group show 65
Two Way Lens: Portraits as Empathy
About the Artists

Melissa Alcena (b.1988, Nassau) is a Bahamian portrait and documentary photographer based in Nassau, Bahamas. In 2012 she completed an Applied Photography course at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario, Canada. Melissa moved back to The Bahamas in 2016, where she became inspired to take portraits of working class and marginalised Bahamians, in their environments. Her work focusses on shifting the paradise narrative of the Caribbean, by directly engaging with the people of The Bahamas in the everyday and tapping into the humanity of its citizens.

Devin Allen was born and raised in West Baltimore. Allen gained national attention when his documentary photograph of the Baltimore Uprising was published on a Time Magazine cover in May 2015 – only the third time the work of an amateur photographer had been showcased there.

Hannah Altman is a Jewish-American artist from New Jersey. She holds an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. Through photographic based media, her work interprets relationships between gestures, the body, lineage, and interior space. 

Lois Bielefeld is a series based artist working in photography, audio, video, and installation.  Her work continually asks the question of what links routine and ritual to the formation of identity and personhood. Born in Milwaukee, currently she splits her time between Chicago and Los Angeles. 

Amanda Bjorn is an artist and curator based between Miami, Los Angeles, and Havana. Interested in the connection between bodies and space, she works in images, music, films, and movement seeking to build relationships with the fragile world around us. She is currently leading photography and art trips for women artists in various locations in Latin America — Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, and Panama. Amanda received her BA in Art History and Photography and a Master's Degree in Art and Curatorial Practices in the Public Sphere from The University of Southern California. Her work has been published in i.D., Vice, Teen Vogue, Livefast Magazine, Urban Outfitters, Nasty Gal, Huffington Post, Passion Passport, among others.

Carloman Macidiano Cespedes Riojas (born 1981) is a Peruvian photographer who lives in Buenos Aires. Argentina He studied Communication Sciences and is a graduate of the Argentine School of Photography. Carlo creates images that, according to him, are inspired by real events in his life and his daily environment, and also deals with diverse photography, from landscapes, trips, streets, documentary and conceptual. His work has won several awards, including the Sony World National Photography Awards in 2015 and 2017.

Holly Chang is an analog photographer based in Toronto. Chang as a second-generation Chinese-Canadian maintains cultural ties with her cross-cultural identity and draws on her hybrid identity for inspiration. Chang makes use of photographic genres to quietly unpack the anxieties that surround a mixed identity.

Helen Maurene Cooper My work is driven by personal connection and the desire to build relationships within community. I am artist who uses numerous photographic processes along with installation and publication to connect and build relationships, explore feminism, entrepreneurship, small economies, the power of adornment, and intimacy.

Lauren Crew is a Los Angeles based artist who specializes in photography. Her imagery ranges from portraiture to fine art and her work can be found in global commercial campaigns as well as in travel and editorial commissions. Crew’s affinity for light and depth helps to connect her clients and viewers on an emotional level. 

Andrés Mario de Varona is a Cuban-American artist from Miami, FL. He attended the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture, and Design where he graduated with a BFA degree in studio art and spent two years working as a production assistant for Osamu James Nakagawa. After graduating in 2019 he drove to the Southwest for Center’s Photographic Review in Santa Fe New Mexico and found a new home in La Cienega.  Since being in New Mexico, Andrés has begun working for photographer Steven Katzman, and embarked on a new photographic series: TRIALS.

Luis Manuel Diaz, born in Michoacán, Mexico, works in photography challenging historical and contemporary depictions of immigrants and the community. Recently, he was awarded the  EnFoco fellowship and exhibited work at the Bronx Art Space in New York. Diaz received a BFA in photography from Parsons The New School of Design in 2019. He has exhibited work at Aperture Foundation, the Arnold and Sheila Aronson Gallery, and Baxter St Camera Club among others. Diaz currently lives and works in NY.

Jess T Dugan is an artist whose work explores issues of identity through photographic portraiture. Their photography is regularly exhibited internationally and is in the permanent collections of several major museums. Jess’s monographs include To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults (Kehrer Verlag, 2018) and Every Breath We Drew (Daylight Books, 2015). They are represented by the Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago, IL.

Amy Elkins is an 8th generation Californian currently based in the Bay Area.  She works primarily in photography and has spent the past fifteen years researching, creating and exhibiting work that explores the multifaceted nature of masculine identity as well as the psychological and sociological impacts of incarceration.  Her approach is series-based, steeped in research and oscillates between formal, conceptual and documentary. 

