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.  Laura J Bennett’s image Path for Pain received the Juror’s Award in the she exhibition juried by Polly Gaillard.  Laura’s exhibition Dames of Anatomy is discussed in this GalleryTalk.

Artist Statement

“I am a collector. My treasures include glass negatives, antique botanical prints, old medical books and other curiosities. Many of the glass negatives I choose to keep are of women from the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. After scanning the negatives, I digitally combine them with medical ephemera to form new environments. The women command attention, calling the viewer to enter a place that may feel vaguely familiar. It is a woman’s place. Although anonymous, I feel deeply connected to them. They are compelling and unafraid. There was a time when they actually existed here on earth, hearts beating. They looked up at the same stars and felt the earth beneath their feet. But through time they shifted into memory and slowly into oblivion, until my rummaging hands found them. Some are peppered with a bit of satire, but there is an underlying presence of struggle and submission. My experience as a woman is a far cry from the fairytales I heard as a child. I tell my daughters, “you are your own prince charming, so saddle up and find yourself.”

Laura J Bennett
August, 2025

Bio

Laura Koskinen-Bennett earned her MFA from the University of Houston in Texas. Much of her work focuses on the female experience and her life as the mother of nine children. Her internationally exhibited Dames of Anatomy was a winner in the Helsinki Photo Fest 2021 citywide exhibition titled “Fearless.” It also won the first Texas Photo Society Nat’l Photography Award, the Soho Photo International Portfolio Competition and the 5th Julia Margaret Cameron Award. Uncontrollable things, a more recent body of work, won the 2024 Hariban Juror’s Choice Award, selected by Tomoko Aya. Bennett’s work has been published in SHOTS magazine, MANIFEST 7 Photography Annual, The Hand Magazine, Woven Tale Press and The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes, by Christopher James. Bennett prefers shooting with film and uses an old Gundlach 8×10, a Zone VI Field camera and an early Hasselblad. She also enjoys scanning antique negatives, interesting objects, medical illustrations and vintage ephemera for transformation in the computer. Bennett is a former college instructor and has taught all levels of photography, history of women artists, photo history and photojournalism. She is currently living a quiet life on a farm in rural Tennessee with her 4 cats, 2 dogs, a rooster named Javier and a bunch of ornery chickens.

website: laurajbennett.com
instagram:  @darkroomdespardo

link to online exhibition