2023 Women's History Month Celebration
A SERIES OF EVENTS WITH OUR FACULTY AND GUESTS
MARCH 1: IN-PERSON OPENING EVENT IN NEW YORK CITY
MARCH 2: ARCHIVAL IMAGINATIONS WITH LAURA LARSON
MARCH 7: I'LL BE YOUR MIRROR WITH SARA MACEL
MARCH 9: PHOTOGRAPHING MOTHERHOOD WITH ELINOR CARUCCI
MARCH 14: MIND OVER MATTER WITH QIANA MESTRICH
MARCH 16: ON BEING AN ARTIST MOTHER WITH STACY MEHRFAR
MARCH 22:
EMBODIED EXPERIENCE WITH CORINNE BOTZ
ABOUT THE EVENT
In celebration of Women’s History Month, PhotoPhlo is thrilled to host a series of events throughout March 2023. Curated and led by the women of our esteemed faculty, each presentation will be a dynamic and informative educational experience, exploring both present-day topics as well as the historical record through the lens of women photographers. These teaching artists include Corinne Botz, Elinor Carucci, Laura Larson, Sara Macel, Stacy Mehrfar, and Qiana Mestrich.
Each faculty member will host an individual event focused on a topic of their choosing, joined by guest artists who will also share their wide-ranging viewpoints. Faculty and guests will present their work and engage in discussions about subjects including motherhood, sexuality, differing cultural perspectives, gender identity, empathy, and resistance, as well as the overall underrepresentation of women in photography.
Our inaugural Women’s History Month celebration is a platform for bold ideas, highlighting groundbreaking contributions that women photographers have made throughout the history of the medium.
LOCATION
All faculty-led events will be presented online via Zoom. The opening is an in-person celebration at Launch Photo Books in New York City which will subsequently be offered for on-demand screening.
TICKETS
Both all-access and single event tickets are available.
• A limited number of both all-access ($125) and single event ($25) tickets are available.
• All-access passes offer participants admission to all six online events and the in-person opening event in New York City and priority admission to the in-person opening event in New York City.
• On-demand recordings of all events will be available to all-access pass holders within 48-hours of the event.
• Single event passes offer participants access to the online event of their choice.
• Passes are non-transferable
The Malala Fund
As part of the checkout process ticket buyers will have the opportunity to make a gift to the
Malala Fund. Their mission is to build a better world where every girl can learn and lead without fear through investment in education activists and advocates who are driving solutions to barriers to girls’ education in their communities.
Learn more.
ABOUT PhotoPhlo
PhotoPhlo connects photography enthusiasts with top photography educators for real-time online learning opportunities and events, fostering a dynamic environment in which photographers can explore further and dig deeper in their creative pursuits. PhotoPhlo’s mission is to build community and camaraderie amongst the countless people around the world who love and practice photography, and to support the creative growth and financial independence of the distinguished teaching artists that make up our faculty.
Women's History Month EVENTS
PHOTOPHLO CELEBRATES WHM 2023 IN NYC
IN-PERSON OPENING EVENT
WITH CORINNE BOTZ, ELINOR CARUCCI, LAURA LARSON, SARA MACEL, STACY MEHRFAR, AND QIANA MESTRICH
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1, 2023
7-9PM ET Talk begins at 7pm
59 ORCHARD STREEt
NEW YORK CITY
Free and Open to the PubliC
As we kick-off a month of great events in celebration of Women’s History Month 2023, PhotoPhlo Faculty members Corinne Botz, Elinor Carucci, Laura Larson, Sara Macel, Stacy Mehrfar, and Qiana Mestrich will offer brief presentations of their work along with an overview of their upcoming individual events. Presentations will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by Sara Macel and a book signing. Please join us for this in-person event at Launch Photo Books in New York City. We’d love to see you!
Laura Larson and guest artist Marissa Stewart will present their work and discuss their shared interest in telling women’s stories by working in and through public and personal archives.
Larson’s most recent book, City of Incurable Women, pictures the complex lives of the 19th century women, diagnosed as suffering from hysteria, who were hospitalized at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris. Incorporating a broad range of materials, Larson layers archival imagery with her own photographs and texts, speculating through the documented accounts of the women’s illness. Embracing photography’s capacity to feel, City of Incurable Women sees these women as unruly spirits that haunt the present, mining the radical possibilities of empathy and resistance.
