Since 2009 NEPR has been co-produced by the Griffin Museum of Photography and the PRC with the mission of bringing reviewers and photographers together from New England and beyond for two days of discussion, networking, and gaining fresh perspective on one’s work. We are especially pleased to welcome students from seven schools throughout the Commonwealth, who have been selected for the 2022 NEPR Student Scholarship Awards, plus the winners of the John Chervinsky award and the winner of the Lenscratch student prize: Jake Benzinger, Lesley University College of Art & Design, Hannah Dong, Wellesley College, Madison Durfee, Endicott College, Justin Michael Emmanuel, John Chervinsky award winner, Aubrey Greenawalt, Rhode Island School of Design, Jack Isacke, Emerson College, Maggie Lu, MassArt, Collin Serigne, SMFA @ Tufts, Allie Tsubota, Lenscratch student prize winner
Working primarily with medium format film and occasionally polaroid, Jake Benzinger’s photographic exploration has conceptually been ever-evolving. Beginning as an investigation of others and mental health, his work has led him to himself, a subject that he had initially attempted to avoid. However, as Jake matured both as a person and an artist, he has grown to better understand his presence within the work.
The investigation then shifted its focus. The focal point became Jake and his partner, his past and current traumas, and the underlying themes of his life. Jake’s photos are a look into the saturated, floral, nostalgia-ridden dreamscape he finds himself floating into as he navigates his isolating reality.
Hannah Dong (she/hers) is a designer, photographer, and thinker. In May, 2022 she will graduate from Wellesley College with a B.A. in Media Arts and Sciences which sits at the intersection of fine art and computer science.
At Wellesley, Hannah has nurtured her photography practice and she is completing an honor thesis under the guidance of Professor Kathya Landeros.
After graduation, Hannah plans to work as a UI/UX designer guided by her love for the arts.
Madison Durfee is a photography major at Endicott College from Riverside, Rhode Island. She has been recognized for her portrait and editing work in the 2019 SkillsUSA competition. Madison is an accomplished portrait photographer, but she does enjoy taking landscape photos as well. An image from her series titled Configuration was featured in the 2021 Endicott College Student Invitational and in the Photographic Resource Center’s 2021 Student Exhibition at Panopticon Gallery. Her image titled Deep Sea Blue is currently being featured in the 2022 Endicott College Student Invitational. Madison is also an event photographer for the Visual and Performing Arts Center at Endicott College, and takes photos of their concerts and performances. When Madison is not photographing, she enjoys spending time with her triplet sisters, other family and friends. She loves music and listens to Ed Sheeran or Broadway while she works and edits. Photography is one of Madison’s greatest passions and she uses it as a way to spread happiness, bring out the confidence in others, and share the world from her point of view. For her, photography is all about having fun, expressing yourself and trying new things.
Born in 1995, in Hartford, Connecticut to Trinidadian Immigrants, Justin-Michael Emmanuel is a mixed media artist that primarily uses photography and the written word to explore ideas of family, love, and Blackness.
Justin is currently based in Boston, MA, and Hartford, CT. He achieved a BA from Hampshire College in 2018 and a Master of Fine Arts degree from The University of Hartford Art School in 2021. His work has been exhibited internationally, at universities and art galleries throughout the United States, and has been published in art magazines and blogs. Justin hopes to help those around him by photographically exploring the depths of human nature, love, and empathy.
Aubrey Greenawalt (b. 1999) is a multidisciplinary artist hailing from sunny Pasadena, California. Their work explores topics of identity and trauma through the combination of photography, video, and ceramics.
Through these explorations, the outcomes mimic Aubrey’s own narrative of questioning the future as the present shifts their past. They are currently in their senior year pursuing a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Photography at the Rhode Island School of Design
Jack Isacke is a 21 year old photographer from Saratoga, California. Currently in his last semester at Emerson College, Jack is studying Visual Media Arts with a concentration in photography. He is currently working on a year-long documentary project that will be exhibited at Emerson’s Huret & Spector Gallery in April, and completed in book form by the fall. Jack plans to travel and soak up the last of his college experience before moving to New York in the new year.
Born in 1999 in Beijing, China. Maggie Lu is a photographer currently based in Boston, MA, the United States. After attending high school in Pennsylvania, she started working with photographs at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2018, and is currently completing her BFA in the department of Photography.
Her work addresses the inevitably power of human connection among strangers and its ability to underpin the world we live in. She creates ‘utterly’ simple portraits to examine the complexity of individuals, and reflect critically what it means to be real humans.
Collin Serigne (b. 2001) is a Cajun-Houma multimedia artist and environmental science student at Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts. He was born in Thibodaux, Louisiana to a family of oilfield workers and fishermen, and in the marshes of Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, Serigne’s childhood was molded by life on the water. In an area gripped by the oil industry and environmental devastation, he bore witness to financial, ecological, and cultural hardship which made his future as unstable and uncertain as the land he lives on. Navigating the fine art world and academia as a first-generation college student from a blue-collar family, Serigne has both the formal training as an artist and scientist, as well as first-hand experience to create work which speaks to the principles governing environmental systems with deep familial and personal connection to place. Dealing with the threat of physically losing his hometown to the Gulf of Mexico and the systematic erasure of culture, his recent work speaks to the loss of history and identity in the face of immense climatic change in his community and across the country.
Allie Tsubota (she/hers) is a photographer exploring intersections of race, visuality, and the formation of historical memory. Her work spans still photography and video, photographic and filmic archives, sound, installation, and text. A fourth-generation Japanese/American, Tsubota has been most focused on histories of transnational empire-building, incarceration, and assimilation located within the Asian/Pacific diaspora, though she is notably indebted to the important work of Black feminist scholars attending to the afterlives of transatlantic racial slavery. Tsubota has been included on Silver Eye’s Silver List (2022), a recipient of Aperture and Google’s Creator Lab Photo Fund (2021), the Lenscratch Student Prize First Place (2021), the Center for Photographic Art Artist Award (2021), the Henry Wolf Award for Photographic Excellence (2021), RISD’s Graduate Commons Award (2021), and a shortlisted artist for the ChromaLuxe X Lucie Foundation Fine Art Award (2021). She is presently an MFA candidate at Rhode Island School of Design.