By Elin Spring and Suzanne Révy
In New England, March is still a winter month. But we are eager to move on. Now is when we start grasping at spring, leaning into longer daylight hours and savoring the brighter sun, escalating birdsong and declarative faith of sprouting buds. Nature’s gradual awakening prods us to seize the day and this month, we are greeted by exciting new photography exhibits and events in and around Boston and New England. As always, we present them geographically for your planning convenience and urge you to check back during the month, as we update listings regularly.
SOWA – Boston’s South End Arts District
Gallery Kayafas – In his large solo exhibit The Lighthouse Keepers, Yorgos Efthymiadis presents salon-style arrays of images with soft, sun-kissed palettes. Each features a person and possesses ruminating dialogs between portrait and place, entries and exits, secrets and regrets. Efthymiadis regards each of his subjects as “a lighthouse keeper. Strong and resilient, fragile and tender, always there to help, guiding each other through life, and reminding me of where I belong.” Stirring and enigmatic, Efthymiadis’ image assemblages resonate with enduring connections. On view through March 30th, 2024, there will be a gallery Reception with the artist on First Friday, March 1st from 5:30 – 8:00pm.
To read our review: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/the-lighthouse-keepers-by-yorgos-efthymiadis-at-gallery-kayafas-boston/
For more information, go to: https://www.gallerykayafas.com/
Abakus Projects – A selection of Stephen DiRado’s exquisite, large-format B&W portraits appear in the solo exhibit, Private/Personal. Works on view span DiRado’s prolific career from 1983 to the present, featuring projects such as Bell Pond (above), Dinner Series, Classroom Series, and his radiant Beach Portraits. On view through March 31st, 2024, there will be an Artist Talk on Sunday, March 31st at 2:00 pm.
For information, go to: https://www.abakusprojects.com/
Laconia Gallery –In her solo show “The Empty Mirror,” photographer, filmmaker and installation artist Jaina Cipriano stages fantastical self-portraits that exorcize her suffocating childhood, employing a combination of playfulness and angst to realize genuine identity. On view through April 7th, 2024.
For more information, go to: https://laconiagallery.com/exhibits/the-empty-mirror/
BOSTON PROPER
Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston – “Creative Spaces: The Photographer’s Studio as Inspiration” takes viewers behind the curtain in a gathering of the idea incubators and working environments of 20th and 21st century photographers who employ a range of approaches to the medium, including multiple exposures, photo collages, cyanotypes, Polaroids, and digital prints. On view through April 28th, 2024.
To read our review, go to: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/creative-spaces-the-photographers-studio-as-inspiration-group-show-at-museum-of-fine-arts-boston/
For more information, go to: https://www.mfa.org/exhibition/creative-spaces-the-photographers-studio-as-inspiration
Also on view at MFA, Boston – “Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party” gathers twenty-seven photographs by Stephen Shames that document the efforts these women undertook at community schools, free medical clinics, voter registration sites, community nutrition programs, and elder care centers across the United States, recalling and underlining their importance to the civil rights movement. On view through June 24th, 2024.
For more information, go to: https://www.mfa.org/exhibition/comrade-sisters-women-of-the-black-panther-party
Tufts University Art Gallery at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) – As the World Burns: Queer Photography and Nightlife in Boston explores the relationship among community photographic practices, queer nightlife, and gay liberation in Boston. In the early 1970s, the Boston area became an important hub of gay culture, activism, and nightlife, and home to a flourishing scene of photography. Many queer artists and community members turned to photography to chronicle, elevate, and enrich their disparate experiences of nightlife. On view through April 21st, 2024.
For information about this exhibit and extensive associated programming, go to: https://artgalleries.tufts.edu/exhibitions/180-as-the-world-burns-queer-photography-and-nightlife-in-boston
Boston Athenaeum – Photographer Toni Pepe layers the tension between the pleasures of parenting, its enormous physical toll, and the cultural and psychological demands of “good mothering” in her solo exhibition Mothercraft. Employing discarded press images found on Ebay and at flea markets, Pepe holds them up to the light and re-photographs from the back side so that the bias-laden handwritten press notes appear as an overlay on the shadow image. With images dating from 1903 to as recently as 1997, Pepe has amassed a visual compendium of shifting 20th century motherly tropes. On view through May 7th, 2024.
To read our review of this work in an October 2022 exhibit, go to: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/toni-pepe-an-ordinary-devotion-lisa-rosowsky-othering-jane-szabo-family-matters-at-danforth-art-in-framingham-ma/
For more information abut this exhibit, go to: https://bostonathenaeum.org/visit/exhibitions/mothercraft/
Leica Gallery Boston – Jamie Johnson’s “Growing Up Traveling” chronicles youthful Irish Travellers who live in caravans along the roadside and in open fields across Ireland. Her provocative and beguiling contemporary images are presented alongside John Day’s atmospheric visual diary of the palpable tension and momentary delights he witnessed in 1972 Belfast, at the height of “The Troubles.” In this paired presentation, The Travellers and The Troubles highlights the stirring emotional qualities of B&W photography as it contrasts two eras and unique artistic perspectives on Ireland. On view through April 20th, 2024.
