Cultivated
New Photography from New England
May 16–19, 2013

  • Photo by Christine Collins

    Photo by Christine Collins

  • Photo by Nelson Chan

    Photo by Nelson Chan

Cultivated: New Photography from New England is a group exhibition of ten photographers whose artistic practice is grounded in the northeast. Cultivated includes artists selected by Leslie K. Brown, independent curator and educator, and Michelle Lamunière, John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Assistant Curator of Photography at the Harvard Art Museums. The photographers include Scott Alario, Cole Caswell, Nelson Chan, Christine Collins, Victoria Crayhon, Andrew Fillmore, Alexander Harding, Tony Luong, S. Billie Mandle, and Amy Montali.

The New England region is an especially fertile environment for photographic education and the artists in the exhibition all have connections to this area’s varied institutions, either as students or instructors, and often both. The geographical connections span the northeast, encompassing Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. Equally diverse, the featured artists include individuals just beginning their careers as well as those poised to break through to the next level.

In developing this project, we were inspired by metaphors of growth and rootedness as well as locality and community. We believe that these photographers merit attention within and beyond New England, and this exhibition sheds light on their locally-cultivated efforts.

Featured Artists

Curators

Leslie K. Brown
Leslie K. Brown lesliekbrown.com

Leslie K. Brown is an independent curator, scholar, and educator pursuing her PhD in photohistory at Boston University. A former curator at the Photographic Resource Center from 2001-09, Brown holds an MA from the University of Texas at Austin. She has also worked at the Cheekwood Museum of Art, Austin Museum of Art, and guest curated exhibitions for the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, and Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward Festival. Her other projects include essays for Sandi Haber Fifield’s book Between Planting and Picking (2011), the Davis Museum’s exhibition catalog A Generous Medium: Photography at Wellesley 1972-2012 (2012), and self-published ventures by John Chervinsky (2013) and Carol Golemboski (2013). Brown has taught at BU, Lesley College of Art and Design, Rhode Island School of Design, and Wellesley College. A speaker at CAA and SPE, among others, she has also served as an guest juror and reviewer for exhibitions and programs, awards and fellowships, and portfolio review events, such as Fotofest, Photolucida, and Critical Mass. Brown is a native of Rochester, NY and the product of a Kodak family.

Image credit: Roger Farrington

Michelle Lamunière

Michelle Lamunière is the John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Assistant Curator of Photography at the Harvard Art Museums where she has worked since 2001. She has also held positions at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. In 2009 she completed her Ph.D. in Art History at Boston University; she also holds B.A. (Vassar College) and M.A. (University of Oregon) degrees in art history.

Lamunière recently co-curated In Character: Artists’ Role Play in Photography and Video at the Addison Gallery of American Art and organized Laurel Nakadate: Say You Love Me at Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. She is currently working on a two-person exhibition that will be on view at both the Howard Yezerski Gallery (Boston, MA) and Salve Regina University’s Dorrance H. Hamilton Gallery (Newport, RI) in early 2014. Among her publications are the catalogue You Look Beautiful Like That: The Portrait Photographs of Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé and three essays on Harvard University’s Social Museum, a collection of photographs and related material illustrating the international social reform movement at the turn of the twentieth century. She has written on contemporary photography for Exposure and Contact Sheet (both forthcoming). Lamunière has given lectures and presented papers at professional conferences and regularly serves as a juror, portfolio reviewer, and guest critic.

Photo Credit: Jess T. Dugan