Stewart will present her project, Call Me When You Get Home, which draws from her relationships with the women in her family. She explores place-making practices within a Black matrilineal household, generational world-building, and the celebration of a self-constructed identity.
In addition to presenting their projects and discussing the role that archival photographs play in their work, Larson and Stewart will talk about their experience of working together as teacher and student in the MFA Program of Photography and Integrated Media at Ohio University.
I'll Be Your Mirror: Expanding the
Definition of Self-Portraiture
With Sara Macel and Zara Stephens
Tuesday, March 7, 2023
7-8:30PM ET
ONLINE
Sara Macel will present photos from her recently released book, What Did the Deep Sea Say, which explores her family history, and discuss her expansive, multi-faceted approach to self-portraiture that challenges viewers to examine their own lives and to consider the question: When is a self-portrait more than a portrait of the artist? She will also highlight historical examples of diverse women artists whose family and origin story inform their work. Additionally, Sara will introduce the audience to her former student and mentee Zara Stephens, a current Pratt BFA candidate, whose own self-portrait work considers the many digital selves we curate online.
Elinor Carucci and guest artist Takako Kido will discuss and share photos from their deeply intimate, autobiographical projects which explore their personal experiences of being mothers. Influenced by their respective cultures, Israeli-American of Mizrahi decent (Carucci) and Japanese (Kido), their work reveals the joy and struggles of motherhood, its relationship to women’s identity, and the unvarnished, often universal, realities that are often overlooked in artistic and cultural representations of motherhood. The artists will also talk about how becoming a mother affected their art and their ability to observe and create. Elinor and Takako’s presentations will be followed by a conversation between the artists and questions from the audience.
Femxphotographers.org:
MIND OVER MATTER
With Qiana Mestrich, Kirsten Becken, Katharina Bosse, Lilly Urbat AND Eva Woolridge
Tuesday, March 14, 2023
7-8:30PM ET
ONLINE
Qiana Mestrich and fellow FEMXPHOTOGRAPHERS.ORG members Kirsten Becken, Katharina Bosse, Lilly Urbat will discuss the various narratives and energies expressed in the group’s second publication, Mind Over Matter (Hatje Cantz, 2022) including feminine sexuality, tenderness, wildness and power. Including work by nearly two-dozen women artists and edited by curator and writer Roula Seikaly, Mind Over Matter evokes a female vision as it investigates the power of the mind, as well as dreams and fantasies, logic, and intuition. The artists will also talk about their experiences around organizing a photography collective with international members.
FEMXPHOTOGRAPHERS.ORG is an independent, non-hierarchical collective, dedicated to the promotion of fine art photographers, who expose and deconstruct the dominant male gaze in photography. The group shapes contemporary discourse by releasing thematic publications, organizing exhibitions and panels, providing photographers with an empowering network of solidarity and mutual support.
Changing the Narrative:
A Conversation on Being an Artist Mother
With
Stacy Mehrfar,
Corinne Botz,
Elinor Carucci,
Laura Larson, and
Qiana Mestrich
Thursday, March 16
7-8:30PM ET
ONLINE
Stacy Mehrfar will host fellow PhotoPhlo faculty members for an empowering discussion on being an artist mother working in photography. The panelists will share their experiences, discussing the challenges and inspirations surrounding these two significant roles. Participants include Corinne Botz, Elinor Carucci, Laura Larson, and Qiana Mestrich.
Embodied Experience and
Photographic Representation
With
Corinne Botz
and
WENG-SAN SIT
Wednesday, March 22
7-8:30PM ET
ONLINE
Corinne Botz and guest artist Weng-San Sit will share their work and discuss how their respective art practices engage with empathy, illness narratives, and the body. Questions to be considered include: How can photographs make marginalized experiences visible? What role does empathy play in healthcare and art? How can photographs transform how we perceive others?
From medical simulations, to lactation rooms, to haunted domestic spaces, to the homes of individuals with agoraphobia, Botz photographs spaces with layered invisible, marginalized, and traumatic histories, particularly relating to women’s experiences. Her published books combining photography and writing include The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death (Monacelli Press, 2004) and Haunted Houses (Random House/Monacelli Press, 2010). Botz will share work from “Milk Factory,” “Bedside Manner,” and “Haunted Houses.”
