Paul Thulin-Jimenez

Paul Thulin-Jimenez

Dana Stirling

Pine Tree Ballads | In the early 1900s, artist Paul Thulin's great-grandfather settled on an island off the coast of Maine because it resembled his homeland of Sweden. Over a century later, his family returns to the same area, Gray's Point, each summer.

Throughout his life, Thulin's great-grandfather shared exquisitely detailed accounts of early settlers at the New England apple orchard; Such characters include a one-legged ship cook, a widowed schoolteacher, and an ingenious Native American blacksmith. The tales were an intricate mix of facts and lore that fueled the imagination and, on occasion, had the power to transform daily floorboard creaks and shadows into enduring ancestral spirits.

Pine Tree Ballads is a poetic memoir, featuring the artist’s daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother as a single protean character (or multiple characters?) vibrating in time, navigating the mysteries and menace of a shared ancestral forest. This deeply personal photographic sequence is part visual narrative of family myths and part origin story. Pine Tree Ballads is fueled by both truth and imagination, which, in many instances are the fundamental ingredients of our personal history. The "docu-literary" structure of this monograph celebrates and fully exploits the duplicitous nature of photography/text to be simultaneously interpreted as both fact and fiction. At the surface, this project explores the emotive, contextual, and material constructs of history, culture, personal identity, memory, and folklore.

Pine Tree Ballads is Thulin’s first book. With an afterword, by poet Dora Malech www.paulthulin.com

Lanna Apisukh

Lanna Apisukh

Dana Stirling

Permanent Vacation | Since the coronavirus outbreak began, I’ve been thinking a lot about my family – especially my parents who have been living in Southeast Asia for the past seven months waiting for the pandemic to end so they can safely travel back to the United States. As a way of navigating these strange days, I have kept myself busy by looking back on past trips we’ve taken together and my visits to their home in Central Florida.

This specific set of images I’m sharing have brought me joy during a bleak time and has inspired me to create Permanent Vacation , a beachy portrait of my parents’ lives as Asian American retirees and senior citizens living in the Sunshine State.

Though my Mom and Dad have been Florida residents for over forty years now, I’m continually fascinated by the way that they have adapted to the American landscape and culture in their own unique way. From the way they dress to the popular colloquialisms they’ve adopted from cable television and the internet, it’s clear that their sunny, suburban environment has shaped their cultural identity.

Growing up, I always knew that our family was different. Not because we were Asian minorities living in predominantly white suburbs, but because my parents so proudly and passionately made their living in a place that contrasted greatly from their native homeland of Thailand.

Their resilience and tireless work ethic as cooks and owners of a Thai restaurant that ran successfully for over twenty years in Longwood, Florida eventually earned them recognition and a well-deserved retirement which I’ve been following for the past year. Captured on a variety of color film formats during their usual weekend trips to the nearby seashores, this photo series offers a glimpse into my parents’ peaceful – yet vibrant and highly active lives as senior citizens, while broadening the ideas of aging and our sense of place and belonging in the world. www.LannaApisukh.com

Alexis Vasilikos

Alexis Vasilikos

Dana Stirling

The power of Nothing | The power of Nothing (2020) is a series of works that revolve around the limits of form and what lies beyond form, it explores the various degrees of abstraction in photography and the relationship between abstract photography and abstract painting, minimalism and abstraction in digital imagery.

Alexis Vasilikos is an Athens-based visual artist who works primarily with photography. His work revolves around peripatetic photography, meditation and energetic editing. Since 2012 he is co-editing Phases Magazine, an online fine art photography magazine and he is represented by CAN Christina Androulidaki Gallery. www.alexisvasilikos.net

Teyé Lee

Teyé Lee

Dana Stirling

Monte Alto 우리동네 | Having married to a Galician woman, Spain has been a second home to me for the last decade. Photography has been my medium of understanding and connecting with this forever-foreign yet second motherland. Perhaps it’s in this gaze of half foot between the cultures, is what makes me to be obsessed with the little odd things in the ordinaries.

