Richards Family Prize Winners - Griffin Museum of Photography
Source: https://griffinmuseum.org/richards_prize
Archived: 2026-04-23 17:25
Richards Family Prize Winners - Griffin Museum of Photography
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This $4,000 scholarship is open to professional and mid-career photographers worldwide. The winning submission, in addition to a cash prize to assist in the production of the work, will have a catalog produced by
Griffin Museum Press
and an exhibition in our Winchester Museum in December 2025.
Juror,
Karen Haas,
Lane Curator of Photographs, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
2025 Winner | Lee-Ann Olwage:
The Right to Play
The Griffin Museum of Photography
is pleased to announce
Lee-Ann Olwage
as the recipient of our second
Richards Family Prize
. Lee-Ann was selected for her project,
The Right To Play
, an evocative mixed media series exploring how climate change impacts girls education in Malawi.
Lee-Ann Olwage
is a visual storyteller from South Africa who uses collaborative storytelling to explore themes relating to gender, identity, and community, as well as the intricate relationship between humans and nature through intimate portraits and documentary projects. She is interested in using photography as a mode of co-creation and celebration, aiming to create a space where collaborators play an active role in shaping images that tell their stories in affirming, celebratory ways.
2025 Finalists
Caleb Cole
Caleb Cole
is a Midwest-born, Boston-based multidisciplinary artist. They have received an Artadia Boston Finalist Award, a Hearst 8×10 Biennial Award, three Magenta Flash Forward Foundation Fellowships, and two Photolucida Critical Mass Finalist Awards, among other distinctions. Cole exhibits nationally, and their work is in permanent collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; the Newport Art Museum; and the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art. They teach at Boston College and in the Visual Arts MFA Program at Lesley University.
Sarah Malakoff
Sarah Malakoff
was born in Wellesley, Massachusetts, in 1972. Her work has been widely exhibited in both solo and group shows nationally and is included in several public and private collections. Monographs include Second Nature, published by Charta in Milan in 2013, and Personal History, published by Kehrer Verlag in 2022. Untitled Interiors, a 16-page Artist’s Project, was published in Esopus Magazine in 2007. She has been awarded Fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council in 2001 and 2011 and a Traveling Fellowship from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2011. She is an Associate Professor of Photography at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and resides in Boston, Massachusetts.
Emily Sheffer
Emily Sheffer
is a photographic artist, educator, and book designer. She is the founder of Dust Collective, a New England–based publisher specializing in small-edition, handmade photography books. Her artistic work and publishing projects often address landscape as metaphor, memory, and narrative space. Both her artwork and Dust Collective books are held in private and public collections worldwide. Sheffer earned an MFA in photography from the University of Hartford and a BFA in photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She currently lives in Massachusetts.
Thomas Holton
Thomas Holton
is a photographer and educator based in New York City. He received a BA from Kenyon College and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts. His ongoing project,
The Lams of Ludlow Street
, documents the life of a single Chinese American family living in Manhattan’s Chinatown over more than 20 years. The project was published as a book in 2016 by Kehrer Verlag and has been exhibited in the United States and abroad at venues including the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Museum of the City of New York, the New York Public Library, and the Baxter Street Camera Club. The work has also been featured in
The New York Times
,
The New Yorker
,
Aperture
,
The Guardian
, and other publications. He currently teaches photography in New York City, where he lives with his family.
Juror
–
Aline Smithson
,
interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, educator, and editor
2024 Winner | Izabella Demavlys:
Without a Face
Without a Face Series, Saira
Without a Face Series, Memona
Without a Face Series, Raffat
Without a Face Series, Sabira
The Griffin Museum of Photography
is pleased to announce
Izabella Demavlys
as the recipient of our first
Richards Family Prize
. Demavlys was selected for her project,
Without a Face
, a portrait series that explores social conceptions of beauty, allowing her to establish her own perspective on beauty.
