Eric Gottesman
November 2013
Eric Gottesman is a photographic artist, teacher, and activist. Since 1999 he has been working in and around the Middle East and Africa collaborating with communities to produce photographs and videos that often challenge preexisting images and perceptions of a culture and/or place as well as the concept of singular artistic authorship. Over 10 years ago, Gottesman worked with a group of Ethiopian children whose parents died of AIDS to found Sudden Flowers, an art collective that produces photographs, videos, installations, and performances in their own community. Interested in how photography functions within the social sphere as the repository for individual and collective memory and as factual and fictional documents, many of Gottesman’s projects examine the quiet, long-term, psychological impact of mass trauma.
Gottesman has been the recipient of a number of important awards, fellowships, and grants including a Fulbright Fellowship in Art, an Artadia award, an Aaron Siskind Fellowship, the apexart Franchise award, as well as grants from the Magnum Foundation, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Most recently his work has been exhibited at the Addison Gallery of American Art and the deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park. His first monograph Sudden Flowers will soon be published by Fishbar. Gottesman participated in Light Work’s Artist-in-Residence Program in September 2013.