The Magic is in the Seeing: Philip Perkis and His Creative Legacy

Undercroft Gallery/Church of the Heavenly Rest

1085 5th Avenue, New York

September 12 – November 14, 2021

The Magic is in the Seeing exhibition honors Philip Perkis, a photographer, artist, teacher, and mentor.
During more than 35 years as an educator, Perkis encouraged hundreds of art students to explore and
expand their unique abilities. The Magic is in the Seeing presents a selection of Philip Perkis’ meditative
and tonally gorgeous black and white images along with a curated showcase exploring the breadth and
diversity of those whom Perkis inspired in the classroom.

Philip Perkis Influenced a generation of teachers, sharing his supportive and open-minded approach to
artistic practice well beyond his own classroom. In New York City alone, Perkis’ students have taught
in all the major college photography programs. His protégés, hailing from the U.S., Europe, Asia and
Latin America, manifest a wide variety of artistic expression and professional success.

Many of Perkis’ former students feel they owe their dedication, vision, craft and artistic spirit to him.
Deborah Willis, PhD, 2000 MacArthur Fellow as well as University Professor and Chair of the
Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, claimed
“he was my hero…I Ioved the support he offered me.”

Taehee Park, now a professor and publisher in Korea, acknowledged that “he liberated me. As a
teacher, artist, and human being, he showed me a way to live. My mission now is to share his work,
thoughts and way of life with people who are struggling to find themselves. Because I know I am so
lucky to have had the chance to meet him; it was the best gift I ever received.”

The exhibition will also features the film Just to See – A Mystery a film portrait of Philip Perkis by
Jin Ju Lee, another former MFA student.

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Philip Perkis

Philip Perkis from In a Box Upon the Sea Philip Perkis from Mexico

Philip Perkis from Nōtan

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Philip Perkis Biography
Philip Perkis has kept a Leica around his neck for more than 50 years.
His interest in photography started in 1957 as a tail gunner in the Air Force. Once out of the
service, he attended the San Francisco Art Institute; after graduating, he studied with Ansel Adams
and Minor White and worked for Dorothea Lange.
He’s been a beloved teacher for most of his life. A Professor Emeritus at Pratt Institute, he's also
taught in the MFA Photography Department at the School of Visual Arts and BFA Photography
Department at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Perkis has received Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts, and New York State Council on
the Arts grants and has published five books: Warwick Mountain Series, The Sadness of Men,
Photography, Notes Assembled, Twenty Days, Twenty Comments and Mexico (most are printed in
English and Korean). He is currently making new work and working on another book. And he
remains, he says, “an unrepentant modernist.”
Perkis’ work can be found in the collections of the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Art
Institute of Chicago, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Brooklyn
Museum, the Carnegie Museum of Art; the George Eastman House, the Fogg Museum, the Getty
Museum, the High Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Library of Congress, the
Metropolitan Museum, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and the San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art.

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Exhibiting Artists:

Alice Benessia
I simply didn’t think, ok? #10
Pigment Print on Cotton Paper
NFS

Alice Benessia Artists Statement

What do we set in motion with our being in the world, as scientists, as artists, as humans? What do
we make of reality around us and within ourselves?
“I simply didn’t think, ok?” is a site-specific installation, created in 2017 at the Castello di Govone, in
Northern Italy.
Photographic prints, visual and written notes, small objects, and a few scientific publications occupy
the space horizontally and vertically, on a table, a blackboard, an archive. They evoke a presence and
expose the skeleton of someone’s exploration. They challenge the relationship between thinking and
making, understanding and acting, knowledge and power.

Alice Benessia Bio

Alice Benessia (MFA, PhD) has a mixed background in theoretical physics, philosophy of science and
visual art. She is the founder of the Center for Research in the Arts and the Sciences Pianpicollo
Selvatico. She is a research fellow at the Interdisciplinary Research Institute on Sustainability (IRIS),
University of Torino. She has been appointed expert at the Joint Research Center of the European
Commission. Her most recent scientific work revolves around the issue of quality of research. As a
visual artist, she uses photography, video and writing for installations and performance, working at
the interface of science, art and sustainability.
___________________________________________________________________________________

Peter Burgess
London Day 6
Pigment print
14 x 14"
$350

Peter Burgess Artists Statement

‘London Day 6’ is from a suite of 12 images contained within “london equivalence days 1-12”.

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These works on paper mimic the iconic cloudscapes of seminal photographers Minor White and
Alfred Stieglitz, but they have been layered with texts and corporate logos the artist encountered
during the first 12 days on a residency in London. Each successive cloudscape is previewed through
the logo of the previous day.
___________________________________________________________________________________

Ney Collier
Flamingo Mail Box
Pigment print
19 x 16"
$500

Ney Collier (Tait Fraser)

Using my married name Ney Collier, I was awarded a BFA in
Photography from The Massachusetts College of Art in 1978.
In 1981, I graduated from The Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York
with an MFA in photography and printmaking. Shortly after I
graduated from Pratt, a series of large format black and white
photographs I took along the then decrepit West Side Highway
in New York City were exhibited at the Photographers Gallery
in London, England.