Izabella Demavlys
is a Swedish born photographer and filmmaker based in NYC. She studied photography at the Royal Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, as well as Parsons School of Design in New York. For many years she focused on fashion photography, but in the fall of 2009, she decided to travel to Pakistan to pursue documentary work about women who had suffered brutal acid attacks.
Her work has been published in Vogue, Marie Claire, The New York Times, WSJ and VICE.
2024 Finalists
Yorgos Efthymiadis
Yorgos Efthymiadis
is an artist/curator from Greece who resides in Somerville, MA. A board member of Somerville Arts Council and chair of the Visual Arts Fellowship Grants since 2017, Efthymiadis is also a reviewer for the Lenscratch Student Prize Awards since 2023 and finds it very fulfilling to help fellow photographers and give back to the photographic community.
An awardee of the Artist’s Resource Trust A.R.T. Grant in 2024, a finalist for the 2017 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship, and the recipient of the St. Botolph Club Foundation 2017 Emerging Artist Award, Efthymiadis has exhibited nationally and internationally and is represented by
Gallery Kayafas
in Boston.
In 2015, he created a gallery in his own kitchen, titled The Curated Fridge. The idea behind this project is to celebrate fine art photography and connect photographers with established and influential curators, gallerists, publishers, and artists from around the world through free, quarterly curated calls. The Curated Fridge recently celebrated 9 years of exhibitions, featuring more than 1,500 artists across 38 shows, juried by 44 guest curators.
Yuki Furusawa
Yuki Furusawa
is a Japanese photographer and book artist, based in both Hong Kong and Japan. Furusawa discovers strong emotional feelings revealed by the intimacy of her close relationships with her family. She creates artist books using various textured media, which are shaped by her emotional response. The familiar physicality of the book is essential in her intimate works.
Furusawa graduated from the Savannah College
of Art and Design Hong Kong in 2017 with a Master of Arts in Photography. Her work has exhibited in Hong Kong and Japan. She participated in the Hong Kong Photo Book Fair 2016. Her work is part of the SCAD Library Permanent Special Collection.
Pia-Paulina Guilmoth
Pia-Paulina Guilmoth
lives and creates art in rural central Maine. She is a working-class transgender woman who resides with her girlfriend and two cats in a small, treehouse-like space inside a very old shoe factory on the bank of the Sandy River.
In her free time, Pia enjoys laying in the dirt, holding her friends, and trespassing into abandoned houses and barns. Her work is primarily about harnessing beauty as a form of resistance in a world full of terrors. While creating art, she reflects on themes such as class, gender, euphoria, dysphoria, and the ways queer community can flourish in rural areas.
Her current project,
Flowers Drink the River
, portrays the queer community she belongs to in rural central Maine and explores her search for magic and beauty in the landscapes surrounding her home.
Alena Grom
Ukrainian artist and documentary photographer
Alena Grom
was born in Donetsk. In April 2014, she was compelled to leave her hometown due to the military conflict in Eastern Ukraine. Since 2017, she has resided in Bucha, a town near Kyiv. Following the full-scale invasion of Russia in February 2022, Grom and her family became refugees for the second time, but returned after Bucha was de-occupied.
These experiences have profoundly influenced her artistic practice. Photography has served as a lifeline for her, allowing her to confront the traumatic realities of war. Since 2016, Alena Grom has centered her work on locations affected by military aggression, capturing the lives of war victims, migrants, and refugees.
Grom operates at the confluence of social reporting and conceptual photography, often working on her themes on the front lines. She perceives her “mission” as documenting the lives of individuals caught in the “gray zones” or near military conflicts. Through her photographs, she aims to inform the global community about the complexities of wartime life. Importantly, her images do not exist merely as illustrations of sorrow or grief. One of her primary themes is the persistence of life amidst adversity.
Rodrigo Illescas
Rodrigo Illescas
was born in Bahía Blanca, Province of Buenos Aires, in 1983. He is an architect and photographer. He published the books, “Asimismo, todo aquello” (2007), declared of Cultural Interest by the National Secretariat of Culture; and “Razia” (2011). He is currently a professor at the University of Buenos Aires.
