group show 40 : The Artists

Alec Soth (@littlebrownmushroom)
Statement: Since I’m a photographer by trade, I was apprehensive about using the medium for social media kicks. While I posted pictures occasionally on Tumblr and Twitter, I was opposed to entering the entirely photographic universe of Instagram. Once I finally did succumb, I felt a pressure to engage with the medium on a more sophisticated level. But within days of signing up for Instagram, I found myself instinctively posting pictures of my pets. More powerful still was the urge to share photographs of myself. Both appalled and fascinated by this primal desire to be visually acknowledged,  I began posting pictures of myself with my face obscured. Some people have suggested that these ‘unselfies’ are a critique of social media culture, but I don’t see it that way. If anything, these pictures are a wrestling match with my own desire to be "liked."

 Bio: Alec Soth (b. 1969) is a photographer born and based in Minnesota. He is the author of over a dozen publications including Sleeping by the Mississippi, NIAGARA and Broken Manual. In 2008, Soth started his own publishing company, Little Brown Mushroom. Soth is represented by Sean Kelly Gallery in New York, Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco, Weinstein Gallery in Minneapolis, and is a member of Magnum Photos.

Amy Eklins (@amyelkinsphoto)
Statement:  #whilstiwasdrawingbreath

3 months, 9 airports, 7 Countries, 5 foreign languages, 4 currencies. I had pushed through crowded markets and witnessed Sufi ceremonies in Turkey, walked miles in Denmark through cemeteries and ballet houses, woke to the endless Bavarian Alps for the two months I was on an artist residency in Germany, joined the rowdy teens in the métro and got lost in the streets of Paris, walked in the relentless rain in London, looked down at Salzburg from a castle on the top of a mountain, marveled at the moon-like landscape and sat in steaming pools with strangers in Iceland. Foreign chatter fell all around me like white noise for months. Strangers and wonderful new friends came in and out of my life. History and religious weight seemingly loomed over Europe in its cathedrals and cemeteries and museums and alleyways.

 And there I was longing for something... anything familiar. And sooner than I could have processed what I had experienced, I was on a layover in NYC, frazzled from jet-lag, loss and a different type of culture shock. It was December and I found soon after landing back in the States, that most things I had left in Portland had dissolved in my absence. I was too tired and weary from traveling to understand any of it. I flew home, moved almost everything I owned into a 5x10 storage unit. I took what I needed. And I drove 1,000 miles away.

These photographs unraveled during this time.

Bio: Amy Elkins was born in Venice Beach, CA, and received her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC; Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna, Austria; the Carnegie Art Museum in California; and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in Minnesota. Her portraits of Arianna Huffington were recently published in The Telegraph/Stella Magazine, while additional fine art projects have recently been published in Lens Magazine and Real Simple.  Elkins is represented by Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York.

Andrew Fladeboe (@fladeboe)
Statement: My current Instagram work has been a way for me to help supplement the current photography project I am undertaking in New Zealand. I am traveling around the country photographing working dogs in various jobs. There is just something so wonderful about being able to instantly post a picture while I am helping herd a mob of 3,000 sheep to my friends across the world. Its helps me feel connected on this often lonely project.  

Bio: Born in California in 1984, Andrew grew up in Japan, Russia, and Austria before obtaining his BFA in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2006. In the past few years he has spent time photographing animals in the Netherlands, the Highlands of Scotland, Southern France, and most recently Norway. His work has appeared in major publications and is held in a growing number of private collections. He has been awarded a Fulbright Grant to photograph in New Zealand for all of 2014.

Emiliano Granado (@quesofrito)
Statement:  I posted an open call to photograph anyone on my Instagram feed. To date, I've photographed over 80 subjects. Friends and complete strangers showed up. The project hopes to investigate the concept of Publication, the desire to see and be seen, and Portraiture. See the ongoing series on Instagram by searching #ipgportraitproject

 Bio: Emiliano Granado was born in La Plata, Argentina but has lived most of his life in the US. He currently lives and works out of Brooklyn, NY and is a graduate of Amherst College. His work consistently revolves around the examination of Popular Culture, exhibition, and spectacle. He has exhibited in various group shows and has worked for many international clients. 

Heidi Romano (@heidiromano)
Statement: Places I have never been is about pictures and remembering. Of being a false witness and geography, about popular culture (instagram) & history (using carbon printing invented by Alphonse Poitevin in 1855 for exhibition prints), about tales and discovery. It is the record of “Places I have never been.” It is a tale about time traveling and not going anywhere. When time stands still and a search for landscapes takes place. A balanced reflection on the past and the present. Blurring the line between fact and fiction, history and contemporary times. Taking images that could be anywhere, and altering time frames. “Places I have never been” is a non-linear photographic narrative, where personal and historic time overlap and co-exist.

