As I found It: My Mother’s House
Russell Hart
Russell’s solo exhibition presents an alternate look at resistance, a resistance to change, a resistance to letting go, and a look at what gets left behind… This look at one person’s process to honor, reflect and move forward is presented in tandem with Resistance: Seen or Unseen, a juried call for entries exploring resistance in all its varied forms.
Presented in our Focus gallery is a selection of photographs from Russell’s recently published book, As I Found It: My Mother’s House. Copies of the book will be available in the gallery and online, and we hope you can join us for this unique presentation.
– David DeMelim,
Managing Director,
RI Center for Photographic Arts
As I Found It: My Mother’s House – Russell Hart
Russell Hart’s solo exhibition is presented in tandem with Resistance: Seen or Unseen, juried exhibition for 2025
Gallery Night Providence Reception: July 17th, 5:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Exhibition: Thursday, July 17th thru Friday, September 12th
Artist Statement, As I Found It: My Mother’s House
Sometimes I envy my baby-boomer friends for having lost their parents quickly. Mine left this life piecemeal. It took my father two painful years to die from cancer, and soon after, without her husband to moor her, my mother began her long descent into profound dementia. More than ten years later, when she could no longer live alone, it fell to me to empty the rambling, creaky New England Victorian she had inhabited for over four decades. Paperwork piled high on her desk and most other available surfaces told a sad tale. Starting with her latest bills, greeting cards, and copious notes to self I peeled away the layers, and at the very bottom found myself back at 2001. My mother’s life, in an emotional sense and as a realm she could successfully manage, had ended the year my father died.
My undertaking took the better part of two years. I spent nearly half that time living in the house alone, plowing from morning to night through rooms gorged doubly by outright hoarding and the Yankee custom of handing down meaningful objects. Much of what I unearthed was unfamiliar to me because it had been packed away for generations, sometimes a century. It ranged from unusably practical to historical—from saved bits of string to the hand-woven wallet an ancestor had carried into the French and Indian War.
– Russell Hart
About Russell:
Russell Hart’s work has been widely exhibited at galleries and museums that include the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Newport Art Museum, Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, the Addison Gallery of American Art, the New Britain Museum of American Art, and the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, among many others. His prints are held in the collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, NY, and various other public and private collections. He has been the recipient of numerous residencies and fellowships in photography, including three traveling fellowships awarded by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. His artwork has been featured in a variety of publications, including Harper’s Magazine, Camera Arts, Fotografare, and The Boston Globe Magazine.
Hart has taught photography at Tufts University and the Boston Museum School, and currently teaches in the master’s in digital photography program at New York’s School of Visual Arts. He was formerly Executive Editor of American Photo magazine, where he wrote about photography for many years. His writing on photographic subjects has also appeared in The New York Times, Men’s Journal, and La Repubblica delle Donne, among numerous other publications.
Hart was a member of the American Photo editorial team that won the American Society of Magazine Editors’ 1994 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. He received the 2003 Gold Medal for Best General Feature from the International Regional Magazine Association, and in 2006 the Lucie Foundation’s award for best photographic magazine. In 2009 he received the Griffin Museum of Photography’s Susan Sontag Scribe Award for best photographic writing. Hart has written several books on photographic subjects, including the Prentice-Hall college textbook Photography, the original Photography For Dummies, and As I Found It: My Mother’s House, his newly published photographic monograph from German art book publisher Kehrer Verlag.
Opening Reception: July 17th 5:00 – 8:00pm
Exhibition: Thursday, July 17th – September 12th
The RI Center for Photographic Arts, RICPA 118 N. Main St. Providence, RI 02903
Located in the heart of Providence, RICPA was founded to inspire creative development and provide opportunities to engage with the community through exhibitions, education, publication, and mutual support.
RICPA exists to create a diverse and supportive community for individuals interested in learning or working in the Photographic Arts. We strive to provide an environment conducive to the free exchange of ideas in an open and cooperative space. Members should share a passion for creating, appreciating, or learning about all forms of photo-based media. We work to provide a platform for artistic expression, that fosters dialogue and drives innovation in the photographic arts.
We are member supported, the first step to membership is registration – https://www.riphotocenter.org/registration Details on membership options can be found at https://www.riphotocenter.org/membership-info
The Gallery at the Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts is a member of Gallery Night Providence https://www.gallerynight.org
Questions: Contact gallery@riphotocenter.org To learn about other RICPA exhibits and programs, visit https://www.riphotocenter.org
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