BOOK RELEASE: Memory Orchards
MEMORY ORCHARDS
Photographers and their Families
OPENING RECEPTION
Friday, January 19, from 5-8 pm
BOOK RELEASE EVENT
Thursday, February 1, from 6-10pm
ABOUT THE BOOK
Featuring 186 photos from 61 photographers this book pushes the boundary on what serves as a contemporary survey of photographers making images of their own family members. Each photographer provides a vignette into their own experience and the people they choose to share their closest moments with.
This titles features essays from Rebecca Senf PhD, curator at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson and Andy Grundberg, independent curator, writer, and educator.
Ron Tarver, Homesteaders, 2017.
We find it easy to relate to family photographs, even when those depicted are strangers. In part, because photography suggests the truth of a situation, we are lured into believing we are learning about the subjects, and, possibly, something about the photographers as well. But photos of family also vibrate at a universal frequency. We see vulnerable children or affectionate partners, and we can see ourselves and our loved ones there. It is the same for those images of aging relatives. Because those aging relatives are also our relatives, or even, ourselves.
Memory Orchards presents a broad survey of family experience, through highs and lows, through lust and loss, creating a survey of work which reflects our understanding of ‘family’ in this moment. The work is derived from long term documentary projects, from archive based explorations, from mundane interactions to moments of intimacy, from family snapshots to artful portraits. While the motivations of any given photographer are always distinctly individual, there are some foundational ideas which persist and are shared widely. Some artists write of their desire to remember, to document their own peculiar and beautiful realities. Others write of their desire to share their experience in hopes of adding to larger conversations about representation or identity. Taken as a whole, this engaging collection of work is complex and personal but deeply relatable.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Among the 61 photographers whose work is included in Memory Orchards are Priya Kambli, Elijah Gowin, Rashod Taylor, Lissa Rivera, Gillian Laub, Edgar Cardnas, Pixie Liao, Jess Dugan, Betsy Schneider, Takako Kido, Karla Guerrero, Lydia Panas, Nadiya Nacorda, Susan Worsham and more. These photographers and photographic artists are innovative, and introspective, in their widely varied approaches to such a familiar and well-loved subject.
Thomas Alleman, Hannah Altman, Debe Arlook, Niki Boon, Nancy Borowick , Tommy Bruce, Emily Buckley, Edgar Cardenas, Justin A. Carney, Velianna Catalano, Adrain Chesser, Daniel Coburn, Jess Dugan, Matt Eich, Kristen Joy Emack, Kev Filmore, Amy Friend, Riley Goodman, Elijah Gowin, Karla Guerrero, Rashed Haq, Jessica Todd Harper, Kate Izor, Susan Rosenberg Jones, Rachel Jump, Priya Kambli, Takako Kido, Gillian Laub, Judith G. Levy, Pixy Liao, Louviere + Vanessa, Monika Merva, Linda Moses, Nadiya Nacorda, Lydia Panas, Toni Pepe, Greta Pratt, Lissa Rivera, Emily Schiffer, Betsy Schneider, Maria Jose Sesma, Safi Alia Shabaik, Jennifer Shaw, Sarah Stellino, Zachary Stephens, Gordon Stettinius, Jerry Takigawa, Ron Tarver, Rashod Taylor, Rachel Elise Thomas, Al J. Thompson, Stephanie Thulin, Paul Thulin-Jimenez, Anne Vetter, Melanie Walker, Becky Wilkes, John Willis, Susan Worsham, Megan Wynne, Arin Yoon
Lissa Rivera, Votive Portrait, 2018