Light Work

Exhibition Insight (video): Meryl Meisler: Best of Times, Worst of Times is on view in Light Work's Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery thru July 23, 2021 I want to show you who I am, she says now. My identity as a woman, Jew, lesbian, middle- class teacher, Baby Boomer, New Yorker, liberal, Americanand so much moreinfluences how I perceive and create art about the world around me. I’ve only just begun revealing my huge photography archive. Register for Virtual Artist Talk | Meryl Meisler: Best of Times, Worst of Times

Exhibition Open Light Work presents the 2021 NEWHOUSE PHOTOGRAPHY ANNUAL, featuring work by photography students in Newhouse School at Syracuse University. This exhibition comprises more than 30 thematically diverse photographs by Newhouse’s Multimedia Photography students. Selected works will be on view in the Hallway Gallery from March 22 July 23, 2021. The exhibiting artists are Nina Bridges, Gabrielle Cavallaro, Zoe Davis, Renee Deemer, Madeline Foreman, Hannah Frank...el, Max Freund, Molly Gibbs, Daniel Lyon, Lauren Miller, Thi Phuong-Anh Nguyen, Laura Oliverio, Katherine Reahl, Thomas Shaw, and Codie Yan. Light Work’s galleries are currently closed to the general public as part of our ongoing effort to stop the spread of COVID-19. We encourage patrons to visit our exhibitions and events online and to check out our catalog of artist videos. See more

Exhibition Open Meryl Meisler: Best of Times, Worst of Times is on view in Light Work's Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery March 22 - July 23. #MerylMeisler will join us for a virtual artist talk and Q&A on April 29, at 6 p.m. EST. Register at lg.ht/MerylMeisler Part time capsule of the 70s and 80s and part memoir, Best of Time, Worst of Times is an invitation to join Meisler for a wild ridedisco nights, punk bars, strip clubs, Fire Island, family, friends and neighbors, and subu...rban Long Island. Her exuberant celebration of human connection is particularly poignant now, when we can take none of these gatherings for granted. Light Work’s galleries are currently closed to the general public as part of our ongoing effort to stop the spread of COVID-19. We encourage patrons to visit our exhibitions and events online and to check out our catalog of artist videos. See more

FUNDING OPPORTUNITY Creative Capital helps visionary artists in all disciplines build thriving careers, and every year we review applications from artists ready to take the next step in their creative practices. The selected artists receive the #CreativeCapital Award, which includes up to $50,000 in funding for bold new projects, as well as a wide range of counsel, career development, and networking opportunities to make their work come to life. Deadline March 1, 2021

Residency Reimagined Light Work welcomes February 2021 remote residency participant LIZ JOHNSON ARTUR. Artur lives and works in London. A Russian-Ghanaian artist born in 1964, her practice includes photography, film, and installation works. She has been capturing and engaging with people for more than thirty years. She went to the Royal College in London for an MA in Fine Art after studying photography at the Bayerische Staatslehranstalt für Fotografie in Munich. #LizJohn...sonArtur has exhibited internationally, including group shows at the 10th Berlin Biennale, David Nolan Gallery (New York City), Kunstverein Leipzig, The Photographer’s Gallery (London), and Serpentine Galleries (London). In 2019, she had solo exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum (New York City) and the South London Gallery (London). In 2017 she was nominated for the Aimia | AGO Photography Prize. The New York Times included her monograph with Bierke Verlag among Best Photo Books 2016. Learn more about #LightWork residency at http://lg.ht/AIRProgram

Residency Reimagined Light Work welcomes February 2021 remote residency participant JAN MCCULLOUGH. McCullough works with photography, moving image, sculpture and installation to explore how the photographic image can be used to construct and produce individual and collective expressions of self. Recent work has included sculptural, material responses to how the camera mediates, encounters and transforms built space and can question how we locate ourselves in it. Other work... has explored how people use photography when improving their own lives in a world where desires are shaped by, and affect, advertising and the photographic image. This residency was co-sponsored by the IMMA - Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, Ireland. Light Work's remote residency experience support artists in developing their artistic practice from their home or designated studio space. In addition to the stipend, artists will benefit from technical, professional, and creative support, as well as the extraordinary freedom to determine their own residency’s shape and timing. Learn more about #LightWork residency at http://lg.ht/AIRProgram

Light Work will exhibit more than 20 works by Arkansasbased photographer Aaron Turner in its first main gallery show of 2021. Aaron Turner: Black Alchemy, Backwards/Forwards will be on view in the Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery from January 25 through March 4, 2021. Mary Lee Hodgens, associate director of Light Work, will moderate a virtual conversation and Q&A with Turner on Thursday, February 18 at 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. EST. Virtual Artist Talk | Aaron Turner: Black Alchemy, Backwards/Forwards photo credit: Julie K. Herman Courtesy of Light Work

#NPR Work by Larry Cook is featured in MoMA PS1 group exhibition titled "Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration." Curated by #NicoleFleetwood, the show is on view until April 4, 2021. Cook will participate in Light Work remote residency in 2021. "Larry Cook's piece The Visiting Room is a play on this type of photography. Inspired by his uncles who were incarcerated, Cook stages his subjects inside recreation prison visiting rooms. But instead of facing the came...ra, they're turned, looking towards painted backdrops of cityscapes, skies, and fancy cars. Counterbalancing Loughney's hurried sketches, Cook's photographs are more contemplative. "Having that faceless element allows us to resonate personally in any way that we can in terms of entering into the photograph," says Cook. https://www.npr.org//marking-time-and-making-art-in-confin