Monte Alto is where I live now. Once a notorious neighborhood in A Coruña, Galicia, the North West region in Spain. There is a tower made by the Romans, there is an abandoned prison that makes you wonder to be locked up in its ironically beautiful build. Tales of bad ass Galician narcotics coexist with the faiths of pilgrimage on every journey of Camino de Santiago. This is Monte Alto, my neighborhood.

The photographs in the series are made while the first phase of national lockdown in Spain that began on the 14th March 2020, during each exit of the house when I brought my dog out for his nature calls. I have shot naturally and intuitively, in an attempt to make sense of the non-senses. www.teye.co

Raul Rodriguez

Raul Rodriguez

Dana Stirling

Marine Park I | Marine Park I documents a local skatepark within a larger park in the city of Fort Worth, TX. The park resides in a predominantly Latino community in the neighborhood of The Historic Northside. Unlike others that surround it, where more affluent communities can afford the qualities of a concrete park, Marine is a repurposed tennis court that has become a haven of ramps, boxes and rails for the local skaters. For as much energy as can exist at the park, there is an equal and reflective notion of what the park provides. It is a shelter.

Skateboarding is by all means inclusive. But it is important to note that for a long time the portrayal of skateboarders was often one dimensional with a primary focus on the suburban, light-skinned and economically well placed skater. With the exposure of more skaters of color, this once deemed “white boy sport” became an outlet for the lower income communities with a need to express themselves fully. I was one of those skaters.

The idea of this culture existing within the urban environment is nothing new. Its introduction has been around for decades. However, within this repurposed tennis court, it is encouraging to witness the free form and expressive lifestyle of skate culture reach a group of diverse kids making do with what they have and coming of age at Marine Skate Park. www.raulrodriguezphoto.com

Attilio Fiumarella

Attilio Fiumarella

Dana Stirling

The Swimmers | One of the first public facilities built in Birmingham, UK was the Moseley Road Baths. Constructed in two stages, being the first the construction of the Free Library, the baths were designed by William Hale and Son, and opened their doors on October 30, 1907. There were restrictions to access, as it was common at the time, and three different entrances attest to that: one for first class men, another for second class men, and a third one for women. Its unique architecture and gathering purpose made it the icon of the neighborhood. After several years of decline, one of the two swimming pools has been refurbished, restoring its old lustre. Sadly, the Gala pool was still left to degradation. The Birmingham City Council intends to close the Baths permanently in 2015, following the opening of a new sports facility.

With this work, the swimmers were standing against the announced closure of the facility, one of the oldest Edwardian pools in the UK. After these photos were taken, and thanks to the tireless efforts of the local community, the closure was delayed several times. In 2016, the World Monument Fund included the Moseley Baths in their watch list, giving them access to £1 Million for emergency repairs. In 2020, the roof repairs were concluded making further refurbishment operations possible. The resilience and cohesion of the Moseley Road Baths community is being rewarded. A light of hope shines on the future of this heritage building and its people. attiliofiumarella.com

Ariadna Silva Fernández

Ariadna Silva Fernández

Dana Stirling

Cartography of Oblivion | Cartography of oblivion propose a reflection on the cultural consequences of the native Galician forest loss. The destruction of the Atlantic forest is motivated by different political, social, economic and environmental factors causing a devastating impact both for biodiversity, memory and collective identity of a large part of Galicia (Spain).

The body of work is presented as both accomplices and victims of a cyclical process in the form of an atlas or cartography. The native forests, in addition to serving as a natural barrier against fire, are characterized as being a symbolic element of Galician culture: the Celts considered oaks and chestnut trees were sacred and a means of communication with the afterlife. The exponential planting, reproduction and normalization of eucalyptus, an invasive species native to Australia used to make cellulose and biomass, causes desecration of the sacred forest, not only because of its presence, but because, in case of fire, it benefits from fire itself by being a pyrophyte species.

