“Fictive Landscapes” by Carol Eisenberg | Awards Collective GalleryTalk

The Awards Collective was created to feature the works of artist who have received a Juror’s Award or Director’s Award in ASG’s Online exhibitions.  Carol Eisenberg’s  image “Fictive Landscapes 08“ received the Juror’s Award in the “landscape” exhibition juried by Kevin Tully.  Carol’s exhibition “Fictive Landscapes” was featured from March 1 to March 31 , 2024 and is discussed in our GalleryTalk with Carol.

Artist Statement

I create constructed digital images that blur the line between painting and photography. This duality of aesthetics is an essential component of my approach to art and life. I am drawn to the polarities of beauty and decay, the contrived and the natural, the excessive and the elegant.

My compositions begin with originally sourced imagery selected from photographs I shoot in my studio or on location near my homes in Maine and Tel Aviv and on my extensive travels. As an active participant in the feminist movement of the 1970s, principles of inclusion, equality, and justice underlie my work in the breadth of source material and the embrace of beauty in all its forms.

The images exist in an abstract realm that unites intentional creation with a fluid, intuitive approach to composition and color. Fusing fragments of natural materials—trees, leaves, branches, flowers, and underwater forms—with images of graffiti and urban detritus, they conjure a mythic idyll in which the ethereal beauties of the natural and made worlds exist in harmony.

Carol Eisenberg, 2023

Bio

Carol Eisenberg has been a practicing photographer since the 1990s. She received her MFA in Media Arts and Photography from Maine Media College, Rockport, ME. Her work is in public and private collections nationwide and has been featured in Décor Maine, Maine Arts Journal, Portland Press Herald, LensCulture, and other publications. It has been exhibited at the Maine Jewish Museum, Portland, ME; LC Bates Museum, Fairfield, ME; and the Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA. Eisenberg is represented by Carver Hill Gallery, Camden, ME; Susan Spiritus Gallery, Irvine, CA; and MMPA Gallery, Portland, ME. Her work has also been shown at A Smith Gallery, Johnson City, TX; Cove Street Arts, Portland, ME; Grant Wahlquist Gallery, Portland, ME; Southeast Center for Photography, Greenville, SC; Photo Place Gallery, Middlebury, VT; New York Center for Photographic Art, New York, NY; Colorado Photographic Arts Center, Denver, CO; and Center for Photographic Arts, Carmel, CA.

website: caroleisenberg.com
instagram: @carol_eisenberg

link to online exhibition

“Liminal” by Cathy Spence | Awards Collective GalleryTalk

The Awards Collective was created to feature the works of artist who have received either a Juror’s Award or Director’s Award in ASG’s Online exhibitions.  Cathy Spence’s image “Bayou #1“ received the Director’s Award in the “water” exhibition juried by Elizabeth Avedon.  Cathy’s exhibition “Liminal” is discussed in this GalleryTalk.

Artist Statement

In the beginning, I set out to create my own Edward Steichen’s 1904 pictorial The Pond ­­– Moonrise described by art critic Charles Caffin as “…the penumbra between the clear visibility of things and their total extinction into darkness.” Liminal captures moments of transition – just before daylight, almost winter, edge of spring; and the mirage of fog.

Most of my time was spent in the marshes where the air is wet and thick, and the horizons are long and thin, broken mostly by tall pines or squat willows. Eventually, I began to take note of the constant struggle between the sun and the fog to illuminate and obscure the landscape.

Cathy Spence, 2023

Bio

Cathy Spence is a fine art photographer living and working in Beaumont, Texas. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Lamar University.  Cathy has photographs in the Wittliff Collection of Southwestern and Mexican Photography, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas in Austin. She was awarded the Houston Center of Photography Fellowship in 1998. Her work has been included in group shows: “Fotofest: New Discoveries,” PDNB Gallery, Dallas, Texas, 1998; “Will Power” Rudolph Poissant Gallery, Houston, Texas, 1998; “Nude,” PDNB Gallery, Dallas, Texas, 1999; “Braun, Francois, Spence, King,” Stephen L. Clark Gallery, Austin, Texas, 2001; and the traveling exhibition “Inside/Outside,” which showcased ten Texas women photographers selected by Anne Tucker, former curator of photography at MFAH. Her solo exhibitions “Saints and Satyrs” appeared at the Art Studio, Beaumont, Texas, 2000; and Stephen L. Clark Gallery, Austin, Texas, 2003; “Crooked Eye” at the Art Studio, 2020; and “Liminal” at the Dishman Art Museum, Beaumont, Texas, 2023.