To read our review: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/jamie-johnson-the-travellers-and-john-day-the-troubles-at-leica-gallery-boston/
For more information about the exhibit, go to: https://leicagalleryboston.com/exhibitions/
Gallery NAGA – In her solo exhibition Portals, Mary Kocol explores thresholds not only between in & out and here & there, but more expansively between night & day and mundane & mystical, all with a transporting mastery of color. On view from March 8th – March 30th, 2024, there will be an Opening Reception with the artist on Friday, March 8th from 5:00 – 7:00pm.
For more information, go to: https://www.gallerynaga.com/exhibition/upcoming/
Pucker Gallery – Stephen Althouse’s solo exhibit Objects of Uncertainty features monumental portraits of primitive tools and relics that imply “depictions of ourselves” through the implements we use. His high-resolution photographs contrast darkness and light, hard surfaces and soft cloths, to accentuate the human experience of survival in the face of “relentless uncertainty.” On view through March 17th, 2024.
For information about this exhibition and associated online gatherings and events, go to: https://www.puckergallery.com/
Griffin Museum at Lafayette City Center (LCC) Passageway – What better way to hoist yourself out of the winter doldrums than with the group exhibit Planting Roots, Growing Community, featuring projects by four photographers who focus on community gardens and family farms: Fall in the Garden by Greg Heins, Living Like Grass by Ellen Harasimowicz, A Year Above the Gardens by John Rich, and Community Gardens By Leann Shamash (above). Their photographs of shared landscapes express not only a fervent connection to the the land but a kinship with the communities that thrive there. On view through April 14th, 2024.
For more information, go to: https://griffinmuseum.org/show/planting-roots_lcc/
Panopticon Gallery – New gallery owners Alexa Cushing and Connor Noll juried the gallery’s annual First Look 2024. The portfolio showcase features five photographers with distinctive projects: Duygu Aytac’s “Full With The Question,” Jordan Douglas’ “My Father’s Things,” Lawrence Hardy’s “Zen Xan,” Denise Laurinatis’ “The Missing Photographs,” and CE Morse’s “The Farrago Series” (above). On view through April 30th, 2024.
For more information, go to: https://www.panopticongallery.com/first-look-2024-exhibition
Arnold Arboretum – In his solo exhibiton, Fran Gardino presents two glorious series featuring photographs created across the Aboretum over the last 10 years: Little Planet, square-format images in which panoramas are curved back on themselves to create circular images that reflect the cycles of the earth and The Many Moods of the Arboretum, a series of digital photographs that have been stitched together into panoramas to show the full breadth of the landscape. On view through June 9th, 2024.
For more inforamtion, go to: https://arboretum.harvard.edu/events-2/current-and-past-art-shows/
CAMBRIDGE
Photographic Resource Center (PRC), Cambridge – In September 2023, Analog Forever Magazine published Home Sweet Home, an online group exhibition curated by PRC Creative Director, Jessica Burko. Now you can experience the sensual qualities of these prints in person. Featuring 42 photographs created with film and analog techniques, it offers a glimpse into the domestic space, often focusing on the nuanced, quiet moments that transmit so beautifully with these processes. On view through March 15th, 2024.
NOTE: There will be a free public event, “In the Gallery with Home Sweet Home” at the VanDernoot Gallery with exhibiting artists Mark Elson, Karina Mackey (above), Brent Mathison, Coco McCabe and Dennis Stein on Sunday, March 3rd at 4:00pm. For information, go to: https://www.prcboston.org/in-the-gallery-with-home-sweet-home/
For more information about the exhibit, go to: https://www.prcboston.org/home-sweet-home/
Gallery 263 – The group exhibit “I wake up in your bed” features analog photographs by Lucie March, Martha Schnee and Lena Warnke, who collaborate to explore the ways that agency and relationships shift between desire and memory. On view from March 21st – April 20th, 2024, there will be an Opening Reception with the artists on Friday, March 22nd from 6:00 – 8:00pm.
For more information, go to: https://gallery263.org/
MIT Museum, Cambridge – “So Easy To See: Berenice Abbott’s Super Sight” is the first large-scale exhibit of Abbott’s pioneering method of producing large photographs of small objects without the intervention of a photographic enlarger, a process she dubbed “Super Sight.” Positioning herself as the “friendly interpreter between science and the layman,” Abbott’s technique produced images of definition and transparency that were astonishing in their realism. On view through March 2024.