In Milwaukee, I started making large format, figurative photographs

which were shown at the Milwaukee Art Museum (1988) and
the Madison Art Center (1987) and Racine Art Museum.
Two of them are in the permanent collection of the Racine Art Museum.
Photographing mail boxes is an ongoing project. From time to time
during the seventies, William Christenberry used to show his
photographs at the Massachusetts College of Art. Perhaps
Christenberry and his friend William Eggleston would have found the sense
of place of Milwaukee’s mail box folk art as appealing as I do.

___________________________________________________________________________________

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Kate Cunningham
Knights Valley, CA, 2020
Pigment print
15 5/8 x 11 5/8"
POR

Sean Donnola
Untitled (2018), 2021
Pigment print
12 1/4x 15 1/2"
POR

Sean Donnola Bio

Sean Donnola is an artist working with photography, film and video. He was born in 1983 in
Binghamton, New York and grew up in the small town of Shelburne, Vermont. In 2002, Sean moved
to New York City to study at The Tisch School of The Arts at NYU where he received a BFA in
Photography & Imaging. Sean's first solo exhibition took place in New York in the fall of 2019 at
Charles Moffett Gallery. His second solo show with Charles Moffett will take place in early 2022. His
work is in the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
___________________________________________________________________________________

Joseph Elliott
Flame Scarfing a Forging, Press Forge Shop, Bethlehem, PA, 19
Gelatin Silver Print
24 x 30"
POR

Joseph Elliott Artists Statement

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Flaming Scarfing a Forging, 1992 is part of a series of photographs made in the steel works of
Bethlehem Pennsylvania between 1990 and 1996. Near the end of its life, workers were spread thinly
over the 1000 acre property, as if in a stage set. Driven by a fascination with the vastness,
complexity, and sublime beauty of the massive, aged complex, the approach was both expressive and
documentary. The work was conducted in collaboration with historian Lance Metz, and the architects
of the Historic American Engineering Record, an office of the National Park Service.

Joseph Elliot Bio

Joseph E. B. Elliott specializes in photography of historic industrial and architectural sites. Over the
past thirty years he has received numerous commissions from the Historic American Buildings Survey,
US Department of Interior, and many private and public clients. His books include The Steel:
Photographs of the Bethlehem Steel Plant, 1989–1996, Columbia College Chicago Press, Palazzos of
Power: Central Stations of the Philadelphia Electric Company, 1900–1930, Princeton Architectural
Press, and Philadelphia: Finding the Hidden City, Temple University Press. Elliott is a Professor of Art
Emeritus at Muhlenberg College and Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design.
___________________________________________________________________________________
__

Nicholas Gaffney
Sunflowers
Pigment print
19 x 26”
$600

Nicholas Gaffney
“Sunflowers” is from the series Orbiter, and the below statement is for that entire series. All the
images from Orbiter can be seen at: ngaffney.net/projects/orbiter/

Orbiter Artist Statement

My photographs aren't empty, but there's a kind of emptiness in the lots, fields, and structures to
which I'm drawn: an absence of people, but a clear sense of those who were once there. I tend to
make images about the places around me, wandering with my camera in the fairly specific landscapes
of New Hampshire, Vermont, and Upstate New York. My desire and anxiety to create keeps me
searching within these environments, hoping for new subjects left behind by others that, with my
camera, I can bring significance to.
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Debra Goldman
Weaving the Invisible
Pigment print
30 x 26"
$800

Debra Goldman Artists Statement

My work dwells in the exchange between nature and culture. In the ineffable space between inside
and outside, the visible and the invisible, the physical and the spiritual. What can be described as
dream, and what is waking? What are the threads that weave through our lives that connect us to
place, to one another?

Weaving the Invisible is one of six images in a small body of work called Dream Mapping. Each image
is created integrating a photographic print taken in 2003. The original pieces are mixed media
incorporating the 20”x24” silver gelatin walnut ink stained print and collage materials of silk, and
silver or gold leaf.

Debra Goldman Bio

I have been a practicing visual artist for over thirty years. Having lived in Iowa, New York, Colorado
and Washington state, I have come to see that time spent in these vastly different environments has
influenced my experience of place as well as informed the visual and symbolic language that I use in
my creative work.

I received my MA in Engaged Humanities and the Creative Life with an emphasis in Depth Psychology
from Pacifica Graduate Institute in 2021. My earlier education resulted in an MFA from Pratt Institute
in Brooklyn, New York in 1988 and a BFA from the University of Iowa in 1980.