Cartography of oblivion arises from a personal concern about a situation strongly aggravated by global warming and the lack of an efficient forest policy. This project is a self-reflexive exercise, an introspection and healing process, and also a personal conflict because it investigates the autobiography linked to the family heritage in relation to the raised issue. It is about demonstrating that the sacred and monumental will survive over time, but not the human condition. www.ariadnasilva.com

Jade Rodgers

Jade Rodgers

Dana Stirling

Free the Archives | This project began with the intent to analyze the black family model in contemporary society. Black families throughout history have been broken and torn due to the effects of slavery, and more presently the stereotypes that surround what the black family model looks like. Following the present-day relationships of my own family members, I aim to highlight the importance of a running documentation of the family archive. Archives, which can be used to keep families closer and give access to the past on a deeper level.

This work is meant to analyze and reinvent the ways in which we look at the black family. In the past, documents like “The Willie Lynch letter” gave step-by-step instructions on how to deconstruct the black family, and make slaves out of them. In this history, we can examine the ways the black family began to crumble, how the separation of family led to the loss of what it means to be Black in America. These ideas were shared through generations orally and internalized. Using images of my own family to examine how these histories have in fact affected their being and the ways in which my family exists individually and as a unit. www.jadethesage.com

Barbara Diener

Barbara Diener

Dana Stirling

The Rocket's Red Glare | The Rocket's Red Glare follows in the footsteps of two instrumental rocket scientists. Teenagers in the 1920s, a time in which rocket science and space exploration were confined to science fiction novels, Wernher von Braun in Germany and Jack Parsons in Pasadena, CA were part of their respective rocket clubs. They talked on the phone for hours about their home-grown explosions and rocket fuel tests. One went on to develop the V2 rocket for Hitler and the Saturn V for NASA. The other made groundbreaking contributions to the development of rocket fuel but was also second in command of Aleister Crowley’s occult religion, Ordo Templi Orientis, and was written out of NASA’s history for decades.

In 1932 Wernher von Braun went to work for the German army, which fell under National Socialist rule the following year. Accounts of when he joined the NAZI party vary but by 1937 he was the technical director of the Army Rocket Center in Peenemünde where the V2 rocket (Vengeance Weapon 2) was created and tested. After the war, when von Braun was brought to the U.S. under the controversial Operation Paperclip, a government initiative to secure and extract German scientists, his talents were called upon by the U.S. military. He settled in Huntsville, AL with members of his original rocket team where they eventually developed the Saturn V and put the first man on the moon.

Jack Parsons was born and raised on Orange Grove Boulevard, also known as Millionaire’s Row, in Pasadena, CA. Although he never attended CalTech he spearheaded the self-proclaimed “Suicide Squad”, a group of CalTech students, who shared Parsons love for rocketry. In 1936 these founders of what would become the Jet Propulsion Laboratory conducted the first rocket tests in the Arroyo Seco, and were soon after commissioned by the U.S. Army Air Corps to develop “jet-assisted take-off” rockets. In the subsequent years Parsons became more and more involved with the Los Angeles chapter of the Ordo Templi Orientis and he opened up his home, the Parsonage, to an eclectic cast of characters. In 1942 Parsons co-founded the rocket and missile manufacturer Aerojet but by 1944 he was bought out and his affiliations with military and government projects were terminated. Parsons died tragically from fatal injuries after a presumed accidental explosion in his home laboratory.

To weave together a sense of these two complicated stories, I have photographed places of significance, made portraits referencing existing images, and appropriated archival material. Many of the titles for my photographs are taken from an untitled poem written by Parsons. Rather than presenting a complete view of this history, I am posing questions, looking at the way that history is passed on through generations, and how facts are distorted, embellished, or undermined. www.barbaradienerphotography.com

Ioanna Sakellaraki

Ioanna Sakellaraki

Dana Stirling

The Truth is in the Soil | After my father passed away three years ago, I returned to my homeland Greece and followed my mother’s behaviors as a believer seeking for shelter in the wider system of religious traditions and cultural beliefs in a society functioning on that basis.

Photography transformed itself into a question of becoming through loss and made the passageway within a liminal space of absence and presence. As the project advanced and while inspired by the origins of ancient Greek laments, I dwelled within traditional communities of the last female professional mourners inhabiting the Mani peninsula of Greece looking for traces of bereavement and grief.

