ARTIST STATEMENTS JULY 14–AUGUST 17, 2017 Aperture Summer Open is an annual open-submission exhibition at The Aperture Foundation’s gallery that features a wide variety of work Curated by For Freedoms, the 2017 drawn from members of our photographic community. Selected annually by a prominent curator or editor, the exhibition seeks to reveal and report on critical themes and trends driving international Aperture Summer Open exhibition, contemporary photographic practice. The exhibition opens the doors of the foundation to all photographers, both well- and lesser- On Freedom, offers a photographic known, as it fosters and promotes new ideas and talents.

Aperture Foundation would like to thank Wyatt Gallery, Taylor response to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Brock, Eric Gottesman, , and Michelle Woo of For Freedoms for all of their hard work and dedication during the : , curation of the 2017 Aperture Summer Open. , freedom from

Participants Demetris Koilalous want, and freedom from fear. Marta Kosiorek Myriam Abdelaziz Holly Lynton Inbal Abergil Francesca Magnani Susan Barnett Marc McAndrews The photographers and image-makers selected for inclusion each Claire Beckett Mary Beth Meehan address these issues in their work in varying ways. By bringing Lisa K. Blatt Noritaka Minami Corinne May Botz Sam O’Neill them together, we aim to open up a dialogue about the nature and Xavi Bou Mike Osborne Jean-Christian Bourcart Joaquin Palting necessity of political action, the language and means by which Jenny Brover Ke Peng we critique and produce avenues for sustainable change, and the Gary Burnley Brittany M. Powell Jasmine Clark Hector Rene relationship of photography to these issues. Debi Cornwall Jordan Reznick Marcus DeSieno Shane Rocheleau and Maureen Drennan Brian Ulrich In the hands of some of the photographers presented in this Jess T. Dugan Daniel Evan Rodriguez Argus Paul Estabrook Phil Roeder exhibition, the camera serves as a mirror, reflecting on the stark Dan Farnum David Rothenberg limitations that make social inequality visible. In others, the camera Mike Fernandez Mara Sánchez-Renero Ashley Gates Ben Schonberger serves as a tool of liberation—for the body and the mind, and from Gigi Gatewood Jay Turner Frey Seawell personal and ecological danger, social constructs, and political Kris Graves Daniel Shea and Stanley Matthew Hamon Wolukau-Wanambwa limitations. The selection demonstrates how the democratic nature Daesha Devón Harris Danna Singer Jon Henry Angie Smith of photography can serve as a vehicle for diverse perspectives Perri Hofmann Steven Trent Smith to visualize social problems, spark dialogue, and transform Lili Holzer-Glier Allison Stewart Michael Joseph Jared Thorne assumptions. For many, freedom may be an illusion, but the Stephen Joyce Millee Tibbs photographers here are committed to mapping new aspects of this Rhea Karam Sandra Chen Weinstein KevinCharityFair Harm Weistra critical terrain—identifying a trail, pointing out dangers along the Lali Khalid Emily Yang way—and ever aiming toward the light.

—For Freedoms

DEBI CORNWALL MARCUS DESIENO BEYOND GITMO SURVEILLANCE LANDSCAPES

In the fifteen years since the U.S. Naval Station in Guantánamo Bay, In our increasingly intrusive electronic culture, how do we delineate Cuba (“Gitmo”) opened its first offshore “War on Terror” prisons, the boundaries between public and private? Surveillance Landscapes 780 Muslim men have been held there, the vast majority without charge is a body of work that interrogates how surveillance technology has or trial of any kind; 41 remain as, essentially, forever prisoners. In this changed our relationship to—and understanding of—landscape and series, Beyond Gitmo, I make collaborative environmental portraits place. These landscape photographs act as a larger metaphor for with fourteen men once held as accused terrorists, after they have the totalizing vision of the global surveillance state. To produce this been cleared and freed, in nine countries. Some returned home, but work, I hack or tap into surveillance cameras, CCTV feeds, and public others were transferred to third countries where they did not speak webcams in pursuit of the “classical” picturesque landscape and the the language. Each portrait replicates, in the free world, the military- sublime. The resulting visual product becomes dislocated from its imposed conditions for making photographs at Guantánamo Bay: no automated origins and leads to an investigation of land, of borders, faces are shown. Their bodies may be free, but the trauma remains. and power. The very act of surveying a site through these photographic JASMINE CLARK Guantánamo will always mark them. systems implies a dominating relationship between man and nature.

AFTER EISENHOWER In my forthcoming book, Welcome to Camp America (Radius, 2017), DAESHA DEVÓN HARRIS I investigate the cost of freedom in the post-9/11 era by juxtaposing After Eisenhower is directly shaped by my upbringing in a conservative photographs, archival material, and first-person texts in Arabic JUST BEYOND THE RIVER military community in Twentynine Palms, California, My parents both and English. joined the Marines Corps at eighteen. The embedded My work explores the concept of “home” as it relates to the African framework of American patriotism is inseparable from and in service American experience, particularly in achieving the American Dream to the systemic cultural narrative that dark skin (one instance) is a and the realization of full, undefiled citizenship. The selections from negative. Protection of others, protection of the flag, and patriotism are Just Beyond the River are inspired by Negro Folklore, Slave Narratives the ideals that persist. Patriotism manifests in symbols, for example, and the Harlem Renaissance poets. This work aims to illuminate the National Anthem, the American flag, and the separation of church America’s enduring legacies of colonialism and systemic racism and state. As an African American female who identifies as queer, that define our nation’s history, while reiterating the central narrative my conflicted views of the military spurred my curiosity about its role that emerges from the referenced memoirs—the ongoing struggle in American life. Military is intertwined in the established patriotic, for Freedom. By combining powerful words with found images of national, and Christian identity. How is patriotism attained without any unidentified ancestors drifting through aquatic landscapes, this work familial military relationship or in a society that oppresses any aspect seeks to acknowledge the courage and sacrifice of our ancestors, of your identity? President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1961 Farewell reclaim their presence, and link them to a sense of place, especially Address warned about the implications of military power and its impact those who have been excluded and displaced. The bodies of water in on American culture. My work probes how American patriotic identity which I photograph are deeply significant to me both personally and manifests when its symbols are conflated with complex and polarizing historically. They include places where memories of joy, sorrow, love, issues such as religion, race, class, nationalism, and the Second loss, and liberation continue to reside. Amendment. The saturation of these oversimplified messages is disconcerting. They are meant to have clear meanings. However, these places and artifacts suggest more problematic truths about American life and our relationship to our military.

