Lost and Found

“The family – that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to.”~ Dodie Smith, Dear Octopus

By Suzanne Révy and Elin Spring

An assembly of new shows at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA mine the complexities of family lore and generational bonds. In a stellar curatorial debut, Griffin Museum Executive Director Crista Dix brings together six artists who employ embroidery, collage and installation to consider the inescapable impact and reverberations of familial bonds. The Main Gallery features the repurposed snapshots of French-Moroccan artist Carolle Bénitah in conversation with intricately layered photographs by Astrid Reischwitz and image-based sculptures by JP Terlizzi to form the exhibit Ties that Bind: Threaded Narratives. The smaller galleries display photography with similar themes in Origin Stories by Anne Piessens, Without A Map by Marsha Guggenheim and Mother Pearl by Brianna Dowd. All exhibits are on view through April 16th, 2023.

At the Griffin Museum of Photography Ties that Bind: Threaded Narratives with work “Secrets” by Astrid Reischwitz (left) “Patriarch” by JP Terlizzi (center) and “ I am afraid to touch you and to like it” (top right) and “I want to extract my body trapped in a giant pincer” (bottom right) by Carolle Bénitah. Installation photograph by Suzanne Révy.

“The Golden Cage” by Carolle Bénitah, 2012, from the series Photo Souvenirs, courtesy of the artist, Sous Les Etoiles Gallery, NYC and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

“The Reunion” by Carolle Bénitah from the series Photo Souvenirs, courtesy of the artist, Sous Les Etoiles Gallery, NYC and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

The tentacles of family can loosen and tighten their grip on us. Despite the comforts and familiarity of home, individuals often bear psychological wounds from the flaws, dysfunctions and traumas of their immediate and distant relatives. These contradictions can be keenly felt in the vintage family photographs that Carolle Bénitah embellishes with embroidery or gold leafing. For example, in “The Golden Cage,” she fashions an enclosure around her father, herself and two siblings in a snapshot made at the beach. The cage is barely visible, and the family dynamic appears relaxed. But are these children free to be themselves in the company of their father? In another, Bénitah literally tethers a large family group to each other with red yarn, and obscures several of the faces. Are we forever bound to our families, and can that be healthy?  Or is it a hindrance to our own growth? Perhaps most unsettling, a picture of the artist as a young woman with a throng of blood red fibers emanating from her eyes and the statement, “he does not say that I am pretty”” across the top. The implication: she did not feel seen or known by those who were closest. 

“He Doesn’t Say” by Carolle Bénitah 2012, from the series Photo Souvenirs, courtesy of the artist, Sous Les Etoiles Gallery, NYC and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

“Jeunes sur l’herbe” by Carolle Bénitah from the series I Will Never Forget You courtesy of the artist, Sous Les Etoiles Gallery, NYC and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

Photography and memory are intertwined. Bénitah also plays with anonymous pictures in an effort to emboss the unknown people in pictures she purchased at flea markets. Just as we bronze a baby’s shoes, Bénitah memorializes the ghosts in these humble snapshots with gold leaf to carry them close. Her art making is a therapeutic process, but her results are not overly specific, which gives viewers a broad entry point for their own interpretations. She retains the mysteries that vernacular pictures offer, inviting viewers into a fragmentary journey of the past through childhood and family dynamics. 

Feature Image: “Shadow and Light” by Astrid Reischwitz, 2019, from the series Spin Club Tapestry courtesy of the artist, Gallery Kayafas, Boston and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

Carolle Bénitah and Astrid Reischwitz share a similar visual language in adorning their family photographs with thread, but each uses her embroidery to very different effect. In her series Spin Club Tapestry, Reischwitz skips back generations to craft something akin to family quilts that honor her origins in rural Germany. In each work, she pieces together vintage pictures of her ancestors and their embroidered domestic fabrics handed down through generations with her own evocative imagery, connecting their stories to hers.

“Window” from the series Spin Club Tapestry by Astrid Reischwitz, courtesy of the artist, Gallery Kayafas, Boston and Griffin Museum of Photography.

“Four Did Not Return” from the series Spin Club Tapestry by Astrid Reischwitz, courtesy of the artist, Gallery Kayafas, Boston and Griffin Museum of Photography.

The women of her family’s village used to gather in “Spin Clubs” at each other’s homes, nurturing a sense of community as they shared stories while creating and mending domestic fabrics. Reischwitz echoes this tradition by hand embroidering fragments of their designs onto her collages. This technique acknowledges that recollections of the past are disjointed and changeable. Moreover, her embroidery imparts symbolic heft, as in the blood red “artery” of those lost at war in “Four Did Not Return” and the apt metaphor in her display of three alternately embroidered versions of  “Memory.” Reischwitz’s richly layered work weaves meaningful parts of her ancestry into harmonic patterns of composition, palette and texture, making Spin Club Tapestry a spellbinding tribute to the endurance of family ties.

“First Memory” from the series Spin Club Tapestry by Astrid Reischwitz, courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas, Boston.

