John Chervinsky Emerging Photographer Scholarship Winners - Griffin Museum of Photography

John Chervinsky Emerging Photographer Scholarship Winners - Griffin Museum of Photography
Skip to primary navigation
Skip to footer
The
John Chervinsky Emerging Photographer Scholarship
seeks to recognize, encourage and reward photographers with the potential to create a body of work and sustain solo exhibitions.
Awarded annually, the Scholarship provides recipients with a monetary award of $3,000, exhibition of their work at the Griffin Museum of Photography, and a volume from John’s personal library of photography books. The Scholarship seeks to provide a watershed moment in the professional lives of emerging photographers, providing them with the support and encouragement necessary to develop, articulate and grow their own vision for photography.
Established in 2015, the scholarship has supported eight talented photographers in elevating their craft, creating new works, telling new stories and showing us their vision. We are honored to share their works here. Congratulations to these extraordinary artists.
2025 Winner |
Roland Hartley
The Fall Line
Exhibition scheduled – 17 December, 2026 – 11 January, 2027
Jurors:
Judith Donath
and
Fern L. Nesson
© Roland Hartley
© Roland Hartley
© Roland Hartley
© Roland Hartley
© Roland Hartley
© Roland Hartley
The Fall Line
is a photographic investigation of the points where rivers cross the geological boundary between the hard bedrock of the North American Piedmont and the softer sediments of the Atlantic Coastal Plain.
At these crossings, changes in geology produced rapids and falls that halted upstream navigation by European colonists. Across the eastern United States, these natural limits fixed the locations of early European colonial transport, trade, and industry. Cities such as Philadelphia, Trenton, Richmond, and Raleigh emerged not by chance, but where geography forced decisions—and in doing so shaped political and economic development.
The Fall Line offers a framework to explore how topography influences civic and economic order. It examines how those early geographic constraints continue to structure the American landscape since the era of European colonial expansion and settlement into the present.
The Fall Line is both a physical and conceptual threshold: a point where natural forces and human ambition converged. I document what remains of this zone—canals, millraces, portage routes, factory ruins, and abandoned railbeds—and consider how these structures function as evidence of labor, industry, and the persistence of geography. My work grows from a longstanding engagement with land and infrastructure, an experience that shapes my practice to treat landscapes as archives of power, extraction, and settlement.
For this project, I travel the historic Fall Line corridor from New Jersey to North Carolina, mapping hydraulic and industrial sites, and photographing visible remains of the original logic of settlement. I plan to expand this body of work in the coming months. The completed series will consist of approximately thirty prints.
This work is urgent because the physical remnants of the Fall Line are disappearing. Urban expansion, highway development, and neglect are erasing canals, millworks, and early industrial structures. Yet the underlying geography—the drop in the river, the boundary in the stone—remains a quiet but active force, and continues to direct human movement and settlement.
About Roland Hartley –
I divide my time between New York City, Miami, and Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. This movement between urban energy, coastal vibrancy, and rural tranquility shapes my vision and draws me to celebrate contrast in my photography. My landscapes and urban imagery often employ dramatic tonal ranges, reflecting the diversity of environments I inhabit.
Recently, I have focused on monochrome photography as part of my exploration of the platinum-palladium printing process. This traditional technique has become an important element of my practice, offering rich tonal depth that enhances the contrasts and subtleties central to my work. My photography invites viewers to consider how contrasting elements—much like the varied places I call home—can reveal unexpected harmonies when brought into conversation with one another.
2025 Finalists
Brian Edwards Jr.
Brian Edwards Jr.
is a Houston-based photographer and filmmaker raised in Dayton, Texas. His work explores the beauty and authenticity of the human experience. It is his vision that the art he creates can be a catalyst for connection, wonder, and telling lesser-known stories of rich heritage. Brian’s compelling imagery has been featured in published magazines and has garnered him opportunities to tell stories all around the world.’
Brittanie Bondie
Brittanie Bondie
is a process-based analogue photographer based in Ypsilanti, Michigan, working primarily with alternative and historical image-making methods. Her practice blurs the boundaries between photography and painting, pushing the medium through tactile, material-driven processes. Using camera-less techniques and surface manipulation, her work creates an unconventional experience that exists between image and object.
She holds an MFA in Creative Photography from the University of Florida (2015), a BFA in Photography from Kendall College of Art and Design (2011), and a BA in Studio Art from Western Michigan University (2007). Her work has been exhibited nationally at venues including Woman Made Gallery (Chicago), Playground Detroit, and MOCA North Miami, and has been featured in
Aeonian Magazine
and Woman Made Gallery’s 25th International Open.