Chain of Command, Chicago, 2015; from the series After Murat, Turkish German (Germany), Refugee Counselor 48.2946856, -113.2414781, 2015; from the series Surveillance I Tire So of Hearing People Say “Let Things Take Their Course,” Eisenhower. Archival pigment print Held: 4 years, 7 months, 22 days Landscapes. Archival pigment print of a still camera from a Fall 2015; from the series Just Beyond The River. Chromira print and Released: August 24, 2006; Charges: Never Filed surveillance camera gimlet in hardwood box with etched glass Containerdorf Refugee Housing, Bremen, Germany; from the series Beyond Gitmo. Digital C-Print NORITAKA MINAMI CALIFORNIA CITY, CALIFORNIA

California City is a master-planned community in the Mojave Desert conceived by sociologist turned real estate developer Nathan Mendelsohn in 1958. It was envisioned as the next major metropolis in California in response to the population and economic growths that followed World War II. Mendelsohn and his associates carefully DEMETRIS KOILALOUS designed the layout of 187 square miles that is still technically the third largest city in the state in land size. Today, it exists as a place that has CAESURA; THE DURATION yet to meet the original ambition of its developer and the idyllic image that was promoted to the public through the media. These photographs OF A SIGH focus on the “Second Community” of California City, which is mostly JON HENRY uninhabited despite having a complex network of streets that stretch CAESURA is a collection of photographs about the transitory state of across the landscape. Despite having the foundation for a city in place, JESS T. DUGAN STRANGER FRUIT refugees and migrants entering Greece, after crossing the Aegean Sea there are no indications that this city will ever be realized in the future. on their way to Europe. EVERY BREATH WE DREW Stranger Fruit was created in response to the senseless murders of black men across the nation by police violence. Even with recordings Typically, caesura manifests as a silent pause in a verse or a Every Breath We Drew explores the power of identity, desire, and from smartphones and dashboard cameras, more lives get cut short musical phrase, here used as a metaphor for a break amid two loud, connection through portraits of myself and others. Working within the due to unnecessary and excessive violence. violent periods. framework of queer experience and from my actively constructed sense of masculinity, my portraits examine the intersection between private, Who is next? Me? My brother? My friends? CAESURA’s characters stand before the camera in a state of transition individual identity and the search for intimate connection with others. How do we protect these men? and uncertainty, on the verge of name and anonymity, transmitting an ambiguous feeling of restlessness and tranquility, while the surrounding I combine formal portraits, images of couples, self-portraits, and Lost in the furor of media coverage, lawsuits, and protests is the plight of space remains reclusive and undisclosed. photographs of my own romantic relationship to investigate broader the mother. Who, regardless of the legal outcome, must carry on without themes of identity and connection while also speaking to my private, her child. I set out to photograph mothers with their sons, reenacting However, behind the stereotypical nameless mask of the “refugee,” individual experience. what it must feel like to endure this pain. These mothers have not lost CAESURA’s characters are the new citizens of Europe. They show their their sons, but understand the reality of that possibility. The mother is determination to place themselves in the new global reality and negate By asking others to be vulnerable with me through the act of being also photographed in isolation, reflecting on the absence. When the the anonymity of History. photographed, I am laying claim to what I find beautiful and powerful trials are over, the protesters have gone home and the news cameras while asking larger questions about how identity is formed, desire is gone, it is the mother that is left. Left to mourn, to survive. CAESURA does not attempt to provide answers or simply make a historic expressed, and intimate connection is sought. statement by exposing the human agony but it rather raises questions about human condition and identity.

Devotion, 2012; from the series Every Breath We Drew. Untitled #24, Birmingham, Alabama; from the series Stranger Fruit. Untitled, Polycastro, Greece, 2016; from the series Tract No. 3107 (California City, California), 2016; from the series Archival pigment print Archival pigment print CAESURA; The Duration of a Sigh. Digital C-print California City, California. Archival pigment print BRITTANY M. POWELL THE DEBT PROJECT

The Debt Project is a long-term research, photographic, and multimedia SHANE ROCHELEAU exploration centered around the subject of debt and its effect on our identity. My goal is to photograph 99 people across America. To date, AND BRIAN ULRICH I have included 70 subjects. A GLORIOUS VICTORY I began this project in 2013 by asking subjects to sit for a formal DANNA SINGER JARED THORNE photograph in their home, surrounded by their belongings, and answer A Glorious Victory is a collaborative project that explores the a series of questions on camera about their debts. I also asked them relationship between history, power, and freedom as it is evidenced in IF IT RAINED AN OCEAN 26 PLANNED PARENTHOODS to handwrite the amount of debt they are in and the story behind it. the people and the landscape of Petersburg, Virginia and its immediate These “stories of debt” are an important part of the project, serving surroundings. This project records how the people of Petersburg endure This body of work, titled If It Rained an Ocean, is a series of pictures of Exploring the varied Ohio landscape, studying its many architectures, as documents that are a physical representation of the abstract and the tangible consequences preceding ideological conflicts, outside the my immediate family and friends from my neighborhood in New Jersey. and contemplating the power and desire manifest throughout these invisible role that debt plays in our lives. theatrical abstractions presented by contemporary media and political It explores themes of class, addiction, mental illness, and my particular forms animated 26 Planned Parenthoods, in which I photograph the discourse. Through a sustained engagement with its citizens, we have view as an observer and member of this family. It is a story about the state’s 26 Planned Parenthood facilities. Debt is publicly enforced and highly stigmatized, but is almost observed Freedom as history, as a right, as stolen, as lost, in acts of joy, struggle of the working class in America, and the cyclic nature of always privately experienced. It is an abstract form without material desperation, and violence, and as a continuum ever shifted by struggle. socio-economic trappings. Planned Parenthood is a critical provider of women’s healthcare to weight or structure, yet with heavy physicality and burden in a underprivileged and disadvantaged communities who, in Ohio, are person’s everyday life. Petersburg has played a pivotal role in our shared national narratives disproportionately African American and Latino. of subjugation and freedom: Native American displacement, the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, Free Black settlements, and the Civil In traversing the state, I witnessed the unsettling reality that our Rights movement, amongst many others. If Petersburg literally holds Supreme Court recognized in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt: within its borders so many significant passages from our American Planned Parenthoods and similar clinics draw a complicated map narrative, what does this reveal about the realities of America’s Dream, marking distinct territories of access and belonging, power and desire, Exceptionalism, and Freedom? class and race.

Calls to defund Planned Parenthood, and the accompanying catastrophic threat to women and girls in predominantly African American and Latino communities, persist. In this series, I am interested in exploring and investigating the interplay between landscapes in my new home state and the identities, desires, and power of the people who fill them.