Remote Residency / ARKO DATTO / http://lg.ht/DattoAIR Datto’s practice interrogates what it means to be a photographer in the digital age while simultaneously playing the observer and commentator’s role on critical issues. He pursues narratives on seemingly disparate topics- forced migration, techno- fascism, surveillance in the digital panopticon, disappearing islands, nocturnal realms, and psychosomatic stress of captive animals. Although every narrative explored is separ...ate and different from the next, together, they form threads of inquiry into our times’ existential dilemmas. #arkodatto #lightworkair Light Work’s remote residency experience support artists in developing their artistic practice from their home or studio space. In addition to the stipend, artists will benefit from technical, professional, and creative support, as well as the freedom to determine their own residency’s shape and timing. Learn about residency program http://lg.ht/AIRProgram See more

Nydia Blas in conversation with Holly Black for Aperture Foundation For Blas, this idea of desirability and utility is linked to the experiences of Black women, who have so often found their voices undervalued and overlooked. When she first exhibited The Girls Who Spun Gold, for example, she was taken aback by the response: The project felt so personal, and yet it resonated with so many people around the world, who felt that they were in a space where they were excluded. #NydiaBlas is 2018 Grants in Photography recipient. Her work is represented in Contact Sheet 202 and in our permanent COLLECTION https://lg.ht/LWCollection

Congratulations! John Edmonds: A Sidelong Glance is presented as part of the inaugural UOVO Prize for an emerging Brooklyn artist. The exhibition is on view October 23, 2020August 8, 2021 at brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions John Edmonds is best known for his use of photography and video to create sensitive portraits and still lifes that center Black queer experiences and reimagine art historical precedents. This is the artist's first solo museum exhibition and features new... and recent photographic portraits and still lifes of Central and West African sculptures alongside friends and acquaintances from Edmonds's creative community in New York. These works explore the intersections of representation, modernity, and identity in the African diaspora. #johnedmonds is a former AIR and exhibiting artist. His show Anonymous exhibited in the Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery in 2017. His work is represented in Contact Sheet 94, 97, 198 and in our permanent COLLECTION https://lg.ht/LWCollection

Exhibition Open (Online) 2020 LIGHT WORK GRANTS IN PHOTOGRAPHY / Oct. 26 - Dec. 10, 2020 / Hallway Gallery Light Work is pleased to announce the 46th annual Light Work Grants in Photography. The 2020 recipients are Ben Cleeton (@bencleeton), Christine Elfman, and Hans Gindlesberger (@hanshanz). Courtney Asztalos and Rachel Guardiola received Honorable Mention recognition. Visit our exhibitions online and check out our catalog of artist videos www.lightwork.org/exhibitions... Light Work Grants in Photography are part of our ongoing effort to provide support and encouragement to Central New York artists working in photography within a fifty-mile radius of Syracuse. Established in 1975, Light Work Grants is one of the longest-running photography fellowship programs in the country. Each recipient receives a $3,000 award, exhibits their work at Light Work, and appears in Contact Sheet: The Light Work Annual.

EXHIBITION OPEN (Online) Light Work presents Heroine, a solo exhibition of work by Mexican-British multimedia artist and visual anthropologist Alinka Echeverria. The exhibition is on view in the Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery from October 26 through December 10, 2020. We encourage patrons to visit our exhibitions online and to check out our catalog of artist videos, including an interview with exhibiting artist #AlinkaEcheverría www.lightwork.org/exhibitions Heroine is the cu...lmination of the artist’s extensive research into the representation of women and femininity since the origins of the medium of photography. With few exceptions, the place of women was before the lens, not behind it, she acknowledges. As Echeverría immersed herself in the colonial archives of the Nicéphore Nièpce Museum in France, work she embarked on in 2015, the aesthetics of the fetishized and exoticized depiction of women both intrigued and appalled her. Directly referencing the inventor of photography, Nicéphore Niépce, Echeverría titles this work more broadly as Fieldnotes for Nicéphora (incorporating the a at the end to feminize the name that he had adopted for its meaning: victorious)thereby explicitly reframing the legacy of this white, male pioneer of photography to a feminist and postcolonial perspective. See more

Tate Museum (@tate) to exhibit first major mid-career survey of visual activist Zanele Muholi (@muholizanele) in the UK, November 5 - March 7, 2021. Born in South Africa, Muholi came to prominence in the early 2000s with photographs that sought to envision black lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and intersex lives beyond deviance or victimhood. Their work challenges hetero-patriarchal ideologies and representations, presenting the participants in their photographs as confi...dent and beautiful individuals bravely existing in the face of prejudice, intolerance and, frequently, violence. While Muholi’s intimate photographs of others launched their international career, their intense self-portraits solidified it. This exhibition presents the full breadth of Muholi’s photographic and activist practice. - text #artfund #ZaneleMuholi participated in @lightworkorg residency in 2015. Their work is represented in Contact Sheet 187. Find images from their Faces and Phases series in our COLLECTION https://lg.ht/LWCollection

Claim Your Spot Home Printing How To with Dan Boardman / Thursday / October 29 / 6pm EST / Find registration info. and fees at lightwork.org/education Join us in the virtual @lightworkorg Lab this fall! Get consistent image-making results at home! Learn to navigate any complex set-up and swiftly troubleshoot problems with your inkjet printer. This workshop offers a step-by-step guide in color space, profile management, soft proofing and more. Dan Boardman received his BFA in photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2008 and his MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2012. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally and has work in both public and private collections.

BIG TIME Congratulations!! Deana Lawson is the winner of the 2020 Hugo Boss Prize. A photographer born in Rochester, New York, and based in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, Lawson’s large-format imagesmostly portraitsforeground Black diasporic experience and culture. Lawson is the first artist working in photography to receive the prize. Selected by a jury of international critics and curators, Lawson receives an honorarium of $100,000 and a solo exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, opening in spring 2021.