Exposure 2024

By Elin Spring

Like the aftershocks of an earthquake, tremors of disruption surface in the photographs of fourteen artists selected for EXPOSURE 2024, the 28th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition. Juror Samantha Johnston, Executive Director & Curator at Colorado Photographic Arts Center, tapped into a distinct sense of unease in images ranging from punchy cacophony to cavernous longing. The Photographic Resource Center (PRC) has knit the visual and psychological into a mellifluous display, on view at the VanDernoot Gallery at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA through September 29^th, 2024.

Feature Image: “Self-portrait by the Sea” by Andrew Zou, courtesy of the artist and PRC.

There is a veritable laundry list of “subjects” and “themes” in this exhibit, but to me, one overarching feeling is unmistakable. All the images veer toward connections, broken or desired, and sometimes both. At the entry, Andrew Zou’s naked body lays itself at the foot of a harsh, intimidating Chinese culture in his poignant “David & Goliath” proclamation of gay identity.

“Send Me Anything,” Children’s Playground, Manzanar, California, 2024, by Dean Terasaki, courtesy of the artist and PRC, Cambridge, MA.

Dean Terasaki’s delicate layering of current landscapes with heartrending letters penned by detainees in WWII Japanese internment camps weds feelings of indignation and love for his ancestors in the series “Veiled Inscriptions.” In Dutch still-life inspired photographs, Astrid Reischwitz memorializes her rural German heritage in elegant tableaux of family artifacts, foods and embroidery from the lush, multi-sensory series “The Taste of Memory.”

“Egg Pancakes and Yarn” 2024 by Astrid Reischwitz, courtesy of the artist and PRC, Cambridge, MA.

“@tomsandoval1” 2022 by Laura Beth Reese, courtesy of the artist and PRC, Cambridge, MA.

In a switch to the turbulence of today, Laura Beth Reese’s series “#influenced” is a dizzying commentary on the disturbing body dysmorphia and consumerism wrought by social media. In her series “The Sun Bathers,” Kim Llerena channels the sensation of drifting between storms in sunny, anxiety-laden boating scenes. Greer Muldowney’s quiet studies of creeping gentrification in the ongoing series “Monetary Violence” glow with allure as they sear with settings of alarming displacement.

“Feet/floating” 2022 by Kim Llerena, courtesy of the artist and PRC, Cambridge, MA.

“Untitled” from the series Monetary Violence, 2022, by Greer Muldowney, courtesy of the artist and PRC, Cambridge, MA.

“What Branches Grow” 2023 by Suzanne Theodora White, courtesy of the artist and PRC, Cambridge, MA.

Suzanne Theodora White mourns the repercussions of climate change in studio still-life images incorporating crushed and twisted landscape photographs of her family farm in the series “Dry Stone, No Sound of Water.” Distortions and digital noise create the pervading sense of disorientation in Amy Giese’s self-portrait series “My Head is Too Heavy,” an affecting narrative on long-Covid. Just as Giese craves a return to herself, Elizabeth Wiese yearns for a homecoming to nature. Her self-portraits in the series “Free Spirit” envelop her willowy dancer’s body in graceful arboreal surroundings.

“Normal Heart” 2023, by Amy Giese, courtesy of the artist and PRC, Cambridge, MA.

“Listen” 2023, by Elizabeth Wiese, courtesy of the artist and PRC, Cambridge, MA.

“Contour Map with Cattle Fence and Silver Spur, 1971/2017” by Jeffrey Heyne, courtesy of the artist and PRC, Cambridge, MA.

A clash of landscapes takes disparate forms in Jeffrey Heyne’s series “To Hunt A Moon” and the east-west photo collaborators Lisa Tang Liu & J. David Tabor’s series “Alchemy of the Unknowns.” Heyne’s collaged and juxtaposed images of eerie NASA moonscapes with sweeping, somewhat barren earthscapes create a panoptic view of geologies, inviting “conceptual collisions.” Boston-based Liu and Phoenix-based Tabor explore America by utilizing the same roll of film with medium-format toy cameras. Their ethereal B&W, double-exposed landscapes embrace uncertainty and chaos as they find beauty in assimilation.

“Silhouette on Fence” 2024, by Lisa Tang Liu & James David Tabor, courtesy of the artists and PRC, Cambridge, MA.

“Three Dimensions” 2019, by Abbey Hepner, courtesy of the artist and PRC, Cambridge, MA.

Abbey Hepner and Anastasia Sierra utilize domestic scenes to grapple with conflicting emotions about home and motherhood. Hepner’s placid images in the series “A Story About A Home” are staged in a soothing neutral palette, but teem with doors and windows that may be traps or escape hatches. Her canny play of shadows and light furthers a sense of ambivalence. In the series “Bittersweet,” Anastasia Sierra’s self-portraits with her son, the photographs wear a bright, colorful surface whose elements of contrast and gesture convey opposing desires for independence and connection.

“Shadows” 2023 by Anastasia Sierra, courtesy of the artist and PRC, Cambridge, MA.

Inevitably, the human consequences of disconnection and displacement are a deep craving for the opposite. To me, the images in EXPOSURE 2024 all center on this struggle, each photographer focusing on fractures or bonds, and sometimes achieving that precarious, very human bundle of emotions all at once.

For more information about this exhibit and associated programming, go to: https://www.prcboston.org/exposure-2024-the-28th-annual-prc-juried-members-exhibition-2/