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Hyoungsun Ha
Open Road #03291610
Pigment print
18 x 24"
$1600

Jamie Hankin
Peonies 52
Pigment print
20 x 16”
$350

Jamie Hankin Artists Statement

This work recalls 17th century Dutch Vanitas painting. Movement and entropy are frozen in time, a
powerful “magic”, preserving beauty and youth or illustrating the sin of worshipping beauty, coveting
that which is beyond humanity in the realm of the divine.
Modern technological memory and the cult of the perfect have pushed aside our acknowledgement
of any Memento Mori. The unrestrained bombardment of our senses through digital media has
eliminated memory in favor of the newest, the unattainable perfect and the most immediate. In this
way, we have no consciousness of time past, no landmarks to reference, only the sensation of being
swept ever forward into what’s next.

Jamie Hankin Bio

Jamie Hankin (b.1960, Philadelphia, PA) has been a photographer for all of his adult life. After
graduating with a BFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY in 1982, he pursued a successful career in
commercial photography, working for advertising and retailing clients, retiring in 2017 after serving as
the Director of Photography for Saks Fifth Avenue. During this commercial career, he continually
pursued personal projects in photography, advancing an obsession with photography as an art form.
He completed his MFA in photography from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2016 while still
active commercially. He has shown internationally.

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José Hernández-Claire
Beacon of the Desert, 2006 (From North and South of the Border of Mexico
Pigment print
21x17”
$2500

José Hernández-Claire Artists Statement

I met photography due to the course I took with Philip Perkis. I will always be grateful to him and to
all teachers at Pratt.
___________________________________________________________________________________

George Hirose
Sunflower Corner Gardens Bleecker St, NYC
Pigment print
15 x 21"
$800

George Hirose Artists Statement

“Sunflower” is from a series of long exposure images shot solely after dark called “Midnight in the
Peoples Garden”, an artistic documentation of community gardens across the city.

As a local community gardener and activist based in the Lower East Side for several decades, I have
watched these gardens evolve from rubble strewn lots into neighborhood sanctuaries. Community
gardens are also at the core of essential values in the fight against development, greed and are a
connection to land and neighborhood. This series is a love poem to our community gardens and its
gardeners.
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George Hirose Bio
George is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor in Photography at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New
York and his fine art photography has been widely exhibited in one person and group shows in the
United States and abroad.

George is also a community and civil rights activist heavily involved with NYC Community Gardens, as
well as the NY Japanese/Japanese-American community. He is president of JACL-NY (Japanese
American Citizens League-NY and also works for Japan Society and several other non-profit
organizations as a freelance professional photographer documenting events, public programming,
and art installations.

Kristin Holcomb
Rapture #23
Pigment print
25 x 30"
$750

Kristin Holcomb Artists Statement - Rapture Series

Rapture: a feeling of intense pleasure; joyous ecstasy; the expression of ecstatic joy.
Before electricity people’s lives were directed by natural light. They watched it for signs of good
weather and bad and for the change of seasons. Now we check in with our weather app. Natural
light often goes unnoticed as we hasten to turn on lights when the sky darkens or slip into the
fluorescent gloom of our offices. But when we have the opportunity to experience light in its purest
form it can scare or cheer us; make even the most mundane spot seem romantic. 19th century
painters understood the drama of light. They painted the moments when the clouds opened and
“divine” light fell on the land.
Working intermittently as a travel photographer for more than 25 years, particularly in 3rd world
countries or off the beaten path locations with little artificial light, Holcomb had the chance to
document the power and beauty of the natural light that is all but lost in our world.

Kristin Holcomb Bio

Kristin Holcomb is an artist, educator and travel photographer. She received her BA degree from
Cornell University and her MFA degree from Pratt Institute. She teaches at the International Center of
Photography in New York. Holcomb’s recent solo exhibitions include Boundaries fotofoto gallery,
Huntington, NY and In the Silences: A Retrospective, Knox Gallery, St. James, NY. Her publications
include the Chicago Sun Times, The International Herald Tribune, International Investor Magazine,
Landmarks of New York III and Newsday. Her photographs have been exhibited both nationally and
internationally and are in many individual collections.

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Mary Lang
Tennis Court, Rose Garden, Portland, OR, 2012
Pigment print
24 x 30"
$1000

Mary Lang Artists Statement

My photographs are the visual records of a sentient being, standing on the earth, sensitive to the
phenomenal world. Like the turning of a kaleidoscope, for a moment time stops, everything falls into
place and I am part of an invisible pattern holding the world together. Informed by my Buddhist
practice, these photographs show the possibility that we can trust our experience as it unfolds. We
can notice the details of everyday life, held within an awareness without boundary, the space of a
quiet ordinary moment, between in breath and out breath, a gap full of loneliness and possibility.

