group show 67
Embracing Stillness
About the Artists

Carli Adby-Notley
Bio: Carli is a photographer based in the UK, working within themes of womanhood, identity, loss & expectation. Her work emerges from the personal, with intimate moments of her life being shared in order to try & understand those of others. 

Statement: Taken as part of the exploratory process for a project called 'Dear Womb' which address's the innate connection between our relationships with others & how that forms the view of our own ego and subsequently, the decisions we make. In this instance, that around motherhood. 

Hannah Altman
Bio: 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.

Statement: By engaging with imagery over the last five years, my mother and I have been building Indoor Voices around intergenerational womanhood, matrilineal responsibility, and the symbolism in quiet intimacy. The work is a collaborative discourse of familial and female oriented complexities that makes a testimony to our lineage and experiences as Jewish women.

Sophie Barbasch
Bio: Sophie Barbasch is a New York based photographer. She earned her MFA in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design and her BA in Art and Art History from Brown University. Selected grants and residencies include the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Light Work, and a Fulbright Fellowship to Brazil. 

Statement: This photo is part of a project about my family. I focus on my younger cousin Adam, photographing him over the years to capture his experience of growing up. 

Kristina Barker
Bio: Kristina (b.1984) believes passionately about the human connection to the natural world and being outdoors as a form of self care. Growing up in the East Bay, she studied photojournalism at SF State before living and working in the Black Hills of South Dakota for over a decade.  Kristina’s current project is a book about her mom who is living with Alzheimer’s, and their shared love of nature.  She calls Portland, Oregon home.

Statement: While my career is rooted in the world of photojournalism, the past few years I’m finding myself more drawn to making photographs outdoors. Mother Nature reminds us to pause and reflect. The natural beauty and wonder of Earth captivates. Fresh air, sunlight or rain, a strong wind. Mother Nature has the ability to make us stop where we are. This image, of being alone with nature, for me captures the importance of quiet. 

Hady Barry
Bio: Hady is a storyteller and self-taught photographer. She was born in Guinea and raised in Côte d'Ivoire. Her practice involves photography and sound. She is drawn to stories about connection, identity, and memory. Her work prioritizes micro stories, the sublime in the mundane, and personal experiences. This approach is an opposition to the voyeuristic legacy of photography in the documentation of the lives of Africans and people of African descent. Hady is based in Abidjan.

Statement: I live with a dear friend who is pregnant with her second child. “wearing the inside out” is a series about the life we share. The photo is also a projection of my fear of and fascination with pregnancy. Her life is a mirror to mine and reminder of milestones I haven’t hit. Through this project I wanted to enshrine a tender and confusing moment in my life. I wanted to explore the inadequacy I feel.

Ian Bates
Bio: Ian Bates is a photographic artist based in San Francisco. His photographs look at his curiosities of contradictions in human nature and how people interact with the environments they inhabit.

Statement: This picture is from a larger body of work called "The Weight of Ash." There is a moment of silence right after a wildfire has burned through. The ash absorbs all sounds and all that is left to be heard is the cracking of a smoldering tree stump or the fall of the last wall standing from someone's home. It is pure terror, but also pure beauty. It’s a way in which the earth resets.

Rosie Brock
Bio: Rosie Brock is photographer based in Athens, Georgia where she is an MFA Candidate and Instructor of Record at the University of Georgia. Brock holds a BFA in Photography and Video from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Recently, Brock has created commissioned work for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Atlantic. She was included in the 2020 Atlanta Celebrates Photography "Ones to Watch" exhibiton and was a 2018 student recipient of the PDN Photo Annual.  

Statement: Each time I return to my family’s home in Virginia, minor yet significant details have transformed. Hair has grown or been shorn, foliage has blossomed or withered away, and light punctuates the daytime hours differently. In this on-going photographic narrative featuring my family’s domestic life during the pandemic, the semblance of daily routine anchors the work and offers a sense of consistency or perhaps even monotony, appropriate for the circumstances of the year. 

Alexandra Brodsky
Bio: Alexandra is a photographer and filmmaker. Her films have screened at venues around the world. This year she will also exhibit her photographs at the Rotterdam Photo Fair as well as participate in the Charcoal Book Club's Chico Review.   Alexandra is an alumni of The Nantucket Screenwriter's Colony, the Film Independent Screenwriters' Lab, a Fulbright scholar and received her MFA from The Yale School of Art. 

Statement: This photograph part of the series, "Home in The Natural World" form a collective portrait of my twins Sammy and Ava. They are not passive subjects but collaborators. The images are both documentary fact and staged fiction.   Emmet Gowin spoke of his family pictures as if they "were coming to me from life itself"; so my work aspires to express both the deepest intimacy of motherhood and the quiet ephemeral exquisiteness of childhood. 

Sage Brown
Bio: Sage Brown is an artist and photographer whose work explores notions of place, identity and the human relationship to the natural world. Sage lives and works in Oregon. 

Statement: I can hear the soft crunch of gravel beneath my feet. A stream flows nearby. The air is cool, damp. I am alone. When my feet stop moving, it is quiet. Just the way I like it. A slight wind cuts through the air. I pause for a moment, then keep walking. 

Saro Calewarts
Bio: Saro Calewarts is a fine art photographer based in Santa Fe, New Mexico with family roots in the Pacific Northwest. She has a background in film studies and graphic design and her photography practice focuses on concept driven work that explores themes of growth, potential and challenge. She works as a graphic designer and photographer for an arts non-profit organization and is active within the Santa Fe photography community. 

Statement: Made this winter, this photo is possible because I was finally able to slow down since the outset of the pandemic. The first 8 months were a blur of work overload and I lost connection with my photo practice. Which meant I lost touch with an essential part of myself. Re-engaging with photography is a homecoming and these photos embody the inner stillness necessary to creatively respond, imagine and experiment.

