Grass of Memory: Pratt Photography Faculty & Staff Exhibition

Monday, August 20–Thursday, September 20, 2018
Gallery Hours: Monday–Friday, 11 AM–5 PM

This year, the Pratt Photography Gallery presents Grass of Memory, an exhibition of work from faculty and staff of the Photography Department. The works included in this year’s exhibition examine flatness and space, identity and anonymity, the many and the few. Walls are made of cinder block, or dense tree branches, or empty storefronts, or impenetrable stacks of tires. Figures are isolated, even in groups. There is joy here, but also coldness, dislocation, nihilism. These works often occur in disintegrated space, fragments of lives lived, echoes of bodies, rootlessness. We, as viewers, bear witness to time’s lightning passage as well as instants that are boundless; these images are, at once, static and infinitely moving. We see, within these variegated visual diaries, hints of remembered moments, shadows of lives having passed, permanent yet fleeting. These “archaic traces” will collapse, folded comfortably (or uneasily) into the dizzy fury of time.

The works in this exhibition speak to a relentless questioning of time’s fabric, of the uneasiness of our current slice of history, politics and identity, with media that comprise video and gif; inkjet, silver gelatin and chromogenic print; as well as alternative process and embroidery. Participating faculty and staff demonstrate the gamut of this diverse department, including:

Fortunato Castro
Shannon Ebner
Ernst Fischer
Dominica Paige Giglio
Stephen Hilger
George Hirose
Peter Kayafas
John Lehr
Martin Lennon
Jeff Mermelstein
John O’Toole
Sarah Palmer
Julie Pochron
Stephanie Powell
Tori Purcell
Sara Greenberger Rafferty
Lauren Roeder
Aura Rosenberg
Anna Shteynshleyger
Andy Todd
Kate Therrian
Anne Turyn
Sarah van Ouwerkerk
Ellen Wallenstein
Ofer Wolberger