Distant Dialogues
Distant Dialogues
Curated by: Lisa Beard, Micah McCoy, and Vann Powell
As curators, we discovered in the submitted photographs an echo of our own experience. We came to know one another after traveling across the country, wholly alone as individuals, and in three days found the solitude of solo travel replaced with valuable connection based on an exchange of ideas, open inquiry, and the warmth of new friendship. Over many hours collectively deliberating on and sequencing the photographs in this collection, we discovered in the selected assemblage, threads of longing, looking, and a deep-seated desire to connect, visually mirroring the narrative of our own collective inception. The act of photography is so often carried out alone, but this collection expresses the universal desire for acceptance of which no one is immune.
Selected Artists / Amee Ellis, Anastasiia Marinich, Andrew Foster, Christiaan Lopez-Miro, Daniel Keys, Denise Laurinaitis, Dom Ashton, Donya Asakereh, Epiphany Knedler, Erika Nina Suárez, Eva Liatsi-Douvitsa, Forrest Simmons, Franck Doussot, Hank Tilson, Hankyung Ryu, Ilias Lois, Jack Garland, Jared Ragland, Jennifer Y. Collins, Jozef Zekanoski, Justin Pareno, Karen Lue, Karen Osdieck, Kelley Mac Donald, Kelly Stohr, Kon Markogiannis, Léa Mariella, Leah Wellman, Lydia Panas, Mara Patricelli, Marco Gehlhar, Mario Ermoli, Maud Evrard, Melissa Grace Kreider, Michael Young, Nuzhat Ahmad, Rob McDonald, Sarah Bejerano, Susan Isaacson, Sylvie Harris, Taylor Dorrell, Taylor Hedrick, Xinyu Liu, Yorgos Efthymiadis
Honorable Mentons / Chuck Davis, Hannah Schneider, Jennifer Sakai, Jessica Hays, Jimmy Nicholson, Joerg Metzner, Katherine March Driscoll, Mara Magyarosi-Laytner, Mark Caceres, Ray Markham, Riley Goodman
Text by Lisa Beard
Two guys and a girl show up for a weekend of photography in Rochester, NY. Eventually, they walk into a bar … sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, right? It’s not. It's actually how Micah, Vann, and I met. Many laughs were involved though, and it was fun. It occurred because we all took a risk, one that we thankfully all felt like we needed to take, and one that also resulted in the opportunity to work together to curate this open call for Float.
I believe that this strong collection of photographs, which includes work from artists from all over the world, shows us what is happening now: what we are hopeful for and what we desire collectively, but it’s complicated. A hesitant tension was quickly identifiable for me within this grouping of photos, and, paired with a visually clear want and need for acceptance and connection, a sort of fluctuation is produced. This makes it evident that what we are hoping for isn’t so simple to find, or maybe even to identify, at this time. Hands, a motif that is nearly impossible to miss within this collection, may help to show this best. Hands offer and take back; hands comfort and reject. They also reach: to attempt to make contact with others, with oneself, and with nature. Hands are used to steady oneself and to hold. They can also be used to surrender. Hands often reach to feel, and if you’re like me, to try how to not forget the way that something feels in order to keep that feeling close at hand. Religious/spiritual motifs are also heavily present: both literal and metaphorical, specific and general. Crosses, crowns/thorns, lush green foliage, apples, sacrifice, offerings, and not looking back over one’s shoulder are visually referenced.
In some photographs, the gaze is present: but it’s avoidant and detached, looking through or around, and sometimes searching or overseeing. In others, backs are turned, escape is attempted, and remnants are left behind. Images of hope and wonder are dispersed throughout; these are also things to hold onto. And although the desire for acceptance, as well as the wish to be truly seen, are evident, there is, at times, a visual murkiness that lurks, and that could be a reflection of what I view as the difficult task that many of us are experiencing: finding the courage that is needed to take necessary risks in order to find connection and to feel the genuine acceptance we universally seek while making our way through the increasingly divisive environments in which we are so often finding ourselves. Although things look somewhat normal, I’ll roll the dice and assert that looking normal-ish doesn’t mean everything is. This fluctuation is happening as we try to navigate through our lives in the way that we must now, and it is mirrored in this compilation of photographs.
With that being said, I’m grateful that my sometimes extreme inner fluctuation is kept at bay enough for me to take a few good risks, and I hope others continue to find the will to take them as well, because as seen in this exhibition, it can result in some beautiful, and important, things.