Debt Portrait #12, Richmond, California, 2013; from the series Left: Martin After, 2015; from the series If It Rained An Ocean. Toledo, Ohio, 2016; from the series 26 Planned Parenthoods. The Debt Project. Archival pigment print Right: Scene at the Former Bluebird Theatre Archival pigment print Archival pigment print from the series A Glorious Victory. Archival pigment print XAVI BOU JEAN- INBAL ABERGIL LISA K. BLATT CHRISTIAN Ornitographies arises from my N.O.K. – Next Of Kin examines This Chilean lake is a ground CORINNE personal concern for capturing BOURCART the ways in which American zero site for global warming unnoticed moments and from families memorialize their with one of the fastest melting MAY BOTZ my interest in questioning the Tahrir Square, where the relatives killed in military conflict. glaciers. I used a heat sensitive limits of human perception. I massive protests in 2011 MYRIAM I traveled throughout the U.S. scientific camera to measure the The images in Bedside focus on birds, my great were met with violence from to meet with relatives of fallen CLAIRE landscape’s heat (a type of light). Manner were taken at medical passion, in order to capture in authorities, is now a symbol of ABDELAZIZ soldiers and to document their training facilities and explore a single time-frame the the Egyptian Revolution. In order methods of coping through the BECKETT I camped here for a month standardized patient simulations. shapes they generate when to pay tribute to the people who In the summer of 2015, I received preservation of personal effects. SUSAN with NASA and collaborating Standardized patients (SPs) are flying, and to make the fought there, I silently filmed an email from my immigration Small, private monuments exist The Converts explores the international scientists. NASA professional medical actors who invisible visible. Unlike other some of them, asking them to attorney asking if I was ready in garages, basements, and BARNETT experiences of individual was testing the Planetary Lake present particular symptoms to motion studies that preceded replay their most emotional to file for American citizenship. storage lockers across the U.S. Americans who have converted Lander, which it plans to send help medical students improve it, Ornitographies moves away memories of the events. Wondering if I would fit in, I Families must decide which In Not In Your Face, the t-shirt to Islam. Included in the series to Titan, a moon of Saturn. their skills and bedside manner. from the scientific approach took to the road to meet “The objects to keep, what to take is starkly evident but these are people who were not born Scientists also studied a one- Bedside Manner is particularly of chronophotography Social media’s predominant People,” to find out what it meant with them or let go of when they photographs are not about the into Muslim families but who celled organism which deflects relevant in light of current employed by photographers role allowed for simultaneous to be an American. move or as time passes. Through t-shirt per se. They are about have themselves embraced the ultraviolet radiation, which is conversations about illness like Eadweard Muybridge and reporting and organizing and images and testimonials, my identity, validation, and judgment. faith. In a society that, however extremely high here (at times, and empathy. Healthcare is Étienne-Jules Marey. invented a new paradigm of We the People is a catalogue project honors the dead while at These individuals stand out by falsely, constructs “American” any exposed skin would burn important for all citizens and a activism. I collected incredible— of Americans from all paths of the same time giving voice to a the choice of the message on and “Muslim” as diametrical immediately). Here, there is the contentious political debate. The In Ornitographies, the skill sometimes shocking—scenes life: background, age, gender, community of survivors who their back. opposites, what is the experience dichotomy of the light, which is task of recognizing the suffering of flying—man’s long-lasting of personal courage, extreme ethnicity, religion, social class, keep memory alive as they of people who have traversed this beautiful and horrifying, and of of others feels antithetical to yearning—is presented before violence, and collective rage political affiliation and sexual strive to rebuild their lives in the The personalities create their imagined line? In this project, I fear and hope, extremely high this debate and is arguably the us, challenging and extending shared online. orientation. I photographed aftermath of loss. own iconography that explores explore how converts understand UV and international scientific highest form of attention. The our visual perception. Art and them just as they are, as I met the cultural, political, and social themselves, as well as the collaboration, and hope in the photographs simultaneously science walk hand in hand Then, I filmed Tahrir Square them, trying to understand them, issues that have an impact on relationships that they have with one-celled UV organism and for elicit and circumscribe an to create images that are on a normal day—a vacant lot trying to see them as one by CORTES our lives. In this typology, their birth and adopted religions, life on other planets. emotional response, as viewers no longer a single portrait surrounded by incessant and bringing them together instead of the images demonstrate how families, and communities. are forced to contemplate their of reality but instead the noisy traffic. An employee separating and labeling them. “The two shirts and the pillow individuals wear a kind of badge reactions not just to sickness, witnesses of a sequence of was dutifully watering the came back, so I kept this. And of honor or trophy that says, Although I am not Muslim, the injury, and hospitals, but also instants that embody all at battered ground, as if trying Through this series I present that’s how I sleep with them. I “I belong to this group, not the origins of this project are rooted to the innumerable images once past, present, and future. to grow something out of that a complex community layered pretend that it’s him. It’s not him other.” Each one of these people in personal experience. As a of human suffering we are Ornitographies provides a aborted revolution. with contradictions rather than but I pretend.” reveals a part of themselves that young adult I was compelled confronted with on a daily basis. balance between art and creating another collection advertises their hopes, ideals, to respond to the anti-Muslim The photographs document science; it is a nature-based The silent portraits, the of individual biographies, PV2 Isaac T. Cortes, Killed in action, likes, dislikes, political views, and backlash in post-9/11 America. At SPs and highlight the craft of dissemination project and dramatic events, and an instead sketching the outlines 11/ 27/2007, Iraq. From a conversation personal mantras. the same time, I joined the Peace the staged tableaux: the work a visual poetry exercise; ordinary day at Tahrir Square of a national biography of the with Emily Toro, Mother Corps and served in Benin, West gains its power by straddling the above all, it is an invitation to shown simultaneously act American identity. By photographing from the Africa. There I lived in a village of line between fact and fiction. perceive the world with the as a meditation on the back, I explore the time-honored comingled Muslims, Christians, Bedside Manner prompts larger same curious and innocent relationship between memories I became an American citizen tradition of the portrait being of and practitioners of the local questions about authenticity, look of the child we once were. and documents, between at a time in history when we must the face and test whether body- traditional faith, Vodun. In stark representation, and empathy. individual stories and history, honor the blend of cultures type, dress, and demeanor can contrast to what I’d known in between drama and time, which and traditions brought by tell us just as much as a facial the U.S., these groups lived erases everything. immigration, making the USA expression might. together in peaceful cooperation. such a unique country. With these photographs I hope to open up space for viewers to examine their own assumptions about what it means to be an American, Muslim, or otherwise.