Sit’s work investigates the systems and power structures that create the dissonance between inattentive, homogeneous representations of marginalized bodies and the reality of complex and multifaceted identities. She will discuss her most recent work, Routine as Repertoire, which was inspired by her cancer diagnosis. In this project Sit uses photography and videos to explore routines that women and non-binary individuals incorporate into our lives as our bodies go through embodied transformation or challenges.
After sharing their projects, Botz and Sit will have a conversation about topics raised in their work and answer questions from the audience.
Corinne Botz is an artist and educator, whose practice engages with issues including narrative, space, gender, and the body. Her photographs have been widely exhibited, and her published books combining her photography and writing include The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death (The Monacelli Press, 2004) and Haunted Houses (The Monacelli Press, 2010). Botz’s photographs have been internationally exhibited at such institutions as the Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), Wurttembergischer Kunstverein (Stuttgart, Germany); De Appel (Amsterdam), Turner Contemporary (UK), and Benrubi Gallery (NYC). Her short film “Bedside Manner” (2016) won the Grand Jury Prize at DOC NYC. She has held residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture; Atlantic Center for the Arts; Akademie Schloss Solitude; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Mana Contemporary. Botz is the recipient of both the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Jerome Foundation grants. She received her BFA from Maryland Institute, College of Art and her MFA from Bard College. Botz is on the faculty of International Center of Photography and John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY).
Elinor Carucci was born 1971 in Jerusalem to a Jewish family of North African, Syrian, Bukharian and Italian descent. She graduated in 1995 from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design with a degree in photography, and moved to New York that same year. Carucci’s work has been included in many many exhibitions worldwide, including solo shows at Edwynn Houk Gallery, Fifty One Fine Art Gallery, FoMU, and Gagosian Gallery, and group exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art New York, MoCP Chicago, and The Photographers' Gallery, London. Her photographs are included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art New York, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Houston Museum of Fine Art, amongst many other public and private collections. Carucci’s editorial work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, W, Aperture, ARTnews amongst other publications. She was awarded the ICP Infinity Award in 2001, The Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002 and NYFA in 2010. Carucci has four published monographs to date including Closer (Chronicle Books 2002), Diary of a Dancer (SteidlMack 2005), Mother (Prestel 2013), and. Midlife (Monacelli Press/Phaidon (2019). In 2023 her fifth book, The Collars of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the Stories They Tell (Clarkson Potter/Random House) will be published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York City. Carucci is represented by the Edwynn Houk Gallery.
Laura Larson is a photographer and writer based in Columbus, OH. She's exhibited her work extensively, at such venues as Art in General, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Centre Pompidou, Columbus Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, SFCamerawork, and Wexner Center for the Arts and her exhibitions have been reviewed in Artforum, Hyperallergic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Time Out New York. Her work is held in the collections of Allen Memorial Art Museum, Deutsche Bank, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Microsoft, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Whitney Museum of American Art. Hidden Mother (Saint Lucy Books, 2017), her first book, was shortlisted for the Aperture-Paris Photo First Photo Book Prize and her second book, City of Incurable Women, was published in April 2022.
Sara Macel is a photographer from Houston, TX now based in Queens, NY. Her photographic work is narratively-based and often deals with themes of the archive, family, memory, and place. She received her BFA in Photography + Imaging from NYU and her MFA in Photography, Video & Related Media from the School of Visual Arts. Her work has been featured in National Geographic, The New Yorker, Wired, PDN, and HuffPost. Sara has exhibited internationally and is in various private collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and Cleveland Museum of Art. Some of her recent honors include PDN's 30 Photographers to Watch, Light Work Artist-in-Residency, and she is a recipient of the Aaron Siskind Foundation Fellowship. Her monographs include "May the Road Rise to Meet You," "Kiss & Tell," and "What Did the Deep Sea Say." She is currently the Photography Program Coordinator and Instructor at SUNY Rockland CC. She has previously held academic positions at CUNY Kingsborough CC. Macel lectures around the country at academic and cultural institutions including NYU, Syracuse University, and University of Houston.
