Nat Raum

Nat Raum

Dana Stirling

The Light Won't Find You | My queerness lives the strongest in the room inside my mind.

I found comfort in myself and in my own body for the first time in years when I began to question my gender. These images explore my changing relationship with my gender and sexuality following the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and the end of my most recent romantic relationship. They follow me through the process of healing, reflecting, and beginning to define my identity.

Creating these images is a form of escapism; in depicting my personal utopia, I distance myself from a reality in which I am largely closeted and often performing a version of femininity that was engrained in me as a result of past trauma. I strive for the images to feel vernacular, and as such, I am removing a lot of the technical precision I usually employ in my work. The experience of redefining my gender has been surreal and imperfect, and I aim to mirror that in the images I create. By creating hazy, dreamlike images, I depict the feeling of existing in this personal utopia. This includes a combination of imagery from locations including my bedroom, my childhood home, and my grandmother’s house, as well as the city in which I grew up and continue to reside. My relationship to place has always been strong; I am finally examining how places and people have shaped my identity. natraum.com

Cornelia Hediger

Cornelia Hediger

Dana Stirling

Doppelgänger | The Doppelgänger series of photographs are pictorial narratives that explore internal human emotions, notions of the uncanny, the subconscious/conscious mind, the ego and the alter ego. The narrative structure itself is based upon and utilizes the concept of the Doppelgänger—specifically as understood within Germanic literature. In this context, the notion of the Doppelgänger is understood as a ghostly double or apparition of a living person, widely assumed to be sinister and a harbinger of bad luck, but also highly ambiguous, thus presenting a psychological dilemma. The central characters themselves, are enacted by the artist herself, within claustrophobic and timeless spaces.

The structural device of the tableaux-vivant is used to carefully choreograph multiple individual, full-frame photographs into single artworks, using a grid system that also serves to maintain the photographic integrity of each photograph. Most of the artworks are constructed with six photographs, but as the series has progressed they have developed in complexity, incorporating up to eighteen photographs. The more recent artworks have progressed in their storytelling, moving beyond the grid itself and making use of the diptych and triptych format. www.corneliahediger.com

Ion Zupcu

Ion Zupcu

Dana Stirling

American Homes | The houses showcased in this series illustrate the spirit and evolution of common houses found in American neighborhoods for the past three centuries. The installation represent a range of 24 homes from Folk to McMansions. The development of these styles is a reflection of our ever changing taste and sensibilities.

The photographs in “American homes” are the result of my passion and investigation into architecture, structure and light. My previous experience with three-dimensional forms helped to create a fluid transition into my understanding of the history and design of our homes.

Architectural models were carefully selected, designed and constructed for these photographs with the help of architect Tagore Hernandez. After an unsuccessful start with detailed models, I became aware that what captivated me the most about domestic homes for years were their initial outline and form; houses in their minimalist state. When these models were stripped down and presented on a stage, the sculptural form emerged.

All the houses are put on the stage before the public. These are not landmarks, they are icons of the homes that most of us still sleep, eat and raise our families in.

I have lived with my wife and daughter in a Shed Modern home for the past seven years in Upstate New York. In what home do you reside? www.ionzupcu.com

Pamela Connolly

Pamela Connolly

Dana Stirling

WISHMAKER | As a child, I spent endless hours roaming the maze of rooms in my parents' "Ethan Allen" furniture store. The shapes and patterns that filled these constructed spaces became imprinted in my consciousness. Even our family home growing up was a replica of a fantasy, a duplicate of the store, a stage selling hopes and dreams.

Much of my photographic work is in response to these childhood impressions. Through furniture, spaces, and interior decoration, I have been exploring the themes of home, childhood, aging, and the yearning between the imaginary and the real.

Confined to my house during the Pandemic, I immersed myself in a

project photographing 1960's litho-printed tin dollhouses. These toys were designed and marketed to baby-boomer girls growing up in the many suburbs across the US. Printed on the walls of these miniature houses are illustrations of the elements necessary for a successful, fulfilling life: red geraniums on the kitchen window, coordinated curtains, tasteful artwork, rose-covered arbors… Included in the box, colorful plastic furniture and fixtures to complete the fantasy.

A dollhouse is a microcosm of hopes and dreams, the pocket female fantasy.

