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| © CJ Heyliger, Wreckage, Edison, NJ, 2010, from the series "Dream of Pines" |
fototazo has asked a group of 50 curators, gallery owners, blog writers, photographers, academics and others actively engaged in photography to pick two photographers that deserve (more) recognition - the underknown, the under-respected as well as not-appreciated-enough favorites. A little more information on the project is available in the first post in the series here.
We began the series with responses from Nicholas Nixon, Matt Johnston, Blake Andrews, John Edwin Mason, Aline Smithson, Colin Pantall, Michael Werner, Liza Fetissova, Laurence Salzmann, Bryan Formhals, Richard Mosse, Shane Lavalette, Amy Stein, Amani Willett, Wayne Ford and S. Billie Mandle.
Today we continue with responses from Leslie K. Brown and Gordon Stettinius
Respondent: Leslie K. Brown is an independent curator and educator pursuing her Ph.D. in art history at Boston University. A former curator at the Photographic Resource Center in Boston, she holds an M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin. Besides working at and guest curating for several museums, Brown has also taught at the Art Institute of Boston, BU and the Rhode Island School of Design and regularly serves as an invited guest critic, juror, reviewer and lecturer. Her recent projects include a solo exhibition of Daniel Ranalli’s work and an essay for photographer Sandi Haber Fifield’s book, Between Planting and Picking. Currently living in Cambridge, MA, she is the product of a Kodak family.
Selections: Cole Caswell and CJ Heyliger. Exploring the boundaries of landscape—literally, geographically, and metaphorically—both photographers are graduates of the Art Institute of Boston. Caswell (Peaks Island, ME) earned an interdisciplinary MFA from Maine College of Art and is an adjunct instructor and active collaborator with the Geographic Observatory and WE ARE X [wax]; Heyliger (Somerville, MA) teaches at AIB and currently works as an assistant for Abelardo Morell and Nicholas Nixon.
In addition to their personal work seen here, together with Bryan Graf, Caswell and Heyliger maintain the blog Swamp Recordings as an archive of their collective ramblings in the wetlands of the east coast and in preparation for their upcoming multi-media installation and interactive/inhabited studio at Bodega in Philadelphia next spring. Jointly, they have also recently launched the publishing venture Sun System.
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| © Cole Caswell, reservoir, 2011, from the series "Fallen Volume #2" |
Respondent: Gordon Stettinius has been exhibited nationally and internationally, his photography can be found in both private and public collections, and he is a winner of the 2009 Theresa Pollak award for Excellence in the Arts. Stettinius taught at Virginia Commonwealth University until 2009 when he decided to take some time away for teaching to start an independent publishing company, Candela Books.
Selections: Caleb Cole and Susan Worsham
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| © Caleb Cole, Woman Looking In, 2008, from the series "Other People's Clothes" |
Caleb Cole: The first work of his that I was drawn to was "Other People's Clothes," a body of work that involves Caleb finding or borrowing an outfit or a piece of clothing. He then will construct a scenario with himself as subject. It sounds simple, and maybe it is, but he does a brilliant job avoiding campy self-portraiture by adding vulnerability with trace amounts of melodrama. It is hysterical and the more I find myself considering photographers and their very meaningful projects from all over the globe, the more I need work like this to pick myself up again.
Susan Worsham: There is a resonance in Susan's work that I take in on a level just beneath comprehension. Her work is autobiographical in a way. She writes of family and loss but then photographs the vibrations of these experiences and somehow manages to bring together constructed scenes and familiar people, intimate scenes, but suggests those people and those times that she misses the most. As if the soup will always remember the garden. To see it unfold is subtle and persuasive.
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| © Susan Worsham, Untitled, from the series "Some Fox Trails in Virginia" |