Light Work Artists-in-Residence: 2007

Suzanne Mejean
December 2006/January 2007

Suzanne Mejean arrived at Light Work ready to make c-prints and a final edit of her three-year project photographing her mother and other family and friends in the Greenwich, CT community. With this work, Suzanne gives great consideration to the issues of authorship and collaboration inherent to portraiture, particularly when photographer and subject are close and the subject is photographed over lengths of time.

Lucas Foglia
January 2007

Lucas Foglia works as a documentary and portrait photographer, collaborating with people and organizations across the country, while using photography to promote positive change. His recent body of work documented the community garden plot in the Southside of Providence, RI. While observing the functional service of the garden space, he also reveals the more complex dialogue fostered between crossing cultures. During his residency at Light Work, Lucas focused on the editing and printing of a new body of work that documents off-the-grid communities and their inhabitants, allowing insight to alternative lifestyles, while maintaining sensitivity toward his subjects through personal involvement.

Lucas Foglia was raised on a small family farm in Huntington, Long Island. A graduate of Brown University with a BA in Art Semiotics, he has received many grants and fellowships and has had numerous national exhibitions, as well as being published in several national magazines and journals. Lucas is currently based in Rhode Island, but travels extensively to work on his projects. His work can be seen at www.lucasfoglia.com.

Marla Sweeney
May 2007

Originally from Lowell, MA, Marla Sweeney has returned there during recent summers to photograph for her series, Salisbury.   Her subjects are people "as [she] find[s] them" on the beaches and scenes of amusement parks of her childhood. The results are quietly powerful—intimate inroads to the private person on a public stage. Sweeney's work shows full awareness of her position as photographer, and she operates on the belief that you see yourself "most clearly when you see yourself as a stranger."   Her portraits appear to make no judgments, but open a corridor through her lens for a brief yet significantly personal exchange between her and people she had not met before asking permission to photograph them. The result is a picture of a people within a culture seeming both ordinary and splendorous, revealing a depth of dignity and respect for people and memories as we imagine them and as we find them.

Sweeney will spend her month at Light Work printing from this series in preparation for an exhibition this fall at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA. Her work has been exhibited and published widely. Most recently she has exhibited at Galleri Image in Denmark, and her work is included in several permanent collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Musee da la Photographie, Charleroi, Belgium; Museu da Imagem, Braga, Portugal; and the Harry Ransom Center Collection, University of Texas, Austin. Marla holds an MFA in photography from the State University of New York at New Paltz. www.nymphoto.com, http://www.bu.edu/prc/sweeney.htm

Elwira Jaglowska
June 2007

London-based Polish photographer and installation artist Elwira Jaglowska centers her work on everyday subjects, whether people or places. Using powerful implications provided in the mundane to comment on societal past and changes in a variety of cultures, Jaglowska notes her interest in highlighting that which is often "hard to articulate ... difficult to understand due to varied cultural, ideological and economical backgrounds." Her work styles include straight documentary and collage, using the latter to "create powerful hidden connections that draw viewers' curiosity to find out more about [her] subject."

Jaglowska received a BA with honors in Photography from London College of Communication, University of The Arts London in 2006 and comes to Light Work through our exchange program with Autograph ABP in London. During her month-long residency here, Jaglowska is busing making new work on location and in her studio at Syracuse University.   We anxiously await the results of her efforts—to find how she will use the intriguing props our staff and board gladly rummaged to find for her work, among them: a straw hat, one human skeleton, and a full-size tree. Jaglowska presently lives and works in London, and her work can be seen at her website, www.elwjag.com.

Todd Gray
July 2007

If you're in Syracuse this month, you may hear the drumbeat of artist Todd Gray, who has come to participate as Light Work Artist-in-Resident. So he can keep up his African drum skills, we have already put him in touch with a local drum group, and assured him the Light Work apartment is likely to be soundproof. Gray has plans to expand his photo-based shamanist performance series into a multi-media event that will feature multiple projection screens synched by software to the rhythm of his drumbeat. Envision Gray drumming as his spiritualist personae, with projections firing off juxtaposing images of African and American culture and architecture, interspersed with images of from private 'shaman' performances in which he applied shaving cream to his body, enacting various totemic animate forms. If you're already feeling a trance-like state coming on with mere anticipation of experiencing such a meld of music, religion, and excess imagery—don't worry—that's just what he intends.