Although I did not own one of these tin dream houses growing up, they are of my own childhood. I can't help but observe that the backgrounds are rendered in the same aesthetic as my parents' furniture store and home. Peering through the windows like an oversized Alice in Wonderland, I roam through these tiny spaces with my camera, transported back in time to a childhood that took place in showrooms and dreams. www.pamconnollyphoto.com

Jacopo Brunello

Jacopo Brunello

Dana Stirling

Where the echo still resounds | The pre-alpine highlands, between Veneto and Trentino, are places where nature and history intertwine in an indissoluble way. In these places, isolated from the transit areas, language and traditions of an ancient population are still preserved, the Cimbri. The language called cimbrian is a Germanic language of Nordic origin, still spoken in some areas of the highlands. The Cimbrian culture is rich of myths and legends coming mainly from northern Europe.

This project wants to represent - what has been for centuries and still continues - the relationship that has been established in these places between man and nature. For this reason, the choice fell on the Cimbrian community, because it constitutes a bridge between past and future, and between reality and fantasy; through legends, traditions and their unique language.

The project is titled Where the echo still resounds, the echo of the legends that comes from the past and that progressively fades away until it disappears. But this echo lives and still resonates in the memory of a few people and especially in some places, pervaded by an immortal aura and enchanted. The intent is also to try bringing back to life through photographs the memories of a past times, when man lived according to Nature, respecting and venerating her. www.jacopobrunello.com

Paul Yem

Paul Yem

Dana Stirling

Fragments | The work entitled “fragments” is an invitation to explore my cave. Created out of a curious entanglement of my subconscious, i dwell deep inside to reflect. i conjure up images to recreate a memory, to pull it out of context and into an unyielding light. This is a fabricated nostalgia in search of a self constricting understanding, a vulnerable, unfillable void. a yearning to forget all of the tiny little details that i cannot seem to let go, that i piece back together so scrutinizingly meticulous.

I sink deeper and deeper, withdrawn and incoherent and yet i feel unwound and unfettered. it’s where i go to meddle with the inner workings of a distant train-of-thought, so subtly complex yet so sweetly sensual. So take from it what you will, i only hope that this maze leads you to get lost into your own beautiful conundrums. www.paulyem.com

Becky Behar

Becky Behar

Dana Stirling

Seeing You, Seeing Me | Seeing You, Seeing Me began as a photographic collaboration between my 21-year-old daughter, Leah, and me. She is in front of the camera while I stay behind it. However, in our images we share the roles of observer and participant. In these pictures, I see her becoming an adult, while she sees me in the role of mother and photographer.

With Seeing You, Seeing Me, I slow time with intent. I dress Leah in my clothing and pose her with personal artifacts. In doing so, I reflect what gets passed from one generation to the next. I portray the traditions and morals that I hope to leave in her. I include still lifes that also act as portraits in their own way. The fruits and flowers matured, yet they remain vibrant and fragrant.

Inspired by Dutch artists, particularly Vermeer, I attempt to create romanticized images that capture a fleeting and pivotal moment in time – the still of life as she stands on the cusp of adulthood and I witness the passing of time. www.beckybehar.com

J Houston

J Houston

Dana Stirling

Tuck and Roll | Tuck and Roll* builds a queer community situated in the Midwest, examining what a utopia could look like in domestic and private landscapes through the lens of magical realism. I center collected objects, hair, quiet performance, and unfetishized body, and sitting somewhere between reaction and fantasy, I pull materials integral to queer nightlife into the daylight. Shot on medium and large-format film, the images were made in areas around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and across Michigan, including friends, family, partners, interiors, and landscapes that repurpose the different layers of erasure experienced in this region.

*Tuck and Roll (v.); The technique, almost always done while running, involves diving forward in such a way that your shoulder lands on the ground first, and you roll into a little ball. As you come out of the ball, immediately spring back up into a running stance, or move into a kneeling position. www.j-houston.com

Leslie Hakim-Dowek

Leslie Hakim-Dowek

Dana Stirling

Twilight Island | Twilight Island is a poetic contemplation of a time spent on a volcanic island. The book resonates with several subtexts of themes and cycles. A succession of vistas, from volcanic craters to desert plateaux, is juxtaposed with landmarks, memorials and recreational spaces where spectacles are set to unfold in a succession of endless tourism. A polarising axis is drawn between the earthly transformations over millennia, laid bare on this island, and the minute cycles of a summer season and the coming of age of two girls, my twin daughters. Within this brief reflective bracket lies the vast wilderness, an earthly stage on which generational rites and rituals come into being but to which, we remain largely oblivious to.