Stacy Mehrfar is a first-generation Iranian-American artist. Drawing from personal history, her photographs, video installations, and photobooks raise questions about how we build and sustain 'community.' Central to her practice is examining the interdependent relationship between the individual and the group and how landscape shapes identity. Mehrfar has exhibited her works at TEDxSydney, ClampArt, International Center of Photography (ICP), Australian Centre of Photography, and State Library of New South Wales. She is the recipient of several grants, including the Australian Postgraduate Award and Australian Artist Grant. Stacy has received positive press coverage by Collector Daily, L'œil de la Photographie, and BJP, and her works are published in Der Greif, Aint Bad, Fraction. She holds an MFA (Research) from UNSW School of Art & Design in Sydney, Australia, a BA from UW Madison, and a certificate in Creative Practices from ICP in New York. Her second photobook, The Moon Belongs to Everyone, published by GOST Books, London (2021), was named one of Photo Eye's Best Books of 2021. Most recently, Stacy was nominated for the 2022 Silver List. Stacy currently resides in NYC.
Qiana Mestrich is a New York-based photography-focused, interdisciplinary artist, educator, historian and writer based in New York. Born to parents from Panama and Croatia, Mestrich's work references Black mixed-race experiences from her perspective as a first-generation American. She has been exhibited worldwide including the 2021 RAY Photography Triennial in Frankfurt, the BRIC Biennial Volume III in 2019 and London Art Fair’s Photo50 in 2018.
Community building is a vital part of Mestrich’s practice. In 2007 she founded Dodge & Burn: Decolonizing Photography History (est. 2007), an arts education initiative addressing questions of race and inequality in photography. Her forthcoming book based on the blog’s past interviews with photographers of color is to be published in 2022 by Routledge/Taylor & Francis. Mestrich is also co-editor of the book How We Do Both: Art and Motherhood (Secretary Press), a diverse collection of honest responses from contemporary artists who dare to engage in the creative endeavors of motherhood and making art.
A graduate of the ICP-Bard College MFA in Advanced Photographic Practice, Mestrich received her B.A. with a concentration in photography from Sarah Lawrence College. Mestrich was adjunct faculty in photography and social media at the Fashion Institute of Technology (SUNY), has been a guest artist at various MFA programs and has taught several independent workshops.
Women’s History Month 2023 Guest Artists
Kirsten Becken born 1982 in Kleve (DE) is a female artist from Germany living and working in Kleve and elsewhere. She studied at Folkwang Hochschule where she graduated in 2007. Her work includes Photography, Film and Painting, and is most frequently exhibited in Germany. In 2015 Becken’s son was born and in 2017 she published Seeing Her Ghosts at VfmK Verlag Wien. In 2018 she co-founded the non-hierarchical artist collective femxphotographers.org. Becken’s art film debut Ihre Geister Sehen starring Sandra Hüller was awarded by independent film festivals. Works by Becken are part of private collections in Germany, France and the Netherlands. Notable shows include Mom, I’m a rich man via femxphotographers.org, Seeing Her Ghosts at galerie pavlov‘s dog in Berlin and Lothringer13 in Munich. Becken‘s work has been on view via The Naked Body – A Matter of Perspective at Museum Kurhaus in Kleve.
Katharina Bosse was born in Turku, Finland in 1968 and grew up in Kirchzarten, Germany. After living in New York from the mid-90s for almost a decade, she moved back to Germany in 2003, making art, raising children and teaching as professor for photography in Bielefeld, Germany. Her work is in the collections of the MoMA and Maison Européenne de la Photographie, and has been published by magazines including The New Yorker, Spin, Geo, Der Spiegel and the New York Times Magazine. Bosse is actively working on creating more visibility for female identifying photographers through curating and publishing. She is a member of femxphotographers.org and runs the curatorial programme at the project gallery “Elsa” in Bielefeld; Germany.
