MFA in Photography / GRADUATE EXHIBITION 2016 Lesley University College of Art and Design

MFA in Photography / GRADUATE EXHIBITION 2016 Lesley University College of Art and Design From the Director A sincere welcome to this modest thesis document representing the 2016 MFA in Photography 2016 graduating class of our full-residency MFA in Photography program at Lesley University’s College of Art and Design. Beginning with our program’s developmental planning in 2009, we recognized that the medium of photography had ceased KATIE DOYLE being a single identifiable medium, technology or process and that it was, like our program to be, a flexible thing to be nurtured and designed as a collaborative work in progress. We were very conscious of the fact that collectively we had an CRYSTAL FOSS extraordinary opportunity to embrace the medium’s transformation—how it is taught, integrated, practiced, and what it would ultimately represent in the universe of the arts, education, and culture. SAMUEL WEST HISER Throughout its evolution, photography has been a slowly moving glacier of adaptation and obsolescence followed closely by familial transformations KWANGTAE KIM influenced by the heat of science, technology, critical analysis, and cultural practice. I think of these influences and processes as I do the boulders in the woods near my studio in New Hampshire… evidential scat from a glacier’s melting. Each TRACI MARIE LEE overlapping layer of transformation has ushered in an ever-greater democratization of photographic image making, adoption, and adaptation and each of these cycles have been identified by the family name, photography, regardless of how odd the MAURA O’DONNELL new offspring appeared. What each new incarnation had in common was a single salient identification… that of making marks with light. NATALIE TITONE Our program, and the amazing candidates who become masters within it, share a driven curiosity to see where a photographic concept or light-dependent process, MARYAM ZAHIRIMEHR and perhaps its integration with other media, will guide them. In our current roles, as practitioners of the discipline we love, we are enjoying the right time- right place gift of unlimited possibilities, making this the most exciting time in the photographic arts in over a century. It represents, for me, the new photography, a marriage of contemporary analog, digital, and inter-disciplinary studio practice and technologies. The graduates within these pages are its emissaries. I am so proud of them all, and am ever grateful for their contributions to our program’s evolution… and that they have made this adventure so much fun. KATIE DOYLE 13 Ways of Looking at X The whole is greater assumes, than the sum of its parts can never escape but who governs the whole, artificial divisions, has delegated the parts? a topography of self X marks the spot i know my own biases, i know them too well but our map we destroy Who is it that knows? (we are drowned in the liquid of language) Me, being no expert on the subject of one self look to the reasonless creatures assumes the role of know-it-all look to be dissolved (so as not to be the stupid one) into experience coordinates the chaos sensory decadence Mouth through the use of force consummated by decay Video still / Variable size into a question of cartography light is a force of destruction illuminating the image i am not neutral territory of self swallowed whole by its own surveillance methinks self a place, i survey this i, the mouth can stop talking now the lay of the land has its own predilections stop denying itself, (preconceptions), prejudices, to me, to you, to I who is who pronouns, these bumbling words only serving to prove which pronounce arbitrary borders between it is no eloquent communicator i, you, me, she, just an orifice, like any other who dumb but effective thinks, speaks, feels, a yawning desirous void desires, fears, of grotesque consumption sleeps, punctuated by the creature’s reproduces, respirates, breath. consumes, expires, doubts, aspires, Blackbird Video still / Variable size 3 CRYSTAL FOSS I’m in Grad school, so I take nude self-portraits. I’m fat, so I take nude self-portraits. I’m 24, so I take nude self-portraits. For nearly 4 years, my work has been an autobiographical exploration of how I fit into the world, with my physical size as the largest inhibitor to a secure sense of belonging. These works have taken several forms but all center on the body. Whether presenting myself without cover, or intimately performing for the viewer, I always try to maintain the emotional vulnerability I feel, alongside the strength I need in order to question those who only see me as a spectacle. Often, the intent of the work presents a conflict through either a disguise or visual confrontation. My recent work is about seeing, specifically the Film Still_01 