Outspoken: Seven Women Photographers

This is a show about the voices of women and girls. Do we hear them? Despite many cultural gains, there are still battles to be won. Women and girls need to speak out, not only to survive, but also to thrive. And they need to be heard!

The images in this show ask the viewer to question assumptions about what is fair, right, or possible for women and girls. What do girls get to do or be before the cultural onslaught inevitable comes? If growing up is in part about gaining power over our lives, then what do girls gain or lose as they navigate the hurdles with which they are confronted? What happens to the search for identity in a patriarchal world? As a female, do I dare stand out, shout out, be outspoken?

For those who do not see society’s preconceptions, the unequal course of power, or the limits imposed by prescribed gender roles, these photographs are saying: “Listen! Look carefully! Do you see everything that is in play?” The issues of self-awareness, the growth toward full identity, the chance to attain real power over our bodies and our lives, are concerns for everyone. For women and girls, to be “outspoken” is to rise individually and in solidarity with one another, so that our voices are heard.

Marky Kauffmann, Curator

The Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts presents the work of seven women as curated by Massachusetts based photographer and educator, Marky Kauffmann. The exhibition, “Outspoken: Seven Women Photographers ” explores and challenges ideas related to being female. Individually the photographers focus on a range of issues from adolescence to aging. Collectively, the show explores and provides insights into a broad spectrum of struggles encountered reconciling societies mixed messages and contradictory expectations.
The award-winning work is well executed, thought-provoking and makes for a show you really need to see in person. Features photography by Nadine Broughton, Blake Fitch, Nancy Grace Horton, Marky Kauffmann, Tira Kahn, Raina Matar and Emily Schiffer.

Outspoken: Seven Women Photographers
On view at the Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts
Dates: March 15 – April 13, 2018
Opening Reception: March 15th 5:00 – 9:00pm
Hours: Thursday 1-4, Friday + Saturday 1:00 – 6:00pm

About The Artists

(Click on the names for their individual Web sites)

Nadine Boughton is a collage artist and photographer. Her collages use imagery from vintage magazines of the 1950’s to explore the psychology, politics, and polarities of mid-century America. Boughton was selected for the Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50 in 2011, 2013, 2014 and 2016. Her work has been exhibited widely, including Davis Orton Gallery, Hudson, NY; Candela Books + Gallery,
Richmond, VA; JoAnne Artman Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA; Griffin Museum of Photography, Boston, MA; and GuatePhoto in Guatemala. She was an IRIS lecturer at The Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles, CA. Nadine’s work is represented by Trident Gallery, Gloucester, MA.

Boughton grew up in Rochester, NY, under the shadow of George Eastman’s Kodak Tower. She studied photography with Garry Winogrand, and at Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY, and Lesley University, Cambridge, MA. She currently lives in Gloucester, MA.

Blake Fitch’s work has been described as “graceful and confident.” In “Expectations of Adolescence,” Fitch photographed her half-sister and cousin from age 12 through 22, allowing viewers into the mercurial transition period when girls feel alternatively awkward and self-confident, combative and submissive, childlike in their wonder, but budding adults in their growing knowledge of the world.

Writing about “Expectations,” art critic Andy Grundberg stated, “It is rare in contemporary photography to encounter a series of pictures this beautiful, compelling, innocent and intriguing.” Grundberg, who first met Fitch when she was director of the Griffin Museum of Photography, added, “I feel as if Blake Fitch . . . has snuck up behind us and delivered a classic Zen slap.”

Fitch has long been interested in documenting nuances in the emotional lives of girls and young women. “Dress Rehearsal” depicts young girls in one of their favorite Princess character costumes. Taken within the context of the current Disney “Princess Culture” (“PC”), Fitch’s photographs are not a polemic on the effects of PC on the psyche of young girls, but rather suggest that reflection and scrutiny will prove enlightening.

The quality and breadth of her imagery has enabled Fitch to receive a variety of grants and sponsorships, including support from Kodak and Calumet Photographic. Her work has been exhibited internationally, and is held in the collections of numerous private and public collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The George Eastman House of Photography, and the Worcester Art Museum. She is represented by Miller Yezerski Gallery and ClampArt.