WE THE PEOPLE #12, CORTES, 2014; from the series Freedom Is Taken Not Given, Mary, 2012; from the series The clearest lake in the world, Hands, New York, 2013; from Ornitography #12, Barcelona, Tahrir Square / Unspeakable, Louisiana, 2016; from the N.O.K. – Next Of Kin. , 2013; from the Converts. Archival pigment print 2012/2016. the series Bedside Manner. Spain, 2016; from the series 2011. Multiscreen HD video, 8:34 series We The People. Digital C-print series Not In Your Face. Archival pigment print Archival pigment print Ornitographies. Archival pigment Archival pigment print Archival pigment print print on Canson Baryta JENNY BROVER ARGUS PAUL ASHLEY GATES In March 2016, the border in MAUREEN DAN FARNUM Farish Street in Jackson, GIGI northern Greece closed, blocking ESTABROOK Mississippi was once a bustling the migration route of refugees DRENNAN Young Blood documents children, African American cultural and GATEWOOD from the Middle East, notably When the people of South Korea teenagers, and young adults business district. There were Syria, who had fled to Europe I seek out the vulnerability of discovered the bizarre news raised amidst a backdrop of black-owned restaurants, law I am frightened and fascinated seeking freedom and sanctuary. living in a small island community that President Park Geun-hye economic decomposition in the firms, furniture stores, a recording by the influence of belief. I Fifty thousand refugees, most through the lives of the young kept secret council with Choi neighborhoods of Michigan’s studio, a cab company, and have waded in a river sacred to destined for northern Europe, women and girls who reside Soon-sil, the daughter of a auto towns. Adolescence and more, all thriving independently thousands, I have stumbled upon remained trapped in declining GARY BURNLEY there. The neighborhood is Broad shamanistic cult leader who early adulthood are characterized during the repressive Jim Crow a pipe in the ground only to learn Greece and were hastily forced Channel, Queens, and it’s a used their relationship to commit by both fragile uncertainty and laws of the South. While serving that it’s a tool to communicate into makeshift camps. They had Expectations and contradictions lifestyle conditioned and enriched acts of extortion, a series of exciting potential. I see these MIKE as field secretary of the NAACP, with the underworld, and I have spent savings on smugglers, in how I am viewed and defined by the water. There is an continuous protests erupted in same characteristics reflected Medgar Evers worked out of an unknowingly set down a leaned traversed mountain ranges of as an African American artist enduring fantasy and sense of Seoul. The anti-Park protests in the rebuilding process of the FERNANDEZ office on Farish, just steps away chair intended for a fallen angel. Turkey, and crossed the Aegean inform my work. Through my freedom that comes from living began in October 2016 and were region. This project focuses on from the former Crystal Palace, Everywhere I turn, objects, places, Sea on flimsy rafts, afraid to work—suffused with issues of near the ocean that is in direct held every Saturday until March multiple cities, including my In the depths of night, the where Duke Ellington and Louis and even people are imbued with never reach the shoreline. They race, class, identity, and opposition to the reality. 2017, when the Constitutional hometown Saginaw, Flint, changelings come out to play. Armstrong once performed. meaning. We take comfort in risked their lives, only to find personal history—I explore Court announced it would Lansing, Ypsilanti, and the Detroit Only a few decades ago, Farish connecting with our environment. themselves living in tents in modes of representation vis-à-vis As the effects of climate change uphold the National Assembly’s metropolitan area. A new wave of New York kids is would have been as packed as There is power in that. deplorable, isolated conditions. predetermined cataloging. The shake this delicate balance impeachment vote. As a Korean coming out to play in downtown Beale Street in Memphis on a They now wonder when the contradictions and conflicting between the community and American based in Seoul, I felt Fear and the need for equality : hosting parties, Saturday night. But today, despite La Lune revolves around a borders will open, when they will nature of visual expectation the natural environment, the the need to capture the emotions play a role in this project since modeling, re-purposing the being on the National Register of Trinidadian family who left the receive asylum, when the EU are abundantly clear when residents have been confronted and energy surrounding these these communities are commonly nightlife as their catwalk. These Historic Places, Farish is largely church to tend the land and build will aid this neglected situation, historically accepted examples with the reality that the place they historic protests that led to avoided or stereotyped by midnight apparitions show love abandoned. The few businesses community without religion. when a man in need, a child in of portraiture in art are love may not be secure. President Park Geun-hye’s outsiders. Suburban communities and audacity through the spirit that remain there continue to Noriga, the father, spent most of need, will cease to be seen as juxtaposed with imagery typical eventual impeachment. near the areas where I photograph of DIY fashion. Underneath breathe life into what was once a his life as a Seventh Day Adventist an animal, as a statistic, as a of school yearbook pictures I began documenting Broad have historically neglected at-risk this fabric we find self-respect, “black Mecca,” and a look inside Minister. When corruption and burden, and be given a chance and/or photographs from family Channel in 2012, months before youth due to misunderstandings defiance, and emancipation—a the windows of some of the jealousy interrupted Noriga’s faith to know freedom. Harnessing albums. Produced for seemingly Hurricane Sandy imbued and prejudices. My work gives a design to reclaim one’s identity. closed storefronts, such as the in the church, he and his family that small hope, the promise of contradictory purposes and the project with unforeseen voice to the residents in places that legendary Peaches Restaurant, defected without the support freedom, is what carries them reflecting opposing social turmoil. Flooding devastated are typically overlooked and taken The immediacy of poses struck, gives us a powerful glimpse into of their extended family and through each day. status and class outlook, by the area; many lost homes advantage of. changing personas, and form the street’s rich history. friends. Over time they have built coercing their union through and possessions. The arduous are captured in the framed a cooperative farm that consists physical collaging and forcefully recovery underscores the conflict minimalism of a Polaroid. of the community outcasts. This joining fragments, my intention of living close to the water, series meditates on the ways in is to emancipate the resulting especially when leaving, to them, While the splendor is DIY at its which our very own communities image from habitually restrictive is not an option. core, it’s edged in sophistication, can limit our freedom to do right. suppositions. The resulting inspired by Alexander McQueen composited representations I am particularly drawn to the and Yayoi Kusama. Drawing probe and disrupt the typical young girls and teenagers in back, CHANGELINGS is a perceptions of the images. Broad Channel because, like celebration of a youthful New The inconsistencies that result their environment, they are York community, rising out of from their unification allow the in a transitional place with an prejudice to find its soul and provenances of the competing uncertain future. There is a sense of ownership in the city. sources to push and pull at each subtle border between defiance other, defining the validity of their and vulnerability. The fragile periphery boundaries. state between adolescence and adulthood mirrors the changing environment that is affecting this island community.