Text by Micah McCoy
As I write these words, the entirety of this exhibition hangs in my studio, in 4-inch wide test prints. Looking at the sequence developed by Lisa, myself, and Vann, I’m struck not only by the quality of the work but also by how this cadre of photographers seem to tap into the same collective disquiet. So many of them express an absence. Many of the photos seem to exist as wishes that the absence wasn’t so. Of course, there is always a barrier that impedes our presence. Or, at least, that’s how it feels. Appears. In some cases, we look on and a shower curtain separates us. An empty spot on a mattress reminds us of our solitude.
As in life, we find solace in the hope of tomorrow. Our memories are that golden haze of what is no more. Furthermore, they’re mediated through photographs that thwart our circumstances today. The empty spaces and faces turned away bring the film “Paris, TX” to my mind. Cinema is my touchstone for understanding my own life and often provides a framework for the organization of what I see. The world, we as curators, brought into existence and bolstered by ideas originating en masse from photographers in the exhibition, features the same noble desire to bond together despite the messiness inherent in any bid to relate. Like in the film, this desire may be doomed, but this fact makes it no less commendable.
Text by Vann Thomas Powell
Photographs like many things first encountered are often blank slates and meaningless until the viewer places the frame in a larger context. The images in Distant Dialogues suggest a sort of harmony of spirit that hints at what is not contained in the frame but rather can be found beyond the bounds that shape a photograph and provide enough contrast to construct meaning. A yearning for some connection is seen and felt in these photographs. A yearning for meaning and wanting to be a part of something larger than oneself.
That resonance of spirit is the glue that binds these images and gives rise to a shared sense of lack described in the frames. And so we as artists and makers are left with a pit in our being, a feeling that is not easily resolved. However, the sought after resolution is missing the point. Aiming for but missing the mark. The significance lies in the act of striving, in this case, for connection. Through the labor of seeking meaning and connection, ironically, connections and meanings are made and community can be formed, even if we may not wholly feel it, for there is no resolving the all too human struggle to belong and be a part of something - it always seems slippery and just outside of the frame.
About the Curators
Lisa Beard
I am a Chicago-area based artist and teacher. My work is photo-based and conceptual, and it is mainly concerned with complexities of being alive. It is experimental and intuitive in nature and I continue to expand it through using a process of trial and error and along with a variety of hand-based creative photo-based techniques developed for each project in an attempt to bring form and subject matter into relation.
My most recent work is largely focused on the constant and fluctuating change that makes up, when it comes down to it, all parts of life and connects all things. It touches on truth, memory, and reality through a lens of what insists through layers of time for us individually but also collectively. I hold an MFA in Photography/Media Studies (Nov. ‘22) from Maine Media College (Rockport, ME).
Micah McCoy
Micah McCoy is a photographer and poet based in Northwest Arkansas. He received his MFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago (2022) and has been featured in exhibitions at Belong Gallery Chicago, IL, Millepiani Exhibition Space Rome, Italy, Southeast Center for Photography Greenville, SC and others. Micah’s work explores issues of religiosity, anxiety, and social detachment.
Vann Powell
Vann Thomas Powell (MFA, Duke University) is a documentary artist working with still photography and the moving image. His visual practice incorporates an array of photographic mediums in concert with historical and philosophical research to investigate how past, place, and memory construct identity with particular focus on American identities. He is increasingly interested in investigating subjects related to foundation narratives, myths, tall tales, folklore, and seldom told histories.
Vann’s work has been exhibited across the United States at venues such as The International Center of Photography (New York, NY), SlowExposures Festival (Zebulon, GA), PAL Gallery (Provo, UT), City Art Space - Rochester Institute of Technology (Rochester, NY) and The Frederick Jameson Gallery (Durham, NC). His work has appeared in domestic and international publications including The Independent (UK), Glitterati Editions (New York, NY), and Subjectively Objective (Detroit, MI). He has self-published and published artist books in collaboration with Benschop Books (Denver, CO). His books and works can be found in private and public collections including the Rubenstein Rare Books and Manuscripts Library (Duke University) and the Museum of Fine Art Special Collections (Tufts University). Vann is a 2023 Photolucida Critical Mass finalist.
Vann is available for visiting artist programs, guest lectures, curatorial projects, and editorial assignments.