[Todd Gray gave two performances of Sonic Love Wave during his residency. The photo-based multimedia art performance featured multiple projection screens synched by software to the rhythmic beats of Todd's African drums. One performance was held July 27 at the New Renaissance Theatre in Syracuse. A kid-friendly performance was held at Light Work that morning.]

Todd Gray spends his time between Ghana and Los Angeles. He attended the California Institute of the Arts in the late 1970s and became the young Michael Jackson's official photographer from 1979-1984. In the late 1980s, Gray received his MFA from Cal Arts and turned from his commercial experience to a conceptually rigorous body of work. He has exhibited widely, at venues including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture. He is currently a Professor of Photography and Digital Imaging at Cal State Long Beach. http://www.uber.com/toddgray.

Sonya A. Lawyer
August 2007

During her month as Light Work Artist-in-Residence Sonya A. Lawyer worked on three different series. Among them, Southern Roots: Black Madonnas-Black Magnolias, a three-part series that explores and preserves places and memories from her father's home state of Mississippi. This series includes three distinct bodies of work: The Absence/Presence, Rupture/Rapture/Rest, and A Folk Modernism.

She also developed a new part to her series Searching for Beulah (limit of disturbance), which transforms vintage images of African Americans into colorful abstract fabric pieces (referencing quilt patterns used in The Underground Railroad). The newer addition to this series uses vintage images of children and is called Searching for Beulah (and the illusion of our separateness). When Lawyer was not working in our labs, we steered her toward area antique shops to help in her quest for more vintage photographs.

By representing images of people of color that appear fastidiously dressed, coiffed, and determined, she works to efface negative stereotypes—such as the lazy inept "Beulah" figure—still used as historical references in popular culture. She believes her imagery can empower others to search, find, and preserve familial images that are uplifting and empowering, and therefore, speak to our collective histories.  

Lawyer holds a BS in Biology from Howard University and an MFA in Creative Photography from the University of Florida. She has exhibited in Baltimore, MD; Washington, DC; and New York City. She currently lives in the Baltimore-Washington corridor of Maryland. Her work can be seen at www.SonyaLawyer.com and, coming in January 2008, in an online exhibition at www.limitofdisturbance.com.

Stephen Chalmers
October 2007

Stephen Chalmers spent his residency working on his new series, Dump Sites. Chalmers uses Freedom of Information searches of police reports, along with crime scene photographs, prosecutor reports, and true crime novels to research the locations where serial killers in the western states have disposed of their victims' bodies. Using this information in conjunction with mapping software, Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, and Google Maps, he pinpoints and then visits these psychologically charged locations, called "Dump Sites" by law enforcement authorities. The images he produces contain no iconic signifier that the image in question is the location of a body dump site—other than the title, which only suggests the name and age of the victim.

Stephen Chalmers has a BS in Psychology (Pre-Medical) and also a BA in Photography from the University of Louisville, and an MFA in Cinema and Photography from Southern Illinois University. He has been an emergency medical technician, taught gang-affected children photography, and worked as a counselor to severely emotionally disturbed children. He now lives in Spokane, WA, and is currently a professor of photography and digital media at Washington State University in Pullman. Chalmers has exhibited widely. His work can be seen at www.askew-view.com.

The work by artists who participated in the 2007 Artists-in-Residence program will be showcased in the Light Work Annual (CS147), to be published in summer 2008. The publication will be sent to all 2008 subscribers of Contact Sheet. Back issues of Contact Sheet and the Light Work Annual are available for individual purchase via the Light Work Online Store.

Light Work's Artist-in-Residence Program

Since 1976 over 300 artists have participated in Light Work's Artist-in-Residence program. Each year Light Work invites 12-15 artists to participate in this program. During their month-long residencies each artist is given the opportunity to create new work at our studio facility in the Robert B. Menschel Media Center at Syracuse University. Each Artist-in-Residence donates a few examples of their work to Light Work's permanent collection. The Light Work collection currently includes around 2,200 images.

Past Artists-in-Residence | 2007 | 2006 | 2005

How to apply to the Artist-in-Residence program