Mary Lang Bio

Mary Lang received an MFA in Photography from Pratt Institute in 1977, studying with Philip Perkis
and Arthur Freed. She exhibits at Kingston Gallery in Boston’s SoWA arts district. She was included in
the 2004 DeCordova Annual Exhibit. Her photographs are in collections at the Boston Museum of Fine
Arts, the Fogg Museum at Harvard, the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, the Fidelity
Corporate Collection, and in many private collections. The Bottom of the Sky, a 60-page book of
photographs and haiku, in collaboration with poet David Rome, is available on lulu.com.
___________________________________________________________________________________

Jin Ju Lee
A Film Portrait of Philip Perkis: JUST TO SEE - A MYSTERY

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Jeong Hyun Lee
A Little More or Less than Nothing 152
Pigment print
22 X 17"
$700

Tae Hoon Lee

Chromogenic Print
18 x 24"
$500
___________________________________________________________________________________

Martin Lennon
Wash Dry
Pigment print
16 x 20"
$500

Martin Lennon Artist Statement

The photograph “Wash Dry” was created as part of the photo series “South Slope” the neighborhood
I’ve lived in (I now live next door in Windsor Terrace) The impetus for this series was having moved
from the more toney Park Slope with its brownstone homes to South Slope with its mix of frame
buildings and row homes, it had to my eyes a more complex mix of architectural styles. “South Slope”
is a study of this unique Brooklyn neighborhood.

Martin Lennon Bio

Having received my BFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University in 1993, I became a member of
the co-op gallery Vox Populi, Philadelphia until 1999. In 1999, I came to Pratt Institute to study in
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graduate program of Photography. While in the program Phil Perkis was my professor. I graduated in
2002 and received my MFA. I taught Non-Silver photography at Pratt Institute and been a
photography technician since 2002.

Judy Linn
Wire, Pottsdam, 2011
Pigment print
15 x 19"
POR

Colleen Longo Collins

Sara, Williamsburg, Brooklyn NY 2009
Gelatin Silver Print
13 x 13"
$500

Colleen Longo Artists Statement

My photographs evoke the enigmatic memories of my childhood. My models are close friends and
family, and through them, I represent my feelings about the passage of time and changing female
identity. I work from my intuition to capture my models and their surroundings. They are both
voyeuristic and nostalgic. There is always more than what I am showing. My girls are vulnerable and
so am I. They are my sisters, my dolls, my provocative wallflowers, my muses. They inspire me with
the realities of womanhood as I explore their details with my camera.

Colleen Longo Bio

Colleen Longo Collins (b.1980) is a photographic artist and archivist based in California and New York.
Her projects explore the depth of her relationships with her subjects, and she has tracked their lives
and environments for over a decade. Her prints are a record of time and the result of intimate
collaboration. She works with traditional black-and-white photo processes and is heavily influenced
by her memories of girlhood and the seductive nuances of womanhood. Colleen received an MFA
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with honors from Pratt Institute where her work was described as being “film noir meets modern
nostalgia.”
___________________________________________________________________________________

Susan Dunkerley Maguire

Snowbank and Winter Light
Pigment print
23 x 29"
$350

Susan Dunkerley Maguire Artist Statement

Photography’s ability to manipulate time, scale, perspective and space continues to challenge and
inspire my work. This photograph is part of an extended series of photographs called “Window
Collages.” The window is a nexus, providing both literal and metaphorical connections between
interior and exterior space, between the cultivated and the wild. I construct sets, then set my camera
up, watch the light, wait, and experiment. The precision of photography calls forth the power of
visual imagery to enchant and to set the imagination in motion.

Susan Dunkerley Maguire bio

Susan Dunkerley Maguire’s photographs have been published and exhibited nationally and in Europe.
She is known for her black and white photographs documenting temporary collages and sets she
constructs. More recently, Susan’s works include digital, painting, and mixed media. Dunkerley
Maguire’s photographs have been recognized with a number of awards, including Fellowships from
Silver Eye Center for Photography in Pittsburgh, and from the Houston Center for Photography. Her
photographs are represented in many private and public collections, including the Brooklyn Museum
of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

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Vincent Manzi
Haliç Istanbul, 2018
Pigment print
16 x 20"
NFS

Vincent Manzi Artists Statement

Why I photograph:
To connect with, and examine what is fleeting (inner and outer).
Getting out there in hopes of contact with life force- a fraction of a second.
To continuously follow perception.
To track the growth of my way of seeing.
The interaction of color tonalities as an infinite puzzle.
To piece it together so there’s no need for explanation.

This series of photographs, World of Dew, is part of a book in process. The time spans
2005-2021. Each photograph stems from the same impulse- a recognition of the impermanence
of form, and a striving towards what is beyond it.
_______________________________________________________________________________

Michael Marston
Geysir
Pigment print
26 x 32"
$800

Michael Marston Artists statement

Landscape resonates for me as an artist in a very elemental way. I’m looking for moments when form,
line, color and movement intensify and another reality might be revealed.
There is an improbable quality to the Icelandic landscape, a harsh and isolated realm, beyond
conventional standards of beauty. Its magnificent mountain ranges and waterfalls, glaciers layered
with volcanic ash, fluorescent green mosses, and bizarre rock formations give the landscape an other-
worldly aspect. Iceland was for centuries the Ultima Thule, a land beyond the borders of the known
world.