Awards (selection): Global GFX FujiFilm Challenge; 1st prize Felix Schoeller Photo Award; Leica Finalist, Oskar Barnack; Grand Prix, PhotoDays Festival, Rovinj, Croatia; 1st Prize, Portraits, PoyLatam, Mexico; 1st prize, Best Portfolio, “Transversalidades”, Portugal; Honorable Mention, Provincial Visual Arts Salon Florencia Molina Campos.
Exhibitions (selection): Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, Italy; Somerset House, London; Museum of Cultural History in Osnabrück, Germany; CCK, Argentina; among others.
Work in Collection: Museum of Arts and Crafts, Zagreb; National University of Villa María, Córdoba; Private Collections in London, Madrid and Andorra.
Pedro Ledesma III
Born in South Dakota and raised in a small town in Texas,
Pedro Ledesma III
has always appreciated wide, open spaces and small communities. Exploring the world and embracing his Korean-Mexican heritage have given Pedro a unique understanding of family and culture. From Texas public schools to MIT and Columbia University, Pedro’s education has been a constant source of inspiration and fueled his lifelong curiosity. His diverse background, including work on Wall Street, research in international development economics, and experience as a teacher, informs his understanding of global dynamics.
Pedro’s photography journey has evolved from documenting beauty in everyday moments to using his camera as a tool for social change, echoing the justice-focused themes he probed in economics. He explores the complexities of social and economic inequities, as well as his own identity in America as a mixed-race, Southern Baptist-raised, Ivy League graduate. Through his creative work, Pedro aims to spark positive change toward greater equality by exploring how these national issues unfold in the small towns across America.
Matthew Ludak
I met Logan on my last trip along the Ohio River. I was walking through the small village of Bridgeport, Ohio which is across the river from Wheeling, West Virginia, when I came across Logan sitting in front of his apartment smoking a cigarette and enjoying some of the last warm days of fall. We got to talking and Logan was quick to tell me about his life and experiences living along the river. Something that lingered with me, long after I made his portrait was the answer he gave when I asked him what there was to do around “here” for fun. He laughed and responded “There’s nothing to do here, you gotta go to Youngstown or Pittsburgh if you are looking for fun”.
Matthew Ludak
is a documentary photographer and photojournalist focusing on long-term projects about economic disparity, de-industrialization, and environmentalism in the United States.
In 2021, Ludak was published and exhibited internationally and received an Artist Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. In 2022, his work was shown in the Wisconsin Biennial at the Museum of Wisconsin Art and the Soho Photo Gallery in New York City. In 2022, he had his first solo and international exhibition in Braga, Portugal, as part of the city’s annual Photography and Visual Arts Festival. In 2022, Ludak was invited to attend the prestigious Eddie Adam’s workshop in Calicoon, New York, where he received the National Geographic award for his work. In 2024, Ludak was included in GUP Magazine’s FRESH EYES International 2024 Talent and received an Award of Excellence from the Alexia Foundation.
Ludak’s work has been featured in The Washington Post, The Economist, TIME, Bloomberg, and Fox Business.
He holds a BA in History and English from Drew University, a Certificate in Documentary Studies from the International Center for Photography, and an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
Emily Hanako Momohara
Emily Hanako Momohara
was born in Seattle, Washington, where she grew up in a mixed-race family. Her work centers around issues of heritage multiculturalism, immigration, and social justice.
Momohara has exhibited nationally, most notably at the Japanese American National Museum in a two-person show titled
Sugar|Islands
. She has been a visiting artist at several residency programs, including the Center for Photography at Woodstock, Headlands Center for the Arts, Fine Arts Work Center, and Red Gate Gallery, Beijing. In 2015, her work was included in the Chongqing Photography and Video Biennial. Momohara has created socially driven billboards for For Freedoms and United Photo Industries. She lives and works in Cincinnati, where she serves as the Interim Studio Arts Chair, a Professor, and heads the photography major at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.
