Dylan Everett

Dylan Everett

Dana Stirling

The preface to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray | The preface to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is a series of aphorisms about art and beauty, including the declaration that “all art is at once surface and symbol.”

If all art is at once surface and symbol, I create symbolic surfaces. Through the use of photo-collage and still life, my pictures collapse figure and ground into surface. Drawing from a range of references – my personal life, literature, art, pop culture – and cultural signifiers, these surfaces are loaded with symbols. The viewer is invited to decode these symbols, or at least to try.

The symbols in my images often function as homages to the people and things that I love or admire: LGBTQ-identified creative figures, gay icons, and personal relationships. In one instance, this manifests as a room constructed of cyanotypes inspired by John Dugdale; in another, a grisaille room winks to George Platt Lynes’ black-and-white male nudes that remained hidden until after his death. This series of homages is held together by an aesthetic that strips away any sense of hierarchy among cultural signifiers. In my fabricated spaces, there is no distinction between highbrow and lowbrow, personal or famous, historical or contemporary. www.dylaneverett.format.com

Luca Iovino

Luca Iovino

Dana Stirling

I wrote “città nuova” in 2014, as an attempt to describe the feeling of Drifting, the filter I used to codify the city. I wanted to translate, in my own words, the feeling of loss and rediscovery I perceived through that combination. Years later, while reading those words I wrote, I felt the need to start working on a project that would enable me to give shape to the intangible nature of that thought, by creating a space poised between places that were both real and imaginary. I wanted to create a city to regain my sense of abandonment, a city where the mapping of a place becomes the tool to perceive a reality filtered through sheer invention. The city should not be viewed as we know it, but dismantled of its archetype, with new detailed foundations rebuilt from its ashes.Now that the city has lost its pivotal role, my point of view becomes the bearer of a new meaning, through the innate need to give all things their own shape: statues, maps, objects, the flexible shape of the human body, the man-made form of the landscape.

Kearston Hawkins-Johnson

Kearston Hawkins-Johnson

Dana Stirling

As an actor, I'm trained to explore the messy, vulnerable parts of humanity and showcase it to others. Outside of showcasing a character on stage or film, I imagine what I call, "the moment before" of the character.

I'm very curious as to what happens behind the scenes. Before the stage lights come on, before realizing there's a camera in your face, before the thoughts of socialization and perfection creep in. The authenticity that exist before a performance.

Time is fleeting, existentialism reigns, and I'm just fascinated by the construct of people, places, and things in this moment in time. I enjoy documenting the shadows that exist, the moments before, the day to day in their natural essence. It is itself a performance. www.kearstonhawkinsjohnson.com

Stephen Goldstein

Stephen Goldstein

Dana Stirling

Approaching Garland | Approaching Garland is a project about small communities off the grid, scattered around the outskirts of Flagstaff, Arizona. People who live in a rural setting, some that live off the land, and settled in the mountains of Northern Arizona. The work revolves around a significant forest road in Parks, Arizona, called "Garland Prairie". 

Dominik Wojciechowski

Dominik Wojciechowski

Dana Stirling

Svijet | Since the Break up of the socialist Yugoslavia, expansion of nationalisms which leaded to bloody conflicts, inhabitants of the nonexistent country of Tito, are trying laboriously to build new identities. For some, it could be a national identity, strong identification with an ethnic group. Others, might not accept multi-national reality, preserving the myth of Yugoslavia caused by feeling of loss. Loss of the once great country, that coexisted happily despite many cultures. The second group is represented by the elders who were growing up in Tito’s country but their stable life was disturbed by war. They are now, living in these seperate,small countries that emerged from balkan humanitarian disaster. What keeps them alive is yugonostalgia, which is a common factor among the old generation. The other group includes people, not entirely sure of what their identity is. They are being recruited from the generation that was born during Balkan Wars or right after it and they have passed on their confusion to their kids.