Aldo Cervantes
Bio: Aldo Cervantes is a Mexican American artist born and raised in Baja, CA Mexico.  He is currently pursuing a B.A. degree in visual arts at the University of California, San Diego. 

Statement: This photograph is part of an ongoing project that explores ideas of family, memory, and the meaning of connection by recontextualizing traces of interpersonal relationships through my family’s archive.

Annie Claflin
Bio: Annie Claflin is a photographer living in San Diego, California. Her artwork explores themes of identity in relation to family, home and mental health. She crafts imagery, often coupled with text, that invites the viewer into her imagination. Most recently, Annie’s work was included in “Primary Source” at The Griffin Museum of Photography. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art + Design and a Master in Arts Administration from Boston University.

Statement: Since suffering from a massive depression in 2020, I photograph simple sights daily, using creativity as my recovery co-pilot. I observe details in my surroundings that would have evoked sadness in me last year. By bleaching my melancholy with sunlight, I brighten mundane scenes to liven my spirits. These photographs offer hope that the future will bring happiness.

Lane Coder
Bio: Lane Coder has an incredible ability to capture images that evoke emotion and this theme pervades all of his work. A photographer since the age of 19, his career has taken him around the world. Lane has lived in New York City, Paris, France and Los Angeles, CA. He currently resides in Bar Harbor, ME.  Lane has won numerous awards throughout his career and has been included in many gallery exhibitions as well as having work in the permanent collection at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His commercial clients include: Vogue, Vogue Japan, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Architectural Digest, Dwell and advertising agencies such as: Media Arts Lab for Apple, Ogilvy & Mather for Coca Cola, Iris Worldwide for Smirnoff and Saatchi & Saatchi for Plavix.  Lane currently sells his Fine Art editions through ClampArt NYC.

Statement: The photos I submitted were carefully selected for “Embrace Stillness” in their own unique way. I have a highly personal connection to several of these images, while others are simply cathartic and I personally embrace them for their inherent meditative qualities. Taking photos and editing photos during the pandemic has been paramount to my own mental health and act a form of escapism to a quiet, still and peaceful place.”

Amanda Cots
Bio: Amanda Cots is a photographer and a cinematographer from Spain. In her work, she  challenges the traditional documentary photography, using performance and fictions as a way to explore contemporary issues. She uses humor as a way to subvert the ordinary logic of our everyday. She has been living in Cuba for the past three years studying at the cuban school of cinema and tv (EICTV).

Statement: This photo belongs to a bigger project called Garbí. Due to coronavirus, I came back to my hometown and  I had plenty of time to observe this place closely and calmly. I've started to see the magical universe of its inhabitants and spaces. I started to use performance and to intervene spaces in order to interact with my birthplace differently.

Allison DeBritz
Bio: Allison DeBritz is an artist working with themes of family, relationship, and femininity. Her photographs explore the depiction of women and mothers in mainstream American media and the roles they are expected to fulfill in domestic spaces and relationships. DeBritz has exhibited her work nationally and is a graduate of the BFA photography program at SUNY New Paltz. DeBritz attends Syracuse University in pursuit of an MFA in photography and will graduate in May 2021.

Statement: This work is a meditation on my relationship with my mother, the codependency of our artistic identities, relationship between artist and subject (when both parties are artists) and how motherhood has shaped my mother’s career and my view of her. This is a multigenerational exploration, featuring my grandmother, mother, sister and self–we morph together as women sharing common experiences. These images are made in quiet, everyday domestic spaces, generally occupied by women. 

Charlotte Dobson
Bio: Charlotte Dobson is an emerging fine art photographer currently studying Photography at Leeds Arts University where she continuously explores the relationship between humans and nature, specifically our alignment to nature. Charlotte has been featured in various magazines, international exhibitions and collaborations. For example, recently, she was acknowledged on Rankin's 2020 Beauty episode aired on SkyArts and featured on Classics Magazine on Instagram.

Statement: Nature can unexpectedly aid calmness as it can impact our emotion, create a sense of awe and direction. Light almost dances, shines and glimmers. It is warm and comforting.  Stillness, specifically sleep and rest, is significant to functioning in the present.   I find that connecting with family and friends is a meditative form, aligning with the soul.

Jess T. Dugan
Bio: Jess T. Dugan is an artist whose work explores issues of identity through photographic portraiture.  Dugan’s work has been widely exhibited and is in the permanent collections of over 35 museums throughout the United States. They are represented by the Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago, IL.

Statement: This photograph is from my long-term project Every Breath We Drew (2011-present), which explores the power of identity, desire, and connection through portraits of myself and others. This image was made during COVID, when I focused on turning inward – and embracing stillness – through creating self-portraits and still life images.

Mark Dupré
Bio: Working in the tradition of the still life, photographer Mark Dupré creates arrangements or temporary ‘sculptures’ of objects taken from the vernacular and organic world whilst exercising new ideas of colour, balance and form. Drawing aesthetic ques from Japanese ikebana floral arrangements along with the baroque visual tradition of the sublime. Mark is currently a final year student of the Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Dun Laoghaire, Ireland.

Statement: This photograph was created during the summer of the 2020 lockdown. Away from my studio I created one in my apartment using natural sunlight. During this time attentions were directed away from the outside world and became more insular, focused on the stillness of my surroundings at home. The plants and objects photographed all came from my immediate environment, arranging these forms into short lived sculptures became a meditative act for me during this time.

Andrea Fernandez
Bio: Andrea is an editorial photographer from Buenos Aires, Argentina, now based in Vancouver, Canada. Her work explores intimate and domestic moments, while also touching on notions of the personal and collective identities of a place. She is increasingly interested in the relationship between memories and spaces, and how our identity can be shaped by travel.

Statement: The series "Aurora (for the love of dawn)" started at the beginning of the pandemic, when I would visit my neighbour's rose daily (that I named Aurora) for companionship during the first hard few months. Eventually the work evolved into daily observations and an effort to become grounded in the present moment and place, and establish a routine that felt hopeful.