relationship between the observer and the observed. I’m Durational Film presently focused on the moment of looking in the time- based gaze. Observed_02 Archival Inkjet Print / 24” x 24” Obscured_02 Archival Inkjet Print / 24” x 24” Trooper Archival Inkjet Print / 24” x 24” 5 SAMUEL WEST HISER Photography evolves. It changes imperceptibly (and sometimes radically) from generation to generation. Only the fittest and most memorable examples survive. Tired techniques and ideas go out of favor, replaced temporarily with the new, the exciting and the re-cycled. New combinations and integrations materialize; the weaker ones live, like those found in calendars, for only 30 or 31 days. Every picture carries the discarded information, the code, of all possible histories of Photography. Since Photography evolves, it must be a living organism. Wasabi Arcade, Natick Mall Electronic print from a film negative / 20” x 24” West Portico, Trinity Church Electronic print from a digital file stitch / 20” x 24” 7 KWANGTAE KIM I close my eyes and open my heart to listen. The sun is beyond the horizon and it is the time that no one walks. Wind and waves whisper. Clouds harmonize and trees conduct. My senses follow their pulses. I walk after their musical notes. Thousands of emotions flow and memories flash like a movie in my mind. All of these poured onto a sheet of paper steers you into a new space and time that you have never been but within you. I create as an invitational bridge into a state of meditation for my viewer. Untitled 2 Untitled 1 Untitled 3 Archival Inkject Print Archival Inkject Print Archival Inkject Print 9 TRACI MARIE LEE This is how it began – photographing first and physically handling second. The confines of this process I have created for myself, do not allow me to leisurely sort through the images and notes, or turn over every page of the albums. Small evidences of her life unfold from the modest things that conceivably no one other than her was meant to see - but death is permissible. There are printed photographs that have found their permanent Tough old bird you are… residence to be the dark blue envelope with the bold Collage, family photographs, family album typeface, “Here are your pictures!” I begin sifting through her objects, keeping their containers close by and clearly separated. This is her process; her order - and initially, I try not to insert myself. I am her novice biographer, her curator and an accidental voyeur, as I trace her arrangements. The success of the Archive represents only half of the material – the half that has survived. The matter lays somewhere in between what is present and what is missing. Perhaps these instances are the keys – the markers connecting bodies and identities, generations and histories; the physical indication of an unidentified connection. Guess you know me. Collage, family photographs, family album Landmarks, film still Video, archival footage, still photographs 11 Preparation House dance Video still Video still MAURA O’DONNELL We are in an age of constantly self-curating and in turn being viewed and seeking approval for the image of ourselves that we create. The videos I make investigate ideas about the act of performing the role of woman using my own body as a vehicle. I make conscious choices in recording the environment, angles, and light to illustrate the simultaneous strengths and limitations of my body. 13 Untitled Untitled Photo transfer on porcelain / 6” x 6” Photo transfer on porcelain / 2” x 1.5” NATALIE TITONE My interest in the archive was a direct result from strong curiosity with my family’s textile manufactory once I began to explore the years of documents and drawings that were stored away. I do not know the technicalities of the craft, but with daily exposure, I developed an inherent sensibility to the process. My thesis considers archeology as it occurs within the family archive, the physical representation of a history, and building and breaking connections through the construction of clay structures that evoke exploration in my own work. I explore the intervention of found archived material with a mix of imagination and historical data resulting in a construction, which conveys my interpretation. Acting as an archaeological curator, I excavate unresolved meaning within the family archive in order to discover controlled, fleeting universal and personal truths within the chaos of the process. By working in both clay and photography, it allows me to investigate two-dimensional representations of objects and how they relate to interpretative memory and fact. I use excavation as a metaphor for the archeology of the family archive and as a means of presenting the syntax in the way family photographs and documents are Untitled systemized and organized. Photo transfer

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