While travelling around Former Yugoslavia, through the countries that are not so similar anymore, sometimes even treating each other like enemies, it is difficult not to see the common factor between these countries. Something far more deep than their shared history. It is the post-yugoslav identity and mentality that appears on different levels – both in private and collective stories. It shows up in daily decisions, in political, social, cultural life as well as collective imagination. In opposition to yugonostalgia, which is emotionally pointed to the past, post-yugoslav identity is a daily practice. It is born inbetween yesterday and today, between historically rich past and the still evolving present.

Macaulay Lerman

Macaulay Lerman

Dana Stirling

Greer Road | Of all the symptoms of youth, perhaps the greatest is the inability to see beyond the world that currently is. The intoxicating illusion of permanence that defines the early years of our lives is proven false by the transient nature of young adulthood and slowly we begin to see existence for what it is; an endless process of becoming.

For as long as I can remember I have not wanted to live in this world. When I was a child this feeling manifested itself in the form of endless hours spent reading The Lord of the Rings and gallivanting off on epic quests of my own in the woods behind my family’s home. When I was a teenager the feeling remained, and yet the expression of it shifted. I discovered anarchist rhetoric, befriended local squatters, and began traveling in slowly expanding circles away from New England via hitchhiking and freight train. I tattooed my face and hands with a sewing needle and India ink, drank wine from a bag, and slept out in the woods with others who had chosen the same path.

This is how I met Nate. I picked him up along with a mutual friend at an Occupy encampment in Lancaster PA in 2011, and together we circled the country in a $500 van I had purchased from an Alpaca farmer the week before. We busked for our money, ate out of grocery store dumpsters, and for a few years at least successfully evaded time.

I imagined we’d live this way forever. That our bodies would never betray us and that the excess of society would always be enough to scrape by. However, as we entered into our early twenties an increasing plague of heroin addiction and subsequent death spread rampantly throughout our community. Our days no longer existed in a weightless suspension, change was coming.

Nate took a job on a fishing boat in coastal Alaska, and I moved to Vermont to attend a small liberal arts college. In the Summer of 2016, Nate lost his pinky in an accident while out on a 3-month fishing contract. To avoid a lawsuit he was offered a large cash settlement in addition to his pay for the 3-month voyage. With nearly $100,000 in hand, Nate bought 5 acres of land in Fritz Creek AK and began building

a small homestead. Through word of mouth, this story spread throughout the nomadic punk community and soon others came to Fritz Creek with similar pursuits in mind.

If there is a common thread between travelers of this nature, it is the disbelief that you could ever truly belong in this world. That there is nowhere for you to go and so you must learn to live between things. This is simply not true. There is a place amidst the white spruce and Pacific yew where in the summer months the alpenglow suspends and it is always almost morning. There is a place past the spit up on Greer Road where the paved road ends and the fireweed takes root; thriving, becoming. www.macaulaylerman.com

Lake Roberson Newton

Lake Roberson Newton

Dana Stirling

Flowers For the Dead | Flowers For the Dead is an ongoing project that examines historical sites, homes and institutions in the United States that are open to the public. Acting on William Faulkner’s quote ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past’, I undertook a project where ‘real life’, past or present, should be made to seem real- for it is not believable solely for the fact that it happened.

This idea is manifest in my interest in how once private or historically important homes have been preserved for current public consumption, the roll objects and spaces play in presenting a particular history and its context to greater social narratives, how physical alterations to original places project themselves experientially, and the effect the public plays on defining the engagement of a preserved space. For me, the process provides insight and understanding- for what could be more pitiful than a voyeur in the dark. www.lakenewton.com

Siew Png Sim

Siew Png Sim

Dana Stirling

Longing for Belonging | My work seeks to capture the pursuit of solace in the spaces that I reside. It’s a therapeutic exploration of my personal fleeting relationship with the concept and definition of a physical home. From a young age, my family and I constantly moved around various cities never settling down for long periods of time. I was enrolled to international schools, where it was a norm to see a constant change in classmates and teachers.

Detachment from the sentimental links that makes up the common notion of home eventually became habitual. Only upon returning to my home country of Singapore for my mandatory military service, I realised how “rootless” I was; and how that affected my ability to re assimilate with the home country I’m suppose to serve.

