Thilde Jensen: Canaries

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As I walk into Light Work today it is almost exactly a year since, for the first time, I was able to enter this or any building not wearing my respirator. For seven years before that, my life was restricted by my body and brain’s sudden inability to process the vast amounts of chemicals floating in the air surrounding us. A year into my struggle with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities I started documenting my own life and the lives of others with similar stories. My first contact with Light Work was in 2006 when I received the Light Work Grant based on some of these pictures. At the time I was living in a tent in the woods just starting to build a safe house. During the following years the house project took priority and it wasn’t until spring of 2010 that I again came into contact with Light Work. During a meeting with Jeffrey Hoone it was decided to work towards a future exhibition of the Canaries series. With the help of the intern program, and under the guidance of digital lab manager John Mannion, we started digitizing most of my negatives. For me this was a terrifying moment—I had lived in total avoidance of computers for six years due to the often severe pain following exposure to their emissions, and here I was working in a digital lab like a dinosaur misplaced in the future. Needless to say it was a slow and difficult process culminating not only with the creation of a powerful exhibition, but also with my return to life as a “normal,” unmasked being. Without the support of Light Work the Canaries series would never have made it as far as the New York Times, reaching millions of people with a story both personal and timely. Thank you Light Work.

Thilde Jensen
www.thildejensen.com

Scott McCarney: Visual Books

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SCOTT McCARNEY–VisualBooks
Light Work Main Gallery
November 1 – December 16, 2011
Gallery reception: November 3, 5-8pm

Light Work is pleased to announce the exhibition VisualBooks, featuring work by Scott McCarney. This unique and beautiful exhibition explores the book as a sculptural object that employs a variety of image-making processes. McCarney’s carefully hand-bound editions and found-altered books incorporate photographic imagery and utilize the space of the gallery to explore reading as display (on pedestals and shelves, hanging from the ceiling, mounted on the wall).

McCarney creates his sculptural objects and photo-based editions as one-of-a-kind, hand-made pieces as well as small runs of print-on-demand books. According to Hannah Frieser, director of Light Work,”Scott McCarney rethinks the book form, considering books as a starting point rather than a mere vehicle for information and images.”

The gallery reception on Nov. 3 (5-8 pm) celebrates the exhibition, and also serves as the kickoff event to the Society of Photographic Education (SPE) Northeast/Mid-Atlantic regional conference titledPhotographers + Publishing, which will be hosted by Light Work and Syracuse University. Light Work is publishing a special conference edition of the award-winning publication Contact Sheet in a run of 250, which will include original art by McCarney.

About the Artist
McCarney’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Center for Book Arts and Printed Matter Inc. in New York City; Tower Fine Arts Gallery in Brockport, NY; Minnesota Center for Book Arts in Minneapolis; University of the West of England, Bristol, UK; and other locations throughout the United States, the UK, Australia and more. He received his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA, and his MFA from SUNY Buffalo and Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester. He has received numerous awards, including the New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (printmaking/drawing book arts) and multiple Special Opportunity Stipends from NYFA/Rochester Arts & Cultural Council). McCarney’s work is featured in many permanent collections, including those of the Getty Center in Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; the Museum of Modern Art Library, New York; and the Photographic Resource Center in Boston, among many others.

Also on view at this time is 2011 Light Work Grants, an exhibition of work by the winners of the 2011 Light Work Grants in Photography Competition: Neil Chowdhury, Danielle Mericle and Ahndraya Parlato. In addition, bobCollignon:Outdoorsman is on view in the Community Darkrooms Gallery.

Gallery hours for these exhibitions are Sunday to Friday, 10am-6pm. (except school holidays), and by appointment. To schedule an appointment, please call 315-443-1300. Both the exhibition and reception are free and open to the public. Paid parking is available in Booth Parking Garage.

Light Work invites groups and individuals to schedule tours and gallery talks of the exhibition and facility. Light Work is a nonprofit, artist-run organization dedicated to the support of artists working in photography and electronic media. Light Work is a member of CMAC, the Coalition of Museum and Art Centers at Syracuse University.

For more information, please contact Jessica Reed at Light Work, 315-443-1300 or jhreed01@syr.edu.

En Foco/In Focus: Selected Works from the Permanent Collection

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EN FOCO/IN FOCUS:
Selected Works from the Permanent Collection
On view in the Robert B. Menschel Photography Gallery
Schine Student Center, Syracuse UniversityExhibition Dates: Sept. 1, 2011–Jan. 31, 2012

Light Work is pleased to announce the exhibition EN FOCO/IN FOCUS: Selected Works from the Permanent Collection, featuring photographs from the permanent collection at En Foco. Since its founding in 1974, En Foco has been dedicated to promoting cultural diversity in the field of photography. It has nurtured and supported photographers of diverse cultures, beginning with Latinos in New York, eventually broadening its mission to embrace photographers of African, Asian and Native American heritage across the United States.

The exhibition features the earliest works in the collection, dating to the 1970s and 1980s, which reflect the documentary impulse that characterized photographic work produced during and in the aftermath of the Civil Rights era. The exhibition also traces En Foco’s mission as it broadened its scope beyond Latino photographers. In doing so, the organization reflected the multicultural discourse of the 1990s, one that pressed for the inclusion of many cultural and ethnic voices in the spheres of culture, politics or the media, and looked at photography as a medium to examine identity, otherness and social and cultural contexts that shape perspectives on the self. Finally, the exhibition looks at En Foco through the youngest photographers represented in the collection, who provide a glimpse into the contemporary art scene’s global landscape. Whether dealing with local or universal themes, photographers of the current generation approach photography with great freedom, drawing from multiple photographic traditions, cultural histories and creative modes. These artists have come of age as digital technologies matured and essentially replaced the old, analog processes, and as virtual realities and communities have assumed an influential role in the way we perceive the world.En Foco has become recognized in the field of photography for its publications, annual New Works fellowship program, workshops and exhibitions. Much less known is a collection it has amassed of works by many of the photographers who have taken part in its programs. It now numbers nearly 700 prints dating from the 1970s to the present day, encompassing not only a plurality of voices but also subject matter, photographic approaches and points of view. The images presented in this exhibition offer an introduction into this significant photographic collection.

In addition to Light Work, the EN FOCO/IN FOCUS exhibition is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, the Bronx Council on the Arts, Canson Infinity, Archival Methods, and Syracuse University’s Division of Student Affairs Co-curricular Fund.

Gallery hours for the Robert B. Menschel Photography Gallery in Schine Student Center are Sunday to Saturday, 10 a.m.–10 p.m., except school holidays. You can also view the exhibition by appointment—to schedule an appointment, please call 315-443-1300.

Light Work invites groups and individuals to schedule tours and gallery talks of the exhibition and facility. Light Work is a nonprofit, artist-run organization dedicated to the support of artists working in photography and electronic media. Light Work is a member of CMAC, the Coalition of Museum and Art Centers at Syracuse University.

For more information, please contact Jessica Reed at Light Work, 315-443-1300 or jhreed01@syr.edu.