A Syrian Kurdish Boy, Ritsona Study #8, USA, 2016; from the Shannan, Broad Channel, Student Protesters March, Open Fire Hydrant, Detroit. Jacob’s Battle Hymn, New Peaches Restaurant, La Lune River, 2017; from Refugee Camp, Greece, 2016; series Kings of Yesteryear. Queens, New York, 2013; from Seoul, South Korea, 2017; 2012; from the series York, 2016; from the series Farish Street, Jackson, the series La Lune. from the series Open Borders. Mixed media photo collage the series Island Kingdom. from the series Losing Face. Young Blood. CHANGELINGS. Mississippi, 2016; from the Archival pigment print Digital giclée print Digital C-print Giclée print Archival pigment print Archival pigment print series Farish Street. Archival pigment print LILI KRIS GRAVES MATTHEW PERRI HOLZER-GLIER STEPHEN RHEA KARAM HOFMANN In A Bleak Reality (2016), a HAMON This photograph of Milton, JOYCE The series Déraciné (Uprooted) KEVIN series that stands in stark Howard Beach, Queens, is from an inmate struggling with mental consists of trees I have contrast to the energized portraits GYMNOSOPHY: Our word the ongoing project Surface illness, is part of a multimedia Where I Once Stood is a story photographed in New York, CHARITY in The Testament Project, gymnasium comes from a Tensions. Responding to a piece published in partnership MICHAEL of a boy who is trapped in the and then printed, painted, Graves documents eight sites Greek noun meaning “place contemporary America where with The Human Toll of Jail, landscape without the love of his transported, and “replanted” FAIR of the murder of unarmed black to be naked.” The adjective rhetoric, signs, and symbols a storytelling project from JOSEPH life. He doesn’t want to be there, onto public walls in Beirut men at the hands of the police. was gymnos, “naked.” In the often take the place of substance the Vera Institute of Justice, but he doesn’t want to leave through the process of wheat Tuurngaq was originally a rather While each one represents early 20th century, the term and nuance, the photos and Narratively Creative, that Lost and Found is a portrait either. He likes the pain. It’s a pasting as a method of benevolent spirit that the Inuit a single life and death, the gymnosophy was appropriated interrogate these signifiers was supported by the John D. series examining the souls of good thing that he is sad questioning both environmental from Greenland could call upon photographs speak to the greater by several groups to denote a that innocuously appear in and Catherine T. MacArthur lost youth who abandon home to because he was having trouble and sociopolitical issues. The when in need. With Christianity, epidemics of institutionalized broad philosophy that promoted daily life. This visual response Foundation’s Safety travel the country by hitchhiking adjusting to being happy. project initiated from the closure this spirit, freed from its original racism and violence against as an essential principle that seeks to highlight the tension and Justice Challenge. and freight train hopping, living Eighteen years reduced to one of the main landfill in Lebanon role, was assimilated to a demon. the black community, and black the nude human body was a between a commonly understood on the fringes of society. Driven moment, when the man asked in 2015, where garbage was Life line is one of the 15 photos men in particular. These social natural condition and should be construction of Americana and a A man bound hand and foot by wanderlust, they look to his son to kill him. He’s been being dumped and processed, of the Tuurngaq Project, a search divisions and a startling lack of normalized for the betterment much darker lived reality. struggles to sit upright and escape a societal construct and a living inside the fragility of resulting in a trash crisis that for the traces left by this spirit empathy are compounded by the of society. hollers, “This is inhumane!” predetermined, prescribed life. In that room ever since. This is a has been ongoing and flooding promoted to the rank of a demon. perpetuation of denigrating and Another pulls his knees to his their new-found freedom they find glimpse inside the world that the the streets with waste and dangerous stereotypes. Graves is This series of portraits was chin and, wide-eyed, whispers a new family of traveling friends. boy has created for himself. He debris. This physical intervention This project is a naive effort to able to evoke a person—a life— made during a ten-day stay at a about telekinesis and the CIA. They are photographed on public has created a realm that attempts alters the urban landscape and illustrate the impact of freedom by the absence of the figure, and naturists’ community in Ontario, “Someone cut off all my toes,” a streets using natural light, in the to put together the broken pieces tackles the theme of identity on the contemporary Inuit society creates a powerful, disquieting Canada. I comingle aesthetics third man with scars streaking space in which they are found. of his memory. Grabbing at words and its relationship to the urban of Greenland and as a parallel, statement: this is a reality not and techniques associated his face says quietly. “I’m so glad that reveal themselves, he uses environment by the symbolic how freedom (here freedom only measured in numbers or with both journalism and formal I’m finally in the hospital.” Like graffiti on the walls of the city them because they linger for too gesture of being uprooted from from want), like Tuurngaq, at statistics but in individual lives. portraiture to capture authentic, streets they inhabit and the trains long. This was constructed in one country to another. first desirable, may become narrative images of this culture. But this isn’t a hospital. they ride, their bodies and faces the city that he once shared with malignant. This image attempts become the visual storybook the man, so the boy can leave to document the price associated The Cook County Department of their lives. Often unseen or that painful place in his darkest with such a freedom obtained at of Corrections in Chicago is one misjudged, they are some of the dreams, as if it’s a room in the the expense of Nature herself. of the largest single-site pre- kindest people one might meet. back of his house. detention facilities in the world, Their souls are open and their gift Never can we free ourselves from with an average daily population is time. As one states, “They will Nature that surrounds us, we hovering around 9,000 inmates. give you their time because time can only adapt or withstand as It is estimated that 35 percent of is all they have.” And in some long as we can. Considering the this population is mentally ill. cases, in the family they have lightness with which many of us lost, they have found each other. are responding to the challenges Now more patients than ever we face, Greenland will inevitably are being treated in jail rather be stripped to stones and rocks, than at a mental health facility. letting centuries of repressed Cook County Jail has become liberties flow towards us. one of the largest, if not the largest, mental health care provider in the United States.