A silent equation unbinds deep rings of fire,
Palpable in damp ravines
And oceans gathering around the island's edge.

Out of the parabola of the skies,
Summer galloped in with its sad stillness
Full of slow time and blinding rays.

As time slips into stones,
Shallow moons fall into tepid lakes
And girls hover in their reflections
Living scene by scene.

I once lapsed into numbness,
Perhaps I am here, or lost dreaming of
A colony of peaks soaring into orbs of distance,
Rhythmic forest that swell as lunatic terrors
And, diagonal rains which seep into
Shadows of feathers, shadows of needles,
Full of breath and the holler of myths.

We are at the end and the beginning.
www.lesliehakimdowek.com

Lesley MacGregor

Lesley MacGregor

Dana Stirling

Memories Recorded in Water | These two series, Pattern Separation and Tales of the Sea, explore how we move through our lives, finding patterns where none seem to exist, sculpting from them a narrative of our experiences. The ocean is the perfect medium for these thoughts, ceaselessly changing yet comfortingly the same.

Pattern Separation is a meditation on being in lockdown: as the days slid by, one becoming another with nothing to mark the progression from week to week, time ran together. Psychologists call this inability to differentiate memories pattern separation. The series juxtaposes identical backgrounds of water, with the working boats whose differences become clear only as you observe them more carefully. Together they are a reminder of when time stood still and I clung to the small differences — a red hull or blue, a barge or a freighter — to mark the passage of time in an unending sea of repetition.

In Tales of the Sea, old sail boat hulls, resting in dry dock bear the story of every voyage they’ve taken, etched by currents, waves, and debris. The pattern of accumulated memories, written in chipped paint and rust stains, bookends the ocean itself, author and scribe of their adventures. The initial impression of shape, colour, and space provides an emotional tapestry for the series before these abstractions resolve themselves into specific representations.

Both series express my interest in how our memories reshape our past, how we narrate our lives based on experiences rather than on objective facts, how each of us builds our own fragile reality. My photographs take this internally constructed world and make it external with photographs that feel like thoughts, slightly untethered from the real world, showing my unique way of seeing. www.lesleymacgregor.com

Karen Osdieck

Karen Osdieck

Dana Stirling

Modern Boyhood | ‘Modern Boyhood’ is a long-term project documenting the personal journey of my children while navigating complexities of early adolescence. Childhood is a confusing time and I feel it is important for my two boys to openly explore their identity without restrictions and preconceptions. While my husband and I encourage our boys to be true to who they are, the media and societal views play a huge role in shaping our youth. Our culture is moving toward embracing a less rigid version of masculinity and accepting alternative parenting styles but it is not yet the norm. Through these images, I am examining their behaviors both innate and learned while teaching the importance of empathy, vulnerability and self expression.

Struggling with speech delays, both boys grew up knowing they were different from other children. Early on, I realized how important confidence is to their development. Crying, admitting fear and having interests deemed feminine are not signs of weakness inside our household. Now, as they venture out on their own, they are becoming aware of how they are perceived by their peers and expected male behavior. My hope is that they retain the courage and confidence to measure themselves by their own standards.

This series began as a way to hold on to this liminal state of innocence. Fading in and out of their consciousness and only stepping in when needed. It became a way to cope with my anxiety of not knowing the future and hoping I have done enough. For these moments I am invisible.

This project is ongoing. www.karenosdieckphotography.com

Wendy Constantine

Wendy Constantine

Dana Stirling

Reverie | Reverie inhabits the space between reality and dreams. One foot is firmly planted on terra firma, and the other steps through an otherworldly portal filled with melancholy wonder. This body of work is a personal fairytale, depicting a landscape of loss in a luminous, panoramic form.