website:  cathyspencefineartphotographs.com
instagram@cspence.art

link to online exhibition

“Out of Context” by Michael Prais | Photographic Performance GalleryTalk

The Photographic Performance was created to feature the works of artist with completed bodies of work and a strong narrative. Michael Prais’ exhibition “Out of Context“ is the first of four performances to be exhibited during 2024.  Michael’s exhibition is discussed in this GalleryTalk.

Artist Statement

The reassembly of the photographs figuratively illustrates that photographs are immediately and forever taken out of context. As much as resemblance is heralded as reality, photographs are disconnected from the reality that we take them to be. Reassembly challenges viewers to consider photographs without the resemblance and the composition that are central to the Modernist conception of photography. Reassembly is digital post-processing that challenges Modernist values by producing a self-collage that signals, as collages did a century ago, an expected, disturbing reality and by producing an (oxymoronic) non-representational photograph.

Photographs of scenes with arrangements of deteriorating objects are reassembled to ask viewers to consider how photographs function without their chief characteristic: resemblance. Reassembling photographs takes constituent blocks out of context while each and every piece of the photograph remains visible and each piece–and the whole–remains a photograph. Repetition of the frame repeatedly illustrates that photographs are taken out of context.

Loss of context of any block creates graphical discontinuities at each of its edges that point to precipitous loss after a finite length, time, or life. These rectangles are metaphors for our finite lives. As the original structure is hidden in and by the overall chaotic appearance of the distorted image, this treatment suggests a loss of usefulness and value and perhaps our progression away from a more structured life and toward chaos.

Reassembly could be pushed to the level of pixels to create chaos, but small regions of each photographs remain recognizable so that one can recognize the deterioration and loss captured in my first type of photograph. Abandoned and deteriorating objects in these photographs and the reassembled photographs of them are also metaphors for our lives. I believe that I will not have an afterlife. This project helps me, and perhaps viewers, deal with our ultimate concern.

Michael Prais, 2023

Bio

Michael G. Prais grew up in suburban Dearborn, Michigan, (the home of the Ford Motor Company) during the post-WWII heyday of the auto industry. He studied chemistry, physics and mathematics at the University of Chicago and received a doctorate from UCSD analyzing the distribution of vibrations in mathematical models of the surfaces of crystals.

While teaching chemistry and becoming tenured at Roosevelt University in Chicago, his background in teaching and in large-scale calculations drew him into supporting modern information and communication technologies in the service of education.

As a visual person who moved easily between the concrete and the abstract, Michael has always been interested in how both concrete and abstract tools worked. He is particularly interested in explanation and mechanism. He has always helped and taught others to understand and use abstract tools. He has published the book Photographic Exposure and Camera Operation (ISBN 978-1-4392-0641-6).

A visual explorer, he has always been stimulated by the juxtaposition of the organic and the designed and explores both human constructions in nature and nature and the coincidental in the midst of structure. Michael now uses photography to examine how random acts create structure. His current project, Out of Context, examines the concepts of resemblance, reassembly and recognition in photography and the concept that all photographs are taken out of context in an upcoming book of images and ideas.

website: michaelprais.me
instagram@michaelprais

link to online exhibition

“interiors” juried by Ann Mitchell | GalleryTalk

The “interiors” exhibition juried by Ann Mitchell, was in the online gallery from January 19 to February 29, 2024.  Ann selected fifty five images from forty six artist. Abbey Hepner’s image “The House is Just a Metaphor” received the Juror’s Award. Ron Butler’s image “somebody see you up there” received the Director’s Award.

