photographic artists, Chris Rauschenberg and Meggan Gould. The intimacy of the studio and beautiful chaos of making is a visual feast. Chris Rauschenberg’s series Studio Views fills the gallery with color and creativity. These large scale composites engage us in the details and connection to the art practice of Rauschenberg’s friends and colleagues. Meggan Gould explores the darkrooms of fellow photographers, exposing the tools of the medium used in darkness.

Wig Heavier Than a Boot brings together photography and video by David Johnson and poetry by Philip Matthews. As we reveal Petal—a persona as whom Philip writes, and whom David photographs—the project crosses art-making rituals with isolated performances in domestic spaces and pastoral landscapes. Taken together, the images and poems reveal surprising relationships between character, observer, and author. The photographs provide one record of Petal and Philip’s personalities, blurring art-historical feminine / masculine postures and gestures. The poems provide another which elaborates upon the lived experience of performing or, sometimes, obscuring or protecting the self from being seen. Thus, a continuous exchange between photographer and two subjects in one body reflects the complications of power and gender expression through the history of photography.

Cody Bratt (b. 1982) is a San Francisco-born and based artist. His father, a photoengraver, and his mother, a multimedia artist, inspired his love of photography and book making, in particular. He holds a BA in Rhetoric with a formal concentration in Narrative and Image from the University of California, Berkeley (2005). Shying away from a literal approach, Cody’s photography employs primarily non-linear emotional or psychological approaches to exploring subjects and concepts. Unreliable memories, displacement, loss and coming of age feature centrally in Cody’s work. He has exhibited internationally at Athens Photo Festival, Berlin Art Week, Month of Photography Los Angeles, Griffin Museum of Photography, Colorado Photographic Arts Center, ICP Museum, Brighton Photo Fringe, Filter Photo Festival amongst others. Cody is a 2016 LensCulture Emerging 50 Talent, 2018 PDN 30 nominee and 2019 Review Santa Fe attendee. His most recent series, THE OTHER STORIES, was honored with a 2020 CENTER Awards Director’s Choice Award and a 2020 Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50 distinction. Cody’s first monograph, LOVE WE LEAVE BEHIND, debuted by Fraction Editions in 2018. That series was awarded a 2018 Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50 distinction, named as a finalist for the 2016 Duke University CDS/Honickman First Book Prize and had images selected and published as winners in American Photography 34 (2018). His work is in public and private collections in several states across the US, as well as Europe. Cody’s work has been published worldwide in print and online venues including PDN, LENSCRATCH, LensCulture, Lomography Magazine, iGNANT, Gente Di Fotografia, Blur Magazine, Aint-Bad, and Float Magazine amongst others.