Bondie is a recipient of an Artist Grant from the Vermont Studio Center and a Graduate Fellowship from the University of Florida. Through her experimental practice, she offers alternative ways of experiencing photography, inviting viewers to reconsider visual perception and their relationship with the natural world.
David Gary Lloyd
Photography by David Gary Lloyd
David Gary Lloyd
(b. 1985 Annapolis, Maryland) lives and works in Miami, Florida. He received BFAs in Photography and Graphic Design from the Savannah College of Art and Design (2009). Lloyd’s practice spans photography, digital painting, and mixed media, intertwining Queer symbolism and portraiture to explore identity, resilience, and the LGBTQIA+ experience within natural and contrived environments.
Selected solo exhibition includes
“Garden Shadows of the Sun”
(2025), Gallery 255, Coral Gables, Florida. Selected group exhibitions include
“Visions from Inside These Walls”
(2024), Coral Gables Museum, Coral Gables, Florida;
“Art Miami”
(2023), Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, Miami, Florida;
“Architectural Photography Showcase”
(2023), Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, Florida.
Lloyd received the Corral and Cathers Art Fund (2025), and his work is held in the collection of the Coral Gables Museum (Coral Gables, Florida). His photography has been featured in
Vogue México
Harper’s Bazaar Brasil
Wallpaper Magazine
Purple Muse Magazine
, and
DesignMilk
Eliott Peacock
Eliott Peacock
was born in Seattle in 1973 and raised by a painter (his mother) and a jazz bassist and composer (his father), who encouraged him to follow his creative instincts. After high school, he moved to Aspen, Colorado, where he spent seven years mountaineering and competing in snowboarding. He returned to Seattle in 1999 and earned a BA in International Affairs from the University of Washington in 2004. During his studies, he conducted grant-funded research and leadership projects in Norway, France, and Italy, focusing on genetic ecology and international policy.
In 2017, he relocated to the Catskill Mountains in New York and began working in black-and-white photography as an art practice in 2020. His work reflects a deep connection to nature, a fascination with optics and light, and a trust in perception as a guide for spontaneous, improvisational image-making. Through a novel use of optics, he creates surreal imagery that challenges assumptions of camera-based photography, exploring worlds within worlds of light and returning with visual records of these journeys.
Jacob Mitchell
Jacob Mitchell
(born 1997, Shreveport, Louisiana) is an American photographic artist currently based in New Orleans. He has exhibited in
Louisiana Contemporary
at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in 2020 and consecutively from 2021–23. In early 2024, his work was featured in the 37th Annual McNeese National Works on Paper Exhibition.
His past achievements include a commissioned photograph for
The New Yorker
, participation in the
NO DEAD ARTISTS
exhibition at Ferrara Showman Gallery, and
Across Common Grounds
at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. Most recently, his work was included in the contemporary photography exhibition
The Unending Stream: Chapter I
at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.
Leah DeVun
Leah DeVun
is a Professor at Rutgers University, where she teaches in the departments of History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She creates photography and writes books about LGBTQ history, science and medicine, religion, utopian communities, and gender and the body. DeVun is the author of the award-winning books
The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance
(Columbia, 2021) and
Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Time
(Columbia, 2009), and co-editor of “Trans*historicities”(Duke, 2018, with Zeb Tortorici). Her writing has appeared in
Radical History Review, GLQ, WSQ (Women’s Studies Quarterly), Osiris, ASAP/Journal, postmedieval, Journal of the History of Sexuality,
and a number of books. She has lectured internationally and received grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, UCLA, Huntington Library, and Stanford Humanities Center. She is currently the George William Cottrell Jr. Member at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.
DeVun’s photography has exhibited in the US and internationally, including at Baxter Street, Bemis Center, Blue Sky: Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts, BGSQD, BRIC, Center for Photography, Woodstock, Colorado Photographic Arts Center, Doc (Paris), Drexel University’s Pearlstein Gallery, Galerij Verbeeck (Antwerp), Houston Center for Photography, Kate Werble Gallery, La Mama, LatchKey Gallery, Mrs. Gallery, NYU’s Tracey-Barry Gallery, Royal Photographic Society (Bristol, UK), Rutgers University’s Mary H. Dana Women Series Gallery, September Gallery, Yale University’s Green Gallery, and other venues. Museum shows include the Blanton Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Leslie-Lohman Museum, the Stonewall National Museum and Archives, the Tang Teaching Museum, and the ONE Archives Gallery and Museum at USC. She has been selected for reviews and festivals such as the New York Portfolio Review, Photolucida’s Critical Mass Top 50, SPRING/BREAK, PhotoVogue Festival (with Eye Mama Project), and ImageNation (Milan and Paris). She is a 2025 NYSCA/NYFA Fellow and was longlisted for the 2024 Aperture Portfolio Prize.