Milton Rests in a Division of Cook County Jail Reserved for the Mildly to Moderately Mentally Ill, Chicago, 2015; The Murder of Michael Brown, Sharmane and Gilligan, 2016; Howard Beach, Queens, from the series INSIDE THE Lurch, 2014; from the series THRIFT STORE, Pittsburgh, Treescape #05, Lebanon, Life line, Ilulissat, Greenland, Ferguson, Missouri, 2016; from from the series Gymnosophy. 2014; from the series Surface MASSIVE JAIL THAT DOUBLES Lost and Found. 2015; from the series Where 2016; from the series Déraciné 2016; from the Tuurngaq Project. the series A Bleak Reality. Archival pigment print Tensions. Archival pigment print AS CHICAGO’S LARGEST Archival pigment print I Once Stood. (Uprooted). Archival pigment print Archival pigment print MENTAL HEALTH FACILITY. Archival pigment print Archival pigment print Archival pigment print MARTA FRANCESCA MIKE OSBORNE KOSIOREK HOLLY LYNTON MARC MAGNANI White Vans & Black Suburbans Three Square Meters Several years ago, I moved from MCANDREWS MARY BETH is an ongoing series of photo- investigates the individuality New York City to New England Sultan Malik was born in Bed- SAM O’NEILL graphs shot in and around sought out through personalized farm country to embrace its Stuy, Brooklyn and was detained It’s late November on the edge MEEHAN Washington, DC. The project spaces in Polish prisons. The ethos of sustainability and at 18 for armed robbery. He of Cannonball, North Dakota For the past year, I’ve been looks at the nation’s capital from LALI KHALID prisoners function in a monot- local farming. My photography spent 14 years in a maximum- and the sun is setting low over SeenUnseen explores—in image, corresponding with Ashleigh Dye, a perspective that reflects the onous world. Their surroundings explores people’s passion for security prison—seven years in the Missouri River. Stewart text, and public installation— a former high school classmate unease, intrigue, and paranoia Snakes shed their skin do not change. This is a world maintaining rural traditions and solitary confinement for resisting Americanhorse walks along what it means in our society to of mine who is currently in prison that characterizes our current periodically to allow for further with a limited number of stimuli. preserving natural resources racist abuses. “Didn’t older the riverbank talking about be both seen and unseen. How for killing her mother at the age political climate. Throughout the growth and to get rid of parasites As Erving Goffman states in despite the challenges of inmates warn you against rising growing up on the Standing Rock is it determined who is seen and of seventeen. work, each image withholds as that may have gotten attached his “Characteristics of Total agribusiness and climate change. up to provocation?” I asked him. Reservation. “When we were kids who remains invisible? What are much as it reveals. By trafficking to their old skin. We as humans Institutions”: “In prison, all The individuals I photograph He smiled, “Of course, but those they didn’t let us use the rodeo the effects of being seen one way In an effort to understand in concealment and obfuscation, shed our skins too but it is an aspects of life are conducted demonstrate a powerful yet who warn you are also the first grounds so we’d come down by one’s inner circle, but publicly Ashleigh’s life, I’ve been the pictures invite projections. ongoing process and rarely in the same place and under intimate hands-on connection to react.” His body is covered and break the horses along here seen differently? How do we constructing a narrative through In Man with a Pressure Washer, noticed. But what if we were able the same single authority. Each as they work in tandem with in scars from fights, stabbings, because the water would soften account for what we think we see photographs and written letters the everyday work of maintaining to shed our skin like the snakes? phase of the member’s daily their environment: beekeepers, bullet wounds, beatings. A the landing and it calmed the buck when we encounter another? between her and I. Once a week, the Supreme Court is tinged activity will be carried out in the wearing no protective clothing; federal jury recently awarded him down. Right there, that’s Red we speak on the phone; at the with the possibility of violence. This snake’s skin shedding immediate company of a large trainers at a wolf sanctuary; and $400K after correction officers Willow, an old form of tobacco With portraiture, I explore the end of each call she gives me Here and elsewhere, the nobler process reminds me of all the batch of others and required catfish “noodlers,” capturing beat him while fully restrained. they used to smoke with. That possibility of connection between a request, for example to eat a aims of our civic institutions times we change roles to become to do the same thing together.“ seventy-pound fish with their He says he survived prison Sage we’d use to pray with... ” strangers. On my SeenUnseen meal she can no longer enjoy or collide with the uncertainty and someone else. I have been a During my visits to prisons I have bare hands. The title Bare thanks to his mother who visited His voice trails off as he continues blog, I write about the people to track down an ex-boyfriend dysfunction that pervade our mother, a daughter, a lover, a made an attempt to capture how Handed refers to this manual whenever possible and thanks to along the path collecting plants I meet, the process of trying that she misses. Through these present reality. wife, a sister, a divorcee. With inmates transplant reality from approach to work that resembles his mind over matter attitude. and grasses at his feet, gathering to represent them, and the acts, I can better understand each role, I lose a bit of myself. the outside to prison conditions. a form of meditation, where there For the last two years he has them together in bunches. preconceptions that arise in me. her life and situation, while also 2016 was a year of losses for Common objects are often is a delicate balance between been a successful trainer In mounting the portraits in the providing her a link to the world me, different kinds of losses. reinvented in a new context. dominance and surrender. at Conbody, the Chinatown The Black Snake looks communities in which they are outside her incarceration. There was a loss of self, of love, All this is done to mark their bootcamp that hires only ex- past the protests surrounding made, I am urging viewers to of life, of religion, of identity, of personal space and to give the I often photograph vanishing convicts. On this night, I waited the Dakota Access Pipeline to consider these questions. When I visited our hometown freedom, of home. My way of feeling of autonomy. industries and explore how while he trained by himself the elders of the Standing Rock of Fredericksburg, Virginia, coping with loss was to create historical events helped to after everyone left the gym. He Sioux Tribe and the younger “Bidur” represents a woman living Ashleigh gave me a list of things these self-portraits, illustrating determine local industry and dimmed the light and used a very generations who will continue in Providence who fled the war in to do. The first thing on the list the challenges I go through as a pastimes. These images aim to small portion of the room, and to raise their families next to the Syria. It was printed on 30’x20’ was to go to the pharmacy/soda minority, explanations I have to preserve the legacy of rapidly that made me think of his old cell. river after the dust has settled. vinyl and installed in the city’s fountain downtown and order a give, fears I have and freedom disappearing agrarian traditions This series aims to recognize the downtown core, in a ceremony Cherry Coke, her favorite drink. that I am constantly fighting for. while highlighting the current oppression of Native American shown in this exhibition. landscape. This has formed a tribes by the Federal Government, portrait of the ways in which disputed treaty lands, and the Installation photo courtesy of Americans’ relationship to changing relationship between Scott Lapham nature continues in the face of the predominantly white towns an increasingly technological of Bismarck / Mandan and the world. In contrast to the images Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. of rural hardship created by WPA photographers, Bare Handed celebrates the spiritual conviction and resistance of the trend towards mechanization that these heroic individuals possess.