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Special apology to Dan McCormack. YouTube child protection policy did not like the posting of his image on our video. So…. here is his image “Elizabeth  P 02-03-18–10AE”:

Dan also included a statement about his image:

“My image “Elizabeth_P_02-03-18–10AE” was shot with one of my Quaker Oats home made pinhole cameras. The camera holds 8×10” B&W film and requires a two minute exposure. This explains the movement in her fingers and slight blur in her face.  That day in February of 2018, we made 15 exposures in different parts of her house. Elizabeth is an established photographer living in the same town as I do. She is also an accomplished harp player. I had asked Elizabeth to pose for me because it was a way for me to work with and get to know another successful photographer. I like this image because of the bright natural light from the window behind her and on the other her other side is her robe on the door.”  Dan McCormick, February, 2024

—oOOOo—

Juror’s Statement

I am enthralled by interiors – whether they are literal or implied. It’s a word that exists in partnership with its opposite – and that resistance, that separation, is part of what gives it strength and power. We all live interior lives in exterior-facing structures and throughout life we find ourselves sliding somewhere along the space between those two points. These images tell the story of how we live, who we are and what we construct around us.

Concerning Abbey Hepner’s Juror Award image “The House is Just a Metaphor”:
While there were so many powerful images in this group – I was immediately struck by the intentionality, the move from observational into performance, by the artist. I was also struck by the choice of aligned placement along the wall – almost like an echo of Sir John Everett Millais’ Ophelia, floating in this empty suburban room.

Ann Mitchell
January, 2024

link to online exhibition

“Surprise Inside” by Walter Plotnick | Awards Collective GalleryTalk

The Awards Collective was created to feature the works of artist who have received either a Juror’s Award or Director’s Award in ASG’s Online exhibitions.  Walter Plotnick’s image “Limerick“ received the Director’s Award in the “portal” exhibition juried by Crista Dix.  Walter’s exhibition “Surprise Inside” is discussed in this GalleryTalk.

Artist Statement

As a child I was fascinated by single-serve cereal boxes, you would open the box along the perforated long side, pour in the milk and eat out of the open box. It was the folded mechanics of the box I was interested in. Fast forward many years later to my Surprise Inside Series…

My photographic collages serve as a metaphor for anticipation, those moments when the unknown is being revealed.

The implied act of opening the boxes, releases the occupants, allowing them to take flight. The people and objects confined within, through the simple act of unfolding, are exposed revealing what was previously hidden.

I try to convey excitement, and energy in images that are playful, expressive, and nostalgically bring the viewer back to the joyful moments of anticipation felt in childhood.

The sense of nostalgia evoked in the graphic synthesis of these images is augmented using a wash of warm sepia tones that permeate the images. There is also a visual correlation between inhabitants of the boxes and the boxes themselves. The folds of the boxes having a quality not unlike origami, is reflected in the contortionist-like bending of the human forms within.

The unusual and dissimilar combination of people and cardboard boxes is visually unified through the repetition of angles. Despite pairing such disparate elements, I bring them together harmoniously to form images with visual impact, and are frankly, fun to look at.

Walter Plotnick, 2023

Bio

Mr. Plotnick is a USA photo-based artist who lives and works in the Philadelphia, PA area. He received his MFA from University of the Arts and BFA from Tyler School of Art.  Mr. Plotnick is a Senior Lecturer in the Fine Arts Department at Penn State University/Abington.

website: walterplotnick.com
instagram@walter_plotnick

link to online exhibition

“Here we be” by Megan Hatch | Awards Collective GalleryTalk

The Awards Collective was created to feature the works of artist who have received a Juror’s Award or Director’s Award in ASG’s Online exhibitions.  Megan Hatch’s image “A Ladder to the Sky“ received the Juror’s Award in the “common objects” exhibition juried by Doug Beasley.  Megan’s exhibition “Here we be” was featured from February 1 to February 29 , 2024 and is discussed in our GalleryTalk with Megan.

Artist Statement

According to the Oxford English dictionary, hope can be defined as “a feeling of trust.” In the past, I’ve described hope as my superpower. It’s a sinewy hope we’re talking about: I grew up rural, queer, and too quiet about what hurt. Now I’m finding that sometimes you have to leave hope behind. For instance, I will never carry a child in my body. I feel betrayed, not by my body, but by hope. How can you give up and carry on at the same time? As I started exploring this question, I found myself working with images that quite unexpectedly reminded me of the months after my mother passed.