Mari Saxon
Mari Saxon
is a Russian-born conceptual photographer based in the USA. With an academic background in the arts and a 25-year, award-winning career in architecture, she constructs images that combine theatricality, humor, and echoes of Old Master painting. Photography became her primary medium after relocating to the USA in 2022 and leaving architecture behind.
Through staged realities and character-driven narratives, she explores identity, transformation, and unconventional beauty, blending absurdity with psychological depth.
Her work has been internationally awarded, published, and exhibited in 40+ exhibitions worldwide. In addition to her practice, she leads workshops and artist talks, fostering dialogue on diversity, self-exploration, and personal myth-making.
Mehrdad Mirzaie
Mehrdad Mirzaie
is an Iranian interdisciplinary artist, assistant curator, and educator currently based in Phoenix, Arizona. His practice centers on the mental image, the politics of seeing, the politics of memory, and historical images, particularly in regions marked by censorship, state violence, and historical erasure. Working primarily with photography, archives, and alternative image-making processes, he explores how visual histories are preserved, reinterpreted, or lost, emphasizing the dialogue between bygone eras and contemporary contexts.
Mirzaie’s research extends into the history and philosophy of photography, where he examines the role of images as conduits for historical narratives and storytelling. He currently serves as Assistant Curator and Collection Assistant at Northlight Gallery, where he continues to expand his curatorial and research experience. He received his MFA in Photography from Arizona State University in 2025 and is currently pursuing an MA in Art History at ASU, with a focus on image-based art in Iran and within a broader global context.
He is also the founder of the Tasvir Archive Project (established in December 2022), a research initiative dedicated to the history of Iranian image-based art and the studying of photographic practices in Iran.
Russ Bray
Russ Bray
is a documentary photographer born and raised in the Midwest. He earned a BFA in photography from Missouri State University in 2023 and is currently completing an MFA in photojournalism at the University of Missouri. His master’s research centers on self-reflection through photography, focusing on the most formative aspect of his upbringing: poverty.
Bray grew up impoverished, living in a trailer park for most of his life until college. Long ashamed and reluctant to speak about his past, he turned to photography as a means of understanding and addressing it. This led to
fearing what i won’t become
, his undergraduate senior project. He is now expanding this work to focus on people separated from himself and his family, aiming to make the project more widely relatable and foster understanding. His guiding principle is to be human first, artist second—using photography to record the shared traits that define what it means to be human.
2024 Winner |
Bridget Jourgensen
Homeshadows
Jurors:
Arlette and Gus Kayafas,
Frazier King
, and
Bruce Myren
© Bridget Jourgensen,
Doorway
© Bridget Jourgensen,
Neck
© Bridget Jourgensen
© Bridget Jourgensen
Homeshadows
is a study of solitude.  Over the course of a year and at the height of the pandemic in 2020, I found myself in a new home and very much alone on a day-to-day basis.   As an introvert and sometimes anxious person, it was a bit of a dream come true.  But while I wasn’t exactly lonely, I was yearning to use my time creatively and feel connected to something while the world outside raged.    I began to document the light and shadows that streamed through the windows of my house.  Everything in my home was new to me, and I had the pleasure of watching the seasons unfold from the inside.  I sometimes put myself in the images to round out the developing narrative.  I worked to capture light and manage composition with great attention to mood and detail in order to convey the sense of solitude, beauty, and mystery that I was experiencing during this period of time.  Although I had been taking photographs for many years, this was my first intentional series and attempt at cohesive storytelling through images.
About Bridget Jourgensen –
My love of photography began as a young girl leafing through my mother’s Vogue magazines and feeling enthralled by the lush images within. As a pre-teen I made images of my family with a Kodak Instamatic 100, and documented the mundane details of my day-to-day life. It seemed that everything looked more glamorous printed on 4×4 squares, accompanied by strips of eerie negatives. I was hooked.
As an adult photographing a world which is increasingly complex, my lens seeks out simple, quiet subjects that are familiar yet presented in a distinctive way. Influenced by the work of Vivian Maier, Gordon Parks, and Sally Mann, I’m drawn to photographing people in the world around me. Whether that world is within my own four walls or a country I’ve never stepped foot in, my desire to observe others is the foundation for a great deal of my work. By sharing my images, I hope to spark human connections and emphasize our commonality through a moment captured in time.
