Announcing the Light Work Photobook Award 2019

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Then came Sandy Hook. I remember the day vividly, the complicated emotions embedding themselves and lingering for a long time. Over the following year, I thought seriously about the ways we absorb and synthesize this kind of trauma as a culture, and about how I could begin to approach it as a storyteller. I started visiting sites of mass shootings—from Columbine to Sandy Hook—in an attempt to find the meaning behind this confounding accumulation of grief. — Andres Gonzalez

We are pleased to announce Andres Gonzalez as the recipient of the 2019 Light Work Photobook Award. His monograph American Origami,” co-published by Light Work and Fw:Books, is brilliantly designed by Hans Gremmen. Light Work gives the Photobook Award annually to an artistic project that deserves international attention. As with all of Light Work’s programs, in selecting the artists for this recognition we seek to highlight emerging and underrepresented artists who come from diverse backgrounds.

“American Origami presents an unusual and moving reflection on the complexity of a seemingly endless cycle of gun violence in America—a timely publication that is visually striking, poetic, and painful,” said Light Work Director Shane Lavalette. “We are pleased to present Andres Gonzalez with the 2019 Photobook Award, for this powerful project.”

Reflecting on his selection for this year’s award, Gonzalez said, “I am extremely honored to be awarded this year’s Light Work Photobook Award. I arrived at Light Work in 2017 with a backpack full of hard drives and negatives not knowing what was to come of my time at the residency. A month later, with the help and feedback from the Light Work staff, I had a book dummy ready to print. It makes me so very happy to come back full circle and have Light Work co-publish American Origami with Fw:Books.

Andres Gonzalez
American Origami
Fw:Books/Light Work, 2019
Softcover, 384 pages
ISBN: 978-94-90119-81-2
First Edition
Signed by the artist

Andres Gonzalez’s raw project closely examines the epidemic of mass shootings in American schools. His collection of first-person interviews, condolence items, ephemera, and blunt images—made and archival—coalesce in this compelling photobook, depicting a country that violence has sometimes overwhelmed. Gonzalez elaborates, “The varied elements repeat and fold into each other, illuminating the relationship between myth-making and atonement.” American Origami takes the reader on a visual journey of shared grief that illuminates moments of beauty and brings into focus the moral questions inherent in acts of collective healing.
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Andres Gonzalez is an educator, photographer, and visual artist living in Vallejo, California. His current work synthesizes in-depth research and the poetics of photography, looking for truths behind the fictional, mythic aspects of American history. He is a graduate of Pomona College and received his MA in Visual Communications from Ohio University in 2004. Gonzalez is a Fulbright Fellow and was selected as one of PDN’s 30. He has also received recognition from the Pulitzer Center, the Magenta Foundation, the Alexia Foundation, and his work has been exhibited internationally. Gonzalez participated in Light Work’s Artist-in-Residence program in October 2017.

Pre-order a first edition SIGNED copy of our 2020 Book Collectors Offer American Origami by Andres Gonzalez and you will also receive a complimentary subscription to Contact Sheet (a $115 value) for only $75!

Light Work Awarded $100,000 Grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation

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The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has honored Light Work with a $100,000 multi-year programming grant. Distributed over the next two years, these funds will support Light Work’s renowned residency and exhibition programs, offering support and visibility to emerging and under-recognized artists working in photography and image-based media. This is the second Warhol Foundation grant that the forty-six year-old arts institution has received, following the first in 2015. Light Work extends our congratulations to all the other grant recipients for their great contributions in the field.

The highly-coveted Andy Warhol Foundation grants focus on serving the needs of artists by funding the institutions that support them. In total, 42 organizations nationwide will receive more than $3.6 Million in support of scholarly exhibitions, publications, and visual arts programming, including artist residencies and new commissions.

“We’re extremely grateful to the Warhol Foundation for their recognition of Light Work as one of the leading arts organizations in the country,” said Light Work Director Shane Lavalette. “With their ongoing funding of our programs, we will continue to focus on our mission of providing direct support to artists.”

One testament to Light Work’s artist-centered mission comes from award-winning photographer, author, curator, and former artist-in-residence Debra Willis, who reflected on the benchmark importance of the organization in her early career, “During my month-long residency at Light Work I discovered what many artists had already known — Light Work is a place where photographers are embraced, supported and treasured. Whenever photographers talk to me about their work and the place where they feel most comfortable, Light Work is evoked as a spiritual-like place where photographers can be totally involved in their work.”

In accordance with Andy Warhol’s will, The Andy Warhol Foundation’s mission is the advancement of the visual arts. The Foundation’s primary focus in making grants is to support the creation, presentation, and documentation of contemporary visual art, particularly work that is experimental, under-recognized, or challenging in nature, emphasizing that the Foundation “believes that arts and culture are a fundamental part of an open, enlightened society.” The Foundation manages an innovative and flexible grants program while also preserving Warhol’s legacy through creative and responsible licensing policies and extensive scholarly research for ongoing catalogues raisonnés projects. To date, the Foundation has given more than $200 million in cash grants to more than 1,000 arts organizations in 49 states and abroad and has donated 52,786 works of art to 322 institutions worldwide. For more information, see warholfoundation.org.

For more on the selected organizations and projects receiving funding read the online announcement and browse the the Awarded Grants page.

Light Work Welcomes New Lab Manager

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Today, Light Work welcomes Dan Boardman as its lab manager. Boardman begins his position July 16 and replaces long-time lab manager Amrita Stützle. Stützle leaves the position after four years to pursue a Masters Degree in Fine Art at the University of Pennsylvania. We wish her much success in her academic pursuits and future exhibitions and projects.

Dan Boardman is not a new face at Light Work. We got to know him and his work during his month-long residency in 2015. He has exhibited internationally and is a founding director of Houseboat Press, an award-winning publisher of artists’ books. Over the years he has fostered a relationship with our organization as a service member in our community-access DIY digital services lab.

“We are excited to welcome Dan back to Light Work as the community lab manager,” says Shane Lavalette, director of Light Work. “Dan’s past experience brings together technical expertise with a passion for working with others on creative projects, aligning with Light Work’s ethos of artists supporting artists. We look forward to working with Dan to continue serving the vibrant photography community in Central New York and beyond, and bringing Light Work Lab into the future.”

Our new lab manager reciprocates our own excitement and enthusiasm. “It is with great pleasure that I join the team at Light Work as Lab Manager,” says Boardman. “I’m looking forward to continuing the mission of serving artists working with photography. I believe strongly in this mission. In 2015 as an artist-in-residence I was able to see first-hand the care, dedication, and expertise of the entire staff at Light Work. I am honored to be able to join this team. I’m excited to get to know Light Work’s community both here in Syracuse and all over the world.”

Dan Boardman lives in Brutus, NY. Boardman received a BFA in photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2008 and his MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2012. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally and has work in both public and private collections. In 2016, Aperture short-listed Boardman for their PhotoBook Award and he was a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellow in 2013. Recent exhibitions include 321 Gallery in Brooklyn, Harvard University, Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts, Musée des Beaux-Arts in Le Locle, Switzerland, Sad Gallery in Seattle, and The Photography Gallery at Riley Hall, University of Notre Dame.