Xan Padrón
Galician photographer
Xan Padrón
(Ourense, Spain, 1969) received his first camera at the hands of the photojournalist Enrique Reza, who awakened in him a passion for the photography of the everyday, just as his father, the journalist Luís Padrón, awakened in him the patience to listen and observe stories.
After diverse street photography projects in New York City (Human City, Motion City, Visions of New York), in 2011 he began his acclaimed project, “Time Lapse”: a collection of portraits of various cities through the people who inhabit them. His series Time Lapse has been exhibited, among other places, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, the Pfizer Building in New York, and the Sala Valente in Spain. Xan Padrón’s artwork is held in corporate and private collections across the globe. In 2023, Padrón was invited by the MTA Arts & Design Program to exhibit at the Bryant Park subway station in New York City. His work has been featured in international publications such as New England Review, Die Zeit Magazine, and Photo World Magazine, as well as on the cover of academic anthologies like “Race, Class and Gender in the United States” (MacMillan, 2020) and “Personal Networks” (Cambridge University Press, 2021). His Time Lapses were also selected for the Art on Link program by the City of New York. Xan Padrón’s career as a photographer is deeply intertwined with his previous profession as a professional musician. For over a decade, he toured with his bass and his camera, capturing life surrounding the musicians he collaborated with. As a photographer of artists and concerts, he has worked in an official capacity for APAP (Association of Performing Arts Professionals, United States) and has contributed to publications such as Inside Arts and The Writer Magazine (United States). Xan Padrón shares his life with musician, educator, and writer Cristina Pato. Since 2005, he has spent his time between Galicia and New York City and has his studio at Mana Contemporary (NJ).
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Amy Rindskopf's Terra Novus
At the market, I pick each one up, pulled in by the shapes as they sit together, waiting. I feel its heft in my hand, enjoy the textures of the skin or peel, and begin to look closer and closer. The patterns on each individual surface marks them as distinct. I push further still, discovering territory unseen by the casual observer, a new land. I am like a satellite orbiting a distant planet, taking the first-ever images of this newly envisioned place.
This project started as an homage to Edward Weston’s Pepper No. 30 (I am, ironically, allergic to peppers). As I looked for my subject matter at the market, I found that I wasn’t drawn to just one single fruit or vegetable. There were so many choices, appealing to both hand and eye. I decided to print in black and white to help make the images visually more about the shapes, and not about guessing which fruit is smoothest, which vegetable is greenest.
Artistic Purpose/Intent
Artistic Purpose/Intent
Tricia Gahagan
Photography has been paramount in my personal path of healing from disease and
connecting with consciousness. The intention of my work is to overcome the limits of the
mind and engage the spirit. Like a Zen koan, my images are paradoxes hidden in plain
sight. They are intended to be sat with meditatively, eventually revealing greater truths
about the world and about one’s self.
John Chervinsky’s photography is a testament to pensive work without simple answers;
it connects by encouraging discovery and altering perspectives. I see this scholarship
as a potential to continue his legacy and evolve the boundaries of how photography can
explore the human condition.
Growing my artistic skill and voice as an emerging photographer is critical, I see this as
a rare opportunity to strengthen my foundation and transition towards an established
and influential future. I am thirsty to engage viewers and provide a transformative
experience through my work. I have been honing my current project and building a plan
for its complete execution. The incredible Griffin community of mentors and the
generous funds would be instrumental for its development. I deeply recognize the
hallmark moment this could be for the introduction of the work. Thank you for providing
this incredible opportunity for budding visions and artists that know they have something
greater to share with the world.
Fran Forman RSVP
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This $4,000 scholarship is open to professional and mid-career photographers worldwide. The winning submission, in addition to a cash prize to assist in the production of the work, will have a catalog produced by
Griffin Museum Press
and an exhibition in our Winchester Museum in December 2025.