Amy Fink
Bio: Amy Fink (b. 1996) is a fine arts photographer who received her BFA in Photography from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2018. She was born and raised in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, where she has recently returned during the pandemic and continues her creative practice. 

Statement: Amy Fink’s work is crucially influenced by the loss of her mother. This image culminates to express ideas surrounding entropy, grief, identity, maternal care, and nostalgia. This work was born as a method to reconcile the pieces of herself that her mother cultivated. Pieces which are both cherished and rejected, often simultaneously. Her image making fluctuates through what exists internally that her mother is responsible for, and what exhibits itself externally in spite of her absence.

Zoé Forget
Bio: Zoé Forget (b. 1982) is based in Paris, graduated in 2008 from Louis Lumière school (Paris) in photography. For several years now, she has been associating photographic images and (artificial) hair in her work in order to create a dimension both visual and tactile, through which she tries to develop an organic feeling of images (whether sensual or disturbing depending on the viewer); but also the formulation of a personal commentary on femininity.

Statement: Hair is a motif extremely charged with symbols throughout history, particularly in relation to issues of autonomy, control, respectability or threat from the female body. This image is part of a « Hair Portraits » series, a visual exploration of an archaic and timeless feminine incarnation, whose stillness conveys at the same time  tranquility, strength and deep resistance.  

Zachary Francois
Bio: Zachary Francois (born in Naperville Illinois, 1999) Is a photographer and artist based in Atlanta. Using photography as a form of self-actualization and critical thinking, as a means to explore topics of existence and how we consume and produce images and the effects they have within our culture.   Zachary has exhibited work  around Atlanta at Dalton Gallery at Agnes Scott college, and a solo show at Hapeville depot museum and has photographed covers for Mainline zine, as well as Always In a Funk.

Statement: This image displays the stillness and intimacy between the inanimate and those we choose to share space with.

Ryan Frigillana
Bio: Ryan Frigillana is a Philippine-born lens-based artist holding a BFA in Photography and Related Media from the Fashion Institute of Technology. His work focuses on the fluidity of memory, intimacy, family identity, and visual culture, largely filtered through the lens of race and immigration. Embracing its plasticity, Frigillana explores photography’s relationship to context as a catalyst for thematic dialogue. Ryan lives and works in New York.

Statement: Human connection: vital to our survival and well-being. With the unprecedented events of this past year, that need has never been more evident. Quarantined from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdown, I began harboring an attuned sensitivity to the spaces and objects around my home. These meditations on space, surface, and ephemerality afforded me a vehicle from within the vacuum of solitude back to the outer world, to familiarity, to tangible experiences.

Cristian Geelen
Bio: Cristian Geelen is mainly an analog photographer from the Netherlands. Born on October 17th, 1982.   Most of his is travel and documentary based. But lately he is taking a more conceptual, contemporary, and philosophical approach for his personal work.

Statement: These photographs are part of my upcoming series: "Memories of a man once there...." The project is about my father who died when I was three years old. He was an adventurer like me and my grandfathers. And this will be our adventure together. To create the memories we have never had.

Jackson Hardin
Bio: Jackson Hardin is a photographer interested in evolving understandings of masculinity and self identification, as well as in exploring theories of deep ecology to reimagine the human-environment relationship. Photography provides him a means of engaging with vulnerability, memory, and community.  Raised in the Western Slope of Colorado, Hardin holds a BA in Media Studies from Vassar College. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Photography and Related Media at SUNY New Paltz. 

Statement: To my mind, stillness is a solitary state. Even if we are surrounded by those we love, we are present first within ourselves, and it is from within that we draw a sense of simple serenity, tender reflection, or terrible wonder. This photo describes slipping into that sublimity between moments; when the clamor of the receding past and thundering imminent future falls away and the veil between ourselves and the present is thinnest.  

Oji Haynes
Bio: Making images is all Oji can think about. Oji is endlessly thinking of ways he can better myself as an artist. Whether that be through brainstorming ways he can better express himself artistically through his work, or researching those whose work inspires him. By immersing himself in the art form, he hopes to make a body of work so moving and influential that one day he can awake something in whoever views it.

Statement: The image I chose was made at a time where everything in my life seemed completely chaotic. Each of the subjects in these images all know how to stop time when I am around them and allow me to feel at peace. My camera captures their moments of stillness, whether that is taking a break from work at home or watching over roaming chickens, their peace is very still.

Marvi Hetzer
Bio: Marvi Hetzer was born in Argentina and has been living in Italy for 24 years. Her photographic work tends to reflect on personal experiences, being a single mother, or the fragmentary memories of a childhood lived on the South American farms. She has two long-term projects: one explores issues and life in general around the families of single mothers, and the other is about childhood memories in very a distant and peasant world.

Statement: The pandemic that arrived out of the blue forced us to lock ourselves in our homes and modify our daily habits and pull the handbrake from the race of our lives. So in this overwhelming slowdown, we rediscovered time for ourselves, for reflection, silence, and the quiet.

Ashleigh Howard
Bio: Ashleigh Howard is a self-taught photographer living in Vermont.  Her work is currently inspired by the temporal elements of nature and self.  Fueled by the potency in the eerie and ethereal she explores these themes through the details of expression, gesture, and setting.

Jessica Just
Bio: Jessica Just received her BFA from Baylor University and her MFA from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Many of her interests lie in various facets and manipulations of the past, and how it affects objects, outlook, identity, and memory. Mining through familial objects, photographs, and stories presents a myriad of fascinating opportunities for new narratives and reinterpretations. She currently lives in Waco, TX, and teaches at Baylor University and McLennan Community College. 

Statement: The image I am submitting comes from a body of work titled ‘All the other In Betweens.’ The perpetuation and transmission of personal mythology guide my photographic impulses to explore memories that are vivid, yet strangely vague and seemingly unimportant. Integrating tactile elements in my work has been an important way to discuss intimacy, and the bonds we strive to make and maintain. Magnified traces of presence, stillness, and contemplation linger here.