These visual poems were inspired by a dream, and they make tangible the deeply buried grief that has haunted me for years. Set along the quiet and still waters of Coal Creek in Boulder, Colorado, the imagery metaphorically explores the “wintering of the soul” that comes before healing, just as spring fosters new growth and resilience. wendyconstantine.com

Lauren Taubenfeld

Lauren Taubenfeld

Dana Stirling

Oh Brother | Oh Brother, has taken shape over the course of over ten years, in collaboration with her younger brother Benny from 2005 to 2018. Lauren Taubenfeld photographed her brother Benny, as he grew from adolescence to early manhood. This extensive body of work can be viewed as a fascinating document of an always-compelling transition but on closer look, images reveal further nuances; a collaboration, a sibling bond, and at the same time a picture of his adolescence. By photographing my brother frequently and intimately over his developmental years, a sense of mirroring began to emerge, recalling something of the artist’s own adolescent self. The outcome are these uncanny portraits of her brother and self as well as a glimpse into the off-scene periods and reveal ‘in between moments’ of his everyday life. Benny’s tenacious, rebellious manner is constant as such prevails even among these photographs. www.laurentaubenfeld.com

Fred Lahache

Fred Lahache

Dana Stirling

Looking for Hamza | Hamza and I grew up together. We were kids, then teens, and we're still in touch. I remember the stories he would tell me after each summer in Morocco with his family, that time of the year we could not be together for a while. So when I first visited Morocco recently, I couldn't help trying to depict those stories, and imagine him by my side. This is the diary of the trip we never had. www.fredlahache.com

Matailong Du

Matailong Du

Dana Stirling

In Passing | In Passing is an ongoing photography project which portrays people’s daily lives in the public environment such as streets. This project is the photographer’s approach to show the importance and beauty of people and things around us. Something ordinary could be extraordinary.

Street photography could be the easiest and most difficult art format: it is extremely accessible for people photographing in the public space, but it is hard for photographers making connections between visual arts and real life efficiently. Magnum photographer Harry Gruyaert said, “There is no story. It’s just a question of shapes and light”. It is unnecessary to discover every story behind photographs and there are no stories for some photographs. For In Passing, the most important elements are shadow and strong colors.

By having those two elements, the objects in the photographs could be presented directly while coming with a dynamic arena for normal people. The body of work could fit in with current contemporary art by combining documentary photography and fine art photography. The ideal audiences for In Passing could be people who do not get involved much with visual art or people who are always in a rush and fail to slow down and discover the beauty around them. www.matailongdu.com

Maria Mavropoulou

Maria Mavropoulou

Dana Stirling

The Desire for Consciousness | These images have no titles and no captions to guide you about what to see or how to perceive their content. There is no text to recreate the missing context.

In these images it’s impossible to determine the time, the place or the circumstances under which the photo was taken as the black background deprives us from any other information that would help us locate its subject in the real world.

In this way, relocated in a virtual space, the depicted object somehow loses its “realness” and tends to represent the meaning of it, it becomes an idea and it is transformed into a symbol.

Although the operation and the meaning of a symbol are predetermined in this series I create new symbols and invite the viewer to give them meaning by reading them literally or metaphorically. In my mind these images work in coherence, like a deck of cards that tells a different story every time it’s shuffled, raising questions about how differently each one of us interprets the same stimulus and therefore how diverse interpretations can occur when meanings are not fixed but depending on the ever changing context and every individual viewer. www.mariamavropoulou.com

Paul Stein

Paul Stein

Dana Stirling

LIES | “and that certain images be formed in the mind… to remain there, resurgent” (Ezra Pound, Canto LXXIV)

Lies explores how we remember and how we will be remembered. The diptychs in this project depict how observation gives way to memory, how intention gives way to intrusion, how truth and fiction merge, and how our experiences gain a new meaning through our reimagining. Like memory, the combinations of images in Lies are open-ended for others to build their own lies.

The parings start from the assumption that photography is a tool for visual thinking, then ask us to think about these questions:

· Memory: While there might be consistency in how images are made, and cohesion in how images are exhibited, how are images linked in memory to summarize and catalogue the arc of a life? What is the difference between the visual truths we immediately experience, and the explanatory lies we subsequently fabricate? Since we are deluged with exponentially more visual images than we could ever shoot personally, how do we mentally curate (retain, retrieve, and reframe) all this visual information in a process that creates both complementary and dissonant dialogues between images?

· Mortality: How will we ourselves – our quotidian lives and the images we create – be appropriated and remembered by others decades from now as part of the long tradition of memento mori art? Anyone regarding vernacular photographs has the somber knowledge that virtually all the people in those photographs are deceased.

· Appropriation: What are the boundaries for “taking” a picture and what does it matter who shoots? Are my visual experiences limited to the camera in front of my eyes and the creation of a new image, or are they equally defined by my appropriation of an existing image from others or myself and the adding to it of new visual meaning?