Juror,
Karen Haas,
Lane Curator of Photographs, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
2025 Winner | Lee-Ann Olwage:
The Right to Play
The Griffin Museum of Photography
is pleased to announce
Lee-Ann Olwage
as the recipient of our second
Richards Family Prize
. Lee-Ann was selected for her project,
The Right To Play
, an evocative mixed media series exploring how climate change impacts girls education in Malawi.
Lee-Ann Olwage
is a visual storyteller from South Africa who uses collaborative storytelling to explore themes relating to gender, identity, and community, as well as the intricate relationship between humans and nature through intimate portraits and documentary projects. She is interested in using photography as a mode of co-creation and celebration, aiming to create a space where collaborators play an active role in shaping images that tell their stories in affirming, celebratory ways.
2025 Finalists
Caleb Cole
Caleb Cole
is a Midwest-born, Boston-based multidisciplinary artist. They have received an Artadia Boston Finalist Award, a Hearst 8×10 Biennial Award, three Magenta Flash Forward Foundation Fellowships, and two Photolucida Critical Mass Finalist Awards, among other distinctions. Cole exhibits nationally, and their work is in permanent collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; the Newport Art Museum; and the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art. They teach at Boston College and in the Visual Arts MFA Program at Lesley University.
Sarah Malakoff
Sarah Malakoff
was born in Wellesley, Massachusetts, in 1972. Her work has been widely exhibited in both solo and group shows nationally and is included in several public and private collections. Monographs include Second Nature, published by Charta in Milan in 2013, and Personal History, published by Kehrer Verlag in 2022. Untitled Interiors, a 16-page Artist’s Project, was published in Esopus Magazine in 2007. She has been awarded Fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council in 2001 and 2011 and a Traveling Fellowship from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2011. She is an Associate Professor of Photography at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and resides in Boston, Massachusetts.
Emily Sheffer
Emily Sheffer
is a photographic artist, educator, and book designer. She is the founder of Dust Collective, a New England–based publisher specializing in small-edition, handmade photography books. Her artistic work and publishing projects often address landscape as metaphor, memory, and narrative space. Both her artwork and Dust Collective books are held in private and public collections worldwide. Sheffer earned an MFA in photography from the University of Hartford and a BFA in photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She currently lives in Massachusetts.
Thomas Holton
Thomas Holton
is a photographer and educator based in New York City. He received a BA from Kenyon College and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts. His ongoing project,
The Lams of Ludlow Street
, documents the life of a single Chinese American family living in Manhattan’s Chinatown over more than 20 years. The project was published as a book in 2016 by Kehrer Verlag and has been exhibited in the United States and abroad at venues including the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Museum of the City of New York, the New York Public Library, and the Baxter Street Camera Club. The work has also been featured in
The New York Times
,
The New Yorker
,
Aperture
,
The Guardian
, and other publications. He currently teaches photography in New York City, where he lives with his family.
Juror
–
Aline Smithson
,
interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, educator, and editor
2024 Winner | Izabella Demavlys:
Without a Face
Without a Face Series, Saira
Without a Face Series, Memona
Without a Face Series, Raffat
Without a Face Series, Sabira
The Griffin Museum of Photography
is pleased to announce
Izabella Demavlys
as the recipient of our first
Richards Family Prize
. Demavlys was selected for her project,
Without a Face
, a portrait series that explores social conceptions of beauty, allowing her to establish her own perspective on beauty.
Izabella Demavlys
is a Swedish born photographer and filmmaker based in NYC. She studied photography at the Royal Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, as well as Parsons School of Design in New York. For many years she focused on fashion photography, but in the fall of 2009, she decided to travel to Pakistan to pursue documentary work about women who had suffered brutal acid attacks.
Her work has been published in Vogue, Marie Claire, The New York Times, WSJ and VICE.
2024 Finalists
Yorgos Efthymiadis
Yorgos Efthymiadis
is an artist/curator from Greece who resides in Somerville, MA. A board member of Somerville Arts Council and chair of the Visual Arts Fellowship Grants since 2017, Efthymiadis is also a reviewer for the Lenscratch Student Prize Awards since 2023 and finds it very fulfilling to help fellow photographers and give back to the photographic community.