2024 Finalists
NO INFO
Finalists:
2021 John Chervinsky Emerging Photographer Scholarship
Scholarship Awardee:
Justin Michael Emmanuel
Jurors:
Tricia Capello
Br
uce Myren
, and
Connie and Jerry Rosenthal
© Justin Michael Emmanuel,
Sisters
© Justin Michael Emmanuel,
Darien & Granny
© Justin Michael Emmanuel,
Cowrie Shell
© Justin Michael Emmanuel,
Celeste
© Justin Michael Emmanuel,
Allyson & Alex
© Justin Michael Emmanuel
With this photographic series, I present to the viewer a resistance to systemic racism and also a window into understanding what makes us human. I hope that by showing imagery of touch, warmth, laughter, and love, I may begin to unravel and break down any preconceived notions or ideas that do not give resonance to those qualities in regards to Blackness in the mind of the viewer. I am desperately attempting to declare my own humanity and have it recognized by others. By showing the gentle side of our human nature I am hopeful that the viewers will recognize their own familial behaviors and interactions, thus bridging gaps that are set by race, ethnicity, nationality, culture, and economic social-political forces. This work desires to deconstruct and challenge the mainstream historical imagery that has described Blackness in a light that wasn’t its own. I hope that the importance of these images are not only determined by what they express visually or culturally but also by the fact that they are documents of the human capacity to care for and feel empathy towards one another. Most importantly, the purpose of this work is to create empathy among people by showing the human aptitude to love. In the Bible, it is said that at the tower of Babel, God, frustrated and threatened by the power of human cooperation, fractured our language so that we could no longer understand each other and work together. And while an ancient story that reverberates with myth, the essence of this still rings true. That when we work together, not even the heavens will be the limit of our greatness. That God himself will pale in comparison to the vastness of our achievements. If only we could work together, we could become so much more. It is as the writer Eric Williams once said, “Together we aspire, together we achieve.” –
JME
About Justin Michael Emmanuel –
Born in Hartford, CT, in 1995,
Justin-Michael Emmanuel
is a mixed media artist that primarily uses photography and the written word to explore ideas of family, love, and blackness. Justin was first exposed to photography in 2015 during his time at Hampshire College where he received both the David E. Smith and Elaine Mayes fellowship awards for his photographic work on Afrofuturism. He then completed a master of fine arts degree at the University of Hartford Art School in 2021 where he also won the Stanley Fellman Award for his graduate thesis work A Facefull of Mangos. Photographs from that series have been included in group exhibitions at the Chrysler Museum of Art, The Center for Photographers of Color, and the Joseloff Gallery. Justin currently resides in Quincy, MA, where he continues to make photographs that critically engage with his community. By using the camera to show our human aptitude to love, Justin hopes that his photographs will help give people the tools they need to shape the world around them.
2021 Finalists
NO INFO
Finalists:
2020 John Chervinsky Emerging Photographer Scholarship
Scholarship Awardee:
Tavon Taylor
Jurors:
Rachel Fein-Smolinski
Jennifer Georgescu
, and
Michelle Rogers-Pritzl
© Tavon Taylor
© Tavon Taylor
© Tavon Taylor
© Tavon Taylor
“Within the last few months, I’ve started my photo and video-based project,
The Last Rose of Summer.
In this body of work, I am discovering my family’s history within the DC and Maryland areas. So far, I’ve done interviews, filed archived images, make images of my loved ones, photographed our surroundings, and more. There’s so much that I’m thinking about and planning for the blossoming of this project. I’m excited to get to know more about my ancestry. I would love to be able to properly document the richness and depth that branches back far before myself. Through discovering and sharing my own lineage, I hope to create inspiring imagery celebrating the lives and legacy of those who’ve once walked this earth. In this process of discovering moments that have come before me, I am discovering myself.
The last rose of summer
gives me the chance to proudly and boldly take control of my own narrative as a queer black man navigating in today’s social climate. In this process, I am celebrating the people in my family that I love and those that we’ve lost. In sharing these stories, with a larger audience, I hope to inspire people to value those closest to them.”
About Tavon Taylor –
Tavon Taylor
is a photography-based artist who uses visual narrative to explore meditative image-making. Through portraiture, still life, and landscapes, his work centers on themes of memory, representation, and identity. He questions concepts of beauty while creating detailed and delicate photographs. Tavon’s work embraces intimacy and uses the power of imagery to spark dialogue and reflection.
