Race, Love, and Labor: New Work from The Center for Photography at Woodstock's Artist-in-Residency Program

Curated by Sarah Lewis

August 27 — December 14, 2014
Sara Bedrick Gallery

Joanna Tam, Untitled (from the series "Manner of Delivery"), 2013, Archival pigment print, Center for Photography at Woodstock Permanent Print Collection

 

It is impossible to separate the history of photography from the history of labor, love, and race in America. This exhibition, culled from the collection of the Center for Photography at Woodstock's Artist-in-Residency program, displays images by artists who understand the needs of labor in the fullest sense of the word: a means through which we birth ourselves anew. These artists are participants in a 15-year-old tradition at the Center for Photography at Woodstock (CPW), which offers artists of color one of the requirements for a sterling creative practice—embryonic time to probe deeply, unfettered by distractions. At the 20th anniversary of CPW's partnership with the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, it is a moment to honor this residency and examine the themes that have emerged from the resulting, irreplaceable pictures.

 


LaToya Ruby Frazier, Momme, 2008, Gelatin silver print, the Center for Photography at Woodstock Permanent Print Collection

 

The 20 artists whose work is featured in the exhibition are:
Endia Beal, William Cordova, Isaac Diggs, Caleb Ferguson, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Nikita Gale, Gerard H. Gaskin, Eyakem Gulilat, Tommy Kha, Kathya Maria Landeros, Deana Lawson, Alma Leiva, Yijun Pixy Liao, Gina Osterloh, Dawit L. Petros, Tim Portlock, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Xaviera Simmons, Joanna Tam, and Preston Wadley.

 

Gerard H. Gaskin, Latex Ball, Manhattan, NY, 2007 (from the series "Legendary"), 2011, Archival pigment print, the Center for Photography at Woodstock Permanent Print Collection 
 


Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Self-Portrait After (from the series "Glasco Turnpike"), 2010, Archival pigment print, the Center for Photography at Woodstock Permanent Print Collection


A reflective look at the CPW collection shows how photography, working with a vast range of aesthetics, plays a critical role in the labor of becoming and the work it entails—on the land and within our inner worlds. They function, as Frederick Douglass once reminded us, as images that both record what is and conjure a sense of what could be. What does it mean to work in this lineage? These photographs, each the gift of a moment in time through a unique residency, show us where a future path may lead.

— Sarah Lewis, guest curator, author, and Du Bois Fellow, Harvard University

 


Tommy Kha, Little Polite (A Role Study), 2011, Chromogenic color print, Center for Photography at Woodstock Permanent Print Collection