My personal intention for realizing this project has been the impossible mourning of my father that is yet to come while making this body of work that contemplates around fabrications of grief in my culture and family. In a way, these images work as vehicles to mourn perished ideals of vitality, prosperity and belonging. By connecting my poignant grief with the dramatisations performed by the professional mourners, I look into the subjective spirituality of Greek death rituals.

I am interested in how the image affirms things in their disappearance and gives us the power to use things in their absence through fiction. The photographs themselves lay between real and unreal allowing the viewer to believe in the real that is yet to come; another type of reality. ioannasakellaraki.com

Mallory Trecaso

Mallory Trecaso

Dana Stirling

Restorative | The series of photographs in Restorative examines intimate views of home interiors that metaphorically embody my physical self. Emergency surgery left me with new marks, scars, and a patchwork of temporary solutions, and a heightened understanding of my own physicality. I use the familiar subject of the home to talk about my body. Looking through the lens of the home as a metaphor gives the viewer a different framework to view, rather confronting one’s self directly. Like a home, a body records time through markings, imperfections, discoloration, and cracks. Some, like a broken window or a scratch, happen suddenly while others take an extended period to fully manifest on the surface, such as cracks in the structure or human scars.

For the last six years, I have battled Crohn’s, an inflammatory bowel disease. I underwent emergency surgery that I thought would lead to a quick recovery but I emerged from the operating room with an ileostomy, something that saved my life but drastically altered my physical state. The process left me with scars, markings, and tentative solutions both large and small that are constant reminders of the invasion and trauma of surgery.

I find moments in the home that are a record of time, alluding to my lived experience. The body referenced in the photographs is my own, one that is in a restorative process. Imperfections within the houses I photograph symbolize my own physical state. For example, the large crack held together with transparent tape and centered in the frame of Incision breaks the continuous pattern of wallpaper, suggest the discolored scar left on my abdomen. I photograph these moments within the home at the same distance referencing how the distance does not change when looking at my own body.

Both the house and the body are intimate as well as social spaces. The body is a private, personal space but when in contact with another person moves to a social space. Similarly, the home is a private space that one inhabits with some degree of security but when others are invited in, it becomes a social space for interaction. Through my photographs, I metaphorically address private and social space.

Through a repeated vertical orientation, I create a sense of order, structure, and perseverance. The vertical orientation suggests the upright figure, still standing after a physical struggle. Finding order and structure when photographing produces a sense of control that my own body lacks due to my autoimmune disease. Using light and shadow to call attention to the physical imperfections within the home, I create a sequence that references my own state of mind through my journey with Crohn’s disease. Darker images reference time filled with depression, fear, and uncertainty while the brighter images suggest moments that, in retrospect, were pivotal in accepting and coping with Crohn’s.

In making these photographs, I took a deeper look at myself and came to understand that my body is in a restorative state, similar to homes I photograph. I invite viewers to think about their own marks from lived experiences and understand that their imperfections are a record of time. My thesis presents my personal timeline through Crohn’s disease but also opens a more universal conversation about discovering and processing trauma. www.mallorytrecaso.com

Dylan Everett

Dylan Everett

Dana Stirling

The preface to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray | The preface to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is a series of aphorisms about art and beauty, including the declaration that “all art is at once surface and symbol.”

If all art is at once surface and symbol, I create symbolic surfaces. Through the use of photo-collage and still life, my pictures collapse figure and ground into surface. Drawing from a range of references – my personal life, literature, art, pop culture – and cultural signifiers, these surfaces are loaded with symbols. The viewer is invited to decode these symbols, or at least to try.

