PHOTOGRAPHY NOW 2013
Juried by Kira Pollack
Artists: Noah Addis, Beth Chucker, Alinka Echeverria, Ayala Gazit, Gary Grenell, Robin Schwartz, Ilona Szwarc, and Samantha VanDeman
on view: April 13 – June 16, 2013
opening reception: Saturday, April 13, from 5 – 7pm
The Center for Photography at Woodstock (CPW) is pleased to announce Photography Now 2013 juried by Kira Pollack, Director of Photography at TIME Magazine.
This years’ installment of the annual Photography Now exhibition presents eight artists, who all employ photography to put forth vari
ed discourses within the documentary genre. Noah Addis, Alinka Echeverria, Ilona Szwarc, and Samantha VanDoren look outwards into society, exploring timely or pertinent subjects ranging from forays into surreal subcultures to records of international movements and events. Beth Chucker, Ayala Gazit, Gary Grenell, and Robin Schwartz each turn inwards with their work, training their eyes on conflicts and pleasures close to home.
In his project Future Cities, Noah Addis (Columbus, OH) documents urban squatter communities in developing nations from Mexico City to Mumbai. From dense conglomerations of multi-story concrete structures to sprawling shantytowns and simple huts, he illustrates the disconnect between the progress that rapid industrialization brings and the infrastructure that is unable to support such massive urban migration.
With a tender, narrative gaze towards family and home dramas, Beth Chucker (Los Angeles, CA) cinematically charts the quiet and occasionally ominously moments in her personal life and that of those around her.
The photographs of Alinka Echeverria (San Jeronimo Lidice, Mexico) take the temperature of a nation undergoing independance. In 2011 the Republic of South Sudan became the worlds’ 193rd nation ater a long-awaited referendum resulted in nearly 99% of some 4 million voters opting for succession from the North. With a clean, straightforward approach she emphasizes the determination, unity, and defiance of the Sudanese citizens.
At 12 years old, Ayala Gazit (Brooklyn, NY), discovered that she had an older brother named James who lived in Australia. Before they had a chance to meet he committed suicide in 1996, spurring Gazit to embark on a journey to his home. Combining family snapshots, letters, and her own images, her work is a poignant, heart-rending attempt to better understand the brother she never knew.
Green Lake is Gary Grenell’s (Seattle, WA) neighborhood and the epicenter of his photographic world. A social documentarian in the tradition of Henry Horenstein or Diane Arbus, he seeks out the area’s particular structure and rhythms as well as its idiosyncratic mix of characters, creating awkward but endearing portraits.
Robin Schwartz (Hoboken, NJ) and her daughter Amelia share an affinity with the animal kingdom that reveals itself in extraordinary images wherin humans and creatures coexist together. Bridging a the line between realism and fantasy, the photographs play out dramas and scenarios in which Robin, Amelia, and the animals commune and collaborate with one other.
Traveling across the country, Ilona Szwarc (New York, NY) photographs girls with their American Girl dolls. The marketing ploy behind these dolls, which are customized to match the appearance of their owners, is revealed in Szwarc’s surreal and satirical images to be a problematic symbol of social status and false individuality.
Samantha VanDeman (Villa Park, IL) series Forgotten Hotels is a nuanced examination of vacant spaces soon to be demolished but redolent with the memory of the people that have left them behind. Largely unnoticed, isolated, and forgotten, VanDeman’s work is an attempt to capture the former splendor of these once magnificent environments.
ABOUT THE JUROR:
Kira Pollack is the Director of Photography at TIME Magazine. Since Pollack joined TIME in October 2009, the brand’s photography has been recognized with awards including the World Press Photo of the Year and the Visa D’Or award as Visa Pour I’Image. In March 2011, she established TIME’s photography site LightBox, which is dedicated to the culture of images and provides a forum for conversation on photography. Previously, Pollack was the deputy photo editor for the New York Times Magazine as well as the associate photo editor at The New Yorker. In October 2011, she was named the photo editor of the year at the Lucie Awards.