Untitled, 2016; from the series Prison Gym, 2016; from the Les Amber, Honeybees, New Sultan’s Room, 2016; from the Creek Boy on Horseback, Bidur, Installation Ceremony, Cherry Coke, 2017; Man with a Pressure Washer, The Loss of Self. series Three Square Meters. Mexico, 2008; from the series series Sultan’s Sense of Space. Standing Rock Protest Camp, Providence, Rhode Island, 2017; from the series Ashleigh. Supreme Court, Washington, Archival pigment print Archival pigment print Bare Handed. Digital C-print Dye sublimation on aluminum North Dakota, 2016; from the from the series SeenUnseen. Archival pigment print DC, 2017; from the series White series The Black Snake. Archival pigment print Vans & Black Suburbans Digital C-print HECTOR RENE PHIL ROEDER MARA JOAQUIN JORDAN After serving in Iraq, I became At a time when the world SÁNCHEZ- PALTING interested in the power structures REZNICK has the highest number of found throughout the History of displaced persons ever—and RENERO Demarcation explores the social, Art, e.g., The Church, the state, A sense of rightness and strength photojournalists capture iconic psychological, and philosophical KE PENG the monarchy, bankers, etc. I results from unchaining one’s images of people making The Nahuatl word topializ means ramifications of the increased collaborate with veterans in my visible appearance from the treacherous journeys to new “what is our possession, what infrastructure along the border “To the place where light never community, combining their restrictive norms of an unchosen lives—the Trump Administration we must preserve.” This concept between the United States and changes, and people stroll personal history, our shared gender assigned at birth. It is a attempts to turn United States DAVID speaks of a conscience that Mexico. History has repeatedly through the dust, where a histories, and their personal feeling of freedom necessary to DANIEL EVAN policy against refugees and had the ancient civilizations of shown the futility of putting thousand miles of river are belongings (iconography) from living one’s life. It is a feeling that immigrants. Yet, pockets of ROTHENBERG Mexico be bearers of a legacy these types of physical barriers hidden in the fog. To the first service. This process is a group does not necessarily result from RODRIGUEZ resistance around the nation that had to be preserved in favor between humans, yet we place I have been, but don’t effort. We share experiences that simply swapping a normative are finding ways to become Covered Tracks (2015–17) is a of the descendants. This legacy continue to do so to the point know much about.” are familiar to us yet foreign to male gender ideal for a female The Vernon C. Bain Center is safe havens in support of series of photographs made while contained the foundations that of irrationality. The very idea is many around us, especially for one, or vice versa. an 800-bed medium and people on a journey to freedom. walking through neighborhoods constructed its identity. contradictory to the fact that we I tried to reconnect with Hunan, those of us who were recently maximum security Rikers Island connected by the 7 train line in are social by nature. This series a southern province of China, home from deployment. It is Queer Babes celebrates the processing facility servicing all One example is in Des Moines, Queens, New York. The 7 train In the Nahuatl language, of photographs touches upon where everything seems important for me to make work complex identities of queer and five New York City boroughs. Iowa, where the public school cuts through the most culturally iluikak means “in the sky.” The common themes which are found suspended and eternal. It was around that experience with transgender people. The project Nicknamed “The Boat,” the district educates students diverse neighborhoods in the Zongolica mountain range in throughout my greater body the first place I had ever been in people who understand it. shows off many possibilities for purpose-built jail barge has been from 100 different nations, United States, neighborhoods Veracruz is characterized by of work, such as: separation, the world. I also turn to the place gendered life. It takes pleasure permanently docked at the and more than a quarter that are representations of its high altitude and clouds, an loss, and isolation. I grew up, Shenzhen, a city as The method of juxtaposing in queer forms of beauty that southeastern tip of Hunts Point in of its students are English transient lives as new immigrants essential part of its creative young as me, where everything motifs and narratives from the challenge mainstream notions of the South Bronx since 1992. It is Language Learners. Ten days merge languages, cultures, unconscious. The Nahua is marked by perpetual History of Art with contemporary what desirable looks like. It is an currently the largest prison ship after President Trump signed and daily lives creating a community living in the sierra movement and rapid change. military culture is a vehicle to adoring archive of contemporary in the world. his “Muslim ban” executive layered density. This for me is still hold on to beliefs in which The population of Shenzhen look at American Patriotism forms of queer identity that order, Des Moines Public a site of freedom that should ancestral traditions that keep grew from 30,000 to 15,000,000 through the luxury and burden ruptures limiting myths about The route to get there cuts Schools declared themselves a be celebrated, and is becoming them connected to nature in the span of thirty years, of time. This is both an aesthetic trans people by picturing dignified directly through the center of sanctuary. The very next night, more threatened under the remain an important part of their which made me curious about and critical decision as painting embodiments of selfhood. the neighborhood, from the this man was one of more than current political administration. particular identity. and aware of the relationship and photography have been beginning of Hunts Point Avenue, 250 people who attended a The neighborhoods and between the limitations of space manipulated, historically, to to the intersection of Halleck forum, sponsored by the school sites that flank the 7 train are Iluikak is an attempt to breach and the sudden expansion of perpetuate idealized narratives Street, and finally to The Boat. district, to help those new to often considered peripheral, the conventions of an assumed the city. I looked into both the of political “Truths.” the community understand and contain an ever-shifting identity. It is only at the limits new and the old in modern Bain is a series about how the their legal rights, one more step landscape of objects, and of both the evident and the China by photographing incarceration complex (both toward freedom. situations to which I have been concealed—in isolating men between these two places. I am structurally and psychologically) drawn. These sites have provided and women from their everyday particularly interested in how echoes through the environment a fertile landscape to photo- contexts and instead portraying human experiences can be of Hunts Point—a historically graph that is simultaneously them within the space of their simultaneously distinct and yet stigmatized and marginalized realist and abstract as cultural imaginations, the space of their are often connected. neighborhood—as seen from identities merge and new mythical existence—that we a single road. meaning is inscribed. can witness the dissolution of constructed identity and thus confront the true uncertainty of human nature.