The symbols in my images often function as homages to the people and things that I love or admire: LGBTQ-identified creative figures, gay icons, and personal relationships. In one instance, this manifests as a room constructed of cyanotypes inspired by John Dugdale; in another, a grisaille room winks to George Platt Lynes’ black-and-white male nudes that remained hidden until after his death. This series of homages is held together by an aesthetic that strips away any sense of hierarchy among cultural signifiers. In my fabricated spaces, there is no distinction between highbrow and lowbrow, personal or famous, historical or contemporary. www.dylaneverett.format.com

Luca Iovino

Luca Iovino

Dana Stirling

I wrote “città nuova” in 2014, as an attempt to describe the feeling of Drifting, the filter I used to codify the city. I wanted to translate, in my own words, the feeling of loss and rediscovery I perceived through that combination. Years later, while reading those words I wrote, I felt the need to start working on a project that would enable me to give shape to the intangible nature of that thought, by creating a space poised between places that were both real and imaginary. I wanted to create a city to regain my sense of abandonment, a city where the mapping of a place becomes the tool to perceive a reality filtered through sheer invention. The city should not be viewed as we know it, but dismantled of its archetype, with new detailed foundations rebuilt from its ashes.Now that the city has lost its pivotal role, my point of view becomes the bearer of a new meaning, through the innate need to give all things their own shape: statues, maps, objects, the flexible shape of the human body, the man-made form of the landscape.

Kearston Hawkins-Johnson

Kearston Hawkins-Johnson

Dana Stirling

As an actor, I'm trained to explore the messy, vulnerable parts of humanity and showcase it to others. Outside of showcasing a character on stage or film, I imagine what I call, "the moment before" of the character.

I'm very curious as to what happens behind the scenes. Before the stage lights come on, before realizing there's a camera in your face, before the thoughts of socialization and perfection creep in. The authenticity that exist before a performance.

Time is fleeting, existentialism reigns, and I'm just fascinated by the construct of people, places, and things in this moment in time. I enjoy documenting the shadows that exist, the moments before, the day to day in their natural essence. It is itself a performance. www.kearstonhawkinsjohnson.com

Stephen Goldstein

Stephen Goldstein

Dana Stirling

Approaching Garland | Approaching Garland is a project about small communities off the grid, scattered around the outskirts of Flagstaff, Arizona. People who live in a rural setting, some that live off the land, and settled in the mountains of Northern Arizona. The work revolves around a significant forest road in Parks, Arizona, called "Garland Prairie". 

Dominik Wojciechowski

Dominik Wojciechowski

Dana Stirling

Svijet | Since the Break up of the socialist Yugoslavia, expansion of nationalisms which leaded to bloody conflicts, inhabitants of the nonexistent country of Tito, are trying laboriously to build new identities. For some, it could be a national identity, strong identification with an ethnic group. Others, might not accept multi-national reality, preserving the myth of Yugoslavia caused by feeling of loss. Loss of the once great country, that coexisted happily despite many cultures. The second group is represented by the elders who were growing up in Tito’s country but their stable life was disturbed by war. They are now, living in these seperate,small countries that emerged from balkan humanitarian disaster. What keeps them alive is yugonostalgia, which is a common factor among the old generation. The other group includes people, not entirely sure of what their identity is. They are being recruited from the generation that was born during Balkan Wars or right after it and they have passed on their confusion to their kids.

While travelling around Former Yugoslavia, through the countries that are not so similar anymore, sometimes even treating each other like enemies, it is difficult not to see the common factor between these countries. Something far more deep than their shared history. It is the post-yugoslav identity and mentality that appears on different levels – both in private and collective stories. It shows up in daily decisions, in political, social, cultural life as well as collective imagination. In opposition to yugonostalgia, which is emotionally pointed to the past, post-yugoslav identity is a daily practice. It is born inbetween yesterday and today, between historically rich past and the still evolving present.

Macaulay Lerman

Macaulay Lerman

Dana Stirling

Greer Road | Of all the symptoms of youth, perhaps the greatest is the inability to see beyond the world that currently is. The intoxicating illusion of permanence that defines the early years of our lives is proven false by the transient nature of young adulthood and slowly we begin to see existence for what it is; an endless process of becoming.

For as long as I can remember I have not wanted to live in this world. When I was a child this feeling manifested itself in the form of endless hours spent reading The Lord of the Rings and gallivanting off on epic quests of my own in the woods behind my family’s home. When I was a teenager the feeling remained, and yet the expression of it shifted. I discovered anarchist rhetoric, befriended local squatters, and began traveling in slowly expanding circles away from New England via hitchhiking and freight train. I tattooed my face and hands with a sewing needle and India ink, drank wine from a bag, and slept out in the woods with others who had chosen the same path.

