The 32nd Annual Light Work Grants in Photography were recently awarded to three Central New York residents. The selected artists are Laura Heyman, Thilde Jensen, and Rishi Singhal. For the past thirty-two years, Light Work has awarded grants to photographers, critics, and photo historians who reside in Central New York. 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. The grants also aim to foster an understanding and appreciation for photographic arts in Central New York.
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 ten 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:
Laura Heyman, Syracuse, NY, Onondaga County
Laura Heyman's work is mainly focused in portraiture. Her submitted work, from the series The Photographer's Wife, features a female subject looking intimately at the photographer, resulting in images that would seem to be an artist photographing their lover. Heyman serves the role of the photographer as well as the subject, creating for the viewer "both a fictionalized subject and a fictionalized photographer." Her inspiration for this series came from past images made by men of their wives and lovers.
Thilde Jensen, Truxton, NY, Cortland County
Thilde Jensen's images in her series Human Canaries are a personal account of the life she has lived with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, and the people she has met who suffer the same condition. People with theis sensitivity have been dubbed "human canaries," and they are the casualties of what Jensen calls a "ubiquitous synthetic chemical culture." Jensen became so sensitive to chemicals in the air that she could not sit in traffic, read a book, or sit next to someone wearing perfume. She was forced to wear a gas mask when entering banks, supermarkets, and doctor's offices. She left her life in New York City, her husband and her career, and moved to the country where she lived in a tent away from the regular chemicals such as laundry detergents, pesticides, and exhaust fumes.
Rishi Singhal, Syracuse, NY, Onondaga County
Rishi Singhal has traveled the world since 2004 photographing this series, Condition of Urbanity. The images look at natural and built environments, and how they are related to one another. He is particularly interested in urban environments, in areas where physical and metaphoric transitions are constantly occurring. He captures cities that were once at their pinnacle of economic and cultural boom, but are now struggling under the loss of jobs to off-shore agencies, urban and social planning failures, and industry closure. Singhal photographed this series first in Western Europe, then in New Delhi, India. He is currently photographing in the American Rustbelt, focusing on areas that have "undergone deterious transformations over the last two decades."
The judges for the 2006 Light Work Grants competition were Lonnie Graham, Lisa Robinson, and Marni Shindelman.
Lonnie Graham participated in Light Work's Artist-in-Residence program in 2000. He was recently named Pennsylvania State Artist of the Year. He is currently a professor of visual and integrative arts at Pennsylvania State University, and an instructor of special programs at the Barnes Foundation. Lisa Robinson participated in Light Work's Artist-in-Residence program in February 2006. She lives in Jackson Heights, NY, has been photographing snowscapes since 2003. She looks for man-made, singular objects blanketed in heavy layers of snow. Marni Shindelman is an assistant professor of art and an associate of the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Rochester. Her work ranges from printmaking to photographic imagery to sculpted soap. It incorporates found hypertexts, medical myths, and news events with icons of the banal.
For more information, contact Light Work at (315) 443-1300.
Press image available upon request (thumbnail below).
Contact Jessica Heckman at jhheckma@syr.edu to obtain a digital copy via email. |