Nadezhda Ermakova was born in Tambov, Russia in 1985.  She was graduated from the Philological faculty and first worked as teacher of French.  In 2018 she started his way on Photography. Nadezhda works on the field of social issue, age transition and relationships between generations.  Her series was published and took part at group exhibitions in Russia and worldwide. Since 2019 she studies at Rodchenko School of Art in Moscow, Russia.

Lauren Forster is a portrait and documentary photographer; her work mainly addresses sociological issues and explores the human condition with her family playing a central role to her work. Her work has been exhibited and published internationally. In 2018 she was a winner of Portrait of Britain and has been shortlisted for awards such as Wellcome Photography prize, the Royal Photographic Society International Photography Exhibition and the Kuala Lumpur International Photography Portrait Award.

Karim Gavins is a visual artist who focuses on philosophies and ideas based around perception. Using the mediums of photography, drawing, physical and digital manipulation Karim is focusing on perception of identity and how that shapes the world around us. Often using himself and his surroundings he questions values and identities placed within people, symbols, and places.

Roberto Goya, 1977, Tenerife. Degree in Dramatic Art. In parallel, he continues with his self-taught formation in the field of photography, that is complemented with several courses and workshops given by artists, curators and editors as Dora García, Sven Ehmann, Pablo Helguera, Nicolas Bourriaud, Ricardo Cases, Juan Curto, Joan Morey, Xavier Ribas, Gonzalo Golpe and Mariela Sancari. His work has been exhibited in Tenerife, Madrid, London and Berlin, as well as appearing in various publications.

Allison Grant is an artist, writer, curator and Assistant Professor of Photography at the University of Alabama. Her artworks have been widely exhibited at venues including the DePaul Art Museum, Azimuth Projects, and Catherine Edelman Gallery, among others. She was the 2019 recipient of the Developed Work Fellowship from the Midwest Center for Photography and shortlisted for the 2019 FotoFilmic Mesh Prize. Her works are held in public collections at DePaul Art Museum (Chicago), Columbia College Chicago, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and 4-Culture (Seattle.)

Anna Grevenitis found photography in a meandering way: it happened organically after becoming a mother, and because it was therapeutic and based in self-inquiry, she effortlessly pointed her lens at her family and herself. In her daily introspection, she searches for meaning with her camera. Grevenitis is interested in photography as an act of establishing visual memory and engaging in social visibility, over time. Her photographs have been exhibited both nationally and internationally. 

Originally from Ethiopia, Eyakem Gulilat’s work is rooted in a quest for belonging. Gulilat focuses on the complexities of cross-cultural encounter, perceptions of time, memory, and place. His photography questions the differences between subject and photographer; the borders that distinguish us from one another; and the ways our perceptions shift when we view each other through the camera’s lens. His photography work has been exhibited throughout the U.S and in Canada and has been acquired for private and public collections.   

Erick Guzman is a first-generation, Latinx, Queer, and GenderQueer interdisciplinary artist, scholar, philanthropist, and writer. Often using their subjects allegorically, Guzman’s work navigates the intricacies of identity politics to ask questions about their liminal identity and relation to the Latinx Diaspora. Their work borrows from various visual traditions ranging from photographic and figurative portraiture, queer aesthetics, and the vernacular surrounding spirituality. They are a graduate student, currently on COVID-related leave, at the Rhode Island School of Design, where they are pursuing an MFA in Photography. They graduated from Brown University Magna Cum Laude in 2016 with two degrees: a BA in Visual Arts with Honors and a BA in Health & Human Biology. Their work has been exhibited nationally and published widely.

Dylan Hausthor is an artist based on a small island off the coast of Maine. Their work is an act of hybridity–an effort to render field recordings into myth. Interested in small-town gossip and the fragility of journalistic truth, they look for stories that are found at the end of dirt roads and in the tops of fir trees. Hausthor received their BFA Maine College of Art and is a current MFA candidate at Yale University. Their work has been showcased nationally and internationally by the Aperture Foundation, Ain’t-Bad, British Journal of Photography, Photo District News, PHMuseum, Vice, Gomma, World Press Photo, LensCulture, Vogue, and the permanent collection at MoMA’s library.

Jamil Hellu is a visual artist whose work deals with issues of identity relating to race, queer sexuality, and gender. Navigating through a personal and political lens, Hellu weaves together a photographic exploration of his own visibility as a queer immigrant and a focused motivation to collaborate with members of the LGBTQ+ community to activate a critical dialogue about social justice, equity, and inclusion. Hellu holds a MFA in Art Practice from Stanford University.

