Memories Real & Imagined

What Makes It Great? / Featured / September 9, 2021

By Elin Spring and Suzanne Révy

There are a number of reliable ways to trigger memories, as famously fickle as they are persuasive: a smell, a song, and of course, photographs. At the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA, four artists summon both tangible and imaginary recollections in exhibits as different as they are engaging. In the Main Gallery, photographer Lou Jones’ distressed:memories constructs imaginary scenarios born of dreams and myths; in The Founder’s Gallery, Dylan Everett collages invented memoirs that honor writers and other artists; in the Griffin Gallery, Rhonda Lashley Lopez’ Life Narrated by Nature etherealizes the natural world and; in the Griffin Atelier Gallery, Zachary P. Stephens’ Watching the Ice Melt invokes a past and future for the earth. Jones’ distressed : memories will be on view through October 1st, 2021 and the others until October 24th, 2021. Additionally, The Women’s Postcard Project: I’m Speaking, a banner regarding the 19th Amendment by Joan Lobis Brown, is on view in the outdoor gallery through December 31st, 2021. Free, public, Opening Receptions for all shows are this Sunday, September 12th at 5:00 pm.

TODAY! Thursday, September 9, 2021 NOON – 1 PM, Bring your Brown Bag Lunch, the local community is invited to stop by for lunch while Lou Jones is at the museum.

“distressed : memories” by Lou Jones at the Griffin Museum of Photography. (Installation photograph by Suzanne Révy)

“Delphi” 2003 by Lou Jones from the series distressed : memories courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

Presented as intimate prints in black and white, Lou Jones’ distressed:memories blends dreams, myths and memories in constructed images that offer surreal narratives. Monotones, at once timeless and otherworldly, have been variously sullied, burned or torn, taped back together and rephotographed to convey a storied past. Some feature an enchanting fable narrated in Jones’ sonorous voice in accompanying audio accessed through a QR code. There are also hints of steampunk – a science fiction aesthetic that repurposes nineteenth century technologies powered by steam – represented in several objects that appear in the pictures and installed throughout the gallery: an ancient wheelchair, an antediluvian leather tome, vintage cameras, and classic pipes that function as a metaphor for plumbing the depths of the subconscious.

“Invention” 1998 by Lou Jones from the series distressed : memories installation photograph by Suzanne Révy.

“Young Fisherman” 2007 by Lou Jones from the series distressed : memories, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

(Feature Image) “Balance” 2000 by Lou Jones from the series distressed : memories, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

“Welder” 2021 by Lou Jones, installation view of distressed : memories (Photograph by Suzanne Révy)

Distressed:memories is an ongoing series since the late 1990’s. In it, Jones reveals a whimsical mastery of the constructed image while guiding viewers through fantastical realms that resonate with the familiar. “The Inventor” humorously presents a winged man, holding onto to his top hat as he attempts to fly a“phantasmaglider” that recalls and refutes the flight of Icarus. Gossamer curtains adorn the Goddess Omicron in the sublimely beautiful “Delphi,” where the tragedy of her diminished powers is emphasized through a torn negative. In “Balance,” Jones evokes worldly woes through gravitational powers of the universe. He invokes an epic battle in the parable of “The Young Fisherman” where nothing but a carcass remains between an angler and her catch. Jones is acclaimed for his prolific commercial career, boasting a broad photographic range that includes dizzying images of skyscraper construction, his illuminating panAfrica project, and coverage of both Olympic Games and Death Row inmates. In distressed:memories, he marshals a lifetime of knowledge, photographic skill and insatiable curiosity to plumb his interior life. The journey is magical.

“Grey Room” 2019 by Dylan Everett, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

“Tattoo” 2019 by Dylan Everett, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

Using collage, Dylan Everett constructs images rich in textural detail and symbolism. A recent MFA graduate of RISD, Everett gathers both “high and low” arts, using elements such as decorative objects, sculpture, patterned wallpapers, and floral arrangements to draw on his personal experiences and pop culture, often building homages to creative figures he admires. In one, he collages a classical interior replete with pedestals, an elaborate vase alongside a simple step ladder, and a hint of pink flowers below three figure studies, in tribute to photographer George Platt Lynes’ famed clandestine male nudes. In another, he uses Delft blue ceramic, cyanotype and a blue glass vase in praise of the figurative work of contemporary American photographer John Dugdale. Everett’s compositions are skewed and eclectic, intriguing viewers to both recognize and create associations in his colorful, suggestive tributes.

“White Corner with Dust” 2021 by Dylan Everett, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

“Blue Room” 2019 by Dylan Everett, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

“Dream Clouds” 2021, archival pigment on gampi with 24K gold leaf by Rhonda Lashley Lopez, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.

Escape” 2021, archival pigment on gampi with 24K gold leaf by Rhonda Lashley Lopez, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.

In Life Narrated by Nature, Rhonda Lashley Lopez’s imagery is representational but no less expressive than the imaginatively staged photographs in accompanying galleries. It is a tricky reach to convey a sense of awe in the things we see all around us every day but Lashley Lopez has succeeded with bells on. Her photographs embrace the expansive scale of the natural world with a refreshing naïveté and palpable reverence. With equal measure, she observes shifting skies and radiant moon, the flurried flight of birds and insects, and dainty droplets of moisture on twigs and leaves. Her rhapsodic perspectives invite us to see an old world with new eyes. Their intimate dimensions and the subtle effects of gold and palladium leaf endow Lashley Lopez’s images with a stirring, spiritual luminosity.

“Romance” 2021, archival pigment on gampi with 24K gold leaf by Rhonda Lashley Lopez, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.

“Wet Leaves” 2021, archival pigment on gampi with 24K gold leaf by Rhonda Lashley Lopez, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.

“Anguish” 2019, Mounted Cyanotype, Unique Print by Zachary P. Stephens, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.

“Monolith (diptych)” 2020, Mounted Cyanotype, Unique Print by Zachary P. Stephens, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.

Zachary Stephens’ Watching the Ice Melt is at once literal and figurative. He employs a direct process of placing various forms of ice onto photosensitive papers which transform into cyanotypes, creating abstract prints from the resultant melting patterns. Stephens’ vibrant, fanciful prints belie the fragility and transience of what they actually depict. The concept behind these camera-less images is a metaphor for how we continue to plow through the earth’s resources and spew harmful agents into the atmosphere, blissfully and perilously ignoring their life-limiting effects. Watching the Ice Melt implores us to recall the past, esteem the present, and consider our future on the planet.