Mart Center of Photography


	Mart Center of Photography US Consulate General in Yekaterinburg FINDING LOVE contemporary american photography


	Heather Evans Smith (USA) Seen Not Heard

	After the birth of my daughter I started creating images to express the emotions of motherhood. These images were of women and never actually included my daughter. But as she has grown from a baby into a force of nature all her own, I was drawn to pull her into my world of conceptual photography and explore our relationship during a time when emotions of love, stress and confusion are high. Seen Not Heard takes its title from the Old English adage “To Be Seen and Not Heard”, a term often thrown about in reference to the desired behavior of children. These images are silent, but they create a voluble visual narrative on the relationship between parent and child. They explore the cycles that are passed down through generations and the tension between keeping to what is known and forging a newer, and perhaps stronger, path. As strong as the close, forever bond between mother and daughter is, there also exists a distance inherent between two different individuals.

	Heather Evans Smith (USA). From the series "Seen Not Heard"

	Heather Evans Smith’s work reflects her southern roots, motherhood, womanhood and a whimsical imagination she relied on as an only child in a rural town. Smith’s work has been featured in solo and joint exhibitions internationally and nationwide, magazines, literary journals and online publications. She has been invited as a guest lecturer at colleges, universities and photography conferences such as Australian Exposure in the Gold Coast, Australia and the Real Life photography conference in Alberta, Canada. Her first monograph, Seen Not Heard, was published by Flash Powder Projects in 2016. She lives and works in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.


	Jennifer Thoreson (USA) Medic

	Medic is a sensitive, intricate glimpse into human relationships during times of need and recovery, and a heartfelt exploration of sacrificial love. The work began wholly on one sentence whispered by my husband while we endured a deeply unsettling time together he held my hand, lay close to me and said softly "I just wish I could take the pain from your body, and put it into mine." I have been fortunate to know incredible love all my life, but at that moment I became suddenly and intensely aware of the magnificent power that exists between people who care for one another. When I was anxious and fighting to fall asleep each night, I began to invent miracle machines; contraptions that heal, deliver hope, legacy, remedy, and redemption. Each image from medic is a thoughtful invention, strange and tender, revealing facets of the delicate human heart. In ten isolated chambers we are witnesses to emotional happenings, exchanges, confrontations, and life decisions. I became particularly fascinated with illustrating the depth of a love relationship by portraying only the individual in many images, exploring the weight of partnership, the sacrificial life perspective, and the burdened, selfless decision-maker in some chambers. We witness life changing moments; mercy, healing, humbling choices, memories recorded and legacies written. In others we see an exchange; affection, tenderness, and sacrifice. In the making of this work, I sought to begin to understand some of the most rare and beautiful relationships in the world, to expose their most frail, vulnerable moments, times of great intensity, and most cherished inner workings. Medic is a dark and sentimental collection of stories about great tests in life, purpose, and the most painful, but also the most glorious times to love.

	Jennifer Thoreson (USA). Manna. From the series "Medic"

	Jennifer Thoreson was born in Weatherford, Texas. When she was still a child, her family moved to a small, conservative town in rural Texas where Thoreson spent her early years. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Texas at Arlington with her bachelor's degree in fine arts in 2001 and later went on to receive her masters in fine arts from the University of New Mexico in 2014. Since then she has taught at the University of New Mexico and the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops, as well as housing informal workshops, both in person and online, in Texas, California, Pennsylvania, and Nevada. Jennifer Thoreson's photographs have received positive reception and she has accepted many awards for her works. Thoreson's work has been showcased in many other exhibitions. She lives and works in Albuquerque, NM