Fitch received her BFA on a full scholarship from Pratt Institute, with a major in photography and minor in photo history. She studied photography at the Art Institute of Chicago, before earning her master’s degree in arts administration at Boston University. From 2002 through 2007, Fitch was executive director of the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA, where she was instrumental in making the museum a preeminent resource devoted to the exhibition of photography.

Fitch continues to curate independently and work as a fine artist and commercial photographer. She teaches at the New England School of Photography and lives in Reading, MA, with her husband and their two children.

Nancy Grace Horton’s recent solo exhibition was titled “That’s What She Said”, and gender is central to the work.

Trained as a photojournalist, Horton—who lives near the Maine/New Hampshire border—spent several years as the house photographer for the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom live performance venue. She loves having a spot in the front row, as well as the chance to photograph iconic performers, but she was also fascinated with the crowd, especially the women. Those women in the crowd occupy a large space in “That’s What She Said” exhibition, a 6ft high and 10ft wide tryptic, where they usher viewers into an eclectic and challenging exhibition of photographs, cyanotypes, video installations, handmade books, sculptures and even a dress made of photographs, first shown at Engine Gallery in Maine. Each work, says Horton, challenges the narrowly defined ways in which women are perceived —and how they perceive themselves in American society today. Horton’s work in this theme has been seen widely in New England. She says, “the work is aligning with an issue that’s at the forefront of conversation right now.”
—Jessica Skwire Roughier, Maine Women’s Magazine

Marky Kauffmann is a graduate of Boston University and the New England School of Photography. She has been working as a fine art photographer, educator, and curator for more than thirty years. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2017 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist’s Fellowship in Photography. Recently, she won First Place in Soho Photo Gallery’s National Alternative Processes Competition, and was a finalist in the 7th Edition Julia Margaret Cameron Worldwide Gala Awards in three categories, including fine art, portraiture, and landscapes photography. Last summer, Kauffmann garnered an Honorable Mention in the Danforth Museum’s Art Annual Competition, juried by Jessica Roscio.

Kauffmann has been a guest curator at several Boston-area school galleries. Her first curatorial endeavor, Five After Five, featured five New England School of Photography graduates who were making art five years after graduation. Last year she helped curate Veiled Rebellion, an exhibit featuring the work of Pulitzer Prize winning photographer, Lynsey Addario, at Milton Academy’s Nesto Gallery. Currently, Kauffmann’s exhibit, Outspoken: Seven Women Photographers is on display at the de Menil Gallery at Groton School in Groton, MA.

Kauffmann is a passionate educator who has taught photography at numerous secondary schools, including Buckingham Brown and Nichols School, Shady Hill School, Dana Hall School, Milton Academy and Weston High School. She also spent twenty years teaching photography to adults as part of the New England School of Photography’s Evening Workshop Program. Currently she teaches at Milton Academy’s Saturday Course.

Kauffmann is in love with photography. She believes discovering photography allowed her to finally find her voice. She utilizes traditional darkroom techniques, alternative processes, and digital technologies, to create her unique images.

Kauffmann splits her time between her studio in Somerville, and her home in Shirley, MA, where she lives with her husband, Gordon Chase.

Tira Khan’s portfolio, Growing Up Girl, was exhibited in a solo show at Tufts Health Plan’s Harris A. Berman Diversity Gallery, and was a featured exhibit on SocialDocumentary.net. Her photographs have been selected for exhibition in juried group shows, including the 2013 New England Photography Biennial at the Danforth Museum; City Streets/Country Roads, in the Photoplace Online Gallery; We Are Family, at the Darkroom Gallery, and The Ties That Bind in the Canon Gallery at Calumet. Selected photographs from her portfolio will also be exhibited this fall in a group show at the Nesto Gallery at Milton Academy.

In 2009, Tira founded Sugarhouse Media, which produces corporate and documentary-style videos for websites and presentations. She has received two Telly Awards for her work as a video producer. She is also a contributor to Getty Images. Her photographs appear in corporate newsletters and political websites.

