Memory Orchards: Photographers and their Families

Memory Orchards

Photographers’ Images of Their Own Families

Edited by Gordon Stettinius

Essays by Rebecca Senf and Andy Grundberg

Memory Orchards

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.

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.

Dr. Rebecca Senf is Chief Curator at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, in Tucson. Her B.A. in Art History is from the University of Arizona; her M.A. and Ph.D. were awarded by Boston University. In 2012, her book Reconstructing the View: The Grand Canyon Photographs of Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe was released by University of California Press; in 2017, her book To Be Thirteen, showcasing the work of Betsy Schneider, was published by Radius Press and Phoenix Art Museum. Senf is an Ansel Adams scholar, and in 2020 released a book on Adams’s early years, called Making a Photographer, copublished by the CCP and Yale University Press, now in a second printing.

Andy Grundberg is an art critic and curator who holds the position of Professor, Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at George Washington University. He is the author of Crisis of the Real, a selection of his essays for The New York Times and other publications. Grundberg has also authored numerous books such as Mike and Doug Starn and Alexey Brodovitch. Exhibitions he has organized include Photography and Art: Interactions Since 1946, Ansel Adams: A Legacy, and In Response to Place: Photographs from the Nature Conservancy’s Last Great Places. Awards include an Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography and a Leica Medal of Excellence for writing. He holds a BA from Cornell University and a MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Gordon Stettinius founded, in 2010, an independent publishing company, Candela Books, which has published monographs from Gita Lenz, Chris McCaw, Willie Anne Wright, Kahn & Selesnick, Shelby Lee Adams, Paul Thulin, as well as other collections and catalogs. In 2011, Stettinius founded Candela Gallery with the mission being to bring notable photographers to Richmond, Virginia, in hopes of elevating the discourse around contemporary photography. As an artist Stettiniius has exhibited nationally and internationally, and his work is represented by Robin Rice Gallery (New York) and Page Bond Gallery in (Richmond). His work is in the permanent collections of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Longwood University (Farmville, VA), the Telfair Museums (Savannah), Capital One, and many other private and public collections. He is also an emeritus member of 1708 Gallery (Richmond).