An awardee of the Artist’s Resource Trust A.R.T. Grant in 2024, a finalist for the 2017 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship, and the recipient of the St. Botolph Club Foundation 2017 Emerging Artist Award, Efthymiadis has exhibited nationally and internationally and is represented by
Gallery Kayafas
in Boston.
In 2015, he created a gallery in his own kitchen, titled The Curated Fridge. The idea behind this project is to celebrate fine art photography and connect photographers with established and influential curators, gallerists, publishers, and artists from around the world through free, quarterly curated calls. The Curated Fridge recently celebrated 9 years of exhibitions, featuring more than 1,500 artists across 38 shows, juried by 44 guest curators.
Yuki Furusawa
Yuki Furusawa
is a Japanese photographer and book artist, based in both Hong Kong and Japan. Furusawa discovers strong emotional feelings revealed by the intimacy of her close relationships with her family. She creates artist books using various textured media, which are shaped by her emotional response. The familiar physicality of the book is essential in her intimate works.
Furusawa graduated from the Savannah College
of Art and Design Hong Kong in 2017 with a Master of Arts in Photography. Her work has exhibited in Hong Kong and Japan. She participated in the Hong Kong Photo Book Fair 2016. Her work is part of the SCAD Library Permanent Special Collection.
Pia-Paulina Guilmoth
Pia-Paulina Guilmoth
lives and creates art in rural central Maine. She is a working-class transgender woman who resides with her girlfriend and two cats in a small, treehouse-like space inside a very old shoe factory on the bank of the Sandy River.
In her free time, Pia enjoys laying in the dirt, holding her friends, and trespassing into abandoned houses and barns. Her work is primarily about harnessing beauty as a form of resistance in a world full of terrors. While creating art, she reflects on themes such as class, gender, euphoria, dysphoria, and the ways queer community can flourish in rural areas.
Her current project,
Flowers Drink the River
, portrays the queer community she belongs to in rural central Maine and explores her search for magic and beauty in the landscapes surrounding her home.
Alena Grom
Ukrainian artist and documentary photographer
Alena Grom
was born in Donetsk. In April 2014, she was compelled to leave her hometown due to the military conflict in Eastern Ukraine. Since 2017, she has resided in Bucha, a town near Kyiv. Following the full-scale invasion of Russia in February 2022, Grom and her family became refugees for the second time, but returned after Bucha was de-occupied.
These experiences have profoundly influenced her artistic practice. Photography has served as a lifeline for her, allowing her to confront the traumatic realities of war. Since 2016, Alena Grom has centered her work on locations affected by military aggression, capturing the lives of war victims, migrants, and refugees.
Grom operates at the confluence of social reporting and conceptual photography, often working on her themes on the front lines. She perceives her “mission” as documenting the lives of individuals caught in the “gray zones” or near military conflicts. Through her photographs, she aims to inform the global community about the complexities of wartime life. Importantly, her images do not exist merely as illustrations of sorrow or grief. One of her primary themes is the persistence of life amidst adversity.
Rodrigo Illescas
Rodrigo Illescas
was born in Bahía Blanca, Province of Buenos Aires, in 1983. He is an architect and photographer. He published the books, “Asimismo, todo aquello” (2007), declared of Cultural Interest by the National Secretariat of Culture; and “Razia” (2011). He is currently a professor at the University of Buenos Aires.
Awards (selection): Global GFX FujiFilm Challenge; 1st prize Felix Schoeller Photo Award; Leica Finalist, Oskar Barnack; Grand Prix, PhotoDays Festival, Rovinj, Croatia; 1st Prize, Portraits, PoyLatam, Mexico; 1st prize, Best Portfolio, “Transversalidades”, Portugal; Honorable Mention, Provincial Visual Arts Salon Florencia Molina Campos.
Exhibitions (selection): Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, Italy; Somerset House, London; Museum of Cultural History in Osnabrück, Germany; CCK, Argentina; among others.