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Michael Marston Bio
I am a retired Adjunct Associate Professor at Pratt Institute where I taught for over thirty
years. I have taught at Skidmore and The University at Albany as well.
I have been awarded an Artist’s Fellowship in Photography from the National Endowment for
the Arts, a 9/11 Fellowship from the College Art Association and two faculty development grants from
Pratt Institute.
I have worked as a commercial photographer, audiovisual producer, and a digital imaging specialist.
My clients have included: Godiva Chocolatier, AT&T, Hoffman-LaRoche, Lancôme and Architectural
Digest.
I hold the BFA from the Maine College of Art 1978 and MFA from Pratt Institute, 1980.

Taehee Park
Iceland
Pigment print
16 x 20"
$600

Julie Pochron
Blues
Chromogenic Print
24 x 19.5”
$3000

Julie Pochron Artist Statement

What stories does a color tell? Is there truth, fiction or maybe a hue of poetry written within the
blending of a tonal range? The colors fields in my photographs are made in the darkroom using light,
emulsion and emotion. I photograph these swatches of color I make so that they can become
backgrounds, foregrounds as well as the subject of my photographs. The images contain bits of
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myself photographed and physicality ripped, stacked, and then arranged to be photographed again
and again. Blues is from this series, “Works of an Invocation”.

Barbara Pohl
Fabricated Landscape: The Pine Barrens
Pigment print (Digital collage)
17 x 23”
POR

Barbara Pohl Artist Statement

My interest in photographic montage has been a thematic presence in my work from my early days of
using an 8x10 view camera and fusing imagery on to film. Eventually this style of seeing has been
transformed into a digital format. By using a variety of camera formats and a computer I create
photographic collages. The result becomes my statement of visual transformation. My subject matter
Is influenced by film, nature, and the world around me.

Barbara Pohl Bio

Photographer and educator Barbara Pohl lives in New York City. She currently teaches part time at
Parsons School of Design/ The New School in the First Year program. She received her BA and MA
from SUNY Buffalo, and her MFA from Pratt Institute. Ms. Pohl is known for her photographic
montages which combine, via computer, a variety of camera formats to produce a visual statement of
transformation.
___________________________________________________________________________________

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Suzanne Revy
Princess
Pigment Print
23 x 23"
$800

Suzanne Révy Artists Statement

My two sons were muses to me since their childhood. As they entered their teens, they hurtled
toward an emotional departure from childhood at an alarming pace. I created visual diaries of each
fleeting and ephemeral chapter in their lives beginning in toddlerhood. “Princess” is from the third
and final portfolio called “I Could Not Prove the Years Had Feet” and was made during the weekend
after his first school dance where he got this temporary tattoo. The portfolios are traces of the perils
and poignance in the day to day life of a family with two growing boys.

Suzanne Révy Bio

Suzanne Révy is a photographer and writer. She earned a BFA in photography from the Pratt Institute
in Brooklyn, NY. After college, she worked as a photography editor in magazine publishing for fifteen
years. With the arrival of two sons, she left publishing and created a visual photographic diary of their
lives. In 2016, she earned her MFA in photography from the New Hampshire Institute of Art and more
recently has been exploring the landscape around her home in the suburbs of Boston.
___________________________________________________________________________________

Peter Riesett
High Winds, Maine
Chromogenic Print
24 ¾ x 29 ¾”
$2000

Peter Riesett Artists Statement

I enjoy being a curious wanderer of American culture, people, objects and the collections we
surround ourselves with. The process of photographing for me is both meditative and one that I have
likened to having wordless conversations, with what catches my eye and forces me to stop and take a
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closer look. Storytelling, idiosyncrasies, and juxtaposing connective threads all fascinate me as I
compose images upside down and backwards on the ground glass of my large format view camera.
The image came to be while in Maine, and being in the right place at the right time.

Peter Riesett Bio

Peter Riesett currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His interest in photography began at a
young age, and grew when he recognized the deeper meaning behind a static image and the
medium's ability to provide a unique voice. A graduate of Maryland Institute College of Art (BFA) and
the Pratt Institute (MFA), Peter’s work has been exhibited and published both nationally and
internationally, and resides in the permanent collection at The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, as
well as various private collections. His self-published book, titled Testament, received several
honorable mentions and resides in the Indie Photobook Library (iPL).