Most of the photos are unplanned and are taken during day to day life. They have a view of a distant observer, searching for the warmth of belonging in unfamiliar environments. www.siewpngsim.com

Leia Ankers

Leia Ankers

Dana Stirling

Airsoft Wankers | Airsoft originated in Japan during the mid-1970s, mainly because it was illegal to own firearms by private individuals. The shooting sport Airsoft involves two teams, red and blue. Both of these teams use airsoft guns to eliminate their opponents by hitting each player with spherical non-metallic pellets.

A pellet does not mark its target and so it relies on an honor system as part of the role play game. When a player is hit, the person is expected to call themselves out even if no one witnessed the hit. To re-spawn they must touch the building of the marshals choosing.

Between the hours of 1000 to 1600, these young men are in the mindset of soldiers, their surroundings and their use of the environment gives them the impression of war and anyone wearing the opposite tape to them is their enemy. The series projects the traditional traits of male identity combined with symbolic landscapes. www.leiaankers.com

Seth Johnson

Seth Johnson

Dana Stirling

I’m Still Here | My brother has lived in the same small town and has worked the same job for thirty years. It’s a town that is content with its own adequacy and looks at anything beyond with an air of suspicion. If there is a whisper of change, it rarely takes hold. This way of existing does not question itself, and I find this simplicity both foreign and endearing. While I have often envied my brother’s contentment with the small and sweet narrowness of our home- town, I wrestle with the idea that I want more for him than he wants for himself. www.sethjohnsonphoto.com

William Castellana

William Castellana

Dana Stirling

South Williamsburg Brooklyn | Street photography, in terms of the “unposed,” is a practice that serves the compelling need to distill the ebb and flow of visually complex interactions into static form - forever fixed and with meaning. It is this desire to understand more deeply the rhythms of humanity that takes me to the streets in search of clarity.

In their simplest sense, the images in this series form a social document of a people and a place; namely, a sect of Hasidic Jews known as the Satmars. This sect of Hasidic Jews was founded in Satu Mare, Romania by Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum in the early 20th century. After WWII, Teitelbaum settled in

Williamsburg, Brooklyn to lay the groundwork for a religious ideology that would launch one of the largest Hasidic movements in the world. Since Teitelbaum’s death, the Satmar community has grown exponentially and continues to thrive economically and spiritually through closely observed traditions and social mechanisms.

Between the fall of 2013 and 2014, I set out to photograph my neighbors in the one-half square mile area below Division Avenue, which demarcates the religious from the secular communities of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The photographs in this book are constrained to the “neighborhood view,” since my outsider status made access to a more privileged look impossible.

As an outsider, what I witnessed through my camera during that period was forever new and unique compared to my everyday routine and what the rest of the city’s inhabitants were pulsing to. For me, street photography is about the preservation of time and place - a kind of poetry that distills both in equal measure. www.williamcastellana.net

Yulya Pavlova

Yulya Pavlova

Dana Stirling

Seek And Hide | When I began to work on this project my aim was to show famous stereotypes in the raising of children. I asked my son to help me with visualization. I’ve made pictures about such statements as «Boys don’t cry», «Boys must be strong», «Children must grow in greenhouse conditions», «A child is the main person in the family», «Child has to have tough borders» and etc...

But suddenly my son refused to be photographed. He said that it is not interesting to him and became angry. I noticed some «signs» that he showed me, such as the angry or sad face or he could run away from me. What's the matter with him? I tried to understand.

After that, my son began to hide from me. It was a kind of game and I joined him.
I realized that the game is the best way to understand and to communicate with my son. I asked him what he likes and what he wants to do. I decided to orient not to social attitudes but to my son.
In the beginning, the result was important for me but I didn’t care about the answer if he liked it or not. Seeing signs of refused I changed our interaction.
My son painted for me, dressed his favorite lizard mask, built a house on the tree and showed me his collection of insects. The game is the main instrument in interaction and in the raising of children. It is not about how to be a perfect mom or how to raise a perfect child. But it is about how to hear and help your children to grow up.

