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2010 Light Work Grant Winners
The 36th
Annual Light Work Grants in Photography were recently awarded to three Central
New York residents. The selected artists are Yasser Aggour, Ron Jude, and Lida
Suchy. The Light Work Grants in Photography program is a part of Light Work's
ongoing effort to provide support and encouragement to artists working in
photography. Light Work awards grants to photographers, critics and photo
historians who reside in Central New York. The grants also aim to foster an
understanding and appreciation for photographic arts in the area.
The
Light Work Grant is a fellowship that includes a $2,000 cash award, an
exhibition at Light Work, and publication in The Light Work Annual.Applicants
were required to submit 10 examples of their work along with a short application
form. Three judges from outside the grant area then selected the recipients
based on the merits of their work. Light
Work is pleased to announce this year's grant recipients:
Yasser Aggour,
Syracuse, Onondaga County
 Yasser
Aggour submitted photographs from two different series, The Hunted and The History of
Paradise. In the images from The
Hunted, Aggour collects photographs depicting hunters and the animals they
have killed, and then manipulates them using imaging software to remove the
hunter completely, resulting in portraits that defy easy categorization. In The History of Paradise Aggour uses a
collage technique to create images that, in his words, "transform the
pedestrian into the seemingly mythic." The images revolve around the themes of
nature and destruction, violence and beauty, and death and immortality. Aggour
received his MFA from Yale University, and both a BA in Fine Arts and a BA in
Political Theory from the University of California, Santa Cruz. His work has
been exhibited internationally, and he is currently an assistant professor of
photography in Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts.
Ron Jude,
Ithaca, Tompkins County
Ron Jude's series emmett features images made during his
youth in his home state of Idaho. The photographs are focused around the idea
of living an average, working-class life in a rural mountain town in the 1980s,
and the struggle of the inevitable looming blue-collar life. According to Jude,
"Edited here nearly thirty years later, the somewhat accidental, experimental
body of work has the cohesive qualities of a dream-memories reorganized into a
fictionalized narrative, imagery suffused with both an unsettling melancholy
and the prismatic glow of youthful reverie." Jude received his MFA from
Louisiana State University and a BFA from Boise State University. His work has
been exhibited internationally. He is represented by Blind Spot Artist
Representation in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, and Gallery Luisotti in Santa
Barbara, CA. He previously received a Light Work Grant in 2001.
Lida
Suchy, Syracuse, Onondaga County
 Lida
Suchy received the Light Work Grant for her series The Community Choir - Photographs by Lida Suchy. The black-and-white portraits
in this series, described by Suchy as "the antithesis to the celebrity
portrait," look closely at the members of the Syracuse Community Choir. The
choir is based on the idea of inclusion, and therefore offers brailed music,
rides for people in wheelchairs, and childcare, among other things, and always welcomes
people from any race, ethnicity, gender, age, and sexual orientation. According
to Suchy, "The choir's use of art and singing as tools to foster inclusiveness
and community building are what initially inspired me to create these images."
Suchy received her MFA from Yale University, and her BA from SUNY Albany. Her
work has been exhibited internationally, and she has received numerous grants
and awards.
The judges for the 2010 Light Work Grants
competition were Sharon Bates, Shawn Records, and Brian Ulrich.
Sharon
Bates is the director of the Art & Culture Program at the Albany
International Airport. The
Art & Culture Program has become a cornerstone for showcasing the breadth
and quality of the arts throughout the Capital Region of New York, and has made
the Airport a busy hub not only for travel, but also for celebrating and
learning about local culture. Through the program's Airport Gallery, Concourse
Galleries, the Exhibition Case Program, and free public programming and group
tours, the Art & Culture Program has extended the reach of area artists and
museums to an audience of more than three million people per year.
Shawn Records has been photographing
Gray's Harbor in Southwest Washington State for the past three years. His
series Harborlooks at both the decline and resurrection of this area, which has had more
than its share of stumbles into the twenty-first century. A region known for
incredible natural resources and beauty, this place has also seen the failure
of a declining logging industry, a nuclear power plant that foundered on the
eve of opening, and the rise of meth use. Records received his MFA from
Syracuse University and a BA in from Boise State University. His work has been
exhibited internationally, and is featured in numerous collections, including
the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, IL and Portland Art Museum
in Portland, OR among others. Records also oversees the Critical Mass portfolio
reviews for Photo Lucida in Portland, OR and is the president of the board. He
was an Artist-in-Residence at Light Work in November 2009.
Brian Ulrich's photographic
series Copia looks at the economic,
cultural, social, and political implications of consumerism, as well as the
everyday activities of shopping. He received his MFA from Columbia College
Chicago and his BFA from the University of Akron. His work has been exhibited
internationally, most recently at Robert Koch Gallery in San Francisco, CA. His
work is included in numerous collections, including at the Art Institute of Chicago;
the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, CA; and the Museum of Fine Arts in
Houston, TX; among others. He received the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial
Fellowship in 2009 for his series Copia.
He was an Artist-in-Residence at Light Work in April 2010. He maintains the
blog Not If But When.
Past Grant Winners
Image Information:
Banner: Ron Jude - emmett
Top Right: Yasser Aggour - Incision
Bottom Right: Lida Suchy - Roberta
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About Light Work:
Light Work's mission is to provide
direct support through exhibitions, artist residencies, special
projects, and publications to emerging and under-recognized visual
artists working in photography and related digital and electronic media.
Light Work is dedicated to the support of the creation of new
work and the promotion of photography as a medium. The state-of-the-art
darkrooms and digital facilities are designed to make it easy for
artists to produce museum-quality work. All services are geared toward
the needs of artists.
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