It turns out that the heart of my question and of this body of work is grieving. In my experience, grieving is the way in which you find yourself anew in a place that is also radically altered. Getting there often involves looking for a way out, looking for the thing you lost, and/or just lying on the floor weeping because the pull of gravity is too much. You come undone, and pass through days like a ghost. In this permeable state, you also start to feel how the world keeps reaching out to you. That reaching? That, to me, is hope. It is the world reminding me that I am a part of it, and it is a part of me.

So this is the answer to my question: hope doesn’t come from within me and it exists independent of any outcome. It is in the letting go and the carrying on. My mother wrote a haiku, only one line of which I can now remember: “Death gives rise to wings.” What I think she was talking about is the way that letting go allows us to rise to meet the present. This is the moment that will see us through, not all the ones that came before or any possibility of one to come. My mom was pretty sinewy too.

Sometimes the present moment is a hard one. As I complete this work, things that we hoped for and even saw manifest are being taken away—bodily autonomy, trans & queer rights, affirmative action. I will continue to hope that we will find our way, not in spite of the grief I feel, but with it.

Megan Hatch, 2023

Bio

Megan Hatch (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist and curator living in Portland, Oregon. She is a recent recipient of the Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers (2023),
and a Critical Mass Finalist (2022). Her work has been exhibited internationally and is in collections both private and corporate.

I’ve loved making art my entire life. As a budding photographer, the tool I had at hand was a disposable camera and I waited with breathless anticipation for the prints to show up in the mail. I
eventually graduated to a film camera, and my hands still remember the satisfying click of the shutter release. Today I work in a digital format and the childhood thrill remains.

Regardless of medium or discipline, the arts are powerful. The joy I experience as an artist is why I’m here today; it’s seen me through. After earning a BA in Studio Art from Carleton College, I
have spent many years creating work, teaching art in communal spaces, and curating exhibitions in sometimes nontraditional environments. My experiences of growing up rural, working class, and queer created a deep desire to help make the arts accessible to a broader range of folks than typically find themselves, or at least comfortably so, in mainstream spaces.

I can’t not make art. I know, deep down, that art is essential to our collective thriving. It’s how we’re going to find our way.

website: meganhatch.com
instagram: @meganhatch_arts

link to online exhibition

“Merged Landscapes : New Lands” by Lisa Cassell-Arms | Awards Collective GalleryTalk

The Awards Collective was created to feature the works of artist who have received either a Juror’s Award or Director’s Award in ASG’s Online exhibitions.  Lisa Cassell-Arms’ image “Between Heaven and Earth 2“ received the Director’s Award in the “open/unfiltered” exhibition juried by Kevin Tully.  Lisa’s exhibition “Merged Landscapes: New Lands” is discussed in this GalleryTalk.

Artist Statement

During the pandemic I rediscovered a collection of antique stereoscope cards that had belonged to my great-grandfather. I had always been fascinated by them. Long and horizontal in format, two images appear side by side, merged in the center. They often depict exotic locations, captured from slightly different angles, suggesting an edit, or slight glitch in time. When viewed through a stereoscope viewer, they appear three dimensional. For me during that time, they provided a momentary escape to a far away place. Inspired by those images, and searching for a way to stay sane and creative, I took a deep dive into my photographic archives. Looking at images that spanned decades gave me a comforting sense of continuity and hope.

In my resulting series, Merged Landscapes: New Lands, I pair and combine two landscapes into a single merged image. The landscapes are distant from one another on the globe, and separated by time. I tone and texture them to recall the aged quality of stereo-cards, hinting at the enigmatic and slightly unreal nature that I’ve loved about those early, mysterious images. Pairs may share some commonality, perhaps in form, topography or mood. Some may be analogs to one another, merged back to back as if in mirror image. Placed together, they enter into a conversation. A visual dialogue between shapes and shadows that suggests a new and hybrid land, an alternate history to be discovered.

Lisa Cassell-Arms, January, 2024

Bio

Lisa Cassell-Arms is a fine art photographer focused on capturing the magic and beauty of the natural world and our changing relationship with it. By combining and merging images that are different, across time and location, she reinterprets landscape and explores our perceptions of natural space. Lisa discovered her love of photography as a young teenager. An early Polaroid camera and the complete Time-Life Library of Photography provided a great early education in the mechanics, principles and history of photography.

