ONLINE August 28th, 6:30-8:30pm
Featuring Amy Giese, Kim Llerena, Lisa Tang Liu/J. David Tabor, Dean Terasaki, and Suzanne Theodora White
Free to attend, and open to the public.
Register HERE to receive the Zoom link.
PRC Nights is a long-standing monthly tradition at the PRC. This free, program fosters a sense of community by offering an opportunity to share images and insights about particular topics in contemporary photographic practice. PRC Nights is open to the public and all are welcome!
The August 28th PRC Nights celebrates the exhibitors of Exposure 2024, the annual PRC Members juried exhibition. The exhibition juror, Samantha Johnston (Executive Director & Curator, Colorado Photographic Arts Center) writes, “As I finalized my selection for the exhibit, I saw common threads emerge, such as COVID-19 affecting us all in different ways and continuing to impact many peoples’ lives. There was also a focus on themes of home and place, not just the physical place we reside, but the towns and cities around us. History and found objects also played a role, and threads of space, time, and memory can be drawn through many of the works selected. I saw several artists working with self-portraiture and themes of connection, including exploration of social media, and consumerism. Together, these artists harness the power of photography to tell compelling stories that invite us to reflect on our shared experiences and the diverse ways in which we navigate our world.” The artists presenting in this event on the 28th will share work along these themes.
Amy Giese is an artist living in Boston, MA. Giese’s work is an ongoing attempt to locate the self within distinct places and spaces, whether physical, psychological or virtual. The work she will be discussing at this event is from her ongoing series, My Head Is Too Heavy. Using LiDAR scanning apps on her smartphone, Giese creates virtual models of herself and the space that she exist in. The gaps in information, the distortions and inaccuracies all point at the limitations of photographic seeing. They also act as pointers to the invisible symptoms that define her day to day life as I come to terms with a newly acquired chronic illness. Note on the process: The images are screen captures of the 3D models that are then printed as archival inkjet prints. Giese’s work has been exhibited in the US, China, New Zealand, Czechia, and Scotland. She has participated in recent shows at the OVERLAP Gallery, Danforth Museum of Art, Rear Window Gallery in Hangzhou CN, McDonough Museum of Art and the Newport Art Museum. She received her BA from Amherst College and an MFA from Parsons School of Design.
Kim Llerena is a photographic artist based in Miami, Florida. She holds an MFA in Photographic & Electronic Media from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and a BA in Journalism from New York University (NYU). She exhibits nationally in addition to serving as full-time faculty at the University of Miami. Her work in Exposure is from the series, The Sun Bathers, a quiet contemplation on a particular chapter in time, one largely defined by our ties to the world outside. For two years, our lives became more isolated, more domestic, and more interior. Since we’ve emerged, changes to weather, temperature, and tides are more undeniable than ever. One could argue that we are adrift between two uncomfortable realities – that we’re in the calm both before and after a storm. In obscured portraits and tight crops, these images foreground gesture as an expression of their subjects’ renewed but mutable relationship to place. Private moments play out in public spaces against a recurring backdrop of sea and sunlight. Implications of water are loosely threaded throughout, the subjects hovering always at its edge. Bodies interweave with fragments of these environments, suggesting that our connections to the natural world are at once abundant, entangled, and precarious.
Alchemy of the Unknowns is a Collaborative Project by Lisa Tang Liu and J. David Tabor in which they double-exposed the same film as two strangers from Boston and Phoenix, separated by 2,700 miles. As part of the analog photography revival during the 2020- pandemic engaged in “film swaps”, the practice of having one photographer first expose images on an entire roll of film and mail it to another, who would then expose the same film again. Challenged with the uncertainties of using (sometimes expired) film and the discomfort of relinquishing control over the fate of our own images, Liu and Tabor are learning to accept, and even embrace, chaos. Lisa Tang Liu explores the meaning of “America” through photographic art. As a naturalized U.S. citizen raised in a working class immigrant family, she often ponders over belonging and alienation. Liu holds a bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College. Since 2006, she has participated in solo and group exhibitions in Massachusetts and New York. J. David Tabor was born on the banks of the mighty Salt River in the Sonoran Desert. He is a musician, spoken word artist, welder, photographer, lover of rabbits, and professional artisan of bronze wind bells. David is also a practitioner of darkroom printing.
Dean Terasaki is sansei, a third-generation Japanese American. The discovery of his father’s 442nd Regiment, World War II snapshots and memorabilia sparked a lifelong exploration of photography, memory, and the intersection of race and culture in society. Terasaki earned a BFA from the University of Colorado (1978) and an MFA in photography from Arizona State University (1985). These photomontages included in Exposure 2024 are from a body of work called Veiled Inscriptions. Their source material is a collection of letters that fell out of a building’s wall as it was being remodeled in Denver, Colorado. Hidden for almost 70 years, these letters were requests mailed by Japanese Americans who were illegally removed from their homes and forced into War Relocation Authority incarceration camps during World War II. The hand-written requests were sent to a Japanese American business that was still functioning during the war. That business was named T.K. Pharmacy by its owner Thomas Kobayashi, M.D. and operated by Yutaka Terasaki. Both men were Dean Terasaki’s uncles. Dean Terasaki is on a journey to photograph all of the incarceration camp sites. Terasaki sees the layered visual content as very much like the mystery of his own identity – isolated, transforming, and still revealing itself. While his family was not forced to “relocate” or incarcerated, they had first-hand experience with racism and war-time hysteria. The letters are important both for what they request – hair dye, stomach remedies, dignity – and as a compelling reminder about the fragility of human rights amidst social disruption.
Trained as a painter, Suzanne Theodora White studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Tufts University, and has an MFA from Maine Media College. She was a two-time winner of fellowships awarded by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. After receiving the first of these awards, she spent over a year on the road traveling alone, overland, through Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Far East. In the 1980’s and 90’s she made extended trips to South America to study birds in the Amazon basin and Central America. White has had many solo exhibitions and has been included in group shows over her long career including: Yale University, New Haven, CT; Cove Street Arts, Portland, ME; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The De Cordova Museum, Lincoln, MA; Newport Art Museum, Newport, RI; Art Institute of Boston; Thomas Segal Gallery, Boston, MA; and Colby College, Waterville, ME. White’s profound connection to the natural world and the human impact on our environment has been in the forefront of her work throughout many years. The farm, where she has lived and worked for decades, is her muse. Utilizing photography, video, and site-specific installations, White constructs what she considers theaters using photographs of the farmland from more than forty years. By tearing, twisting, and folding them, she creates imaginary landscapes and still life in the spirit of 17th century Vanitas paintings, as she explores issues of life, death, and indulgent consumption. The resulting final print, a photograph of the constructed theater, investigates our cultural disconnect from the natural world.