RESIDENCY UPDATE
Photography & Collage Virtual Artist Residency
A virtual, four-week collage artist residency in July 2024
In “What Good Is a Photograph?”, Ric Kasini Kadour writes, “The photograph as language, as a tool of everyday communication, is not new. Twentieth century theorists have wrung every possible drop out of visual literacy as a concept. It does not explain a problem curator Marvin Heiferman frames as, ‘We know that photographs work, but not quite how they do.’ This is dangerous. We may go misunderstood. Or worse, we may be misunderstood by others…Knowing how something works is key to using it effectively.”
The mediums of collage and photography are bound together in an ongoing dialogue. The photographer makes pictures of the world. The collagist remixes those pictures to tell a story about the world we live in. “Today, we’re taking more photos than at any previous time in history,” noted EyeEm contributor Lars Mensel. “Many photographers are asking themselves how to set their work apart from that of their peers. Photography has become less about the skill to take technically perfect pictures–most modern smartphones accomplish this at the touch of a button–but how pictures are combined to tell a story.”
The Photography & Collage Virtual Artist Residency invited photographers and collage artists to come together in dialogue, learn from one another, and make artwork for a series of exhibitions that explore the intersection of collage and photography. Unfolding in two tracks over the course of a month, we asked, What happens when a collagist picks up the camera? What happens when a photographer collages their pictures? Presentations explored collage in theory, artist practice, the ecosystem of art, the state of photography, and the history of photography and collage. Artists shot with their own camera, in whatever process they chose (film & develop or digital & print), and then made collage with the photographs they made.
During the residency, artists made an artwork that was exhibited at Kolaj Institute’s Gallery. The exhibition, “Camera and Collage” took place in December 2024 as part of PhotoNOLA 2024, an annual celebration of photography in New Orleans, produced by the New Orleans Photo Alliance in partnership with museums, galleries, and alternative venues citywide.
The residency was led by Dafna Steinberg, MFA, professor of darkroom photography at Delaware County Community College, and Lance Rothstein, a photojournalist and street artist who operates the darkroom and teaches photography and collage workshops at the Morean Art Center in Saint Petersburg, Florida. The project is being curated by Ric Kasini Kadour, Director of Kolaj Institute and a 2020-2021 Curatorial Fellow of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and produced in partnership with the New Orleans Photo Alliance.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Kolaj Institute accepted fourteen artists from Australia, Canada, Germany, Kuwait, Mexico, and across the United States for this four-week virtual residency.
Demonstrating how collage can transcend time, Claire Hansen (Brooklyn, New York, USA) makes tintypes using a wet plate collodion process that incorporates images taken from inside contemporary video games. Inspired by the minimalism of John Stezaker’s collage, Jan Kather (Elmira Heights, New York, USA) photographs a photograph of the Lackawanna Trail at the point the photograph was taken. Using an inkjet gel transfer process, Jennifer Mead (Tucson, Arizona, USA) brings photographs from her family’s archive and her contemporary photography into conversation about her religious upbringing.
Mónica McCumber Avilés (Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico) prints her photographs on transparent tracing paper and collages them to make “the image more ethereal and belonging to the memories and to the unconsciousness.” Shawn Solus (Pocatello, Idaho, USA) photographs the region surrounding the Idaho National Laboratory in Southeastern Idaho which he then prints and cuts into a Lichtenberg figure.
Maryam Hosseinnia (Kuwait City, Kuwait) collages her photographs “to navigate the duality of my identity as an American-Iranian” and introduce “depth and ambiguity in my visual compositions.” Brandon Thomas Brown (Brooklyn, New York, USA) collages historical materials into his own photographs as a way to interrogate contemporary Blackness. Catharine Bramkamp (Nevada City, California, USA) presents images of decimated land and deleted cultures by collaging her own photographs of historic sites.
The abstract series, “The Language of Posing” by Amanda Gardner (Dayboro, Queensland, Australia), interprets the five classic poses as a comment on “how conformity requires us to re-package ourselves into acceptability.” Spencer Steiner (Brooklyn, New York, USA) “excavates the concept of memory and nostalgia” using miniature snapshots from the 1950s-60s found at the Brimfield Flea Market in Massachusetts. They wrote, “This tension between past and present, paired with the imagery of trash and detritus, evokes the essence of the material residue from celebrations and moments of spectacle.”
Marian Tagliarino (Saint Petersburg, Florida, USA) blends personal photographs with other found images to create art that tells her stories. Frances Carter‘s (Houston, Texas, USA) current photography practice involves capturing the various ways women’s bodies are presented in our contemporary society, through advertising, store displays, human activities, and other sources. Antonina Baygusheva (Berlin, Germany) works in analogue photography, cyanotype, digital photography, collage, and installation, focusing on the relationship of the individual with himself, with society, and with nature. Vasti Stephany Guzmán (Baldwin Park, California, USA) tries to get the viewer to think of materials differently. “An apple isn’t for eating, it’s romantic, it conveys your desires. My goal is to make the mundane or common…extraordinary.” “My main subjects are architecture, construction sites and advertising panels for real estate projects as they offer idealized projections of a future reality as well as, sometimes, an unintended decay, writes Guylaine Séguin (Montreal, Quebec, Canada). “They provide me with images I can use to talk about the construction of images and the illusion of reality of these images.”