Work in Collection: Museum of Arts and Crafts, Zagreb; National University of Villa María, Córdoba; Private Collections in London, Madrid and Andorra.
Pedro Ledesma III
Born in South Dakota and raised in a small town in Texas,
Pedro Ledesma III
has always appreciated wide, open spaces and small communities. Exploring the world and embracing his Korean-Mexican heritage have given Pedro a unique understanding of family and culture. From Texas public schools to MIT and Columbia University, Pedro’s education has been a constant source of inspiration and fueled his lifelong curiosity. His diverse background, including work on Wall Street, research in international development economics, and experience as a teacher, informs his understanding of global dynamics.
Pedro’s photography journey has evolved from documenting beauty in everyday moments to using his camera as a tool for social change, echoing the justice-focused themes he probed in economics. He explores the complexities of social and economic inequities, as well as his own identity in America as a mixed-race, Southern Baptist-raised, Ivy League graduate. Through his creative work, Pedro aims to spark positive change toward greater equality by exploring how these national issues unfold in the small towns across America.
Matthew Ludak
I met Logan on my last trip along the Ohio River. I was walking through the small village of Bridgeport, Ohio which is across the river from Wheeling, West Virginia, when I came across Logan sitting in front of his apartment smoking a cigarette and enjoying some of the last warm days of fall. We got to talking and Logan was quick to tell me about his life and experiences living along the river. Something that lingered with me, long after I made his portrait was the answer he gave when I asked him what there was to do around “here” for fun. He laughed and responded “There’s nothing to do here, you gotta go to Youngstown or Pittsburgh if you are looking for fun”.
Matthew Ludak
is a documentary photographer and photojournalist focusing on long-term projects about economic disparity, de-industrialization, and environmentalism in the United States.
In 2021, Ludak was published and exhibited internationally and received an Artist Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. In 2022, his work was shown in the Wisconsin Biennial at the Museum of Wisconsin Art and the Soho Photo Gallery in New York City. In 2022, he had his first solo and international exhibition in Braga, Portugal, as part of the city’s annual Photography and Visual Arts Festival. In 2022, Ludak was invited to attend the prestigious Eddie Adam’s workshop in Calicoon, New York, where he received the National Geographic award for his work. In 2024, Ludak was included in GUP Magazine’s FRESH EYES International 2024 Talent and received an Award of Excellence from the Alexia Foundation.
Ludak’s work has been featured in The Washington Post, The Economist, TIME, Bloomberg, and Fox Business.
He holds a BA in History and English from Drew University, a Certificate in Documentary Studies from the International Center for Photography, and an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
Emily Hanako Momohara
Emily Hanako Momohara
was born in Seattle, Washington, where she grew up in a mixed-race family. Her work centers around issues of heritage multiculturalism, immigration, and social justice.
Momohara has exhibited nationally, most notably at the Japanese American National Museum in a two-person show titled
Sugar|Islands
. She has been a visiting artist at several residency programs, including the Center for Photography at Woodstock, Headlands Center for the Arts, Fine Arts Work Center, and Red Gate Gallery, Beijing. In 2015, her work was included in the Chongqing Photography and Video Biennial. Momohara has created socially driven billboards for For Freedoms and United Photo Industries. She lives and works in Cincinnati, where she serves as the Interim Studio Arts Chair, a Professor, and heads the photography major at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.
Xan Padrón
Galician photographer
Xan Padrón
(Ourense, Spain, 1969) received his first camera at the hands of the photojournalist Enrique Reza, who awakened in him a passion for the photography of the everyday, just as his father, the journalist Luís Padrón, awakened in him the patience to listen and observe stories.
