First Look 2025

By Elin Spring

To inaugurate each new year, Panopticon Gallery directors Alexa Cushing and Connor Noll jury an Open Call to select a handful of artist portfolios with unique viewpoints. In “First Look 2025,” we viewers get to take temporary leave of winter and hit the refresh button with invigorating photography series by five artists. They include: Austin Bryant’s “Where They Still Remain,” Andriana Nativio’s “As We Rest in the Shadows,” Diana Cheren Nygren’s “Mother Earth,” Anne Sol’s “Palimpsest” and Ira Garber’s “Kinetic Landscapes.”  In addition, the gallery has added a second space called “The Wall,” whose first exhibit, “First Look: Second Glance” features a selection of notable single photographs culled from the same Open Call. On view through April 28^th, 2025.

From the series Where They Still Remain by Austin Bryant, courtesy of the artist and Panopticon Gallery, Boston.

Austin Bryant’s “Where They Still Remain” takes a deep dive into the past of two entwined communities inhabiting Martha’s Vineyard Island in Massachusetts: the indigenous Wampanoag tribe and the enclave of African Americans who found refuge there before legal emancipation. A direct descendant of the latter, Bryant constructs a memorial to their largely unrecorded history by weaving together his own poignant portraits and stirring landscapes with researched vernacular pictures. Simultaneously descriptive and vague, Bryant creates allusive, curiosity-piquing narratives.

From the series Where They Still Remain by Austin Bryant, courtesy of the artist and Panopticon Gallery, Boston.

Feature Image: “Snakeskin” from the series As We Rest in the Shadows by Andriana Nativio, courtesy of the artist and Panopticon Gallery, Boston.

Andriana Nativio’s winsome black and white portraits in “As We Rest in the Shadows” recreates the adventures and, more importantly, the fleeting sense of freedom relished by two sisters roaming the woods and rivers of rural Tennessee. Her images are admittedly an allegory, retracing a trail to her own youth. The sense of nostalgia is palpable, and Nativio’s bitter-sweet emotions are mirrored in the dramatic tonal range of her prints.

“Through the River” from the series As We Rest in the Shadows by Andriana Nativio, courtesy of the artist and Panopticon Gallery, Boston.

“New Pool” from the series Mother Earth by Diana Cheren Nygren, courtesy of the artist, Susan Spiritus Gallery, Irvine, CA and Panopticon Gallery, Boston.

In her “Mother Earth” series, Diana Cheren Nygren juxtaposes snippets of the present with an imagined future, constructing images that are at once questioning and hopeful. Using barren landscapes of the desert southwest as a stand-in for a futuristic scorched earth scenario, she integrates small contemporary scenes that hint at their connection to the accumulating ravages of climate change. Beautifully crafted with a mélange of materials and soothing palettes, Nygren’s images enthrall even as they beg the question of how we will adapt to an uncertain future of our own making.

“Chance of Rain” from the series Mother Earth by Diana Cheren Nygren, courtesy of the artist, Susan Spiritus Gallery, Irvine, CA and Panopticon Gallery, Boston.

“Little Boy” from the series Palimpsest by Anne Sol, courtesy of the artist and Panopticon Gallery, Boston.

Anne Sol’s “Palimpsest” is based on the idea that memory is like “a material bearing visible traces of its earlier forms,” composed of layers accumulated over time. Combining photography and drawing along with washes and old papers, she creates ethereal images “where the tangible gives way to a poetics of the indefinite.” Sol’s tactile, nuanced images invite us to blur the distinction between experience and memory, encouraging oscillation between reality and imagination.

“Dog” from the series Palimpsest by Anne Sol, courtesy of the artist and Panopticon Gallery, Boston.

“Times Square” from the series Kinetic Landscapes by Ira Garber, courtesy of the artist and Panopticon Gallery, Boston.

Ira Garber makes black and white “Kinetic Landscapes” by modifying his camera back to create a continuous and overlapping image across an entire roll of film. His shifting viewpoints and the inherent serendipity of his method encourages viewers to see and think differently about motion and time. Both whimsical and technical, Garber’s images render refreshing perspectives on familiar scenes.

“Chelsea” from the series Kinetic Landscapes by Ira Garber, courtesy of the artist and Panopticon Gallery, Boston.

For more information about this exhibit and The Wall at Panopticon Gallery’s first exhibition, First Look: Second Glance, go to: https://www.panopticongallery.com/