Jon Henry is a visual artist working with photography and text, from Queens NY (resides in Brooklyn). His work reflects on family, sociopolitical issues, grief, trauma and healing within the African American community. His work has been published both nationally and internationally and exhibited in numerous galleries including Aperture Foundation, Smack Mellon, and BRIC among others. Known foremost for the cultural activism in his work, his projects include studies of athletes from different sports and their representations. He was recently awarded the Arnold Newman Grant for New Directions in Photographic Portraiture, an En Foco Fellow for 2020, one of LensCulture's Emerging Artists for 2019 and has also won the Film Photo Prize for Continuing Film Project sponsored by Kodak.

Beth Herzhaft is a self-taught Los Angeles based photographer.  Her focus is on creating iconic, incisive photographs. She is inspired by the challenge of helping shape the persona people present to the world. When not shooting commercially she shoots fine art photography, the work often including a wry sense of humor and cultural observation. 

Stephan Jahanshahi is an Iranian American photographer based in Seattle.  A graduate of the SVA MFA Photo program in 2015, his work explores how community, environment and narrative shape experience and identity.

Anjelica Jardiel is a Filipinx-American, Buddhist, twinless twin who grew up in Los Angeles. She currently lives and works in New York as a portrait and fashion photographer and moonlights as a curator for a group art exhibition series called ANYONE / ANYWHERE. 

Tommy Kha is a photographer based between New York City and his hometown, Memphis, TN. He likes to think he takes after his great aunt, who “read too many books and went crazy.” 

Michael Lagerman was born in Green Bay, WI and was raised on the shores of Lake Huron where he spent his summers. He started making photographs and installations while studying philosophy at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, MI. Michael is now a MFA candidate in the Photography and Imaging department at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. His work begins with the photograph and expresses the medium’s plasticity as a means to explore material expectations in relation to social, subjective, and environmental realms. With his work he demonstrates the productive space found in the margins between these various ecologies. Outside of his studio and research, Michael is an educator, curator and community organizer focused on the intersection of queerness, public and private spaces, and fostering momentum for direct action.

Marco Lorenzetti (b. Detroit) received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Michigan School of Art and Design and his Masters of Fine Arts degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work can be found in the permanent collections of The Detroit Institute of Arts and Art Institute of Chicago. He was nominated for the Prix Pictet Award in 2014. Work from that documentary, Unclaimed Remains, was published in the Prix Pictet book, Disorder, in 2015. 

Marcus Maddox (b. 1994) is a photographer working in Philadelphia and New York City. His work is characterized by a natural tone, guided by intuition and empathy. Drawn towards the personal, Maddox sets out to capture the human condition in a meaningful way. Maddox has been influenced by contemporary black painters, resulting in a project titled "Figures of Color." This work deviates from his normal photographic approach, using painterly compositions to highlight the beauty of Blackness.

Maria Theresa Moerman lb is a Danish-Dutch visual artist based in Scotland. Her practice, which includes curation and writing, is autobiographical and focuses on loss, identity and memory. Working mainly with photography, film and text, she often combines found and original material to create narratives that linger between the real and the imagined. 

Natasha Moustache is a Chicago based photographer and 2021 MFA candidate at Columbia College of Chicago. Natasha is interested in visual representation that allows for the occupation of spaces and identities that are not independent of each other, but overlapping through non-stylized and often candid portraits. Natasha uses their work to spark discussion around social boundaries and social justice.

Ruben Natal-San Miguel is an architect, fine art photographer, curator, creative director and critic. His stature in the photo world has earned him awards, features in major media, countless exhibitions and collaborations with photo icons such as Magnum Photographer Susan Meiselas..His photographs are in the permanent collections of El Museo Del Barrio in NYC, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, NY, The Contemporary Collection of the Mint Museum Charlotte, North Carolina, The Bronx  Museum for the Arts, School of Visual Arts, NYC, The Fitchburg Museum of Art, Massachusetts and The Museum of The City of NY.

Mikael Owunna (b. 1990) is a Nigerian-Swedish American photographer, Fulbright Scholar and engineer. His work explores the relationship between engineering, optics, the Black body and queerness.

Claudia Paul is a German-born photographer based in NYC, shooting commercial and editorial imagery for a variety of clients. Her approach is always personal, with the goal of capturing an emotional and authentic image. Claudia loves storytelling and creates video content for small businesses and Non-Profits via her production company Doppelganger Motion. She currently serves on the board of the New York chapter of American Photographic Artists and is a founding member of The Luupe.