Finalists:
NO PHOTOS
Logan Bellew
Becky Behar
Maria Contreras-Coll
Dylan Everett
Alayna N. Pernell
Kendall Pestana
Daniel Seiffert
2019 John Chervinsky Emerging Photographer Scholarship
Scholarship Awardee:
Michelle Rogers Pritzl
Jurors:
Elizabeth Corden, Jan Potts,
Blue Mitchell,
and
Kirsten Rian
© Michelle Rogers-Pritzl,
Peculiar and Delicate Organism
© Michelle Rogers-Pritzl,
The Mantle of Reserve
© Michelle Rogers-Pritzl
© Michelle Rogers-Pritzl,
The Distant Restless Water
© Michelle Rogers-Pritzl,
The Climax of Her Fate
© Michelle Rogers-Pritzl,
The Shore Was Far Behind
“Since I began graduate school in Boston in 2012 I have been on a journey of deconstruction of faith and reclamation of my life for myself which catapulted me into a divorce in 2014. I knew then that I would eventually tell the story of this final step in leaving behind the faith I was raised in and an abusive
situation. Not Waving But Drowning tells the story of my marriage and my escape. It is my own stand
against oppression of any people by religion or other factors.
Although my work has been about my own journey I believe in the power of photography to change and
empower people. I feel that it is more important than ever to stand up and tell my story openly. When I left my husband, many people believed I should run away and hide in shame. Instead, living the life that is right for me, free from the stifles of religion has brought me joy I never imagined.
I want to share my photography with a larger audience, and to continue developing my career as an
emerging photographer. The grant money would allow me to finish printing and framing this series, which would enable me to exhibit the series in its’ entirety.” – MRP
About Michelle Rogers Pritzl –
Michelle Rogers Pritzl
was born and raised Southern Baptist in Washington DC area.  She fell in love with photography in a high school darkroom and has been making images ever since.  Pritzl received a BFA from the Corcoran College of Art and Design in 2001, a MA in Art Education from California State University in 2010, and a MFA in Photography from Lesley University College of Art, where she studied with Christopher James, in 2014.   Her work explores the tension between past and present in our psychological lives as well as the photographic medium itself, often working in a digital/analogue hybrid and using historic alternative processes.
Pritzl has been widely exhibited in New York, New Orleans, Fort Collins, Boston and Washington DC, as well as internationally.  Pritzl was a Critical Mass Top 250 finalist in 2013, 2014, and 2017; she has been featured in Lenscratch, Fraction Magazine, Diffusion Magazine, Lumen Magazine, Shots Magazine, Your Daily Photograph via the Duncan Miller Gallery amongst others.
Pritzl has taught photography and drawing in both high school and college for the last 12 years, including as an adjunct instructor at Lesley University College of Art, and leading workshops at the Griffin Museum of Photography and Vermont Center for Photography.  She lives on a farm in the Finger Lakes with her husband John and their son.
Finalists:
NO INFO
2018 John Chervinsky Emerging Photographer Scholarship
Scholarship Awardee:
Jennifer Georgescu
Jurors:
Crista Dix
Frazier King
, and
Laura Moya
and
Aline Smithson
© Jennifer Georgescu
© Jennifer Georgescu
© Jennifer Georgescu
© Jennifer Georgescu
In 2015, I became a mother.  I was prepared for the grueling labor, and sleepless nights, but the loss of my sense of self can as a surprise.  I had no time to think and I began to feel like a shell of a person. My early days of motherhood were alienating and awful as well as sentimental and dear. I began to see myself as defined only by a relationship
I felt that my son was an appendage of myself; the embodiment of self and other.  It was hard to accept that he was a growing, changing person while I was to remain forever split. When he is near my thoughts are entangled around him and when I am away I cannot seem to be the person I was before.
A child is how we remain on Earth; they are our legacies. As I see my son grow I feel my time begin to speed up; I feel my decay.  When we think about birth we must realize our death. Motherhood is precious and raw; wonderful and dark. – JG
About Jennifer Georgescu –
Jennifer Georgescu’s
work describes instinctual aspects of humanity correlating to and differing from societal structuring.  With a background in painting and photographic arts, she utilizes medium format film photography, installation, and digital technology.  Her projects analyze dualisms in language, relationships, mythologies and control.  “I often search for the balance that exists in between these dichotomies.  This is how I view humanity; always teetering on the line between fiction and reality, domination and submissiveness, self and other.”
Georgescu is based out of San Diego, CA. Recent exhibitions include the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, and the Center for Fine Art Photography. Georgescu is the 2018 recipient of the John Chervinsky Emerging Photographer Scholarship.
Finalists:
no info
2017 John Chervinsky Emerging Photographer Scholarship
Scholarship Awardee:
Rachel Fein-Smolinski
Jurors:
Ede Bresler
Karen Davis
Jay Gould
, and
Shane Lavalette
© Rachel Fein-Smolinski
© Rachel Fein-Smolinski
© Rachel Fein-Smolinski
© Rachel Fein-Smolinski
© Rachel Fein-Smolinski
© Rachel Fein-Smolinski
© Rachel Fein-Smolinski
“My work is about pleasure, neurosis, objectivity and subjectivity. It is about the visceral and
visual satisfaction associated with the history of the documentation and depiction of bio- medical phenomena. I use a mixture of the visual indulgence of high commerce, the sacred and compulsive laboratory space, and the expansive mode of science fiction and its ability to appropriate the authority of knowledge to create speculative installation spaces in the visual field. I look at what the relationship between neurosis, intelligence, subjectivity, objectivity and visual. indulgence is within the history of the pursuit of knowledge.
