Light Work is pleased to announce the 45th annual Light Work Grants in Photography. The 2019 recipients are Trevor Clement, Lali Khalid, and Reka Reisinger.

The Grants in Photography program is a part of Light Work’s ongoing effort to provide support and encouragement to Central New York artists working in photography. Established in 1975, it is one of the longest-running photography fellowship programs in the country. Each recipient receives a $3,000 award, exhibits their work at Light Work, and appears in Contact Sheet: The Light Work Annual.

This year’s judges were Kimberly Drew (writer, curator, founder, Black Contemporary Art), Eve Lyons (photo editor, The New York Times), and David Oresick (Executive Director, Silver Eye Center for Photography).

Trevor Clement

Trevor Clement is a visual artist, musician, and performance artist based in Syracuse, who uses photography with book art, installation, and sound. His photographic style opposes the cleanliness and simplicity of Western fine art photography by using heavy film grain, dust, and a modernized take on William Klein’s “technique of no taboos.” The do-it-yourself ethic, and the antisocial, violent, and sub-capitalist character of noise and hardcore-punk music all play a major role in Clement’s thinking about visual art. He has contributed to music projects such as FAITH VOID, HUNTED DOWN, and WHITE GUILT, and was a major force in BADLANDS, an underground music and art space for all ages in Syracuse. He was a Light Work Grant recipient in 2014, has shown his work across New York State, and exhibited at the Fotofanziner Fotobokfestival in Oslo (Norway), the NoFound Photo Festival in Paris, and the San Francisco Center for the Book. Recently, Clement has focused on producing ‘zines of his photos of professional wrestling and an audio interpretation of Gregory Halpern’s ZZYZX.

www.trevorclement.com

Lali Khalid

Lali Khalid addresses landscape and abstraction through documentary photography. Lali uses her work as a tool to explore themes of diaspora, identity, family, and home in her own life and the lives of people she photographs. Her images depict and document cultural and private conflicts, as well as emotive effects of natural light, through quiet, narrative allusions. She holds a B.F.A. in printmaking from the National College of Arts in Lahore (2003) and an M.F.A. in Photography from Pratt Institute (2009) where she was a Fulbright Scholar. She has shown her work in many galleries throughout Europe, Pakistan, and the US.  Khalid is currently an Assistant Professor of  Media Arts, Sciences and Studies at Ithaca College.

www.lalikhalid.com

Through pictures of my family, personal journals, travels, and self-portraits, I document my personal experiences. The last couple of years have made me fathom and somewhat accept the difference, the difference others see. I have been in America since 2007, but somehow, I am still on the periphery, looking in. I am an outsider. Fighting the U.S. legal system and recognizing what it means to be “the other” has changed my approach to image making.

— Lali Khalid

Reka Reisinger

Reka Reisinger is a visual and historical archivist living in Burdett, New York. Reisinger graduated from Bard College (2004) and holds an MFA in photography from the Yale University School of Art. Reisinger was born in Budapest, Hungary, and returns frequently to photograph her homeland, the central focus of her work. Driven by a sense of urgency to collect visual cultural artifacts, she used her photographic practice to evoke the atmosphere she experienced during her frequent childhood visits to Hungary during the early post-communist era. Reisinger creates a sense of humor in her work while posing more profound questions about cultural identity during upheaval. She has participated in many group exhibitions nationally and internationally including The Camera Club of New York, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, Lisa Ruyter Gallery in Vienna (Austria), the Midlands Art Center in Birmingham (UK), The Sculpture Center in Long Island City, and the Swiss Institute in New York City.

www.rekareisinger.com

I had the opportunity to experience Hungary at a pivotal time in its history subsequent to its opening up to the West. It was a unique period when antiquated traditions still persisted in the context of an increasingly modern world. I witnessed first hand an era when women in my grandmother’s village still wore the traditional costume, a time before telephones and extensive highway systems, a time before shopping malls and mass media. Simultaneously, I observed the influx of western culture and the Hungarian people’s varied reception and at times unusual interpretation of a lifestyle that was already familiar to me. My memories of this period shaped my interpretation of the Hungarian cultural landscape that I endeavor to portray in my photographs.

— Reka Reisinger

For more information about the Light Work Grants in Photography, including past recipients and how to apply, please visit www.lightwork.org/grants