She first began her career as a newspaper reporter and later earned a master’s degree in creative writing. She has studied film and photography at Massachusetts College of Art, the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University, the New England School of Photography and the Griffin Museum’s Photography Atelier. She holds a B.A. from Lafayette College and an A.L.M. from Harvard University Extension School.

Rania Matar was born and raised in Lebanon, and moved to the U.S. in 1984. Originally trained as an architect at Cornell University, she currently works full time on her personal photography projects, and started teaching photography in 2009 – originally workshops to teenage girls in Palestinian refugee camps, and since 2010, Personal Documentary Photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Matar’s work has been widely exhibited in the U.S. and internationally, most recently at The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers From Iran and the Arab World; Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington DC; Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York; Tufts University Art Gallery; East Wing Gallery, Dubai; Galerie Janine Rubeiz, Beirut; Galerie Eulenspiegel, Basel; Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg Germany; Southeast Museum of Photography, Florida; Sharjah Art Museum; National Portrait Gallery in London.

Her work is currently on view at the Harn Museum of Art in Gainesville, FL in an exhibition titled Aftermath: The Fallout of War – America and The Middle East, curated by Carol McCusker.

Matar has won numerous awards, including the 2011 Legacy Award at the Griffin Museum of Photography, 2011 and 2007 Massachusetts Cultural Council artist fellowships, first place at the New England Photographers Biennial and Women in Photography International. She was a finalist for the LensCulture Portrait Award, has garnered honorable mentions at the UNICEF Picture of the Year Award, Silver Eye Center for Photography Fellowship, CENTER, and LensCulture Exposure International, and has been a repeat top 50 winner at Critical Mass. In 2008 she was a finalist for the distinguished Foster Award at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, with an accompanying solo exhibition.

A mid-career retrospective of Matar’s work will be exhibited at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, in a solo exhibition titled In Her Image: Girls and Women by Rania Matar, December 2017 – May 2018.

Matar’s images are in the permanent collections of several museums, institutions and private collections worldwide.

She has published three books:

L’Enfant-Femme, 2016, with an introduction by Her Majesty Queen Noor, and essays by Lois Lowry and Kristen Gresh

A Girl and Her Room, 2012, essays by Anne Tucker and Susan Minot, selected best photo book of the year by PDN, Photo-Eye, British Journal of Photography, Feature Shoot and L’Oeil de la Photographie

Ordinary Lives, 2009, essay by Anthony Shadid, selected the best photo book of the year by Photo-Eye.

Emily Schiffer is a photographer interested in the intersection of art, audience engagement, and social change.

Awards include: an Audience Engagement Grant from the Open Society Foundation, an Emergency Fund Grant from the Magnum Foundation, the Arnold Newman Prize for New Directions in Portraiture, winner of the PDN Photo Annual Personal Project Category, first prize in the IPA Lucie Awards, the Inge Morath Award, presented by Magnum Photos and the Inge Morath Foundation, and a Fulbright Fellowship inPortraiture, winner of the PDN Photo Annual Personal Project Category, first prize in the IPA Lucie Awards, the Inge Morath Award, presented by Magnum Photos and the Inge Morath Foundation, and a Fulbright Fellowship in Photography. Emily has exhibited her photographs internationally. Publications include: Aperture, Smithsonian Magazine, Photo District News, TIME Magazine, Lightbox, and Mother Jones. Her work is in the permanent collections of The Farnsworth Museum, US, The Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, Japan, Foto Baryo, Philippines, and The Center for Fine Art Photography, US, and numerous private collections.

In 2005, she founded the My Viewpoint Youth Photography Initiative on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota, where she continues to teach and shoot. In 2011, she co-created SEE POTENTIAL, a community engagement/ public art project that installs documentary images on abandoned buildings to illustrate economic development initiatives of community leaders on the South Side of Chicago. In 2014 she co-created Danube Revisited: The Inge Morath Truck Project, a photographic road trip and traveling exhibition in which a 2T truck was converted into a mobile gallery and driven along the Danube River through Central and Eastern Europe.