Abby Robinson
Gush
Pigment Print
30 x 24"
POR

Abby Robinson Artist Statement - Waterworks

WaterWorks grew out of my 40+ year AutoWorks series (black and white self-portraits that
were small, diaristic, and laminated like IDs so they could be held in the hand) and an interest in
sexy/klutzy/serene paintings related to bathing (Degas, Manet, Morisot, Bonnard). And I’ve always
been interested in poking at the tenuous demarcation between what’s public and private.
Making self-portraits means welcoming surprises. In WaterWorks, the interaction between
light and water decreases situational control while simultaneously creating unexpected results. The
challenge is to create intimate – though not confessional – pictures where I have to be present in all
senses of the word.

Abby Robinson Bio

I live in NYC, teach at the School of Visual Arts, have always had itchy feet and a propensity to stare. I
used to work for a detective and I still hunt up evidence. It’s the cagey, slippery, mysterious stuff that
guides my wanderlust and informs my photographs. I started doing self-portraits at Pratt and
obviously continued.

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Christopher Edward Rodriguez
Red Igneous Rock, Orange and Green Lichen, 2020
Pigment print
24 x 18"
$3000

Christopher Edward Rodriguez Artists Statement-Afterlife

Afterlife explores our changing relationship to the natural world. Partially inspired by romantic visions
of 19th Century explorer Alexander Humboldt, the images also reflect on the increasingly synthetic
character of our planet. In themes of color and abstraction, the images celebrate the ambiguous
territory between a fictional and a documented landscape. Challenging colors' representational
qualities allows me to work within an ambiguity, between what is seen and what is made, and to
undermine our expectations of the natural world.

Christopher Edward Rodriguez Bio

Christopher Edward Rodriguez is a photographer whose work explores humankind's relationship to
the natural world. He’s exhibited at Sasha Wolf Gallery, Maybaum Gallery, Sarah Shepard, Newspace
Center for Photography, Current Space, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, among others. His
images have also been featured in Humble Arts Foundation, Wired and the Huffington Post. His self-
published monograph Sublime Cultivation, 2014 is in the collection of the Newspace Center of
Photography Library. He has also completed artist in residence programs at Wassaic Project and
Platte Clove Catskill Center. Originally from New Orleans, he earned his Bachelor of Architecture from
Louisiana State University and received his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He is
a visual arts educator and has taught at several institutions including Pratt, ICP, and the School of
Visual Arts.

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Lynn Saville
Jill in Newburgh
Pigment print
22 x 28"
$3500

Lynn Saville Artists Statement

As a child growing up in a small Southern city, I was filled with wonder when our family visited New
York City. It appeared as a gigantic stage set for the play of fantasies and dreams. When I returned as
a graduate student in photography, I explored on foot and at twilight the streets of the city I had
been whisked through by car and found the magic this time not only in its iconic buildings but in
deserted places where the city seemed to be dreaming its own dreams and where I could dream
mine.
Although my photographs frequently captured such unpopulated urban scenes, a single, sometimes
ghosted, figure occasionally entered the picture. At first, I thought of these figures as interlopers,
representatives of the crowds I was attempting to flee. Gradually, however, I welcomed them as stray
walkers, like myself, whose presence served to intensify the solitude and sense of dreaming.
Now, in photographs taken in central and fringe areas at twilight and dawn, I want to continue using
figures to explore the possibilities for solitude in a highly populous city. During the day, city-dwellers
can feel like human corpuscles in a never-ending circulation of traffic. Buildings and other structures
can appear as mere backdrops to this circulation and others around us as pedestrian-clones. With my
photographs, I aim to counter the numbing sense of predictable routes and urban routines by
revealing unexpected places in the city as settings for quiet meditation and dreaming.

Lynn Saville Bio

Lynn Saville is an internationally known photographer, represented by the Yancey Richardson Gallery.
She has published four monographs of her work, including Acquainted with the Night (Rizzoli),
Night/Shift (Monacelli), Dark City: Urban America at Night (Damiani) and Lost:New York (Kris Graves
Projects). Geoff Dyer included an essay on Saville’s work in his book about notable photographers,
See/ Saw: Looking at Photographs (Graywolf Press, 2021). She has two solo shows coming up: at the
Alessia Paladini Gallery in Milan, Italy (January-March, 2022) and at the University of Central Missouri
Gallery of Art & Design (January-March, 2022).

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Roger Sayre
Lori from Sitting: One Hour Portraits
Chromogenic Print
32 x 26"
$1500

Roger Sayer Artists Statement

Sitting combines primitive photography with meditation, collaboration and endurance.
Subjects sit for a portrait in front of a 20” x 24” custom-made pinhole camera. The subject sits,
meditating on their image in a mirror mounted on the camera, for one hour. Sitting is as much about
the participants' collaboration and perseverance as it is about the actual portraits. The results, in
addition to harkening back to an earlier era of photography, resonate with a likeness possibly truer
than a traditional fraction-of-a-second photograph. Over an hour, all expressions are merged into one
image. The sitter’s essence, distilled over time, is revealed.