This is how I met Nate. I picked him up along with a mutual friend at an Occupy encampment in Lancaster PA in 2011, and together we circled the country in a $500 van I had purchased from an Alpaca farmer the week before. We busked for our money, ate out of grocery store dumpsters, and for a few years at least successfully evaded time.

I imagined we’d live this way forever. That our bodies would never betray us and that the excess of society would always be enough to scrape by. However, as we entered into our early twenties an increasing plague of heroin addiction and subsequent death spread rampantly throughout our community. Our days no longer existed in a weightless suspension, change was coming.

Nate took a job on a fishing boat in coastal Alaska, and I moved to Vermont to attend a small liberal arts college. In the Summer of 2016, Nate lost his pinky in an accident while out on a 3-month fishing contract. To avoid a lawsuit he was offered a large cash settlement in addition to his pay for the 3-month voyage. With nearly $100,000 in hand, Nate bought 5 acres of land in Fritz Creek AK and began building

a small homestead. Through word of mouth, this story spread throughout the nomadic punk community and soon others came to Fritz Creek with similar pursuits in mind.

If there is a common thread between travelers of this nature, it is the disbelief that you could ever truly belong in this world. That there is nowhere for you to go and so you must learn to live between things. This is simply not true. There is a place amidst the white spruce and Pacific yew where in the summer months the alpenglow suspends and it is always almost morning. There is a place past the spit up on Greer Road where the paved road ends and the fireweed takes root; thriving, becoming. www.macaulaylerman.com

Lake Roberson Newton

Lake Roberson Newton

Dana Stirling

Flowers For the Dead | Flowers For the Dead is an ongoing project that examines historical sites, homes and institutions in the United States that are open to the public. Acting on William Faulkner’s quote ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past’, I undertook a project where ‘real life’, past or present, should be made to seem real- for it is not believable solely for the fact that it happened.

This idea is manifest in my interest in how once private or historically important homes have been preserved for current public consumption, the roll objects and spaces play in presenting a particular history and its context to greater social narratives, how physical alterations to original places project themselves experientially, and the effect the public plays on defining the engagement of a preserved space. For me, the process provides insight and understanding- for what could be more pitiful than a voyeur in the dark. www.lakenewton.com

Siew Png Sim

Siew Png Sim

Dana Stirling

Longing for Belonging | My work seeks to capture the pursuit of solace in the spaces that I reside. It’s a therapeutic exploration of my personal fleeting relationship with the concept and definition of a physical home. From a young age, my family and I constantly moved around various cities never settling down for long periods of time. I was enrolled to international schools, where it was a norm to see a constant change in classmates and teachers.

Detachment from the sentimental links that makes up the common notion of home eventually became habitual. Only upon returning to my home country of Singapore for my mandatory military service, I realised how “rootless” I was; and how that affected my ability to re assimilate with the home country I’m suppose to serve.

Most of the photos are unplanned and are taken during day to day life. They have a view of a distant observer, searching for the warmth of belonging in unfamiliar environments. www.siewpngsim.com

Leia Ankers

Leia Ankers

Dana Stirling

Airsoft Wankers | Airsoft originated in Japan during the mid-1970s, mainly because it was illegal to own firearms by private individuals. The shooting sport Airsoft involves two teams, red and blue. Both of these teams use airsoft guns to eliminate their opponents by hitting each player with spherical non-metallic pellets.

A pellet does not mark its target and so it relies on an honor system as part of the role play game. When a player is hit, the person is expected to call themselves out even if no one witnessed the hit. To re-spawn they must touch the building of the marshals choosing.

Between the hours of 1000 to 1600, these young men are in the mindset of soldiers, their surroundings and their use of the environment gives them the impression of war and anyone wearing the opposite tape to them is their enemy. The series projects the traditional traits of male identity combined with symbolic landscapes. www.leiaankers.com

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