The history of science has held fast to the aesthetic of objective authority, with observation as the primary source of knowledge in scientific inquiry. I scrutinize the bio-medical and techno-scientific gaze, using its authority to create discreet objects, incorporating photography, video and sculpture to search for the neurotic impetus within the fields of intellectual pursuit.
I use an alter-ego, a caricature of a neurotic, intellectual hero, constructed from cultural signifiers, as a Jewish woman, raised with a cultural identity that idealizes intellect to the point of fetishization. This is a stylized performance of a masculine archetype (yes, I am exploring what it means to be a woman through the usage of masculinity and its historical relationship to authority) used in science fiction, tv doctor dramas, and retellings of the histories of technological advancement. Intellectual inquiry is a socially acceptable form of obsessive, and scopophilic (visually indulgent) behavior. It is a space where unhealthy impulses are sublimated into the field of intellectual pursuit. All is forgiven if the hero’s brilliance outshines their character flaws.
Bio-medical exploration is a fantasy of constant visibility. To see is to know, and to know is to
succeed. With techniques like dissections, bodies are eviscerated so that the spectator can
incorporate the sight of the others’ internal organs into their own body of knowledge. Or
microscopy, where an imaging apparatus is used to augment the viewer’s vision in order to look at, and infer new knowledge from, otherwise invisible mechanisms, ideally infinitely. However, as there is no such thing as a purely objective gaze—observation is always tied to a host of psychological associations. To see is to concurrently project and consume. Through this playacting of biological experiments and procedures, I tease out the role of visual pleasure in intellectual inquiry, resulting in installation spaces that reproduce the clinical, experimental, and educational. In this way, I explore what Foucault described in his 1963 book The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception, as “…that region of ‘subjective symptoms’ that—for the doctor—defines not the mode of knowledge, but the world of objects to be known.”
About Rachel Fein-Smolinski –
Rachel Fein-Smolinski
(b. 1992 Buffalo, NY) is an artist and educator with a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from Syracuse University. Fein-Smolinski has been published in Kris Graves Project’s
Solace
, the design, technology, science, and science fiction website
Gizmodo,
Photo Emphasis,
and
Orenbeg Press.
Their self-published artist book
Psychodiagnostik
(2020)is for sale through Visual Studies Workshop Press. They received the Jurors Choice award from SF Camerawork’s survey exhibition FORECAST 2020, a 2020 Artist Residency at LATITUDE in Chicago, IL, the 2019 Visual Studies Workshop residency, Duke University’s Archive of Documentary Arts and History of Medicine’s Research grant, the 2018 Wynn Newhouse Award for Artists of Excellence with Disabilities, and the Silver Eye Center for Photography’s Fellowship 19 International Award Honorable Mention. Their 2019 video,
Referred Pain
, was shown in the
Video in America
exhibition at
The Everson Museum
in Syracuse, NY,
SPACES
in Cleveland, OH, and
Silver Eye Center for Photography
. They have had solo shows at The Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art, The Griffin Museum of Photography, and SUNY Upstate Medical University’s Health Sciences Library. They have previously worked as the Digital Services Coordinator at Light Work, and are currently a Lecturer of Studio Arts with a concentration in Photography in The School of Art + Design at The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Finalists:
no info
2016 Winner |
Tricia Gahagan
11:11 Mirroring Consciousness
Jurors:
Leslie K. Brown
and
Mary Virginia Swanson
© Tricia Gahagan,
Catch Me When the Sky Falls
© Tricia Gahagan,
4:44
© Tricia Gahagan,
The Last Goodbye. The First Hello
“11:11 Mirroring Consciousness”
illustrates the introspective significance of the moment; the notion that every experience, relationship, decision, and habit is a mirror. These found moments capture this mirror and freeze space from within consciousness; nothing is constructed. They are subtle, hidden moments that reveal insights, guidance, and answers.
Each image appears as a question, a paradox, a koan: a means to challenge the limits of the analytical mind and engage contemplation. They blur the lines between perception and illusion, darkness and light. Their contrast coupled with silence necessitates a heightened awareness to look deeper inside while witnessing the everyday world around us.