For information, go to: https://mitmuseum.mit.edu/exhibitions/so-easy-to-see-berenice-abbotts-super-sight
Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology at Harvard University, Cambridge – Photographer Zhang Xiao examines the effects of modernization on Chinese culture through the transformation of Shehuo: Community Fire, a traditional spring festival held in rural northern China that coincides with the Lunar New Year. Zhang, the 11th recipient of the Peabody Museum’s Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography, documents the ancient festivities in 2007 and its commercialization a decade later in 2018 & 2019 with vivid and thought-provoking imagery. Accompanied by a book and additional programming, this English/ Chinese bilingual exhibit is on view through April 14th, 2024.
To read our review, go to: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/zhang-xiao-shehuo-community-fire-reflects-a-changing-china-at-harvards-peabody-museum-in-cambridge-ma/
For more information about the exhibit and associated programming, go to: https://peabody.harvard.edu/shehuo-community-fire
For information about the Aperture book, go to: https://aperture.org/books/zhang-xiao-community-fire/
THE BURBS
Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover – The second of two “must see” photography exhibits this spring opens on March 2nd with The Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845. This survey was organized by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and will be accompanied by the ongoing show Robert Frank and Todd Webb: Across America, 1955 that comes to the Addison from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Both exhibitions will be on view through July 31st, 2024.
For more information: https://addison.andover.edu
Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley – After a yearlong closure for interior HVAC repairs, the museum re-opens with Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And, a retrospective solo show by the Wellesley College alum and conceptual artist. O’Grady’s work questions traditional ideas around gender, race and class through collage, photo installation, performance, video and text. This multimedia work subverts the “either/or” basis of western thought to investigate her philosophical notion of “both/and.” On view through June 2nd, 2024.
For more information: https://www.wellesley.edu/davismuseum
Danforth Art Museum, Framingham – The museum presents a slate of shows featuring photography for their spring season, including a solo exhibition by Sandra Matthews that features selections from five different projects dating back to the 1980’s. Group exhibitions feature photography by Scarlett Hoey and Madge Evers. On view through June 2nd, 2024.
To read our review: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/sandra-matthews-jennifer-davis-carey-scarlett-hoey-at-danforth-art-museum-framingham-ma/
For more information: https://danforth.framingham.edu
Shelley Hook Keith Gallery, Curry College, Milton – Co-curators Alison Poor-Donahue and Jim Fitts bring Kristen Joy Emack’s Cousins to the Curry College Campus. These beguiling and nuanced images of three growing girls focus entirely on family ties and entice viewers with their unguarded intimacy while challenging prevailing narratives of Black life in America. On view through April 19th, 2024. There is a reception planned for March 21st at 6:30pm.
For more information: https://www.curry.edu/student-life/student-center/hoon-keith-quiet-study-lounge
To read our review of Cousins at Gallery Kayafas in 2021: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/shawn-bush-angle-of-draw-and-kristen-joy-emack-cousins-at-gallery-kayafas-boston/
Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester – In the Room Where it Happened: A Survey of Presidential Photographers shows the inner workings of those in the highest echelons of power, featuring official White House photographers Shealah Craighead, Eric Draper, Michael Evans, Sharon Farmer, David Hume Kennerly, Bob McNeely, Yoichi Okamoto, Adam Schultz, Pete Souza, David Valdez and staff photographer Joyce Boghosian. On view through March 31st, 2024.
Also at the Griffin Museum, Jeffrey Aaronson: The President and the Press features pictures made of the press following the staging, itinerary and structure of an overseas trip to China by then President Bill Clinton. On view through March 31st, 2024.
To read our review, go to: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/white-house-photos-of-presidents-at-griffin-museum-of-photography-ma-in-the-room-where-it-happened-a-survey-of-presidential-photography/
For more information, go to: https://griffinmuseum.org
Barrington Center for the Arts at Gordon College, Wenham – Four photographers explore the idea of place in ‘the There, there” from distinctive and captivating perspectives: Nubar Alexanian’s sweeping B&W panoramas of Gloucester express an Armenian-American’s tribute to his adopted home; Bill Franson’s B&W images explore the towns bordering the Mason-Dixon Line and the socioeconomic implications of this politically-drawn separation; David Herwaldt’s photographs riff on his nomadic life as a long-haul trucker; and Jean Schnell (photo) honors the light and calm imbedded within the silent traditions of Quaker Meetinghouses. LAST CHANCE! On view through March 2nd, 2024.
For more information, go to: https://www.gordon.edu/gallery
Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester – It has been said that newspapers are the first draft of history, and their archives can function like a time capsule of regional stories. The Gloucester Daily Times has covered the Cape Ann region for over a century and the paper’s owner, North of Boston Media Group, has donated their photography archive to the museum. To celebrate this recent acquisition, they are presenting Above the Fold: Photographers of the Gloucester Daily Times, 1973 to 2005, on view through March 17th, 2024.