Stella Kalinina
Bio: Stella Kalinina is a Russian-Ukrainian American photographer based in Los Angeles working on contemplative stories about human connections, personal and communal histories, and the places we inhabit. She brings empathy, curiosity, and a collaborative approach to portrait-based stories that are firmly rooted in a sense of place. As an immigrant and a woman, she uses photography to make visible those who are often not seen.

Statement: Where They Wait for Me is a poetic meditation on my memories of growing up in the Soviet Union in the '80s and early '90s. The project is about the loss experienced in migration and my inability to go back to a place and time. For a few moments when the past and present collide, time appears to have stood still at my grandma’s home in Ukraine.

Lidiya Kan
Bio: Lidiya Kan is a photographer, filmmaker, and educator based in New York. She is the fourth generation of ethnic Koreans born and raised in the post-Soviet territories. Her projects are influenced by the multicultural and multinational upbringing and aim to revisit overlooked and forgotten histories. Records she creates are evidence of existence, her unique cultural contribution to a larger societal archive. 

Statement: My grandparents' house seems to be frozen in time. The country changed politically, economically, and socially. My grandparents passed away, my parents are older, and the next generation inhabits the space that has not changed in over 20 years. Despite the new participants, the scenes that unfold in every room are strikingly familiar and I am a silent observer capturing what appears to be the past in the present for the future.

Jenny Kim
Bio: Jenny Kim is a photographer exploring topics including family, aging and women. Jenny examines how the mix of mundane and momentous occasions make up a person’s life. Reflecting on her psychological landscape has been an integral thread throughout her work, especially with her most recent project stemming from her infertility. Jenny recently received her MFA in Photography from Hartford Art School. She resides in Los Angeles, CA.  

Statement: This image is from my project, Making My Way to the Shore, where I examine the possibility of motherhood as my fertile years come to an end. Everything seemed to stand still in this moment including my cycle of overthinking about the future.

John Kirkley
Bio: John Kirkley, b.1981, is a self-taught photographer who lives in Portland, Oregon. 

Statement: Created during winter trips into the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, this photo reflects on stillness as it is felt and experienced in these wild spaces.  During violent winter storms, the harshness of the environments keeps them free from human visitation, but after the storms pass, windows are again granted to access these mysterious and newly reshaped landscapes.  The image attempts to linger in the stillness and transitory calm of an ever-changing natural world.

Brendan George Ko
Bio: Brendan George Ko (b.1986, Toronto, ON) is a document-based storyteller raised in Ontario, New Mexico, Texas, and Hawai'i, and is now based in Toronto and Maui.

Statement: During his early years, living in rural New Mexico, Ko heard of a spirit -- one that lives within landscape with the power to possess us. He learned that though we may leave the land behind, its spirit will follow us always. This understanding of spirit is carried through Ko’s entire practice. Using photos, written and oral narratives, video, and sound recordings as conduits of storytelling, Ko aspires to allow this spirit of a place, person, memory, or feeling to cycle on. It is the creation of a document that holds an indexical relationship to that which it represents and acts as an accessible instrument for creating understanding between different peoples, places, and times. Inspired in part by the many places he calls home, Ko creates and recreates histories, his own and otherwise, often tending to the in-between; he believes that it’s not about truth nor accuracy, but rather, it’s caring for this spirit of the memory.

William Lakin
Bio: William Lakin is a photographer based in London currently working on research-based, self-led projects as well as teaching on the BA Photography course at Middlesex University. In 2017 he completed his MA degree in photography and has since continued working on long-term projects. In September 2021 he will begin a practice-based PhD at London College of Communication on the subject of political polarisation and online disinformation. 

Statement: Five Minutes After Birth is a response to the social conditioning men experience in modern Western societies. Referencing anti-social behavior, sexuality, and traditional gender roles, this work offers both a critical and reflective response to men’s pursuit of power and control and their inclination to engage in competitive and harmful behaviors.

Jinwoo Hwon Lee 이훤
Bio: Jinwoo Hwon Lee 이훤 is a poet and a visual artist based in Chicago. Through his work, Lee reaches for the experience of sporadic belonging and frequent displacement. Recognized as an emerging photographer to watch in 2019 by curator Mary Stanley, Lee's works have been exhibited in many magazines and exhibitions. Lee also has published several books and won the Excellent Book of the Year Award by ARKO in 2019. Lee's works are in the collection of Infinite Art Museum, Life Framer Gallery, and Manifest Gallery.

Statement: Home Is Everywhere and Often Nowhere is a series of visual metaphors begotten from Lee's poetry book: "Let Us Be Not Too Desperate." What initially began as a project to share the experience of immigrants turned into a bigger conversation on changing perceptions of home for everyone. Both projects speak of the ever-returning placeless-ness. Visually realizing the literary language, I was reminded that this takes place for many - not just migrants - for we wander in the era of rapidly migrating culture, people and language. The temporal presence of home occurs in the safest space. It takes place in the most still; it takes place in the loudest. It often does in the form of absence.

Adam Leitzel
Bio: Adam Leitzel is an artist based in Lancaster Pennsylvania. He is a recent graduate of the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design photography and video department. Adam’s work tends to focus on interpersonal struggles and his place within society. His work has been exhibited locally at the Demuth Museum, Rock Lititz, and the North Museum of Nature and Science, as well as internationally at the Pingyao International Photography Festival in China.

Statement: The past year has been a barrage of obstacles and roadblocks that have required deftness and no time to think. Photography can be a quick gesture that lets us look back at this time in a way that life does not normally allow. Oftentimes I will make an image, and let it sit in my computer like an undeveloped canister of film. Allowing time to reflect on the work made can be a cathartic experience.