After graduating with a degree in Film from New York University, Lisa worked in television advertising production and film rights acquisitions. Lisa segued into culinary arts, cooking and recipe development which led to food photography and the publication of a cookbook, Seasons in a Vermont Vineyard, Arcadia Publishing.

Lisa has studied at the International Center for Photography and participated in the Atelier and education through the Griffin Museum, Maine Media workshops and Santa Fe Workshops. Her fine art and editorial work has been exhibited in galleries, appeared in print and online. Lisa lives in beautiful Vermont with her husband and silver Labrador.

website:  lisacassellarms.com
instagram:  lisacassellarms

link to online exhibition

“Pound the Pavement” by Rajan Dosaj | Awards Collective GalleryTalk

The Awards Collective was created to feature the works of artist who have received a Juror’s Award or Director’s Award in ASG’s Online exhibitions.  Rajan Dosaj’s image “The Last Leaves of Autumn“ received the Juror’s Award in the “animalia” exhibition juried by Henry Horenstein.  Rajan’s exhibition “Pound the Pavement” was featured from January 1 to January 31 , 2024 and is discussed in our GalleryTalk with Rajan.

Artist Statement

In preparation for this exhibition, I reviewed many of the street photography images that I have shot over the last 3 or 4 years in and around the Los Angeles area.

Many, but not all of the images that I shot during this period often feature a solitary individual going about their business on the streets, working at their job, walking their dog, jogging or simply at leisure.

Focusing on an individual, whether it is a street scene or street portrait, I‘m looking to capture some of the characteristics of the subject. How the individual walks, where the eyes are focused, do they smoke, their comfort level in public, their familiarity with the surroundings in which they are placed and so on. The hope is to capture an image that tells a story about the subject and setting to understand the subject’s position in life and the world at large.

As I often do, architecture, buildings or vast landscapes, etc. are brought into play as I compose the surroundings around the subject. These are details that often complement the image, add to the story and possibly our understanding of the individual.

What you will see in this exhibition are black and white images of the streets, the environment, the moments in the lives of individuals who walk the streets alone, some with a purpose, some without. Each has a unique story that through my camera, through my eyes, I have hopefully captured a brief and wonderful moment.

Bio

Born and raised in the United States, I spent nearly 20 years in the theater world as a dancer and singer in Broadway musicals such as A Chorus Line, Shenandoah with John Raitt, Hello Dolly with JoAnn Worley just to name a few. Upon my retirement from theater, I settled into the business world but it wouldn’t be long before I was in need of a creative outlet and the Sebastiao Salgado documentary, The Salt of the Earth, rekindled my brief high school interest in photography. Soon, the books of Alec Soth, Nancy Rexroth, Sally Mann, Joshua Jackson, and many more were on my shelves and with a newly purchased camera in hand, I started out on my latest adventure.

Naturally, I started with dance portraits and found it incredibly exciting and fulfilling but soon I ventured into other genres to improve my technique. Whether it was wildlife, street, architecture, portrait, or fine art photography, I was either taking a class or teaching myself about a particular genre in order to become a better photographer.

Today I spend most of my time shooting fine art, portrait and street photography, but whatever genre I choose to shoot, I love those rare moments when my eyes, through a camera, are able to see and hopefully capture an extraordinary moment.

In my short time behind the camera, I have been fortunate enough to have several of my images appear in galleries and competitions across the U.S. and Europe including Photo Place Gallery, A Smith Gallery, Praxis Gallery, Black Box Gallery, SE Center for Photography, PH21 Gallery, Blank Wall Gallery, the Decode Gallery and the Orange County Fair.

instagram: @rajan.dosaj

link to online exhibition

 

“color” juried by Fran Forman | GalleryTalk

The “color” exhibition juried by Fran Forman, was in the online gallery from December 8, 2023 to January 18, 2024.  Fran selected fifty five images from forty artist. Aubrey Guthrie’s image “Zocolo Santa Fe 2” received the Juror’s Award. Sharon Royal’s image “Synchronous” received the Director’s Award.

Juror’s Statement

Whether it’s through art, design, or everyday life, color enriches our experiences and adds depth to how we perceive the world.

As the juror for A Smith Gallery’s exhibition, “Color,” it was an honor to witness the myriad interpretations and expressions of this captivating subject. The submissions showcased an exceptional range of creativity, each capturing the essence and significance of color in its unique form.