Bio: Heidi Romano is an exhibiting artist, a researcher on photography and a passionate book designer. When she is not organising the upcoming PHOTOBOOK MELBOURNE festival, curating the next issue of UNLESS YOU WILL, or pursuing her ongoing, experimental photographic practice, she is most likely designing a book, app or website. She is currently living in the gold fields, close to Melbourne, Australia.

Jared Ragland (@jaredragland)
Statement: After living away for nearly 18 years, I recently moved back to my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama.  #108_days loosely documents my return to a place that felt both familiar and foreign, and the confluent feelings of contentment and uncertainty that accompanied it.

Bio: Jared Ragland (b 1977) is from Birmingham, Alabama.

Joe Earley (@joeearleyjournal)
Statement: My practice has completely changed since I got Instagram and started exploring its content, I currently work with the unseen moments that most people ignore or miss, I like geometric shapes, colours and interesting compositions, I find it incredible how an area completely changes when you frame in within a certain crop.

 Bio: Joe Earley is from Rochester, and is currently studying in Kent, UK for his BA in Contemporary photography.

Katrin Koenning (@k_koenning)
Statement: Glow is an evolving collection of pictures focused on things that have assumed a shortlived or unexpected state of glow. The work is - without agenda or linear narrative - a play with light and impermanence.

Bio: Born and raised in Germany’s Ruhr Area, Katrin Koenning is a Melbourne based artist whose work is exhibited nationally and internationally and published widely. Katrin has won a number of awards, including Australia's Top Emerging Documentary Photographer (2011) and the 2012 JGS Award by the Forward Thinking Museum. She is a former Editor of the Australian PhotoJournalist Magazine and a curatorial adviser for Wallflower Photomedia Gallery. She is represented in Australia by Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne.

Lindsay Metivier (@lindsaymetivier)
Statement: Lindsay Metivier keeps her introspective lens pointed in the quiet corners of the everyday, pausing to capture poetic moments nestled in between the columns of chaos, paying attention to objects, unintentional geometries as well as uncanny situations that often go unnoticed. Some images capture a metaphor for solitude and some a playful irony. 

Bio: Lindsay Metivier was born in Burlington, Vermont and currently lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts. In 2008 she earned a BFA in Photography and a BA in Art Education from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.  In 2011 she founded Aviary Gallery & Digital Lab in Jamaica Plain. Additionally she teaches photography and works as a photographer on a freelance basis.

Mark Marchesi (@mark_marchesi)
Statement: I’ve been shooting architecture and cityscapes for a dozen years or so with large and medium format film. When I got an iPhone and joined IG in 2012 I was seduced by the speed at which I could make images, and the fun of sharing. I embraced the low quality, and I found that a single house shot from the street fit perfectly into the square format with the wide lens of the iPhone. Every house has it’s own personality, and gives clues to the personality of it’s owners and the design aesthetic of the region.

I started the tag #houseportrait which caught on quickly and now has almost 28K posts. More recently I began looking at microcosms of the subject. One that I have a particular affinity for is the Triple Decker. This is a style house that is unique to sections of the Northeast, especially New England. It is classified by many as vernacular architecture.

Bio: Mark Marchesi was born in 1977 in a suburb of NYC. He moved to Portland to attend Maine College of Art and graduated with a BFA in photography in 1999. Mark’s work has been exhibited widely in the US. He currently lives in South Portland, ME with his wife and two kids.

Shane Lavalette (@shanelavalette)
Statement: I signed up for an account about a year ago and have used it primarily as a place to make photographic notes to myself, sketch ideas, and as another way to keep myself looking. The images are a mix of moments from my personal life, art practice, travels, etc., without any real expectations or framework. For me, it's sort of like thinking out loud. There's room for play and experimentation. I'm fond of the spontaneity of it, and the potential to uncover something surprising or beautiful. 

 Bio: Shane Lavalette s an American photographer, the founding Publisher/Editor of Lavalette, and the Director of Light Work. He holds a BFA from Tufts University in partnership with The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Lavalette’s photographs have been shown widely, including exhibitions at the High Museum of Art, Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, Aperture Gallery, Montserrat College of Art, The Carpenter Center for Visual Arts at Harvard University, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Musée de l’Elysée, and are held in private and public collections. His editorial work has been published in various magazines, including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Newsweek, Vice, The Wire, Pig Magazine, CODE, and SLASH. 

Stepanka Peterka (@slavicpuddin)
Statement: This track of experiments materializes within the medium of a mobile tracking device. Taking cues from a hyper-connected and high speed digital thrust, these images are abstracted from a collage of embedded digital potential like camera, apps, and screenshots. While engaging in an untethered exploration of playful gestures, a deeper involution into the customization of experience and the device takes place.

 Bio: Stepanka Peterka is an artist living and working in Oregon.