Yana Pirozhok

Yana Pirozhok

Dana Stirling

RETURNING INNOCENCE | What would I be like now, without my traumatic experience? I think about it a lot. I remember that carefree teenager, a village girl waiting, with awe and curiosity, for her fifteenth anniversary. Who is she? Where is she? Sometimes I notice her in the mirror but I’ve never seen her happy. That experience changed her life, left a mark. She couldn’t trust the world anymore, she never learned how to connect with people. Falling in love and building relationships is now a huge risk, it brings suffering. The fear that the ground may fall away underneath her at any moment is now her reality.

I'm going to the village where I spent my childhood and youth years. I hope to find answers to the questions that have been tormenting me for the past 18 years. How can I overcome what happened? Will I be able to stop being ashamed for myself and for my existence?

One day my niece Vika approached me: “Auntie Yana, can you imagine, I made a secret wish, and it came true!” “Great,” I responded, “what was your wish?” “For you to be healthy, and now you came to see us in the village, and you're so beautiful, and you’re radiating, which means that it came true.” I remember I had a lump in my throat and started crying right in front of my niece. An 11-year-old girl who didn't see or talk to me for an entire year for some reason gave away her secret wish for me. It was the first time I recognized unconditional love towards me. Such simple, honest, and fearless love. I hugged Vika and told her that these were the tears of happiness. We tightly hugged each other and cried out loud, with laughter and snot. This incident struck me to the core and I stopped focusing on my inner battle and began to look into the world, probably trying to open up to it as easily as did Vika.

At the time my four nieces were in the village on holidays. I couldn’t spend a single moment away from them, avidly observing how they talk to each other, what games they play, how they learn to express their thoughts and to feel their desires, how they effortlessly and fearlessly explore the world. I understood that in the past I also could do that –– be open to everything and not to fear. At one point I began spending more time with them, we took walks together, told each other silly stories, got into fights and arguments, confided our dreams to each other. We formed a real girl gang: Sveta, 11 years old; Vika, 10 years old; Katia, 8 years old; Julia, 5 years old, and myself, 33 years old. I had with me an old film camera from 1997 and several cassettes: leaving for the village I hope to film a project about my attempt to get over a negative teenage experience that cut my life into before and after. But when I found myself in the world of these girls, I realized that the direction of my project changed, the idea of making art together became important for me, and I offered the girls to shoot a movie together. We wandered around the village, looked for places to shoot, staged and took pictures, and simply enjoyed each others company. The girls themselves decided who would be a director, a cameraman, an actress or a photographer’s assistant.

In the process I began to feel that I’m changing: my behavioral patterns were changing, the armor that I built over the years was gradually crumbling, curiosity was replacing fear. I took a chance, confided in these girls, and let them into my life myself. I returned to St. Petersburg completely transformed. Now I understand that sincere communication with children, the opportunity to make art with them without boundaries and oppression, attentive observation of those who are pure and haven't experienced evil yet helped me return the innocence that rape stole from me 18 years ago. www.instagram.com/yana_pirozhok

Aaron DuRall

Aaron DuRall

Dana Stirling

Don't Stray Far | Don't Stray Far is an ongoing project chronicling the people and places that make up ordinary life in my native Southwest Missouri. Often infusing glimpses of Southeast Kansas and Northeast Arkansas, Don't Stray Far aims to weave an honest, yet endearing tapestry of the seemingly regular and banal elements that make up life in this part of the country. www.aarondurall.com

Eyal Fried

Eyal Fried

Dana Stirling

Mono-Mental | In light of the organic-urban development of new highways and bridges around my locale (mostly HWY 6 North), along with the transformation of the well-recognized scenery, I set out to get reacquainted with my surrounding habitat. I examined the emanating relationship between what’s already present and man’s new additions. There, my physical meditative-like movement was charged with a human urgency in nature and the spine-chilling quietness of these places that made my attention focus on the duality of tension and equilibrium, of materialism hanging by a thread.