Roger Sayre Bio

Roger Sayre is a conceptual artist who often uses nontraditional materials in his work— shadows,
utility buckets, vinyl records, lawn chairs, dog biscuits, tennis balls, and often, light sensitive paper.
Ranging from framed photographs to large outdoor sculptural installations, what unites his body of
work is the sense of play in which the pieces were conceived and executed.

Dan Scheuer
Fishing Boat Diorama, Cali, Colombia
Pigment print
23 x 28"
POR

Dan Scheuer Artists Statement

Dan Scheuer is a New York-based artist who specializes in human-altered landscape and travel
photography. He received an MFA at Pratt in 1988 and taught the Contemporary Issues in
Photography course for senior undergraduates at Pratt for 18 years. Phil Perkis has been his mentor
and friend since they met in Phil’s class 1984.
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Robin Schwartz
Amelia and Babie, 2016. From Amelia, Emily & Babie Series
Pigment print
20 x 20"
$2200

Robin Schwartz Artists Statement

The “Amelia, Emily and Babie Series” evolved from my two previous projects: “Amelia & the
Animals” and my Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography project of photographing rescued animals. I
have always been driven to depict the essential sameness of humans and animals, as in my first book,
LIKE US: Primate Portraits.
My daughter has matured since The Amelia & the Animals books, 2002 thru 2015, published
by The Aperture Foundation. Our photography collaboration has evolved into a true partnership.
Amelia's focus incorporates fashion as a link that ties her with Emily and Babie as equals in the
portraits. I am greatly influenced by the aristocratic, formal portraits from the 16th to the 19th
century of upper-class Europeans and Americans.
The two rescued primates in this series are: Emily, a 21-year-old, extremely unique capuchin
and Babie, an 11-year-old macaque. Babie is a triple amputee, missing half an arm and a leg on
opposite sides, half a tail and a frozen middle digit. Both remarkable primates are now with a
knowledgeable, loving caretaker.

Robin Schwartz Bio

Robin Schwartz is a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow in photography with photographs in the
collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art; the Smithsonian
American Art Museum and the Bibliothéque Nationale, among others. Schwartz’s fourth photography
book is Amelia & the Animals, published by The Aperture Foundation in 2014.
As a fine art and editorial photographer, specializing in portraits of animals and people,
her photographs have been published in the New York Times Magazine, Time, National Geographic,
The New Yorker, The Guardian, Telegraph, The Guardian, Geo Magazines, and many others. View all
animal centric photography projects: www.RobinSchwartz.net. Robin is a professor of photography at
William Paterson University of New Jersey.
___________________________________________________________________________________

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Fred Scruton
Work of Melvin Gould; Cheyenne, WY 2011
Chromogenic Print
24 x 30"
$650

Fred Scruton Artists Statement

Embracing the ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ tradition of street photography, this docu-mentary
project celebrates the expressive vitality of mostly self-taught artists working outside the mainstream
of contemporary art. Shaped less by the influences of pop-culture and the academy, their art
environments and artworks reflect their own lives, cultural his-tories, and inner-musings. Having
sprung from the desire to enlighten, entertain, and make sense of the world through art, these often
ephemeral works contribute a rich, but passing legacy to our culturural heritage. Through repeated
visits, the photographer has often established long-term relationships of collaborative
documentation.

Fred Scruton Bio

Fred Scruton travels extensively throughout the United States to document ‘visionary’ artists and art
environments. After receiving an MFA in photography from Pratt Institute in 1982, he worked for
twenty years as a freelance photographer of artwork and architecture in New York City. He is
currently a professor of art in northwestern Pennsylvania. Widely exhibited, his work has been
reproduced in many books and periodicals, and he has authored numerous articles for Raw Vi-sion
and Folk Art Messenger magazines. Often befriending the artists, he makes frequent near-by return
visits, and yearly road trips to document the evolution of dis-tant sites.

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Wayne Sides
Alabama Lady of the Wood
Chromogenic Print
30 x 24"
$550
Wayne Sides Bio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Sides

___________________________________________________________________________________

Paula Siwek
Bikini Martini
Pigment Print
24 x 16"
$400

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Arturo Soto
Untitled, Oxford, 2016
Gelatin Silver Print
8 x 10"
NFS

Arturo Soto Artist’s Statement

“The situation is that for some reason a text has become unacceptable yet it cannot be discarded”
— Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation

Textures and inscriptions influence how we form our perception of a place. The series An Uncertain
Value of Information (2016-2020) focuses on the materiality of the city and the emotions elicited by
its surfaces. I only found these photographs significant once I had rejected them for another work,
that is, after they seemed useless. This process of repurposing materials, a common practice in
contemporary sculpture, is deployed here to question what constitutes meaningful documentary
information, while suggesting that there are myriad ways in which we can interpret the richness of
urban signs.