Throughout the selection process, it became evident that color is more than a visual element; it is a language that artists skillfully employ to convey emotions, stories, and perspectives. The submissions illuminated how colors interact, evoke emotions, and breathe life into the scenes captured by the lens. It is clear that understanding color allows us to express ourselves creatively and communicate in ways that transcend language barriers.

From vibrant, bold palettes that exuded energy to subtle, nuanced hues that whispered tales of serenity, each photograph carried its distinct narrative. The diverse use of color schemes, contrasts, and harmonies demonstrated a profound understanding of the emotional and symbolic power of color.

Beyond the technical aspects, the submissions showcased the artists’ ability to harness color as a tool for storytelling and expression. Some photographs utilized color as the focal point, drawing the viewer’s gaze and stirring profound emotions. Others masterfully played with the absence or restraint of color to convey depth and evoke introspection.

The deliberation process was both inspiring and challenging, as each entry possessed its own merit and spoke volumes about the artist’s connection to color. Ultimately, the selected photographs stood out for their ability to not only capture the visual beauty of color but also to evoke a deeper emotional resonance, leaving a lasting impression on my mind and heart.

Congratulations to all participants for your exceptional contributions, which collectively painted a vivid tapestry of the diverse, emotive, and multifaceted nature of color. Your artistry and creativity have made this competition an enriching journey, reminding us all of the profound impact of color in our lives and the arts.

And many thanks to Amanda Smith and Kevin Tully, directors of A Smith Gallery, for affording me this privilege and for the tireless work you do for the photographic community.

 Fran Forman
January, 2024

link to online exhibition

“Riverbank” by Renee Lynn | Awards Collective GalleryTalk

The Awards Collective was created to feature the works of artist who have received a Juror’s Award or Director’s Award in ASG’s Online exhibitions.  Renee Lynn’s image “The Light Within“ received the Juror’s Award in the “imagined” exhibition juried by Susan Burnstine.  Renee’s exhibition “Riverbank” was featured from December 1 to December 31, 2023 and is discussed in our GalleryTalk with Renee.

Artist Statement

There is a deep beauty in the remote lands of western Ireland found within neglected places that offer the kind of space and light that respects its true nature. The meandering rivers traverse endless rolling hills and rich green plains which are deeply entwined with the Celtic history of the land.

Using impressionistic photographic techniques, deliberate movements are applied to create a tapestry of colors, shapes, and textures. This series reveals a transient nature of the moment that touches on the infinite. With an ease between representation and abstraction, the unseen materializes in new and unexpected ways born from all that is sacred and revered in this cherished landscape.

Inspiration for the series was drawn from one of Ireland’s treasured poets, John O’Donohue and his poem Fluent.

Fluent
I would love to live
Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.

~ John O’Donohue

Bio

Renee Lynn is an American photographer based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Renee grew up surrounded by artists in the vibrant art scene of Greenwich Village in the 1960’s, an environment that shaped her voice as a visual artist. At 10 years old, with a Brownie camera in hand, she began exploring her world.

In 1980 Renee completed her studies in commercial photography at U.C. Berkeley. She began her career working as a photojournalist before she found her passion as a stock photographer specializing in nature and animal imagery. During this time, Renee was represented by Getty Images, Corbis Images and Photo Researchers. She co-authored the Nature column for Popular Photography and was featured in Photo District News and on the Discovery Channel. Her publication credits include National Geographic, Time, and National Wildlife Federation. Renee received BBC Wildlife Photography of the Year awards in addition to the Addy award for a DDB Volkswagen ad campaign. Her animal imagery was used for advertising by Apple, Exxon, Jaguar and Discovery Channel. Reaching out to others and supporting their professional development, she founded the NPPA Women in Photojournalism Conference and Women in Nature Photography Conference.

In 1996 Renee once again moved to a community with one of the liveliest art scenes in America: Santa Fe, New Mexico. It proved to be a place where she could study and practice the arts surrounded by creative talent and inspiration. Here, she expanded her photographic endeavors to explore the visual language of abstract expressionism. Through imaginative fields of color, line and form she now invites you to experience photography in an unexpected way.

website:  reneelynnimages.com
instagram: @reneelynnimages

link to online exhibition