The Arnold Newman Prize

Mother, mother
There’s too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There’s far too many of you dying
You know we’ve got to find a way
To bring some lovin’ here today, eh eh

~What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye

By Suzanne Révy

The pandemic, protests and global warming have barraged communities and sub-cultures here in the U.S. and across the globe. Contemporary art holds a mirror up to these harrowing times, bringing themes of vulnerability to the fore in the winner and finalists of the 2020 edition of the Arnold Newman Prize for New Directions in Photographic Portraiture, currently on view at the Griffin Museum of Photography. By embracing both a hardened resolve and a tender sensibility for those who are pictured, this year’s winner and finalists enhance the legacy of the late photographer Arnold Newman whose foundation has funded this prize since 2009. This years winner is Jon Henry, whose large format photographs in the series Stranger Fruit are presented alongside three finalists: Michael Darough’s black and white series, The Talk, Rubén Salgado Escudero’s color work in Solar Portraits and Priya Kambli’s familial collages in Buttons for Eyes. There will be a virtual reception on Thursday October 8th at 7pm, and the exhibition is on view by appointment at the Griffin Museum of Photography through October 28th, 2020. To register for the online reception go here: https://griffinmuseum.org/event/reception-main-media-arnold-newman-awards/

Jon Henry “Unititled #13, Groveland Park, IL” from the series Stranger Fruit courtesy of the artist, Maine Media Workshops and College and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

A mother with her infant has been a powerful icon in paintings and sculptures for centuries. Frequently idealized, the “Madonna and Child” offers a serene, loving embrace between two physical bodies while in the “Pieta” tragedy reaches all who have lost a child. Employing classic iconography, Jon Henry’s series of portraits of mothers and sons is an impassioned response to violence against Black bodies, and the often forgotten mothers who shoulder the burdens of love and loss. Several portraits show mothers of young children gently carrying their small bodies, hands and fingers entwined. In others, Henry depicts adult sons lying supine across their mother’s laps raising the question, “will I be the next Black man to die suddenly and violently?” Henry employs a large format camera, and the prints include the detritus of the film’s edge, and in some, the flaws of exposure and development; his palette recalls the faded color of 1970’s era prints which enhances a sense of the ephemeral. The title for the series references the 1939 anti-lynching Billie Holiday recording of “Strange Fruit” which begs the question, how long will violence against Black people go on? How long will systemic racism expect Black mothers to shoulder the burden?

Michael Darough “#10 It was a Cell Phone” from the series The Talk courtesy of the artist, Maine Media Workshops and College and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

Like Henry, Michael Darough’s portraits in The Talk were made in response to police violence against Blacks and the Black Lives Matter Movement. The title refers to the conversations Black parents still must have with their children around racism and the dangers they face while existing and going about their days while black. Darough presents his portraits in sumptuous black and white prints of men facing away from the camera lens. A low-key tonal range and a sensitivity to form, negative spaces, and gesture open a psychological space for viewers to feel these figures. Several images show subjects with hands shackled, their fingers tenderly curled, while others carry phones or wallets which have been mistaken by police for weapons. In one, the subject takes a defiant stance with frustration revealed in his clenched fists. The faceless anonymity of each portrait emphasizes the tragic pervasiveness of the situation, creating a searingly compassionate embrace of Black men. 

Rubén Salgado Escudero “Cristobal Cespedes Lorenzo (51) sits on his raft while carrying coconuts across the river to his home in Copala, on the coast of Mexico’s state of Guerrero. Cristobal and Francisco Manzanares Cagua (16) both work picking coconuts which they then sell to a company which makes coconut butter and oil” from the series Solar Portraits courtesy of the artist, Maine Media Workshops and College and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

Rubén Salgado Escudero’s series Solar Portraits seems like a more traditional documentary project, exploring how solar power is introduced to communities who have lived off the grid until recently. According Escudero’s statement, the International Energy Agency estimates that over a billion people still live without access to electricity. Almost all of those communities are in sub-Saharan Africa, developing Asia or Central and South America. These communities are some of the most vulnerable in the face of climate change. Solar power is an efficient way to bring electricity to these remote areas without belching emissions into the atmosphere. Escudero’s portraits reveal nighttime play and work as he illuminates his sitters with nothing but bare solar powered bulbs. His carefully lit, muted colors are reminiscent of the chiaroscuro found in Caravaggio’s paintings. While Escudero’s compositions recall an affinity for toiling laborers found in the paintings of Jean Francois Millet, many of his images are surreal. Often dreamlike in their construction, Escudero’s photographs endow each individual with grace. 

Priya Kambli “Soha (Muma’s Photographs)” from the series Buttons for Eyes courtesy of the artist, Maine Media Workshops and College and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

Priya Kambli’s playful series “Buttons for Eyes” repurposes archival family photographs in a questioning approach to issues of immigration and identity. Kambli explains that as a child, her mother would scold “do you have eyes or buttons for eyes?” when she was unable to find something right in front of her. Kambli obscures eyes or other facial features in vernacular snapshots that she brought to the U.S. from her native India after losing her parents. Kambli’s collage work recalls seeing with the naive eyes of a child, while also layering on her identities as a parent and an immigrant. In obscuring the faces of her ancestors, Kambli reflects feelings of invisibility and highlights – often in red – the tensions that immigrants feel as they navigate their adopted countries. Kambli deftly resists the urge to respond with anger to the hostile rhetoric towards immigrants, instead conveying a palpable sense of nostalgia and hope in her highly personal collages that trace the most iconic American journey.

(Featured Image) The Arnold Newman Prize for New Directions in Photographic Portraiture administered by the Maine Media Workshops and College is currently on view at the Griffin Museum of Photography featuring Jon Henry’s series Stranger Fruit (center)) and Rubén Salgado Esudero’s Solar Portraits (left) and Michael Darough’s The Talk (right). Installation image courtesy of the Griffin Museum of Photography.

The winner and finalists were selected by Makeda Best, the Richard L. Menschel Curator for Photography at the Harvard Art Museums, Aline Smithson, photographer, educator and founder of the online blog Lenscratch, and commercial photographer and filmmaker Dan Winters. For more information on the exhibit  and to register for the virtual reception tomorrow, October 8th at 7pm go to: https://griffinmuseum.org.  

The Arnold Newman Prize for New Directions in Photographic Portraiture administered by the Maine Media Workshops and College is currently on view at the Griffin Museum of Photography featuring Priya Kambli’s Buttons for Eyes (left) and Jon Henry’s Stranger Fruit. Installation photograph courtesy of the Griffin Museum of Photography.