PRC Nights: Photo As Object

IN PERSON: Thursday, December 16, 6:30-8:30pm
Washington Street Gallery and Studios
321 Washington Street, Somerville, MA, 02143
Wearing a mask and proof of vaccination are required to attend.

Featuring Karen Olson along with Liz Albert, Gary Duehr, and Tiziana Rozzo

Early photography involved often cumbersome and delicate apparatus including large cameras, and glass plates which yielded handheld objects such as daguerreotypes, tintypes, and carte de visite. With the advent of roll film, photographers were more easily able to make prints on paper which were still objects though most often relegated to walls and no longer handheld. In the digital world photographs are most often viewed on pocket-sized screens, severing the connection between hand, eye, and image making. As wet darkrooms are more difficult to find, the craft of photography is less a hands-on art prompting some photographers to gravitate towards tactile image making techniques and three-dimensional photo objects. PRC Nights: Photo as Object showcases photographers working with sculptural methods and mixed media to present their images outside of the frame.

Featured photographer Karen Olson is a lens-based artist working at the intersection of human emotion and the natural world. In her figurative and nature-inspired work, Karen uses concept-based projects to explore the human-nature connection and its role in fostering mental health and communication. Karen seeks an open dialog with subjects such as grief, trauma, empathy, and forest bathing. She illustrates these multi-sensory experiences by blending and layering photographic elements to create ethereal and immersive imagery. Recently interviewed for her project Wildlight by the Maine Museum of Photographic Arts, her sculptural photography has gained attention and press. Her work has been featured by the Griffin Museum of Photography, Art New England magazine, and One Twelve Publishing. Karen was chosen as an Rfotofolio selected artist for 2021. Several of her images from an additional project, Between Two Worlds, were chosen for the show Behind the Lens-Women in Photography at the Rhode Island Center for Photography. Her book with the same title was included in the Davis-Orton/Griffin Museum Photobook Show. Karen’s work has been included in gallery shows as well as online and print magazines such as LA Photo Curator, NY Photo Curator, Torpedo Art Center, the Rhode Island Center for Photography, The Hand, Overexposed Magazine, and Don’t Take Pictures. Sweet Haven Gallery hosted her show Wildheart this past summer in Newburyport, MA. 

Liz Albert is a photographic artist who has exhibited her work in shows throughout the United States and abroad. Online and print features include: Fisheye Magazine, Fotoroom, Fraction Magazine, Lenscratch, Photo-Emphasis, Ain’t Bad and Maake, as well as the French weekly magazine, Courrier International. In addition, her Family Fictions series was exhibited in The Fence 2018, which toured seven cities throughout the US and Canada. Solo exhibitions include: The Danforth Museum of Art in Framingham, MA and the Revela’t Contemporary Analog Photography Festival in Barcelona, Spain. Her most recent exhibit was an outdoor public art installation of her series, Instant Classic, with collaborator, Shane VanOosterhout, at ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, MI. She holds a BFA from the University of Michigan, an MFA in photography from Maryland Institute College of Art, and a post-baccalaureate in teaching from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She is originally from Grand Rapids, Michigan and lives with her family in Belmont, Massachusetts.

Boston based Italian fine art photographer Tiziana Rozzo, a graduate student in Photography and Integrated Media at Lesley University, explores the play between representation and reality in photographs through the notion of perception, memory and materiality. Tiziana was a recipient of the Arnold P. Gold Foundation Grant for the Arts, Medicine and Humanities, Harvard Medical School, a finalist for the 2016 John Chervinsky Emerging Photographer Scholarship and the recipients of grants and scholarships, including the 2020 Strauch Mosse Merit Scholarship from Lesley University and the 2021 Paddle Rise Scholarship , Anderson Ranch ArtsCenter, Snowmass, CO. She had exhibited her prints and photographic artist’s books at the 2019 Boston Art Book Fair and at the Penland School of Craft, NC, Danforth-Art Museum, The Griffin Museum and at Lesley University.  In 2018 she had her first solo exhibit at Colgate University, NY. Tiziana’s artist’s book series Interstellar Ice is in numerous private collections and in the Special Collection of The W. Van Alan Clark, Jr. Library at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA)/Tisch Library/ Tuft University.

Gary Duehr has been chosen as a Best Emerging Artist in New England by the International Association of Art Critics, and he has received an Artist Grant in photography from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. His work has been featured in museums and galleries including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; MOMA PS 1, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; and Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba, as well as exhibitions in Tokyo, Venice, Stockholm, London and Barcelona. Past awards include grants from the LEF Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. His public artworks include a video artwork for the Canadian subway system; a photo installation funded by the Visible Republic program of New England Foundation for the Arts, and a commission from the MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority) for a permanent photo installation at North Station. Duehr has written about the arts for journals including ArtScope, Art New England, Art on Paper, Communication Arts, Frieze, and Public Culture. Currently he manages Bromfield Gallery in Boston’s South End.

Thank you to Washington Street
Gallery and Studios
for supporting this event!