After diverse street photography projects in New York City (Human City, Motion City, Visions of New York), in 2011 he began his acclaimed project, “Time Lapse”: a collection of portraits of various cities through the people who inhabit them. His series Time Lapse has been exhibited, among other places, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, the Pfizer Building in New York, and the Sala Valente in Spain. Xan Padrón’s artwork is held in corporate and private collections across the globe. In 2023, Padrón was invited by the MTA Arts & Design Program to exhibit at the Bryant Park subway station in New York City. His work has been featured in international publications such as New England Review, Die Zeit Magazine, and Photo World Magazine, as well as on the cover of academic anthologies like “Race, Class and Gender in the United States” (MacMillan, 2020) and “Personal Networks” (Cambridge University Press, 2021). His Time Lapses were also selected for the Art on Link program by the City of New York. Xan Padrón’s career as a photographer is deeply intertwined with his previous profession as a professional musician. For over a decade, he toured with his bass and his camera, capturing life surrounding the musicians he collaborated with. As a photographer of artists and concerts, he has worked in an official capacity for APAP (Association of Performing Arts Professionals, United States) and has contributed to publications such as Inside Arts and The Writer Magazine (United States). Xan Padrón shares his life with musician, educator, and writer Cristina Pato. Since 2005, he has spent his time between Galicia and New York City and has his studio at Mana Contemporary (NJ).
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Here’s how to create your Griffin Member Profile
Welcome we are excited to have you and your creativity seen by so many.
1: Log into your membership account
2: To create a profile you must be logged in and be a
supporter or above
otherwise you will not see the add a profile button.
3: You can find the Griffin Salon on the Members Drop down in our Main Navigation on the home page or by starting here –
https://griffinmuseum.org/griffin-salon/
4: A button that says
Create Your Member Profile
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5: If you are logged in and have already created a profile you also won’t see the add a profile button
( the button launches the form
) but you will see an edit and delete icon next to your name and only yours.
6. Fill in your Artist Statement, Bio and upload up to 10 images.
NOTE
Sharing your contact information is in your hands. You can select to make your phone and email public or keep it private.
Once you have updated your information, it sends a ping to museum staff to approve the images and text, and your page will then be listed on the public website. The museum reserves the right to refuse content that is offensive, harmful, or divisive.
Images that include graphic, explicit, or politically divisive content will not be approved.
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Amy Rindskopf's Terra Novus
At the market, I pick each one up, pulled in by the shapes as they sit together, waiting. I feel its heft in my hand, enjoy the textures of the skin or peel, and begin to look closer and closer. The patterns on each individual surface marks them as distinct. I push further still, discovering territory unseen by the casual observer, a new land. I am like a satellite orbiting a distant planet, taking the first-ever images of this newly envisioned place.
This project started as an homage to Edward Weston’s Pepper No. 30 (I am, ironically, allergic to peppers). As I looked for my subject matter at the market, I found that I wasn’t drawn to just one single fruit or vegetable. There were so many choices, appealing to both hand and eye. I decided to print in black and white to help make the images visually more about the shapes, and not about guessing which fruit is smoothest, which vegetable is greenest.
Artistic Purpose/Intent
Artistic Purpose/Intent
Tricia Gahagan
Photography has been paramount in my personal path of healing from disease and
connecting with consciousness. The intention of my work is to overcome the limits of the
mind and engage the spirit. Like a Zen koan, my images are paradoxes hidden in plain
sight. They are intended to be sat with meditatively, eventually revealing greater truths
about the world and about one’s self.
John Chervinsky’s photography is a testament to pensive work without simple answers;
it connects by encouraging discovery and altering perspectives. I see this scholarship
as a potential to continue his legacy and evolve the boundaries of how photography can
explore the human condition.
Growing my artistic skill and voice as an emerging photographer is critical, I see this as
a rare opportunity to strengthen my foundation and transition towards an established
and influential future. I am thirsty to engage viewers and provide a transformative
experience through my work. I have been honing my current project and building a plan
for its complete execution. The incredible Griffin community of mentors and the
generous funds would be instrumental for its development. I deeply recognize the
hallmark moment this could be for the introduction of the work. Thank you for providing
this incredible opportunity for budding visions and artists that know they have something
greater to share with the world.
Fran Forman RSVP