Ryan Pfluger is a Queer artist based out of Los Angeles.  Originally from NY, he received his MFA from SVA.

Laurence Philomene is a photographer based in Montreal, Canada. Laurence makes colourful work that centers queer and trans experiences, often through long-form and autobiographical projects.  Laurence's work is informed by their lived experiences as a chronically ill, non-binary transgender artist coming of age amid the rise of social media. Through high-saturated, cinematic and caring images, their work celebrates trans existence, and studies identity as a space in constant flux.

Irene Antonia Diane Reece identifies as a contemporary artist and visual activist. Her recent work questions society’s perspectives on her racial identities and combats the social norms in regards to being a Black Mexican woman living in the United States and Europe.Her array of photographic works, appropriated films, usage of text, and found objects create an insight towards issues that revolve around racial identity, African diaspora, social injustice, family histories, mental and community health issues. 

Jenny Riffle (b. 1979) holds a BA in photography from Bard College, and an MFA in Photo, Video and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts. Riffle’s photographs have been exhibited internationally and she has photographed for and been featured in numerous publications worldwide; her monograph Scavenger: Adventures in Treasure Hunting was published by Zatara Press in 2015. Riffle lives in Seattle, where she teaches at Photographic Center Northwest.

Keith Haley Robitaille is a visual artist who splits their time between Cambridge, MA and Queens, NY. In 2020, they received a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University where they studied under Bill Burke and Rachelle Mozman Solano. Their work has been shown in group exhibitions in Boston, and New York City. Most recently, they were shortlisted for the Palm Photo Prize in the UK.

Darcy Rogers was born and raised in San Francisco, CA.  She obtained a Masters of Fine Art with an emphasis in photography from the Academy of Art in SF, CA.  She currently resides in NYC where she works full time and pursues photographic projects on nights and weekends.  Her work emphasizes portraiture and memory.

June T. Sanders is an artist, writer, educator, and curator from south central wa state. She lives there still. She is currently a full time assistant professor with the digital technology & culture program at Washington State University. Her work is about gender; dirt; expansions; home.

Robin Schwartz is a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow in photography with photographs in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Bibliothéque Nationale, among others. Schwartz’s fourth photography book is Amelia & the Animals, the second “Amelia book” to be published by The Aperture Foundation. Robin’s photographs have been published in the New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Time Lightbox, The New Yorker, New York, The Guardian, Telegraph, Le Monde, Stern Magazines among others. Schwartz is a Professor in Photography at William Paterson University of New Jersey.

Amber Shields uses photography, video and installation to explore themes of family, mortality, and gender politics through a female-specific lens. In 2018, her photographs received 2nd place Editor’s Choice Award through CENTER Santa Fe and were selected for the PDN Photo Annual. She is also the recipient of a 2017 New Orleans Photo Alliance grant. Exhibitions include the Art + Commerce Festival of Emerging Photographers and PS122 Gallery in New York. Shields received a MFA from San Jose State University in California and a BA from Loyola University in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Bharat Sikka was born and raised in India, where he began his photographic practice before studying at the Parsons School of Design, NY. Sikka’s long term photographic projects have centered on the cultural residues and societal transformations within India, rendered with the visual language and material forms of contemporary art photography. His work subtly speaks to India’s history and regionality (of Kashmir, in Where the Flowers Still Grow), the tide of globalization (Matter), and masculinity (Indian Men). For Unseen 2019, Sikka creates an installation version of The Sapper - his detailed and layered portrayal of his father. Sikka brings together multiple vantage points; from the remote landscapes that his father inhabits and maintains to subtle still life observations of his habits and routines. Over the course of 3 years, Sikka and his father’s photographic relationship has also become multi-layered, shown in the range of Sikka’s intimate portraits of his father in his daily life through to the collaborative performances and enactments that the engineer-father undertakes for his photographer-son.

Aline Smithson is a visual artist, educator, and editor based in Los Angeles. She has had over 40 solo shows and her work has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and PDN. In 2019, her work was selected for the Taylor Wessing Prize at the National Portrait Gallery in London and for the Critical Mass Top 50. Kris Graves Projects published her book on Los Angeles, which is now sold out.

b. 1997, New York City, Joey Solomon's photographs have been featured in The New Yorker, Aperture Gallery and MoMA PS1 among notable others. Solomon’s images serve to advocate for invisible mental highs and lows of the mentally afflicted human experience. As an openly gay man with mental disorders, Joey Solomon’s practice centers on the psychology of self portraits via portraits of his immediate family as well as his own body. In 2019, Joey Solomon earned his BFA fine Photography from NYU Tisch’s School of The Arts after earning a full tuition scholarship to attend. Solomon is currently based in Brooklyn. 

