Akeem

Akeem
Summer Street
Paterson, NJ
October 2011

CCNY Conversation Series: Molly Landreth with Introduction by Tema Stauffer

Cruz, aka Jalessa, Columbus, OH, 2007
© Molly Landreth

Friday, November 18, 7pm
at the CCNY studio
336 West 37th Street, Suite 206

Free admission - Seating is limited

CCNY presents a talk with artist Molly Landreth, with an introduction by curator Tema Stauffer on Friday, November 18 at 7pm at the CCNY Studio. Landreth will present both work from the Embodiment: A Portrait of Queer Life in America series, as well as other bodies of work.

This Conversations Series artist talk is held in conjunction with CCNY’s Other Places exhibition, guest curated by Tema Stauffer.

Q & A to follow the talk

“Embodiment: A Portrait of Queer Life in America” is a series of photographs in an archive and a journey through a rapidly changing community and the lives of people who offer brave new visions of what it means to be queer in America today. Stopping in churches, parks, high school classrooms, back yards and bedrooms, I have collaborated with individuals from both urban and rural areas for over six years. With this ever-growing archive of portraits, I aim to highlight a national experience while acknowledging its many diverging, overlapping and at times conflicting parts.

Created as a joint effort with participants who boldly stand in front of my lens, “Embodiment” reveals images of love and survival, the process of growing into one’s self, creative forms of gender expression and the ever-changing anatomy of a family. It is my hope that these photographs will become a lasting archive for generations to come.
-Molly Landreth

Molly Landreth is a Seattle-based artist who explores concepts of identity and community by way of intimate large-format film photography and multi-media collaboration. She has been recently featured in the New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Time Magazine’s Lens Blog and in The Advocate for her work on “queer America.” Landreth holds an MFA in Photography, Video, and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts, New York; and a BA in Studio Art from Scripps College in California. She is faculty at The Photographic Center Northwest and Seattle University. Visit her website at: www.mollylandreth.com

Pictures are Words-not-Known at LiShui Museum in China

Two of my photographs, White Horse and Burning Brush, are included in an exhibition curated by Sean Justice at the LiShui Museum in China on view through Spring 2012. Pictures are Words-not-Known presents work by faculty from the International Center of Photography exploring the limits of language-centric knowing in photographs to a Chinese audience.

Culturehall invited artist and educator Sean Justice to feature the portfolios of four exhibiting photographers and new Culturehall members in Feature Issue 80: Pictures are Words-Not-Known. Thank you to Lori Grinker, Abraham McNally, Claudia Sohrens, and Bradly Dever Treadway for sharing their work with Culturehall.

Other participating photographers and ICP faculty include Nelson Bakerman, Marina Berio, Rhona Bitner, Jean-Christian Bourcart, Christine Callahan, Elinor Carucci, Jean Marie Casbarian, Ken Collins, Cecilia Dougherty, Suan kae Grant, Michael Wesley Ham, Curtis Hamilton, Thomas Holton, Bill Jacobson, Susan Jahoda, Sean Justice, Ed Kashi, Joshua Lutz, Jay Manis, Tanya Marcuse, Karen Marshall, Garret Miller, Yola Monakhov, Kambui Olujimi, Sylvia Plachy, and Andreas Rentch.






White Horse and Burning Brush exhibited at the LiShui Museum in China with photographs by ICP Faculty in Pictures are Words-not-Known

Other Places at CCNY

Becoming 10, 2010
© Kerstin Honeit

Other Places / Curated by Tema Stauffer
November 9 - December 10
Camera Club of New York
336 West 37th Street, Suite 206, New York, NY

Opening Reception on Wednesday, November 9, 6- 8pm

The exhibition at the Camera Club of New York stems from Culturehall Feature Issue 60 published online in January 2011. This issue drew connections between contemporary artists whose work in photography focuses on identities, relationships and environments defined by unconventional expressions of sexuality and gender. As the idea of realizing an exhibition of this work at CCNY evolved, the original group of artists expanded.

Other Places brings together different generations of international artists whose photographs contribute to a dialogue about individuals and communities—past and present—existing in social and political margins based on sexuality and sexual identity. A selection of work by five artists from the United States, Mexico and Germany serves as a foundation for examination of each of their larger series and continuing practices.

Los Angeles-based artist Kaucyila Brooke documents the history of lesbian bars in cities and towns across the United States and Europe. This ongoing project, The Boy Mechanic, has been exhibited at galleries and museums around the world throughout the past decade. Other Places includes Brooke’s two-sided offset poster originally produced for exhibition at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany, depicting photographs of the sites of seventeen former and three current bars, along with narrative descriptions of her encounters with owners and patrons of these establishments. The photographs, videos, maps and text of the larger project create a historical record of lesbian bar culture and assert the significance of these social spaces and the recollections of those who participated in them.

Doug Ischar produced a series of photographs documenting a community of gay men who congregated on a Chicago beach in the mid-1980s. Two of the twenty-six images comprising Marginal Waters are included in the exhibition, and the entire series is reproduced in a catalogue published by Golden Gallery accompanying the first exhibition of prints in 2009. The images convey the relaxed intimacy and open expression of sexuality at the Belmont Rocks, one of the most visible urban gay beaches in North America nearly a quarter of a century ago. Omar Gamez similarly photographs environments where gay men gather to celebrate their physicality and to create bonds without inhibitions. His Natura series provides an insider’s view of a nudist retreat near Mexico City—a weekend meeting spot for men to engage in bare-fleshed communal revelries.

Embodiment: A Portrait of Queer Life in America by Molly Landreth reflects a cross-country journey over the course of more than half a decade photographing gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people of various ages, races and economic backgrounds. Two portraits from this study of what it means to be queer in America today focus on Cruz, aka Jalessa, performing drag for the first time in a backyard in Columbus, Ohio, and Clare Mercy, a truck driver and musician perched on the back of her car in Bellingham, Washington. Berlin-based artist Kerstin Honeit, in Becoming 10, explores gender construction through a series of photographs in which she assumes the identities of nine half-siblings whom she has never met. The images appear as film stills of everyday urban scenes in which Honeit performs a cast of vivid male and female characters.

In conjunction with the exhibition of Other Places from November 9 – December 10, 2011, additional images and information about the participating artists will be available through their Culturehall portfolios. Also as part of the Other Places exhibition, CCNY presents a talk with artist Molly Landreth, with an introduction by curator Tema Stauffer on Friday, November 18 at 7pm at the CCNY Studio. Landreth will present work from the Embodiment: A Portrait of Queer Life in America series, as well as other bodies of work.