“Matriarch” and “Family Recipe” by JP Terlizzi, from the series Remembering Papa, courtesy of the artist and Foto Relevance, Houston, TX, installation photograph by Suzanne Révy.

Born into a family of Italian immigrants, many of whom were tailors, cobblers or artisans, JP Terlizzi transforms simple family snapshots and tools of their trades into sculptural displays that reference the ethos of a large family in new work called Remembering Papa. As with Reischwitz, he is seeking emotional connections to his ancestral legacy, but like Bénitah, Terlizzi’s work has a deep psychological edge. Installed on the opening wall, “The Shoemaker,”  constructed of vintage photographs, a grain scoop, shoe eyelets and a magnifying glass, resembles a grandfather clock, emphasizing the passage of time while cherishing a beloved grandfather. Or in “Matriarch” and “Family Recipe” he shows a reverence for his family’s vocations around sewing and cooking. In another piece, he precisely inserts red-tipped sewing pins into a vintage photograph of his mother, painfully simulating a voodoo doll. Her undiagnosed mental illness resulted in a cruel persona, which led to her estrangement from Terlizzi and the rest of the family. 

“Pins” by JP Terlizzi, 2021, from the series Remembering Papa, courtesy of the artist and Foto Relevance, Houston, TX, installation photograph by Suzanne Révy.

“Bottled” by JP Terlizzi, 2021, from the series Remembering Papa, courtesy of the artist and Foto Relevance, Houston, TX,  installation photograph by Suzanne Révy

“Mend” by JP Terlizzi 2022, from the series Remembering Papa, courtesy of the artist and Foto Relevance, Houston, TX, installation photograph by Suzanne Révy.

Although Terlizzi brings a playfulness to his meticulously crafted objects, there is a melancholy and moving presence, particularly in “Bottled” or “Mend” featuring young girls whose poignant expressions belie an unease. This deeply satisfying show unravels familial entanglements and legacies, fathoms the myths surrounding previous generations and endows the space with an enigmatic correspondence between each artist and each viewer. 

“Wonder” 2022, from the series Origin Stories, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.

In Origin Stories, Anne Piessens delves into a past that her parents kept secret from her as a child, after uprooting their small family from Belgium to the United States. Her fantasy of an affectionate extended family in a faraway land met an abrupt and shocking end as she prompted her mother – with a photograph – into disclosing the feuds and abuses that wrenched their family apart.

“Effaced” 2022, from the series Origin Stories, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.

In photocollages that alternate between innocent and foreboding, Piessens combines fragments of unearthed family photographs with her own interpretations of her female relatives’ endured traumas and sustaining dreams. Compositional elements like branching arteries and spider webs are subversive counterpoints in her gentler pieces.

“The Victor” 2022, from the series Origin Stories, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.

Other images feature chilling symbols like menacing lions or untethered bodies that appear perched between freedom and free fall. Piessens lures us into her unsettling revelations with captivating mysteries that simmer with emotion.

“Self-portrait” from the series Without A Map by Marsha Guggenheim, courtesy of the artist and Corden Potts Gallery, San Francisco.

In Without A Map, Marsha Guggenheim reimagines childhood memories that were deeply buried or long lost following the death of first, her mother and then, her father when she was young. She has mined old family photos, contacted childhood acquaintances, and visited her old home, Synagogue and parents’ cemetery to re-construct evidence from her past. Using self-portraits from past and present along with ephemera from her uncovered history, she crafts in-camera images to help chart her missing map.

“Ancestors” from the series Without A Map by Marsha Guggenheim, courtesy of the artist and Corden Potts Gallery, San Francisco.

In frames that are compositionally straightforward, she uses selective focus, obfuscations and blurring to evoke the elusive and spotty nature of memory. Warm-toned B&W prints imbue a sense of nostalgia. But it is Guggenheim’s lighting, tenuous and fleeting, that shimmers with uncertainty like a siren song. With their reigning sense of fragility and longing, Guggenheim’s elegant images convey the very essence of an existential quest.

“Mom” from the series Without A Map by Marsha Guggenheim, courtesy of the artist and Corden Potts Gallery, San Francisco.

From the series Mother Pearl by Brianna Dowd, courtesy of the artist.

In “Mother Pearl,” Brianna Dowd constructs a loving relationship with the paternal grandmother she never knew. She collages found family photographs, symbolic personal belongings such as her grandmother’s watch, her own confessional letters, and a symbolic pearl necklace that links them together. In colorful, pearl-shaped compositions depicting her longed-for memories, Dowd’s images sparkle like love letters, each one an aspirational gem.

From the series Mother Pearl by Brianna Dowd, courtesy of the artist.

For information about each of these exhibits and associated programming, go to: https://griffinmuseum.org/current-exhibitions/

In the entrance at the Griffin Museum of Photography, “Young people on the Grass” by Carolle Bénitah (top left), “Resemblance” by JP Terlizzi (bottom left) and “Future Memory” by Astrid Reischwitz from Ties that Bind: Threaded Narratives, installation photograph by Suzanne Révy.