ABOUT THE FACULTY & ORGANIZERS
Dafna Steinberg
Dafna Steinberg holds an MFA in Socially Engaged Studio Art from the Moore College of Art and Design, an MA in Photography and Urban Cultures from the Centre for Urban and Community Research at Goldsmiths, and a BA in Liberal Arts from Hampshire College. She is currently a professor of darkroom photography at Delaware County Community College. Her collage and photography work has been shown in solo and group shows in England, Scotland, Slovenia, and the United States. Her artwork has appeared in publications including Death in the Family: An Open Call, edited by E. Aaron Ross (2023); #ICPConcerned: Global Images for a Global Crisis (2021), Create! Magazine #23, among others. Her article, “Report from Miami”, appeared in Kolaj 28. The artist lives and works in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area. www.dafnasteinberg.com
Lance Rothstein
Lance Rothstein has been making collages with trash and found objects, then leaving them out on the streets since 2010. A professional photojournalist by trade, he’s worked for many major newspapers and publications throughout the US and Europe, but he returned to his art school roots after moving to Belgium with his wife in 2009 and dove headfirst into producing several forms of Street Art. His artwork has been shown in galleries in Belgium, France, the United Kingdom and the United States. His work has been featured in Wallflowers: Collage as Street Art, Be a Pal magazine, Unfamiliar Vegetables, the World Collage Day 2018 Special Edition, and Circulaire 132. Works of his are also in the permanent collection of the Doug + Laurie Kanyer Art Collection in Yakima, Washington as well as The Schwitters’ Army Collection of Collage Art in Sanquhar, Scotland, and the Postcards for Democracy traveling collection by Mark Mothersbaugh and Beatie Wolf. www.rayjohnsonfanclub.com
Ric Kasini Kadour
Ric Kasini Kadour, a 2021 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Curatorial Fellow, is a writer, artist, publisher, and cultural worker. Working with the Vermont Arts Council, Kadour curated four exhibits: “Connection: The Art of Coming Together” (2017) and Vermont Artists to Watch 2018, 2019 and 2020. In 2017, he curated “The Art of Winter” at S.P.A.C.E. Gallery in Burlington, Vermont. In 2018, Kadour curated “Revolutionary Paths: Critical Issues in Collage” at Antenna Gallery in New Orleans, which bought together collage artists whose work represents the potential for deeper inquiry and further curatorial exploration of the medium; followed in 2019 by “Cultural Deconstructions: Critical Issues in Collage” at LeMieux Galleries in New Orleans, which furthered the conversation; and “Amuse Bouche”, also at LeMieux Galleries in 2023. Since 2018, he has produced Kolaj Fest New Orleans, a multi-day festival & symposium about contemporary collage and its role in art, culture, and society. As Curator of Contemporary Art at Rokeby Museum in Ferrisburgh, Vermont in 2019 and 2020, he curated three exhibitions, “Rokeby Through the Lens” (May 19-June 16, 2019), “Structures” (August 24-October 27, 2019), and “Mending Fences: New Works by Carol MacDonald” (July 12-October 25, 2020). He also curated “Contemporary American Regionalism: Vermont Perspectives” (August 17-October 20, 2019); “Where the Sun Casts No Shadow: Postcards from the Creative Crossroads of Quito, Ecuador” (November 1-30, 2019); and “Many Americas” (August 20-November 27, 2022) in the Wilson Museum & Galleries at the Southern Vermont Arts Center. “The Money $how”, co-curated with Frank Juarez, was presented at the AIR Space Gallery at Saint Kate-The Arts Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (April 10-September 12, 2021). For Birr Vintage Week & Arts Festival in Birr, County Offaly, Ireland (August 13-20, 2021), he curated “Empty Columns Are a Place to Dream”, which traveled to the Knoxville Museum of Art in January-February 2022. At 516 ARTS in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Kadour co-curated with Alicia Inez Guzmàn two exhibitions: “Many Worlds Are Born” (February 19-May 14, 2022) and “Technologies of the Spirit” (June 11-September 3, 2022). In 2023 at the Knoxville Museum of Art, Kadour curated “Where the Sun Casts No Shadow: Postcards from the Creative Crossroads of Quito, Ecuador” (January 9-February 16, 2023) and “Mystical Landscape: Secrets of the Vale” (March 17-May 28, 2023). In September 2023, he curated “Word of Mouth: Folklore, Community and Collage” at A’ the Airts in Sanquhar, Scotland. His short film, The Covenant of Schwitters’ Army, debuted at Collage on Screen during Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2023. Kadour is the editor and publisher of Kolaj Magazine. He has written for a number of galleries and his writing has appeared in Hyperallergic, OEI, Vermont Magazine, Seven Days, Seattle Weekly, Art New England (where he was the former Vermont editor) and many others. Kadour maintains an active art practice and his photography, collage, and sculpture have been exhibited in and are part of private collections in Australia, Europe and North America. In January-February 2020, he was artist-in-residence at MERZ Gallery in Sanquhar, Scotland. He holds a BA in Comparative Religion from the University of Vermont. Kadour splits his time between Montreal and New Orleans. www.rickasinikadour.com