Photography A Sense of Place

Mar 1 2021 – Mar 20 2021

What are the elements that make up a place and ingrain it in our memories? Place is more than a stretch of land or the space between two walls. Sometimes it's an innocuous detail that burrows itself into our brains—light scattered on a tablecloth, or clutter strewn on a desk. A location may only stay with us for a particular feeling it evoked, while its physicality remains murky. Other times our memories of a setting are centered around a person—or that person's absence.

"A Sense of Place" called upon photographers to consider the choices they make to communicate a scene at a time when our relationship to places has radically changed. Though photography has always been a means of travel, its utility has a new significance when each of our worlds has narrowed due to the pandemic. Some spaces are inaccessible to us, while others are deeply intimate. Our homes are now multiuse—not only the sites of work, learning, and leisure but as the one place we may feel truly safe. For many of us, meandering walks and drives are our solace. Sharing space with another person is selective, if not precious.

Some of these photographs were taken over the past year under these circumstances, while others are from the past, reconsidered in the light of our new reality. In many of them, the absence of people is pronounced. When people are present, they often feel dreamlike, fixed to that particular setting. The images are a reminder of how much a space can change depending on who is experiencing it. A place may be static in its location, but it ages and changes the same as we do, and it carries different weight for each person who arrives there. In visiting a place we imprint upon it, and it leaves its mark on us as well.
– Jacqui Palumbo

Artists:
Stan Banos, Rich Bergeman, Lucy Bohnsack, Tod Bryant, Annette LeMay Burke, Ruby Chu, Elle DioGuardi, Cristina Fontsaré, Julia Forrest, Vladlen Gorlami, Sarah Hoskins, Austin Irving, Ethan Jones, R. J. Kern, Ken Konchel, Jacob Lunderby, Alana Perino, Léna PIANI, Andre Ramos-Woodard, Cynthia Rettig, Matt Roberts, Holly Romano, Christina Santner, Brittany Severance, Bria Sterling Wilson