As a walking artist, my work dares question our social, physical and cultural limits. Wandering without a purpose invites naturally surprising encounters and in this respect, it sharpens the senses and sensitivities which are worn-out and run-down by our daily routines. The act of aimlessly walking around, the pace, my thoughts, the distance and disconnect from the hustle of the city provide an opportunity to reflect on existential questions. In this series I depicted objects that will remain here long after I’m gone. It’s a pursuit of the essence of things, of substances, usages and functionality. It is as formal and creative as it is a quest for life. www.eyalfried.com

Unforeseen Studio - Clément Chapillon

Unforeseen Studio - Clément Chapillon

Dana Stirling

La Traversée | It's an idea that came from SNCF, the french railway company that asked me to propose a personal vision of the C ligne Paris. RER Line C is the second most important railway network of Paris, it goes through 180 kilometers from point 0 of Notre Dame to a rural area like Dourdan, Etampes or Cergy Pontoise. Line C turns 40 years old this autumn.

For this occasion, SNCF (the state French railway company) asked me to explore its territory with a new look. I followed the rails to rediscover its surroundings and captured unexpected things along the line. RER is a part of the daily life of the inhabitants, it’s the agora, one of the only places where all people from ‘Le Grand Paris’ is crossing each other. It gives me the opportunity to rediscover and have a better understanding of the territory I always lived in.

During my railway wanderings, I captured the variety of the places deserved by the train, the faces of Line C people and workers, and the life inside and outside of this Line. The trains, its colors, its silhouette, are part of the « Ile de France » environment, from high density urban to forests, fields and small remote villages. At the end of the journey, a place that feels familiar shows another face and gives me a better idea of what this RER means for us. « We are the children of our landscapes » says the writer Lawrence Durrell and this Traversée shows us what the 550 000 children who take the RER Line C everyday look through the window of their trains. www.unforeseen.studio

Daria Nazarova

Daria Nazarova

Dana Stirling

The time of water | The past of my family is connected with the places where the Rybinsk reservoir is now located. Between years 1937 and 1941 more than 130,000 people were forced to leave their properties. Stone and old houses were destroyed and burned, the rest were dismantled and transported to new places. Those who remained homeless were paid compensation, but the people had to find a new place to move to by themselves. Those, who couldn’t afford paying workers to disassemble and transfer their houses, had to sell them to Volgostroy for very cheap. Most people moved somewhere nearby and remained to live on the shore of the future sea. There were those who died, unable to survive the shocks, from cold, illness and poverty. In total, about 700 villages and villages were flooded, more than 50 churches, 3 monasteries, noble estates with surrounding territories, gardens and parks, the estate of Musin-Pushkin were destroyed. The whole city of Mologa went under the water.

I was drawn to these places, to find people who would tell about the flooding. Articles from the books were not enough, I needed live witnesses, those, who kept the stories of their relatives. I needed photos, documents, letters, evidence.

It is impossible to remain indifferent now, as it is impossible to change what happened. For a long time, there was a ban on Mologa’s topic and people were afraid to share information. Even when it became possible, the most remained silent. Soon there will be no one left to tell us about these events. cargocollective.com/nazarovadar

Kari Wehrs

Kari Wehrs

Dana Stirling

SHOT | From scenes of gun violence that make the national news, to my 61-year-old mother suddenly deciding to carry, incidents of gun use haunt me with curiosity and fear. Having no personal attachment to guns, I am grappling with present day societal reverberations and implications of the gun in American culture.

To create this series, I set up my darkroom tent and tintype gear at known target shooting locations in the Arizona desert. I meet gun enthusiast strangers and ask if they are willing to participate in my project. I create their tintype portraits, and when complete, I give them the option to use the image as target. Some take part – leaving bullet holes in the plate. “Shot” refers simultaneously to my use of the camera and the participant’s use of the gun.

Tintypes were the primary form of photography during the American Civil War –another time when the country exhibited vast divides. Soldiers often posed for their tintype in military uniform and with weaponry. My use of this form of photography in contemporary time elaborates on these connections to history.