For more information: https://www.capeannmuseum.org/exhibitions/above-fold-photographers-gloucester-daily-times-1973-2005/
Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg – To celebrate their expanding photography collection that now includes a large selection of pictures made by African photographers, the museum presents Africa Rising: 21st Century African Photography. The exhibit includes photographs by Zanele Muholi, Lalla Essaydi, and Aida Muluneh (above), among others whose work grapples with themes such as environmental exploitation, the aftermath of colonialism, women’s empowerment and Afro-Futurism. On view for a full year through February 23rd, 2025, there will be an Opening Reception on Saturday, March 2nd, 2024 from 2:00 – 4:00 pm.
For more information, go to: https://fitchburgartmuseum.org/africa-rising-21st-century-african-photography/
Harold Stevens Gallery at WCUW Radio, Worcester – The late Harold Stevens, a longtime Worcester resident, endowed an art gallery to be established at WCUW radio station. His close friend, photographer Stephen DiRado will be the director of the space, and having photographed Stevens numerous times across decades of their long friendship, presents The Harold Pictures for the inaugural exhibition on view from March 26th – May 5th, 2024. An opening reception is planned for March 26th from 6:00 to 7:30pm.
For more information: https://wcuw.org/
New Bedford Whaling Museum, New Bedford – In his solo show Framing the Domestic Sea, Jeffrey C. Becton layers his photographs to craft exciting and ominous digital collages suggestive of a calamitous coastal future. His mellifluous images are at once reminiscent of New England’s seafaring past and gripping warning signals for the future. On view through May 5th, 2024.
For information about the exhibit and associated programming, go to: https://www.whalingmuseum.org/exhibition/framing-the-domestic-sea-photographs-by-jeffery-c-becton/
ROAD TRIP!
Rhode Island
Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts (RICPA), Providence- The current installment of RICPA’s annual, curated “Behind the Lens” exhibition celebrates Women’s History Month with ongoing projects by six women photographers: Sage Brousseau, Lana Z Caplan, Tresha Glenister, Diana Nicholette Jeon, Marcy Juran and Susan Keiser. On view through March 15th, 2024.
NOTE! There will be a Zoom presentation with all six artists on Thursday, March 7th from 7:00 – 8:00pm. For free, advance registration, go to: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUlcuyurzwvHtZETv-RICfdTZp_0pmu9H__#/registration
For more information: https://www.riphotocenter.org/behind-the-lens-2024-documents-from-the-21st-century/
Opening later this month, the 10th International Call for Contemporary Photography juried by Karen Haas, Lane Curator of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Opens with a reception on March 21st from 5 to 8pm, and will be on view through April 12th, 2024.
New Hampshire
Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, Hanover – Featuring selections from the Hood Museum’s photography collection, And I’m Feeling Good: Relaxation and Resistance celebrates joy in African American life. Simultaneously, it considers the pleasures and challenges in achieving and maintaining that “good feeling” in the United States. On view through April 13th, 2024.
For information, go to: https://hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu/explore/exhibitions/and-im-feeling-good
AVA Gallery and Art Center, Lebanon – Alternative Processes in Contemporary Photography showcases the analog work of six area artists who relish crafting their images by hand. Featured artists include Linda Bryan, Cathy Cone, Chris Esten, Rachel Portesi, Vaune Trachtman and Mary Zompetti. On view through March 30th, 2024.
For more information: https://avagallery.org/event/alternative-processes-in-contemporary-photography/
Maine
Cove Street Arts, Portland – Curator Bruce Brown introduces seven photographers to Portland audiences with Portland Debuts II, featuring Kathryn Anne, Dorothea Eiben (above), Rachel McKenney Coleman, Larry Smukler, Sarah Hood Salomon, Lauren Swartzbaugh and John Wiecha. LAST CHANCE! On view through March 9th, 2024.
For more information: https://www.covestreetarts.com/exhibitions-1/portlanddebutsii
Vermont
Vermont Center for Photography, Brattleboro – Jesse Freidin: Are You OK? features portraits of trans and non-binary youth throughout the country. Freidin writes, “As a queer man of trans experience, and someone raised in a family of two Holocaust survivors, this work has become a contemporary archive of the disappearance of my community and a cathartic way to say that I am (and we are) still here.” Each portrait includes the anonymous parents or caregivers whose support is vital to their survival, particularly in states that are hostile toward the trans and non-binary community. On view from March 1st – April 28th, 2024, there will be an Opening Reception on Friday, March 1st from 5:00 – 8:00 pm.
For more information: https://vcphoto.org