Lies answers these questions by engaging in the practice of vernacular photography. Rather than seeking what is disturbingly odd in vernacular images, Lies builds on what is profoundly ordinary in them. Lies does not treat vernacular images as insufficiently resonant, and therefore needing to be treated as a canvas for collage or inserting the artist’s identity. Instead, Lies explores the abundant meanings inherent in vernacular images, and the equally implicit meanings outside the frame of these images. Lies gathers images separated by decades of time and hundreds of miles of space, and creates a narrative moment between them in the photo album that constitutes memory. Of course, these vernacular narratives are lies, living outside the intended memorialized moment by these anonymous photographers. Yet it is through such lies, through the extractions and sequencing of experiences through memory, that we create meanings for our lives. paulsteinalibis.com

Jacob Moss

Jacob Moss

Dana Stirling

One Arm Dove Hunt | One Arm Dove Hunt is an ongoing documentary project about people with Ectodermal Dysplasia, a rare genetic condition that I also have. Over the past two years I have travelled through more than 25 states, met with and photographed individuals with various forms of Ectodermal Dysplasia. The photographs explore areas of intersection, similarities, differences, the ways we view ourselves and the way we think about ourselves in relation to other people. I ask what does it mean to be part of a community defined by a medical condition? How does that impact an individual’s sense of self? The portraits depict a diverse array of individuals from across the United States who happen to have ectodermal dysplasia, and the journey that brought me to them.

Through my travels, landscape becomes a subject. The emphasis on texture in my landscapes references the condition that links myself and my subjects. One Arm Dove Hunt is an exploration of self: how one moves through the world looking different; how one develops because of and in spite of having a rare medical condition; and how important community and connectivity can be to establishing one’s place in the world. www.jacobimoss.com

Omer Kaplan

Omer Kaplan

Dana Stirling

218th Bayside, Queens | I found Gayle on Facebook when I was looking for people to photograph. I felt like she had an interesting story and I’ve never photographed someone her age. I met Gayle and her partner Chuck next to their place at Dunkin Donuts in Oakland, Queens. Gayle and Chuck live together, but they couldn’t get married because she is on the other end of her disability pension. They have a close relationship and it seems like Chuck would follow Gayle anywhere.

Gayle collects stuff because she is afraid to become homeless again. Throughout her childhood, she was abused by her dad and has developed anxiety. She is currently working on a book and a documentary hoping to support other people who are dealing with similar issues. Something in the experience filled my soul with ripples of memories coming from a dream childhood.

I miss them. There was something comforting in their presence. They are full of life and refreshing. We all deal with the same feelings. It does not matter how old we are, our background, nor gender. We speak different languages, but we know how to listen. As I moved towards the door, they followed me and said goodbye.

I smiled to myself, Wondering when will be the next time I’ll Come by. www.omerkaplan.net

Andy Richter

Andy Richter

Dana Stirling

Louise B. Moore | My grandmother’s acute mind, clever wit, humility and selflessness are aspects of her being that I hope to embody in my own life. She was dedicated to serving others, with love, in her speech, thoughts and actions.

Between us, the conversation was honest and never forced. There was a tranquil, natural quality about the way time passed when we were together. Her presence grounded me, in a manner that one with many years of experience can. Sometimes we would listen to old-time music on her porch and sip wine in the afternoon sun. In the evenings, we watched Wheel of Fortune or the Twins play baseball on television. We played cards or scrabble, and she typically won. We dined around town, hoping to taste something new. With age, rather than closing down and becoming more rigid, she grew ever more open to life.

She frequently talked about her years as a young woman, of life out on her own for the first time. She told the story of meeting my grandfather at work by offering to share her Popsicle with him. She spoke of the war and separation. And, about the move to St. Paul to begin a new life and family in Minnesota. It was as if these moments happened yesterday, they were crystal clear in her mind.

I would tell her my latest ideas and share my pictures with her. She told me about her recent bridge game with the ladies. I massaged her stiff, tired feet by the fireside. She always drove and made sure I got to the airplane on time. Oftentimes, we simply sat there…in silence, present, together.

Louise moved on recently, as autumn turned to winter…she was in her own home, surrounded by her family and much love. A 93-year life of integrity, independence and vitality, released.
These photographs are my memory, moments in time together. www.andyrichterphoto.com

Load More