I view this project as a method to investigate and provoke both personal and collective consciousness. How might we need to re-consider this time in our history? When do/did our rights become our burdens? How do we want to think of our social or political opposite, and how might crossing uncomfortable boundaries potentially lead to positive change? How do we freshen the all-too-often predictable “gun debate”, and instead pursue an exchange to reconcile our differences and move beyond our current impasse? www.kariwehrs.com

Maria Kapajeva

Maria Kapajeva

Dana Stirling

Dream Is Wonderful, Yet Unclear | Dream is Wonderful, Yet Unclear is a multi-layered and multi-disciplinary story of the relationships between collective and personal memories by looking at the community surrounding a textile mill in Narva, Estonia, now closed, of which Kapajeva's family was a part. The story of one small community is set in the larger context of post-industrial cities worldwide, as they seek new identities. It depicts a mill filled by powerful rhythms of looms and lively collectives of women workers that, in today’s competitive world seems like a bright and distant dream. Maria has focused on women, with a heightened sensitivity towards social and political matters in post-Soviet culture.

As the daughter of a textile designer, she spent her childhood at the mill, drawing fabric patterns and dreaming about the same job her mother had. She tries to interweave her mother’s work, her childhood dreams and their failures with the workers’ collective ones to underline the division between personal and collective memories that together form our historical narratives.

The title Dream is Wonderful, Yet Unclear is borrowed from the lyrics of March of Enthusiasts, from the Soviet movie The Bright Way (1940), starring Lyubov Orlova in the role of a female weaver, who made her ‘Cinderella’ journey from peasant to Stakhanovite, a heroic worker. This line of the song was later censored because of doubt raised by the word ‘unclear’. The idea of a wonderful dream is intended as a common thread throughout the book but so too is the lack of clarity that characterizes our memories of the past.

The book is currently in process and has an Indiegogo campaign to help support it’s production. If you are willing and able support the book by donating in the link here.

Joseph Horton

Joseph Horton

Dana Stirling

Terrain Vague | The British countryside has been regarded as a retreat for many, seen as an escape from the constructed urban environment and a place of contemplation. However, this reflection is not wholly relatable as for its inhabitants these spaces present conflict between ideology and reality. Along our border lands two coexisting identities can be found, creating a space which is not easily defined. Formerly attributed to the hardships of industrial closure the south Wales landscape sits alongside traditional pastoral visions associated with Britain. The divide is a ‘trunk’ road which joins England and Wales, whilst forming an unofficial border between rural and industrial South Wales. Its creation has been continually developed since the early 00’s and has seen further development with the help of European funding. Interested in exploring the complex social and cultural identity of this road I sought to inject a contemporary view of reflective and open imagery which, in my view, can be seen in documentary photography today; lyrical, ambiguous and ‘post-truth’.

Working within a political landscape, as photographers, the creation of work for the cause of political comment versus that which speaks within political climates is a hard discussion to disentangle. This, for me, is where photography allows us to begin to unravel the complexities of cultural and political identities. The project attaches an ambiguity toward its subjects, one that gives space to think and from it, we find a balance between evidence and lyricism; it is in this dialogue that the work was made. The area in question is a web of rural, non-rural, urban, suburban sectors all of which have boundaries which blur into each other. Who we are and how we think these places look still remain and are easily found but if you look closer at their makeup and the surrounding spaces you get a sense of the messy truth which builds this picture. Attracted to the political and cultural notions attached to the road I looked to its surrounding space finding solitude in a transitory environment. So the work has become more of a reaction to that, seeking out scenes in the world which represent this feeling. It does not serve to illustrate the roads completion and history, but to explore how it as an object can talk about our relationship to travel and the micro climates that build our complex rural spaces.

The project can be seen as an investigation into national/cultural identity and a quickly changing landscape but more deeply it is a reaction to ‘landscape’, and specifically how it has been historically represented. It is important that representation from across our country is understood with the depth and understanding that transcends pictures of fields. Those areas which carry the most weight are often the most overlooked, hidden in the everyday and familiar. joseph-horton.com

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