Photographer Tiffany Sutton was born in 1981 in Rochester, NY, and was raised in suburban St. Louis, MO. She began documenting family and friends after receiving a Kodak camera as a Christmas gift in the early 1990s. While primarily a self-taught photographer, she also attended classes at Washington University in St. Louis and St. Louis Community College. Sutton is a 2020 Harvard #InTheCity Visual Artist Fellow and was awarded the Regional Arts Commission St. Louis Artist Support Grant in 2019, the Regional Arts Commission Artist Relief grant, the Luminary Futures Fund: Emergency Relief for Artists, and A Sustaining Arts Practice Fund (ASAP Fund). Sutton has decided to work with black women exclusively, as a way to reconnect with herself and discuss social movements. Sutton works with film and instant cameras. 

Rashod Taylor is a fine art and portrait photographer whose work addresses themes of family, culture, legacy, and the black experience. He attended Murray State University and received a Bachelor's degree in Art with a specialization in Fine Art Photography. Since then, Rashod has exhibited and published his work across the Midwest. He lives in Bloomington, IL, with his wife and son.

Rachel Elise Thomas (b. 1988) is a Detroit-born and based artist who obtained her BFA in Photography at the College for Creative Studies. Her clients include The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, The New Republic, Rolling Stone, The Marshall Project, and InStyle. Being a collage artist, documentary and editorial photographer has given Rachel the versatility to tell stories in different ways. Rachel’s warm and introspective personality further adds to the art and imagery she creates. She gathers inspiration from vintage magazines and advertisements, photographs, decorative paper, textiles and printed words, assembling imagery and materials that invite the viewer to more deeply examine the message presented. These messages revolve around identity, ancestry and spirituality. With topics sometimes having tongue-in-cheek nuances, this is done as a way to further understand and delve into issues that affect our society—overconsumption, vanity, materialism, colorism, sexism and racism.

Whitney Toutenhoofd is an emerging photographer based in Boulder, Colorado. She has exhibited her work nationally in group shows at the Museum of Art Fort Collins, the Academy Art Museum, the Barrett Art Center, and the Spiva Center for the Arts, among others.

Ka-Man Tse is an artist and educator. She received an MFA from Yale University, and a BA from Bard College. She has exhibited her work at Para Site, Videotage, Lumenvisum, and Eaton Workshop in Hong Kong, the Silver Eye Center for Photography in Pittsburgh, PA, and the New York Public Library and Aperture, in New York. Awards and fellowships include the Robert Giard Fellowship, the Aperture Portfolio Prize, the Aaron Siskind Fellowship, a research award from Yale University Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies, and a residency at Light Work. Curatorial projects include Daybreak, co-curated with Matt Jensen at Leslie Lohman Museum, and Unruly Visions, an exhibition of emerging LGBTQ photographers in Hong Kong opening in December 2020 as part of the Hong Kong International Photography Festival. This fall, she is exhibiting video work at the Brooklyn Museum, as part of Art on the Stoop: Sunset Screenings. Her monograph, narrow distances was published in 2018 by Candor Arts. She has taught at Cooper Union, Yale School of Art, the City College of New York, and is currently Associate Director of Undergraduate Photography at Parsons School for Design.

Lauren Max, a Northwest native, grew up in Olympia, Washington and moved to Seattle fifteen years ago, where she attended Seattle Central’s Creative Academy for Commercial Photography. She currently specializes in editorial, lifestyle, and portrait photography and aims to create colorfully-eccentric images that exhibit qualities of freedom, humor, and wild beauty found both in people and the world around us. 

Born and raised in New Delhi, India, Ashima Yadava currently lives in San Francisco, California. With the camera as her conduit, Ashima believes in art as a means to social activism and reform. She works in digital and analog methods including medium, and 4x5 large format.

Kiliii Yuyan illuminates the hidden stories of polar regions, wilderness and Indigenous communities. Informed by ancestry that is both Nanai/Hèzhé (Siberian Native) and Chinese-American, he explores the the human relationship to the natural world from different cultural perspectives.

Zhidong Zhang is a lens-based artist from Hunan, China. He holds a B.Sc in Applied Mathematics from Central South University and an MFA in photography at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. His work investigates the intersection of representation, identity construction, and the role of imagery in contemporary culture.