Terminus, Imperial Beach, Untitled, Shenzen, China; from The Creation of US, New York Eric, San Francisco, California, Hunts Point, The Bronx, 2016; Untitled, Des Moines, Iowa, Yellow Flowers (Jackson El baile del guajolote (Dance California, 2016; from the series the series Primal Planet. City, 2015; from the series 2016; from the series Queer from the series Bain. 2017; from the series The Heights, New York), 2016; of the turkey), 2016; from the Demarcation. Archival pigment print Hegemony or Survival. Babes. Archival pigment print Digital C-print New Americans. from the series Covered Tracks. series Iluikak. Archival pigment print Archival pigment print Archival pigment print Digital C-print Archival pigment print JAY TURNER DANIEL SHEA ANGIE SMITH AND STANLEY SANDRA CHEN FREY SEAWELL In 2015, I began Stronger WOLUKAU- Shines the Light Inside, a WEINSTEIN National Trust explores the project that uses photographs careful manufacturing of façades WANAMBWA and interviews to illuminate the I met Barbara and Jessy in a in relation to power, politics, and complex experience of refugee ALLISON gender-neutral bathroom while media in the United States. The If, as we believe, the resettlement in America. Of they were freshening up in BEN subjects of National Trust range institutionalization of violence the 65 million displaced people STEWART preparation for a queer fashion from institutional architecture at the level of race, class, and worldwide, only 1 percent of STEVEN show. The couple lives in the SCHONBERGER to political spectacles and gender is at the core of this refugees will be resettled in Bug Out Bag speaks to the fears MILLEE TIBBS large LGBTQ community in media culture, and they are all country’s history, its structure a host country and of those, TRENT SMITH and desires of post-9/11 America San Francisco and plan to get HAMMER; a tool that delivers a inextricably tied to appearances. and its evolution—if those each has endured a long and and introduces you to the 21st- West is the American dream. married after a few years of blow to another object. Architectural forms reference violences are in its soil—then grueling screening process, These are parlous times and century self-reliant American. Go west; west is freedom. West companionship. They graciously ancient Western empires, what is it to wish to be free from often spanning years. For I fear for the futures of my The Bug Out Bag is the most is the fleeting and radiant sunset allowed me to take a few In January 2015, I interviewed and political rallies exist as them? If, as we also believe, we many, they leave behind a life grandchildren. There are basic piece of gear for disaster that holds the promise of a new spontaneous shots, without a retired Detroit Police officer in meticulously staged theatre sets are bound together in relations of hardship and loss only to find powerful agents working to rip preparedness and contains the and better tomorrow. staging and in natural lighting. his home, located in the metro full of patriotic glitz. of differentiated but mutual that resettlement in America apart the fabric of our society. essentials needed to sustain Detroit area. This officer, whose interdependence, then might it be is a different kind of struggle. They seek to turn long-held life for 72 hours, or to possibly (West is mirage.) This image of Barbara and Jessy identity will remain anonymous These pictures are concerned the case that freedom for some Through this work, I explore values, and laws, and even begin a new civilization. Each is a part of the SHE/They series but is referred to as HAMMER, with the heavy influence of necessarily exerts pressures on themes surrounding resilience, freedoms, topsy-turvy. And not bag becomes a portrait of its The mid-west is transient; it is the of candid and intimate portraits granted me permission to spectacles on our understanding the freedom of others? We also strength, freedom, and identity. just here in America. There is owner, showing us their fears in halfway point to somewhere else. of both women and gender-fluid photograph his collection of of power and politics. At the fervently wish for freedom from Stronger Shines the Light Inside more hatred, more fear, more the face of environmental and It is from here that we dream of people. These photographs seek objects and images that he kept same time, I depict these fear, and we understand that is a platform that shares this division, than at any time since political change. Most preppers tomorrow. It is the land we fly to illuminate the dynamic and during his time on the police fabricated appearances in the freedom to be bound up with the complicated and multifaceted the Vietnam War in the 1960s are community minded but over in our longing for freedom. complex perceptions of tradition, force. His collection consisted midst of an ongoing and profound preservation of free speech and experience with the world, in the and 1970s. Although, what is some are fiercely independent. love, identity, and ideals in life. of photographs and a variety of erosion of trust in American the unrestricted circulation of words of each individual who happening today makes those Independence is a fundamental (Every evening for two weeks At the same time, this work confiscated objects. society. My photographs explore ideas and beliefs. experiences it. Every story is days seem timid, almost carefree, principle when describing the in Nebraska, I photographed demonstrates how both women the persistence of façades in different, but each one speaks in comparison. This photograph, American character. We praise the setting sun over the Great and gender-fluid people After photographing HAMMER’s this precarious climate as This piece attempts to confront of hope, of refusal to give up. Flag and Brothers at the Window, the self-reliant man and credit Plains, folded the printed inhabit diverse bodies and collection, he became insecure structures of power fight to keep this nation’s history through two This resilience is their common Williamsport, Pennsylvania, him for the shining city upon the photograph into a paper airplane, express complex forms of self- and disturbed with how the up appearances. interlinking symbols of American strength, and the light that shines 1969, reflects on the familiar hill, but 21st-century capitalism and re-photographed it. The determination. I incorporate images revealed a dark and masculinity. In their combination through their stories has the sentiment that the political has changed Americans and our series title refers to the content “they,” in addition to the pronoun uneasy representation. HAMMER into the form of a diptych to power to illuminate our lives, our climate today holds to those fears are running rampant. The of the image, sky and earth, “she,” in my title to acknowledge demanded that I abandon my which each of us has contributed communities, and our world. troubled times of the late ’60s. new self-reliant American no and the object into which the the range of gender identities photographic investigation. equally, we are attempting to longer experiences transcendence photograph has been folded, an among the people featured in Our last correspondence was confront the interdependence in nature as Thoreau once did, airplane. The resulting image the photographs. through email in July 2015. of binary oppositions, and but instead, escapes to nature holds the illusionistic space At the end of the project, I to address the incipient in an effort to hoard and protect of the landscape while being was frustrated by our inability antagonisms that are continually property. Prepping has become a photographic documentation of to reconcile our different unchained in the political capitalist enterprise, banking on its manipulation. The collapsing interpretations of the artwork. assertion of ownership over our fears and desires for stability. of the photographic space the identity of this nation. Thus, through folding creates an image This photograph depicts our piece sets out to create an where the intangible and the confiscated drug packages from interstice through or in which a tactile coexist and the ephemeral impounded cars and suspects on set of questions might be distilled is made into an object.) the streets of Detroit, Michigan in direct relation to the thematic during the 1980s. framework for this exhibition.

HAMMER, Detroit, 2016; from Reporter III, Chicago, 2012; Untitled Sar Bah Bi, Boise, Idaho, 2016; Flag and Brothers at the MM’s Bug Out Bag, Los August 3, 2013, Solar Jet, Barbara & Jessy, San the series Hammer. Archival from the series National Trust. Archival pigment print from the series Stronger Shines Window, Williamsport, Angeles, 2015; from the Nebraska, 2013; from the series Francisco, 2016; from the series pigment print on Canson Baryta Archival pigment print the Light Inside. Digital C-print Pennsylvania, 1969; series Bug Out Bag: The Air/Plains. Archival pigment print SHE/They. Archival pigment print from the series Freedoms. Commodification of American Archival pigment print Fear. Archival pigment print HARM WEISTRA EMILY YANG

By merging multiple images of The series Liquify examines bombed and destroyed buildings the complexity of an individual’s in Syria, Weistra has created five gender fluidity. The images have collages inspired by and referring two intertwining threads: one that to Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s might be thought of as storytelling, sixteen famous prison etchings, and the other as a kind of meta- Carceri d’invenzione (Imaginary commentary about the medium of Prisons), fantastical aggregations photography itself. of structures that did not exist in real life. Based on found Raised by a single mother, I was footage, Weistra constructed told that I should not limit my contemporary “aggregations of dreams and potential based on structures.” These compilations my being a woman. However, and assemblages of bombed the gendered stereotypes buildings symbolize how Syrian promoted by mass media have civilians, unable to leave their been pervasive in China. The cities under attack, take the contradiction of my mother’s freedom to utilize these “carceri” promises and the reality that mass to continue their life. media promotes, has compelled me to focus on the illusion of the gender binary. I have learned that a person cannot be easily categorized into a binary. To me, that failure of categorization presents us with the possibility of multiple readings.

Liquify seeks to reflect this ambiguity of gender through an objectification of each of the subjects and the blurring that occurs between the photo- graphs and reality.

Carceri I, Aleppo, Syria, 2017; Present, 2015; from the series from the series Carceri dei Danni Liquify. Archival pigment print Collaterali (Prisons of Collateral Damage). Archival pigment print