Arturo Soto Bio

Arturo Soto was born in 1981 in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. He has published the photobooks In the Heat
(2018) and A Certain Logic of Expectations (2021). Soto holds a PhD in Fine Art from the University of
Oxford, an MFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York, and an MA in Art History
from University College London. He curated the exhibition Foreign Correspondence at the
Architectural Association and took part in the first edition of Forecast Platform at the Haus der
Kulturen der Welt.
His work has been exhibited internationally and is included in the books Primal Sight, Imaginaria, and
the Subjective Atlas of Mexico.

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Younggi Suh
Plain Afternoon
Pigment print
20 x 16"
$500

Younggi Suh Artists statement

Walking down the street, I see someone meet another and have a talk
It makes me feel that I had a glimpse of another world;
those images, by themselves, look like a complete world
Self-contained,
Beautiful
I just stare at them and embrace them that way.

Lucas Thorpe
Albuquerque
Pigment print
$875

…but the frame sets it off from everything else that distracts us. That is the nature and purpose of
frames. The frame does not change the moment, but it changes our way of perceiving the moment. It
makes us notice the moment...
- Frederick Buechner - Whistling in the Dark

Titled Albuquerque, this photograph is from a series called Palai, meaning long ago, of old, and in
times past in pre-modern, biblical Greek, or Koine. The image was taken a few hours before the 40th
birthday party of a close friend and showed the beginning of a bonfire before most of the guests
arrived. My friend's dog patiently watches the fire grow in size as ghostly figures add wood to the fire.
The photograph speaks to a time when I lived in New Mexico. Dusty, vacant, reckless, poetic, and
sublime.

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Lucas Thorpe's photographs explore issues of loss and regeneration, depicting a reflective narrative
within the public space. His work has been featured in group exhibitions, and in both print and online
media. Lucas was born and raised in New York City. He holds a BFA in Studio Art from the University
of New Mexico, an MFA in Photo Video from the School of Visual Arts, and an MS in Nonprofit
Leadership from Fordham University. He is currently the Director of Technology & Program
Organizing at the Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest in NYC. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Sarah van Ouwerkerk

Lake Michigan
Pigment print
20 x 16"
$600

Sarah van Ouwerkerk Artists Statement

The image was my back door as a child, growing up in Wisconsin. Fog would come in, and I
would disappear along the dunes. The environment shaped the way I see the world today, and what I
am still attracted to.
The vast expanse of space, the scale, and the freedom it represented has been with me some
50 years later. I am grateful to have been able to disappear into the fog and use the experience to
continue photographing solitude.

Sarah van Ouwerkerk Bio

Sarah van Ouwerkerk has been a working photographer and artist for 50 years. Photographs
have been exhibited internationally, as well as The New Museum, Whitney Museum, CNN, Affordable
Art Fair and numerous other venues.
The work has also been published by Rizzoli, Art Forum, NY Times, Indiana Press, Longman
Publishing, and Harmony House publishers.
She is a full time, tenured faculty member at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, where she
was fortunate to become friends with, and be influenced by Philip Perkis. She lives and works in NYC
and the Catskills.

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Ellen Wallenstein
Tree, East 109th Street/Tree, East 108th Street, from East Harlem Diptychs 2016
Pigment print
12 x 20"
$1000

Ellen Wallenstein Bio

Ellen Wallenstein grew up in NYC and attended public schools. She earned a BA in Art History from
SUNY Stony Brook and a MFA in Photography from Pratt Institute, where she is currently an Adjunct
Full Professor. A New York Foundation for the Arts Photography Fellow, her past work has been
nominated for the Eisenstaedt Award for Magazine Photography and the Santa Fe Prize. Her
photographs, books, and ‘zines are in various collections and have been exhibited internationally. She
writes reviews and articles for several photography publications. Other professional experiences
include artist-in-residence, photo archivist, curator and tarot card reader.

Ellen Wallenstein Artist Statement

The photograph I am showing, “Tree, East 109th Street/Tree, East 108th Street” was made in 2016 on
the street, while I was doing an artist residency at the Covello Senior Center in East Harlem. This
photograph is a diptych from the series of works I made from 2014- 2018 in New York City, on the
streets, underground, and in museums and galleries. It is from a (self-published) book “NYC Diptych s-
Art: Sanctioned or Found”. All the photographs were made in the square format and uncropped; the
challenge was for both of them to work alone but to work better together.

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Deb Willis
Faith's Hands, Philadelphia
Pigment print
20 x 24"
$5000

Deb Willis statement

Deborah Willis is Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts
at New York University. She is photographer who focuses her lens on notions of beauty. She is the
recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is the author of The Black
Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship and Posing Beauty: African American
Images from the 1890s to the Present. Willis’s curated exhibitions include: "Out of Fashion
Photography: Framing Beauty at the Henry Art Gallery and "Reframing Beauty: Intimate Moments"
at Indiana University and exhibited her works at the Monument Lab Staying Power exhibition in
Philadelphia.

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