Skip to content

Documents for an Imagined Future

    May 7 – June 4, 2022
    Gallery Reception: May 7, 3-5pm

    Artists in Conversation, online:
    May 19, 6:30 – 8:30pm
    Click HERE to register for this free event.

    Vanessa Leroy, Dark Spring, Part Two, 2021

    Storefront Art Projects
    83 Spring Street, Watertown, MA
    Gallery hours: Thursday and Saturday, 1–4pm

    Vanessa Leroy
    DM Witman
    Curated by Sarah Pollman

    Rooted in both the past and present moments, photography is laden with heavy history and complex narratives that are both visible and invisible within its frames. Today’s stories will be understood by future generations in part through the photographic detritus of the present. But what happens when today’s artists create documents for a more just tomorrow? While grounded in the present moment, the photographs in Documents for an Imagined Future envision a futurity for individuals and the environments that house them.

    DM Witman’s images speak towards an ecological grief felt in the wake of impending climate catastrophe, while concretizing strategies to deal with the concurrent grief. Vanessa Leroy uses the nuance of the photographic image to uplift the narratives of marginalized individuals and imagine a more just future. With a nod towards the anteriority of the images, both Witman and Leroy use the photograph to refuse a posteriority devoid of hope, offering the viewer a chance to imagine and create the world that lays ahead.

    DM Witman, The Haircut… or Learning To Let Go, Video, 4:51, 2020

    About Vanessa Leroy: Vanessa Leroy (b. 1996) is a photographer based in Boston, Massachusetts. She holds a BFA in Photography from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She is drawn to image-making because of the power it holds to create nuanced representation for marginalized people and uplift their stories. She sees photography as a tool for social justice, and with it, 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. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, STAT News, Bloomberg, and exhibited at Gallery Kayafas in Boston, MA — where she is represented.

    About DM Witman: DM Witman is a trandisciplinary artist working at the intersection of environmental disruption and the human relationship to place in the Age of the Anthropocene. DM is affiliated with Klompching Gallery, NY and Cove Street Arts, Portland. Recent interviews and publications include The Guardian, BBC Culture, WIRED, Boston Globe, and Art New England. She actively exhibits her work and has been recognized with grants from the Maine Arts Commission, The Kindling Fund (a regrantor for the Warhol Foundation), The John Anson Kittredge Fund, and the Puffin Foundation. She is currently Assistant Professor of Photography at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. She splits her time between the borderlands of south Texas and Maine.

    About Storefront Art Projects: Storefront Art Projects is an artist-run gallery, occasional pop-up and art studio directed by Ellen Wineberg. The gallery’s mission is to support and share exceptional artwork, ideas and activism by regional artists and makers with our neighborhood and the greater Boston community. Ellen Wineberg is an artist whose work has been featured in key galleries and museums such as Bromfield Gallery and shows her dedication to the local arts community through her varied exhibitions of work by local artists and groups.