Jessina Leonard
Bio: Jessina Lynn Leonard (she/her) is a visual artist based in Providence, Rhode Island. Her work explores the intersection of photography, religion, and gender. She graduated with a MA in religious studies from Duke University in 2015 and an MFA in photography with distinction from Rhode Island School of Design in 2020, where she was the recipient of the Henry Wolf Award for Photographic Excellence.

Statement: This photograph is part of a larger dialogue with mystical texts written by religious women in the Middle Ages and the landscape that informed their visions. At once an historical inquiry, a personal pilgrimage, and an investigation into the continued relevance of these texts, my project has taken me to the very place some of these mystics lived, Kloster Helfta, a still-active Cistercian convent in central Germany.

Vanessa Leroy
Bio: Vanessa Leroy (b. 1996) remains on the hunt for new ways of seeing, remembering, and altering the world through photography. She is drawn to image-making because of the power it holds to create nuanced representation for marginalized people and uplift their stories. She hopes to create worlds that people feel as though they can enter and draw from, as well as provide a look into an experience that they may not personally recognize.

Statement: The photos I'm submitting are an assortment from various projects, which all happen to share a common thread of containing moments of stillness. Whether I'm photographing people, places, or things, I always try to find an avenue to best show the essence of that subject, and oftentimes the way to get there is through slowing down and maneuvering the quiet. 

Joshua Levy
Bio: Joshua Levy is an American Portrait/Fine Art Photographer based in Baltimore, Maryland. Joshua was opened up to a whole new world of how others can express themselves, and their stories told throughout photography. Joshua attended Antonelli Institute in Philadelphia in 2011 to perfect his craft in the arts. Going to college opened a new path to all types of photography, and from then on, he had an interest in fine art and portrait photography.

Statement: My work is centered around, intimacy, vulnerability, and loneliness. For the subject of embracing stillness, I feel as though these themes can go along well with the theme.

Elsa Leydier
Bio: Elsa Leydier lives and works in Brazil. There, where she moved to in 2015, the artist explores the limits of this society through photography, focusing on diverting the political charge of iconic images.  She won the Prize Maison Ruinart Paris Photo 2019 and is one of the winners of the Dior Prize for Photography for Young Talents the same year. Elsa Leydier was one of the finalists of FOAM Talent in 2019 and 2020. She had solo shows in Paris, San Francisco, at the Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, and at gallery Caroline O'Breen that represents her work in Amsterdam.

Statement: When I have been to this pound close to my home during the pandemic, it gave me so much strength. The peaceful stillness of the pound helped me find peace in the stillness of those last few months.

Diego Maeso
Bio: Diego Maeso is a documentary and portrait photographer. They use a mix of self-portraits, portraits, and family archive photos to tell their and others' stories. Gender and identity are the main topics of their work. Their perspective on their art is subjective and it is influenced by their own identity as a non-binary person. Their work doesn't fit in a singular category, the same way they don't fit in the dichotomy of gender.

Statement: Selfie Isolation is a project that explores my emotions, identity, and mental health through self-portraits and still lives taken during long periods of self-isolation. I've always worked in self-portraiture as part of discovering my identity as a non-binary person. Ultimately, this project is about identity, gender, mental health and how these topics shaped me and my closest surroundings during the pandemic.

Brittany Marcoux
Bio: Brittany Marcoux is a photographer and visual artist from Massachusetts. In 2016 she received her MFA in photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She was recently awarded the Massachusetts Cultural Council's Artist Fellowship for Photography, The Blanche E. Colman Award, and the INFOCUS Sidney Zuber Photography Award honorable mention. Marcoux is currently an adjunct professor of photography at RISD and Roger Williams University.

Statement: At 38 weeks pregnant, my baby was still breech, unwilling to flip from her comfy position for a safe head-first vaginal birth.  After researching “How to turn a breech baby” on the internet, I began attempting some of the techniques to help encourage her to flip in utero. Some of these inversion techniques were outrageous, some comical, and some quite uncomfortable. None of these tricks worked, but they did help to pass the time while I anxiously waited for my baby girl to enter this world feet first in the midst of a global pandemic.

Mikaela Martin
Bio: Mikaela Martin is an Australian documentary and fine art photographer, based in South Florida, USA. Her work explores the ways we confront our own fragility and wonder; both from within, and through the people and spaces we inhabit. Central to her subject matter is childhood and the idea that in our youth we have an uncomplicated, illuminating synergy with life's elusive unknowns. 

Statement: The image submitted, as with much of my work, explores a kind of stillness. I am interested in that place almost out of time, where for a moment something else exists. I think it has to do with longing, whether in the moment we are aware of it or not. This year has been full of that feeling, so I have been able to find it more in my day-to-day, around the house.

Jennifer McClure
Bio: Jennifer McClure is a fine art photographer based in New York City. Her work is about solitude and a poignant, ambivalent yearning for connection. Her first book, You Who Never Arrived, was published as one of nine Peanut Press Portfolios in 2020. Her work has been featured in publications such as NatGeo Travel, Vogue, GUP, The New Republic, Lenscratch, Feature Shoot, L'Oeil de la Photographie, The Photo Review, Dwell, and PDN. 

Statement: "Today, When I Could Do Nothing" began with the quarantine. Esme was eighteen months old, and we stayed inside for weeks. We started making pictures daily as a way to fill the hours. These were the only times I was completely in the moment, not worried or anxious. I looked for magic and escape. I photographed the things I wanted to hold in my heart, and I tried to experience this strange new world through her eyes.

Mayita Mendez
Bio: Mayita Mendez is a professional photographer based in New York City. She was the first female staff photographer for El Diario/La Prensa and later was on staff for the daily New York City-based newspaper Newsday. She went on to receive a Presidential Scholarship at the Rhode Island School of Design where she received her MFA. 

Statement: I am an immigrant; born in El Salvador, grew up in NYC. There has always been a longing to belong, but finding myself in-between places, languages, senses of self. My work focuses on resting in the pauses. The photographs are a visual map that is grounded in the elements of earth, water, air, fire, ether, the body, and light. It is in the transitional state that my photographs are born.