About Tricia Gahagan –
Tricia
Gahagan
is a fine art photographer born and raised in Providence, RI. She is a first-time recipient of the John Chervinsky Emerging Photographer Scholarship from The Griffin Museum of Photography. Her work has been exhibited and published throughout the United States and internationally. She began her career in fine art photography after over a decade in marketing and advertising. In 2012 she attended Corcoran College of Art & Design then continued to the New England School of Photography in Boston. She then went on to study under Joyce Tenneson and Cig Harvey.In addition to her art she is a contributor to LA Yoga and Boston Yoga magazines and serves on the board of New
Harmony Farm. Gahagan is based out of Newbury, MA with her young family. When she’s not behind her camera she loves doing yoga, hiking, and meditating.
2016 Finalists
Vanessa Filley
A Nursery Rhyme For You
: As a child some weekends we’d visit my grandparents in a farmhouse of decaying grandeur in New Jersey, other weekends we’d stay home and traipse through the halls of New York City museums.  I always imagined how these places could be different, how they were a partial portal to another time, an imagined life.  In the attic of my grandparents home, there were dust covered steamer trunks filled with fraying ballgowns while the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art offered a glimpse into the interiors of colonial homes.  I dreamt of wearing those ballgowns and living in another era that I could shapeshift to be different than it actually was.
As the mother of two girls with fanciful imaginations growing up in an era when childhood fantasy is interrupted or negated by technology, I have sought to preserve and create for my daughters a little bit of the magic that I longed in my own childhood. At the same time, I’ve tried to impart an honest sense of the world we live in today.”
About Vanessa Filley:
Vanessa Filley is a mixed media artist who lives and works in Evanston, IL. She is interested in the energetic threads that orient and connect us, ground us in place and time, yet tether us to our ancestral past and future, the lines that bring us home. Her work ranges from large-scale sculptural installations to tiny embroidery pieces to poems, photographs, and drawings in watercolor, pinprick, and thread. Filley was voted one of Photolucida’s Top 50 in 2018 and has shown work nationally and internationally including the Sonoma County Museum of Art, Berlin Photography Week, the Lishui International Photography Festival, FOCUS PhotoLA, Stricoff Gallery, Galerie Joseph Turene, Western Michigan University, Vivid Art Gallery, Arbor3Arts, The Affordable Art Fair, The Nashville Public Library, the Harold Washington Library in Chicago, the US Consulate General in Saudi Arabia and the inaugural Cosmic Geometries show at Secrist Beach in 2024.
Ville Kansanen
Numen
is a series of photography, video, installation, and land art. The intention of the work is to simulate and interact with natural phenomena revered by our early ancestors as a method to rekindle our primordial connection with Nature.
As we become ever more reliant on science to answer our biggest questions and solve our smallest problems; and as human activity and labor are replaced by technology and convenience, we are in danger of gradually losing ourselves. We rarely touch the ground with our hands or follow the sun to determine our waking hours. Our beginnings become gradually forgotten and regress into our deepest subconscious memories. Our being becomes obscured by layers and layers of thought and human constructs. The spirits of the mountains have been diminished into geological information.
I wanted to create a way to rediscover the primordial feelings of connection and commitment to an ancient Nature; not as a witness of some awesome natural world, but as a maker of human-scale interventions for entering Nature itself.
About Ville Kansanen:
Ville Kansanen (b.1984) is a Finnishmultidisciplinary artist based in California. He works with photography, video, installation, and land art. The central theme of his work is to conceive of the photograph as a unique metaphysical space with idiosyncratic properties of gravity, time, mass, and motion. Employing the traditions and techniques of photography, land, and installation art, Ville creates sculptural work that exists and functions within photographic space.
Ville is an autodidact whose work has been featured in several print and online publications, such as American Photo Magazine, GUP Magazine, SFAQ, and Diffusion Magazine. Ville’s awards include a Hopper Prize and a Lucie Award. His first monograph was released by Datz Press in 2022. He has exhibited internationally with non-profit and private galleries.
Wen Hang Lin
RIFF OF SILENCE: This is a journey of unraveling the intricate symphony orchestrating our daily lives. Through random double exposure, rewinding entire rolls of films after exposure, this project dances between the unexpected and the familiar. The images seek to discover the hidden rhythm, the soulful riffs, and the impromptu narratives that unfold before our eyes.
About Wen Hang Lin:
“Born and raised in Taiwan, Iam a photographer residing in Arizona. In my photography, I bring together elements of realism and abstraction, blending them harmoniously to depict a captivating continuum between the objective world and our subjective perceptions.”