	Jennifer Thoreson (USA) Testament

	Testament explores the endurance of great pain, and the hope and light that wondrously survives. I am drawn to moments where people are on an edge, barely laced together, befriending disaster, remembering something, or exposing something. Testament explores themes of both resilience and dependency; it illustrates the heavy burdens we perpetually carry, and the relentless yearning for release. This work was conceived through a spiritual lens. Matthew 11:28 reads: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Testament probes into obscure, sensitive areas, exploring both earnest religious conviction, and the failure of faith. I am exploring spiritual labor and bearing weight, submission, futileness, and persistence. To create the work, I rented an empty house for a year, and transformed it into a makeshift sanctuary, a freighted space for constructing photographs. I chose the house because it reminds me very much of the home I grew up in; It has a worn-in, gentle quality, and it evokes tangible memories of my religious upbringing. In the photographs, each room is styled with furnishings, textiles, and sentimental objects that I remember from my 1980’s childhood home. I fabricated large-scale sculptural objects for each image, using materials such as wool, linen, clay, and human hair. The materials borrow symbolic language from the Bible, and create alter-like, fleshy masses. I imagine the house as a witness and testament to the curious events depicted in each image; it is a gateway, the silent space just before crossing over. This work is infused with my own inexhaustible, almost irrational empathy. The people in the photographs are in the final phase of bearing weight, the phase just after an aching fall, and just before renewal inevitably begins. I like to know and feel the moment where people fall apart, and saturate my work in it. I am seeking the moment of relief, and relishing in the moments just before it occurs.

	Jennifer Thoreson (USA). Manna. From the series "Testament"


	Jennifer McClure (USA) You Who Never Arrived

	"Amorous passion is a delirium; but such delirium is not alien: everyone speaks of it, it is henceforth tamed. What is enigmatic is the loss of delirium: one returns to...what?" Roland Barthes A Lover's Discourse I have a long history of temporary relationships, punctuated by extended periods of isolation. As forty loomed closer, I decided to examine the meltdowns and the patterns to find out where I was responsible. I restaged my memories in hotel rooms, which are as impersonal and unlived in as my romances tended to be. The opening of old wounds unintentionally shed light on current patterns as lines blurred between the past and the present. The hotel rooms (sets that were always surprises) took on a different role: they came to stand for the complete lack of control that I feel in relationships. I have been chasing an image that doesn't exist. I am more comfortable dreaming about relationships than being in one. The stories I tell myself about my loves are far more dramatic than the actual shared experiences, and the disconnect between fantasy and reality became increasingly apparent with each staged narrative. This project is a mourning for an entire system that no longer works.

	Jennifer McClure (USA). From the series "You Who Never Arrived"

	Jennifer McClure is a fine art and documentary photographer. Her childhood was spent constantly traveling, and she initially studied a degree in English Theory and Literature later on. In 2001, McClure found her roots in photography, taking classes at the School of Visual Arts and the International Centre of Photography, before settling as an image maker in New York. 'Appearances and absences, short stories and poetry' are what serve as her inspiration.

	Amy Friend (Canada) Dare alla Luce

	In my use of the photographic medium, I am not specifically concerned with capturing a “concrete” reality. Instead, I aim to use photography as a medium that offers the possibility of exploring the relationship between what is visible and non-visible. I have been working on the Dare alla Luce series over a period of time; initially, I responded to a collection of vintage photographs, retrieved from a variety of sources both personal and anonymous. Through hand-manipulated interventions I altered and subsequently re-photographed the images “re-making” photographs that oscillate between what is present and what is absent. I aim to comment on the fragile quality of the photographic object but also on the equal fragility of our lives, our history. All are lost so easily. By employing the tools of photography, I “re-use” light by allowing it to shine through the holes in the images. In a somewhat playful and yet, literal manner, I return the subject of the photographs back to the light, while simultaneously bringing them forward. The images are permanently altered; they are lost and reborn, hence the title, Dare alla Luce, an Italian term meaning, “to bring to the light” in reference to birth. The photographs have new meaning, despite the mysteries they harbor. The title of each piece is significant; some titles were taken directly from the notations found written on the photographs, yet those without any indication of provenance were titled to reference the nuances of photography as a medium and the manner in which we interact with these images. As I continued to work on this series, I became more aware of the weight each photograph carries. They display moments of love, excitement, solitude, and fragments of stories that will remain unknown. These photographs are fragments of everything and nothing.

	Amy Friend (Canada). From the series "Dare alla Luce"

	Amy Friend is a Canadian artist who has exhibited nationally and internationally. In 2013, 2014 and 2015, 2019 Friend was selected as one of the top 50 photographs in the juried Critical Mass International Photography Competition. Her work has been featured in publications such as GUP Magazine (Amsterdam), EyeMazing (Thames and Hudson), Magenta Flash Forward Emerging Photography Competition (Canada). Friend has also published the monograph, Stardust with L'Artiere Publishing, Italy, 2018.

	Photo of the exhibition © Ekaterina Popova:




Центр фотографии "Март". Екатеринбург. 8 Марта, 1 Время работы: 11.00 - 22.00 без выходных. Цена билета