Gagan Moorthy
Bio: Gagan Moorthy is a visual artist creating work that reflects stories of people and place. He explores how humanity and nature connect through purpose-driven images and narratives. His work connects beautiful expressions of spaces and identity with delicately channeled light, captivating color, and meaningful nuance.

Statement: All of the time spent inside over the past year has made me more aware of the beautiful little moments around me. This series reflects those moments through the beams of light that fill spaces in my home. I spent days tracking the light and framing my favorite spots. Through the fog and confusion that clouds the times we are living in, these moments are routine glimmers of brightness and hope.

Annie Marie Musselman
Bio: Annie is dramatically inspired by the human-animal connection. After spending two years helping an injured raven rehabilitate, she became focused on transcending this experience for others in her art. She believes that true kinship with animals may transform our lives. Her award-winning books chronicle this subject: Finding Trust and Wolf Haven. Musselman’s work has appeared on the covers of Audubon, Smithsonian, and Outside magazine and inside The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and National Geographic among others.

Statement: In my work, I explore the ancient connection we as humans share with each other and with the natural world, I believe this connection along with ritual is what makes us feel truly alive.  This submission consists of images from my ongoing project about rescued wolves at Wolf Haven International, horses that are trained naturally without equipment at Free Horse Farm, and images of my children.

Timmy Ok
Bio: Timmy Ok is an Asian American photographic artist currently based in Rhode Island. He recently graduated with a BFA in Art Photography at Syracuse University. Timmy’s work typically explores identity, family, and contemporary themes while incorporating the use of relevant technologies and issues.

Statement: This image is part of a senior thesis and an ongoing project that had started in the summer of 2018. They reflect the infrastructure of my family and the dynamics between our characters. Both my parents are survivors of the Khmer Rouge and immigrated to America. In these photos, you see the duality of American and Cambodian culture but also the inheritance of identity conflict and trauma passively passed down to the next generation.

Nate Palmer
Bio: Nate Palmer is a documentary portrait photographer living and working in Washington, D.C. His work primarily focuses on marginalized communities in a period of transition.

Laura Pannack
Bio: Laura Pannack is a London-based photographer. Renowned for her portraiture and social documentary work, she seeks to explore the complex relationship between the participant and the photographer. Much of her work focuses on youth and adolescence. In particular themes of youth, time and love seep through her imagery.  Her work is born from curiosity and a passion for exploration. Much of her research references psychology and philosophy blended with her love for the analog craft. Above all her aim is to learn and play.

Statement: Embrace the isolation is a collection of images that encourage us to use this time of intermission for self-growth, compassion, and reflection. The stillness of an image can remind us to savor the now, to stop and feel. When it feels like the world is in a coma we have the power to use this time rather than wait for it to pass. 

André Ramos-Woodard
Bio: André Ramos-Woodard (they/ them/ theirs) is a contemporary artist who uses their work to emphasize the repercussions of contemporary and historical discrimination. Primarily working with photo-based collage, text, and drawing, they convey ideas of communal and personal identity centralized within internal conflicts. They use their art to accent spaces of both communal understanding and disconnect between them and the viewer, specifically those of Black liberation, queer justice, and the reality of mental health. 

Statement: “Untitled (LIVE LAUGH LOVE)” was an attempt to find nostalgia in the present, both in the world around me and in the worlds I can create.

Tess Roby
Bio: Tess Roby (b. 1993) is a photographer and musician based in Montreal, Canada. A collector of images, she develops autobiographical photographic work that captures her movement from one place to the next. Roby holds a B.F.A. in Photography from Concordia University. She has completed two solo shows in Montreal (2017) and in Toronto as part of CONTACT Photography Festival (2018). A book of her work, Montreal, was published by Kris Graves Projects in Spring 2020.

Statement:
Remnants of dreamlike spaces, Tess Roby’s photographs present minute everyday occurrences that blur visual boundaries. Shot on 35mm film, her photographs exhibit the unmistakable grain of the medium and ethereally capture the passage of time, exposing and transforming unexpected subtleties through her lens.

Christopher Rodriguez
Bio: Christopher Rodriguez is a photographer whose work explores humankind's relationship to the natural world. His work has been shown at Sasha Wolf Gallery, Sarah Shepard Gallery, Newspace Center for Photography, Current Space, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, among others. His first published monograph, Sublime Cultivation, is held at the Newspace Center of Photography Library and is also offered at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

Statement: This image is from the series Afterlife, where I make pictures of our affected landscape in the guise of 19th-century explorer Alexander Humboldt.   The series combines pictures of mysterious artifacts, landscape phenomena, and bodily figures to paint a revived vision of an exhausted landscape.   Considering how someone like Humboldt would look at the current landscape helps me reflect on our changing relationship to nature as it becomes increasingly synthetic.

Maggie Shannon
Bio: Maggie Shannon is a photographer specializing in portrait and documentary work. Hailing from Martha's Vineyard, she received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts and is now based in Los Angeles, California. Maggie was selected as a 2018 PDN emerging photographer and has been recognized as part of Magnum's 30 under 30. She is a member of Women Photograph and her work has appeared in American Photography 35 and 36. Maggie works as a freelance photographer for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, GQ, Wired, Bloomberg Businessweek, New Yorker, and T Magazine among others. 

Statement: I was drawn to moments that gave me a sense of peace; little surprises of light, color, and touch. This image reminded me to slow down and capture something that I would’ve missed by moving too fast. 

Emma Shapiro
Bio: Emma Shapiro is an American artist and feminist activist based in Valencia, Spain. Using her own body as her primary tool, she explores identity, memory, and ephemerality and seeks to represent the human and female form as a timeless event. Through her use of layered video projection, self-portraiture, and repeated encounters with her own image, she deconstructs and questions the meaning of our bodies, how we know them, and what they could be. 

