A reception for the artists will be held on Friday, June 6, from 5:30 to 7:00pm.

The artists included in Self and Others explore their identity in relationship to others, i.e. family, friends, or society.  Burke and Sage approach the self through family; Matthew focuses on ethnicity; Underhill and Burke examine gender; Tibbs compares her child and adult selves; and Lovera posits a fictionalized self as girl-adventurer, à la Pippi Longstocking.

Jesse Burke’s Masculinity presents a tribe of men—the artist’s friends and three generations of Burke males—in natural settings (signifying, one presumes, their primal selves). References to stereotypical male activities, such as hunting, drinking, and sports serve as backdrops to individual portraits.  Most of the men address the camera directly; a few are caught in moments of stress, vulnerability, or introspection. Landscape and still lives of basketballs or animals (living and dead) serve as rests between the portraits.  Presented in a frieze, the images build sequentially to create a story of masculinity that is nature-bound, family-oriented, and equally defined by foolhardy youthful antics and the calm presence of maturity.

Growing up with a mother who was an elegant beauty, Sage Sohier realized early on that competition was fruitless.  Instead she adopted the role of documenter of her mother’s strength, beauty, and hidden vulnerabilities.  Photographing her mother—alone and while interacting with her sister and herself—Sohier creates a portrait of herself and her family’s dynamics.  

An Indian from India is Annu Palakunnathu Matthew’s response to the American misnomer of identifying Native Americans as Indians.  She rephotographed images of Native American “Indians” by early-twentieth-century photographers, substituting herself (an Indian American) for the Native American.  The images are presented in pairs with titles such as American Indian with Dot on Face/Indian American with Dot on Face and Red Indian/Brown Indian. Matthew associates the nineteenth-century photographs of American Indians with photographs taken by British photographers in colonial-era India. The dry humor of the titles belies the stereotypes that are perpetuated by the photographs.

Linn Underhill addresses gender, using techniques that are similar to Matthew’s. In No-Man’s Land, Underhill restages George Platt Lynes's elegant portraits of writers and artists with herself in the title role. She plays the part of her childhood heroes: T.S. Eliot, Joan Miro, Marsden Hartley, Tennessee Williams, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, among others. Mimicking the glamorous style and subtle lighting of Lynes's black and white images, Underhill draws attention to the homoerotic gaze of Lynes’s photographs. The layering of gender—gay, straight, male, female—mirrors Underhill’s view of a no-man’s land of gender, which she posits as “open to question and contention, owned absolutely by no one.”

In This is a picture of me, Millee Tibbs pairs family snapshots of child-Millee (circa 3–6 years old) with reenactments of adult-Millee in identical clothing and pose. The series is a charming and nostalgic view of the desire to return to childhood and serves also as a meditation on societal views of sexuality, the body, and childhood.  Tibbs views it as an attempt to “locate the self in an image,” saying, “ I like to think that all those experiences that form who I am are present in the space between the two images.”

Amy Lovera’s narrative entitled Girl & Bird Detective Co. tells the story of a young woman, played by Lovera, who befriends a bird on the Internet. The bird comes to visit; they open the Girl and Bird Detective Co. and investigate the evil forces of Wal-Mart. Mixing drawings with straight and digitally rendered photographs, Lovera creates a delightful tale that is reminiscent of adventure stories for young girls (Nancy Drew, Pipi Longstocking) and, at the same time, voices the artist’s political inclinations.

Artists

Jesse Burke received an MFA in photography from RISD in 2005.  The recipient of an Aaron Siskind Fellowhip from RISCA, Burke does both editorial and art photography. His works have been exhibited at the Tucson Museum of Art; the RISD Museum; and in the PEEK Art + Commerce Festival of Emerging Photographers in Tokyo, Milan, Madrid, and Stockholm, among other sites. www.jesseburke.com

Amy Lovera received an MFA in photography from RISD and a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art.  She has exhibited at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA; Hera Gallery, Wakefield; 55 Mercer Gallery, NY; and in the International Festival of Photography, Arles, France.   www.amylovera.com

Annu Palakunnathu Matthew teaches photography at the Univesity of Rhode Island, Kingston. Her work has been shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Light Works, Syracuse; Sepia International, NY; and the Noorderlicht Photo Festival, The Netherlands.  She is the recipient of numerous grants including the MacColl Johnson Fellowship; John Gutmann Fellowship; American Institute of Indian Studies Creative Arts Fellowship, and has been in residence at the Yaddo and MacDowell colonies. Her work is in the collections of George Eastman House, Rochester; Musuem of Fine Arts, Houston; and Center for Creative Photography, Tuscon.  www.annumatthew.com

Sage Sohier has taught photography at RISD, Wellesley College, Harvard University, and Massachusetts College of Art. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the International Center of Photography, NY; Houston Center for Photography; Museum of Contemporary Art, Columbia College, Chicago; Addison Gallery, Andover; DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, and the Photographic Resource Center, Boston. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and NEA, and a Critical Mass book award for the publication of her monograph Perfectible Worlds, 2007. Her work is in numerous public and private collections, including those of MOMA, NY; SF MOMA, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. www.sagesohier.com

Millee Tibbs holds an MFA in photography from RISD and a BA in studio art from Vassar College. She has exhibited at the New Hampshire Institute of Art, Concord; 55 Mercer Gallery and Winkeman/Plus Ultra Gallery, both in NY; the Hera Gallery, Wakefield; and the Museum of Modern Art, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

Linn Underhill teaches photography at Colgate University. She studied with Dorothea Lange and Robert Sobieszek, and received an MFA from Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY. She is the recipient of grants from VSA, the NEA, and Light Works. Underhill’s works have been included in exhibitions at San Francisco Camerawork; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse; Minneapolis College of Art and Design; and National Museum of Women in the Arts, among others.