Katie Mack
can’t find photos or info (this series not on the attachted webstie)
Tiziana Rozzo
she doesn’t have a website – so I don’t know what series these photos belong to, and I do not have an artist statement
Rebecca L. Webb
Rebecca Webb (b. Radford, VA, 1967), received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University in 1990. In addition, she completed courses in New York University’s graduate studies program (Steinhardt School of Education and Community Practice), as well as photography and museum studies courses at Harvard University.
Webb is a photographer and an emerging ceramic sculptor. Her photo-based work draws upon a directorial mode; fusing mythology, land art, and place identity. Through this lens she explores the meaning, significance, and symbolism of specific places and how these perceptions contribute to an individual’s conceptualizations of self and self within the greater society.
currently, her series
Uncanny cacti
prints and ceramic sculptures are available at the Elemental contemporary art space in palm springs, ca and until March 2026, her
Uncanny cacti
installation is being exhibited at the San Diego Airport (
Mirror,Mirror
). recently, her
hado
photography series was in a group show at CECUT in Tijuana, Mexico and a print from
beyond index
was exhibited in the Denver photography festival.  Also in 2025, Webb had her work printed in two journal publications). 2024 included group shows at Techne in Oceanside, CA, and at the Athenaeum in La Jolla, CA. In addition, her ceramic sculptures were acquired for personal and hospitality collections. In 2023, a print from Webb’s photographic series
The Desert as a Concept and a Plac
e was acquired by the Fort Worth Museum of Art and in 2022, an image from her
Hado
series was added to the Oceanside Museum of Art’s permanent collection. Her body of work
Beyond Index
and
America Deserta II
were selected as a finalist for the highly competitive and international Critical Mass competition top 200 (2023 and 2021). Webb’s work has been exhibited at the following institutions:  The San Diego International Airport, Griffin Museum of Photography, Cannon Gallery, Thomas Kellner Atelier, Center for Fine Art Photography, Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, The Cooper Union, San Diego Art Institute, and JDC Fine Art. Her  photographs also have appeared in both print and online features in:
Goldenrod Editions, Luupe, Musee Magazine, Trans Architecture Journal, Fraction Magazine, Fotovisura
, among others. Past honors include: two grants from the William Male Foundation, a residency at the high desert test site in joshual tree, ca, and the Millay Artist artist Colony in austerlitz, ny, a finalist for the 2019 San Diego Orchid award for her celebrated series
Hado
, a nomination for the 2017 San Diego Art Prize, and shortlisted for the John Chervinsky Award (Griffin Museum of Photography). Her work is held in both private and public collections, including the collection of Hugh Davies, MOPA, and the City of San Diego, among others.
Webb is also a curator and project manager. She continues provide art consulting services in hospitality and corporate settings.  In 2018, she produced an immersive “24 hour” installation
Ama: Into the Deep
for Wonderspaces at the Lafayette Hotel in San Diego, California, and curated the exhibition
San Diego: The Architecture of Four Ecologies
at the La Jolla Historical Society in La Jolla, California. ‘Four Ecologies’ was called one of the “most memorable” exhibitions in San Diego by the
San Diego Union Tribun
e “
2018 shows us what San Diego’s art scene aspires to be
.”  In 2014, Webb launched and curated/produced the
Filmatic Festival
at UCSD to present immersive experiences at the intersection of science, cinema, and technology, which ran annually until 2016.
Footer
Griffin Museum of Photography 67 Shore Road, Winchester, Ma 01890
781-729-1158
email us
Map
Purchase Museum Admission
Hours: Tues-Sun Noon-4pm
Visit
Hours
Admission
Directions
Handicap Accessability
FAQs
Exhibitions
Exhibitions | Current, Upcoming, Past
Calls for Entry
State of Our Union 2026
Scholarships & Residencies
Richards Family Prize
John Chervinsky Emerging Photographer Scholarship
Carolyn Harder Scholarship
The Cummings Foundation Artist Residency
Griffin State of Mind
Education & Events
Events
In Person
Virtual
Receptions
Photobook Focus
Focus Awards
Education
Classes
Photography Atelier
Professional Development Series
NEPR (New England Portfolio Reviews)
Education Policies
Travel
Members
Become a Member
My Account
Griffin Salon
Member Portfolio Reviews
Member’s Only Events
Give
Give Now
Griffin Futures Fund
John Chervinsky Emerging Photographer Scholarship
Leave a Legacy
About
Our Mission & Museum
Meet Our Staff
Griffin Museum Board of Directors
Arthur Griffin Photo Archive
Get in Touch
Rent the Griffin
Shop
Online Store
Admission
Membership
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 –
4: A button that says
Create Your Member Profile
appears
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.
Please ensure all submitted images and text are appropriate for a public audience.
Member Directory
Form for adding and editing members to the member directory
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