Statement: This photo is part of an ongoing series of self-portraits entitled "The Practice". Self-portraiture is my way to connect to myself, to forgive myself, and to see myself. I want viewers of my self-portraiture to witness a moment of purity, ephemerality, and timelessness, together. I use self-portraiture to understand myself in these contexts.

Jendrik Schroeder
Bio: Jendrik Schröder is a German photographer and filmmaker based in Berlin. He studied Communications at the Berlin University of the Arts, Film Studies in Stockholm, Photography at the Ostkreuzschule, and holds a Master's degree in Philosophy and Arts. In his interdisciplinary work, he is interested in translating philosophical ideas into an artistic practice. Influenced by concepts of New Phenomenology, Contemporary Aesthetics, and Daoism his work focuses on the portraiture of the ordinary.

Statement:
Bao-My is a Vietnamese in Germany and a German in Vietnam: 'Wherefrom' is an exploration of the in-between. Through the silent gaze and the associative representation of the actual, the work attempts to leave the space to the subjective itself. The abstract longing for home is thus linked, as it were, with an appreciation of the momentary. All photographs were created in the presence of the subject.

Aline Smithson
Bio: Aline Smithson is a visual artist, editor, and educator based in Los Angeles, California. She has exhibited widely at a variety of international institutions and her work has been featured in publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, and PDN. Smithson is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Lenscratch. Her monograph, Self & Others, was published by the Magenta Foundation and LOST: Los Angeles by Kris Graves Projects.

Statement: This photograph represents times of stillness in my life....that moment when you slow down and hear the cicadas, or feel the wind, or watch the light move.

William Mark Sommer
Bio: William Mark Sommer (b. 1990) is a film photographer residing in Sacramento, California. Mark has earned his BFA in Photography from Arizona State University and he has exhibited over the United States and Internationally. In 2020, Mark was chosen by Alex Prager for Life Framer's "Open Call" First Place Award. Mark also has self-published 10 zines and has been featured in publications like Stay Wild, Float, Aint Bad, Booooooom, Analog Mag, Modern-Day Explorer, among others. 

Statement: When looking to tell intrinsic stories about our current time I felt, shook, puzzled, and lost; within these days of shelter in place I looked to reevaluate my previous work. Some work from days to years prior came to visualize this time at home away from our previous lives. This archive of photos I had accumulated came to symbolize this time and gave me purpose to continue to find more stories to tell.

Caleb Stein
Bio: Caleb Stein (b. 1994, London) graduated from Vassar College in 2017. His work explores the fragility of memory through an embrace of community and the dynamic, energetic interactions that occur within it. Questions surrounding mythology and narrative as they relate to the United States and the international influence it exerts sit at the core of much of Stein’s work, as he grapples with his relationship to the country that has become his adopted home.

Aysia Stieb
Bio: Aysia Stieb is a photographer based in Berkeley, California. Her work is like looking through a microscope. Enamored by natural everyday objects around her, she studies them to discover metaphors in the photograph.

Her most recent work from this past year looks at subtle change as something hopeful, even when witnessing decay - molding tomatoes, a fly caught in a spider web, dried up plants.

She received her BFA in Photography from California College of the Arts in 2016. Her work has been published by Pomegranate Press and Wallpaper* and commissioned by The New Yorker and The California Sunday Magazine

Amanda Suarez
Bio: Amanda Suarez is a visual journalist and photographer. She was born and raised in Philly and is currently working as a photo editor in Brooklyn.

Statement: This photo is part of an ongoing series currently called No Longer Pillars of Salt, where I imagine and explore a connection between Laura Mulvey’s Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema and the biblical story of Lot’s Wife. Stillness, as a ramification of our gaze, is conceptually embedded throughout the work.  This project is very much in progress and began in 2016. 

Cristal Tappan
Bio: Cristal Tappan was born in 1990 in Los Angeles and grew up between San Luis Obispo, California, and Prescott, Arizona. In 2020 she received her BFA in photography at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon, where she currently resides. Tappan has been included in various exhibitions including “Cowardice” at Wicked Step Gallery in San Luis Obispo, California, and “Blue Sky's Pacific Northwest Photography Drawers” at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, Oregon.

Statement: I focused on the relationship between my mother and I by creating images that illustrate her character loosely based on memories of her that have stayed with me. This work allowed me to see myself in my mother’s likeness and draw parallels between our lives that I have struggled to acknowledge. As a result, my frustration with her has dissipated and I have made space for an elevated connection, empathy, and understanding of her.

Rashod Taylor
Bio: 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 United States and internationally. He lives in Bloomington, IL, with his wife and son.

Statement: This submission is part of my series Little Black Boy and it addresses themes of race, culture, family, and Legacy and these images are a kind of family album, filled with friends and family, birthdays, vacations, and everyday life. At the same time, these images tell you more than my family story; they’re a window onto the Black American experience. 

Jordan Tiberio
Bio: Jordan Tiberio is a photographic artist based in New York City. She has coined her quirky-quizzical work as The Odd in the Ordinary— where mundane, everyday objects come to life in beautiful displays of light and color. She holds a BFA in Photography from The Fashion Institute of Technology (2015), where she has gone on to teach high school students in the medium.

Statement: When I would visit my Nana's home as a child, I always made sure to look through the tea tin under her couch that was full of Polaroids from my mother's childhood. This obsession later turned into collecting the vernacular photography of strangers and pulling inspiration from their accidental, artful compositions into my own work. These strangely familiar images of my friends and family speak to those old-school candids with a twist of whimsy.

Bárbara Traver
Bio: Bárbara Traver is a portrait photographer and visual educator. She studied photography at the Espai d'art fotogràfic school (Valencia, Spain) and did a Master's in photographic projects.  Thanks to several scholarships, she has been able to study at the EFTI School (Madrid, Spain) and specialized in contemporary photography with Javier Vallhonrat.  She has self-published two photobooks, exhibited in several national and international schools, and has received several photography awards.

Statement: This photograph is from my latest work ', te quiere, mamá' which deals with the personal relationship of my mother and me from a visual story.