Takako Kido was born in Japan in 1970 and received a B.A. in Economics from Soka University in Japan in 1993. After graduating from the International Center of Photography in 2003, she remained in New York working as a B&W printer and retoucher. She returned to Japan in 2008 and currently lives in her hometown, Kochi. She has exhibited work internationally, at Foley Gallery in New York, USA, Sprengel Museum Hannover in Hannover, Germany, Noam Gallery in Seoul, Korea, Tagajo City Library, Miyagi, Japan, Marute Gallery, Kagawa, Japan, Newspace Center for Photography, Oregon, USA. Her work has also been featured in publications and web magazines including IL FOTOGRAFO, CLAN magazine, Musee magazine, PhotoVOGUE, Kochi Newspaper, NHK World-Japan, Eloquence. She was one of a Photolucida Critical Mass 2021 Top 50 photographers and also a finalist of Gomma Photography Grant 2021. In 2022, she received a grant from Women Photograph. Recently her work was awarded the 3rd place for VONOVIA Award fur Fotografie 2022 in Germany and selected for LensCulture Summer Open 2022 winner.
Weng-San Sit is a Singaporean Artist and educator currently based in Los Angeles. Utilizing primarily still and moving images, San’s work investigates the systems and power structures that create the dissonance between inattentive, homogeneous representations of marginalized bodies and the reality of complex and multi-faceted identities. San received a certificate from the International Center of Photography and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. She was a recent recipient of the Sundance Institute Uprise Grant and the Korea-Singapore Exchange Grant. Her work has been presented at the Angel Gate Cultural Center, Vincent Price Museum, USC Keck School of Medicine, City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, International Center of Photography, Objectifs - Centre for Photography & Film among others. As an educator, San had taught photography in Venice Arts, UCLA Extension and various community colleges. She is currently an Assistant Professor at El Camino College.
Zara Stephens
Zara Stephens is currently a BFA candidate in Photography at Pratt Institute. She holds a A.S. degree in Photography from SUNY Rockland CC. Her work explores identity and the digital landscape through self-portraiture. Zara welcomes ambiguity and mystery when approaching her work as a form of self-discovery.
Marissa Stewart was born and raised in Toledo, OH and is based in Columbus, OH. She earned her MFA in Photography and Integrated Media from the School of Art + Design at Ohio University in 2022. Her practice centers black families, matriarchal lineage, race, and oral history through experimental storytelling. Stewart uses traditional photographic techniques—both black and white and color darkroom processes—and archival photographs in her work.
Lilly Urbat (she/her) is a german photographer and media artist located in Berlin. She was born onto a tiny farm in April, 1988 and afterwards studied with Juergen Teller. Urbat studied photography and visual communication at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg and media art at the Karlsruhe University of Design, after working as freelance journalist and co-founder of Bavaria’s first net label. In 2020 she was nominated for C/O Talent Award and in 2019 for Plat(t)form at Fotomuseum Winterthur. In 2018 she won the Bavarian Award for the Advancement of the Arts. Her projects got multiple fundings through the federal government and art institutions. From 2014-19 she co-hosted 404.earth - a podcast driven by artistic research, that negotiates the social and cultural implications of technological progress. She was Artist in Residence at the Petrohradska Kolektiv in Prague. Her participation in group exhibitions and projection mappings include CFA Berlin, Haus der Kunst, Muffatwerke and Galerie der Künstler in Munich, Zeiss Großplanetarium Berlin, Schnütgen Museum Cologne, Kunstpalais, UMPRUM Prague, Galerie Krobath in Vienna and numerous festivals. She is member of international collective Femxphotographers.org, which released their first publication The Body Issue with Berlin publishing house Hatje Cantz in 2020. Furthermore has her work been published along System Magazine, Photonews Hamburg, Profifoto, Missy Magazine, VOGUE Germany, Salamé Magazine, Coeval Magazine and Top Magazin.
Eva Woolridge (Creative Director & Photographer) (she/her), is an award-winning Queer, Black & Chinese conceptual portrait photographer, public speaker, and social activist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her photo series explore the sexual, spiritual, and emotional nature of femininity. In her work, she transcends surface-level labels of people of color by conveying strength, perseverance, vulnerability, and vitality using strong lighting and composition.
Woolridge’s work has been featured in publications such as Rolling Stone, Teen Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Harper’s Bazaar, and has been exhibited in Seattle, Boston, D.C., NYC, and Berlin, Germany. She speaks nationally about photography and its relationship to identity, including a Tedx Talk, the Schomburg Research Center in Harlem NYC, The Scope Art Art, and as a keynote for the University of Maryland, College Park. Woolridge currently sits on the Diversity Advisory Council for Fuji Cameras of North America.