Alexis Vasilikos
Bio: Alexis Vasilikos(b.1977) is an Athens-based visual artist who works primarily with photography. His work revolves around peripatetic photography, meditation, and direct perception and is deeply influenced by Eastern mysticism and the philosophy of non-duality. He studied photography in Athens, at Focus and A.k.t.o. and attended the Art History Course of D.A.M.S. in Bologna.  Since 2012 he is co-editing  Phases Magazine an online fine art photography magazine. He is represented by CAN Christina Androulidaki Gallery.

Statement: This photo is part of the book "Variations of Presence." You can see the entire edit of the book HERE: http://www.alexisvasilikos.net/01/

Eva Vei
Bio: Eva Vei is a photographer based in Athens, Greece.  She has received her Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts and Art Sciences, majoring in History of Art. She has been attending Focus School of Photography since 2019. Her work revolves around the exploration of human relationships through portraiture and still life photography. 

Statement: By isolating elements of my surroundings, I aim to portray the need for distancing in search of moments of peace and comfort that have become invaluable in the ever-moving chaotic pace of everyday reality. This does not necessarily entail solitude as one may assume, for these are the precise fragments of time that may allow us to bond and forge relationships.

Wesley Verhoeve
Bio: Wesley Verhoeve is a photographer and curator splitting his time between New York City and Amsterdam. In April of 2021 he is publishing his first monograph, Notice, shot entirely in Vancouver BC during the pandemic.

Statement: During the pandemic I went on a daily photo walk for 123 days in a row, focusing on the little bits of beauty and wonder that I usually would rush right past. I walked a combined 800 miles, all in my small neighborhood. I slowed myself down and taught myself how to notice better. I made it still. I made it, still.

Anne Vetter
Bio: Anne Vetter (b. 1994) lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area and Wellfleet, MA. She is a queer, trans non-binary Jew. Her work is focused on the fluidity of identity, while also pushing up against how whiteness and wealth can both protect and inhibit a body. Her current project Love is not the Last Room is made in collaboration with her family- parents, brothers, cousins, and partner- and is shot in and around her home.

Statement:
Love is not the Last Room is of my family, but about stillness, about leisure as privilege, the kinds of connection that form when you’re up high on a hill away from others with a lot of time. The images are from the past 2 years, shot in and around my home in Kentfield, CA, and Wellfleet, MA. They are photos of my parents, brothers, cousins, partner, and self. I created this work thinking about how queer intimacy functions in a family, and how my gender fluidity has shaped the role I play at home.

Paola Vivas
Bio: Paola Vivas is a Mexican photographer, born and raised in the south of Mexico and currently resides between Mexico City and London.  Paola, who studied Fashion Photography at the University of Arts London, is inspired by youth, colors, and the delicacy of the female body; combining organic portraits with staged and composed images. Paola explores femininity using digital and analog mediums allowing the strength of her subject remaining a key part of the narrative. 

Statement: Through the uncertainty of times, we look for peace deep in our inner selves. Turmoil in the outside world has forced us to go inwards. We are in a cocoon, in stillness and receptivity; we have an opportunity to flourish, it is not a permanent state. Resurgence to the world with an improved vision awaits. Stillness as an observation strives to capture the moments preceding the metamorphosis, portraying women in a personal and vulnerable space.

Kate Warren
Bio: Kate Warren is a queer artist based in Vermont who makes creative nonfiction work about identity, secrecy, and memory through photography, writing, and quilting. Her photography has been recognized with awards from the Lucie Foundation, PDN, American Photography 36, Ain't Bad, Focus on the Story, and Athens Photo Festival. She was a keynote speaker on feminism and photography during Apple’s StoryMakers Festival and FotoWeekDC.

Statement: This image is from my project 'Loss of Central Vision', which meditates on grief and returning home. Through stillness, it explores the tension of a rural idyll in a place that is romanticized but violent, isolating, and Puritanical. I began the project after moving back to the Vermont mountains where I grew up, taking a sabbatical in a cottage on a glacial lake after leaving my home in LA during the pandemic.

Polly White
Bio: Polly White is a photographer based between Bristol and West Wales. With a distinct interest in our connection to nature and the land, in particular, within folklore and religion, she challenges Arcadian ideals to explore the darker undertones of a landscape. Polly’s work often draws from local history, shedding light on otherwise perhaps disregarded areas of society. By revisiting forgotten stories and harking back to their environment, her images hint to a previous age. 

Statement: This image is from the series ‘As Dusk Crawls', and for me exudes a sense of stillness and peace. Raindrops trapped by a spider’s web highlight gossamer usually only visible in certain light. There is a calmness about the natural world that cannot be found elsewhere - even when we are alone, we do not feel lonely.  

Megan Zecchin
Bio: Megan Zecchin is a photographer whose narrative work relies heavily on the poetic and the metaphysical.  Megan received her MFA in Photography from the University of Houston and her BFA in Studio Art from Lamar University in Beaumont, TX. She currently lives and works in Houston, TX, and is a professor of photography and art at Blinn College in Bryan, TX.

Statement: This image comes from my series, Absence Presence, which originated from keeping a list of any topic that startled me and felt significant, and making photographs that provoked me in a similar emotional context. Examples of items on the list are: mirror neurons, the golden record, and attempts to weigh the soul. The resulting images all deal with efforts to connect and the search for tangible evidence of things unseen; marks of change and loss.

Yuyang Zhang
Bio: Grew up in Wuhan China, Yuyang Zhang is a multi-disciplinary queer artist currently living in Portland, Oregon. His works often revolve around topics related to automotive culture and cultural identity and the millennial life on the interweb.

Statement: My works intend to find connection and calm through separate images in a chaotic and unsettling time like this. By layering different times and locations, they invite people to connect and imagine new narratives. In a world where we are greeted with pain and grief, these photos are a visual gateway to find a little bit of inner peace.