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For Binghamton-based artist Hans Gindlesberger, receiving a Light Work grant has been a bright spot during the pandemic and has given him momentum to continue his work.

Gindlesberger, Ben Cleeton and Christine Elfman are the three central New York photographers who were awarded Light Work’s 46th Annual Grants in Photography. Each recipient received a $3,000 stipend, and their work will appear in “Contact Sheet: Light Work Annual” and at an exhibition at Light Work later this fall. Courtney Asztalos and Rachel Guardiola received honorable mentions.

The Light Work grant is one of the longest running photography fellowships in the country, said Cjala Surratt, the communications coordinator at Light Work. Light Work strives to support emerging and underrepresented photographers, which includes giving visibility to local artists, Surratt said. The Light Work grant is specifically for photographers within a 50-mile radius of Syracuse.

Russell Lord, the Freeman Family Curator of Photographs at the New Orleans Museum of Art was one of this year’s three judges. Each artist is different, so their work cannot be judged on the same terms, Lord said. He looks for quality of composition and how well a project conveys the artist’s intended purpose, as described in the artist statement. This year’s grant recipients featured different themes and styles of photography, he said.

“You really couldn’t have three more different photographers, but all working at very high levels,” Lord said.

Christine Elfman’s work focuses on the tension between the desire for stability and the impermanence of photography. Courtesy of Christine Elfman

Gindlesberger’s submission to the Light Work grant is a collection of different but related projects that focus on the physical presence of images and the materiality of photography.

After a particularly busy year of shows, Gindlesberger realized that a lot of his engagement with his work was virtual. He would send digital prints to exhibitions to be printed off site, he said, but didn’t physically engage with the work.

“I sort of missed this physical connection with the work,” Gindlesberger said. “So I started engaging with these projects that really kind of looked not only at the image but also looked at the physical aspects of photography.”

Gindlesberger created crayon rubbings of archival images that had been distressed, damaged or preserved to pick up on the surface details of the pictures. He also created contact prints after recasting photos in glass, which he said was a reference to glass negatives and the early days of photography.

Cleeton’s project titled “The Town” started out as his capstone at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and evolved into a whole project on Syracuse over the years. Cleeton said he doesn’t see a lot of good local reporting on Syracuse and wants to do justice by the stories of the people he has met.

“The papers just don’t really represent these invisible neighborhoods in Syracuse well or accurately,” Cleeton said. “As I’ve spent more time getting to know people, the realities are very different than what we see, where there’s a lot more to everyone in these different neighborhoods that are kind of invisible in the margins.”

Cleeten’s photographs depict the lives of Syracuse community members. In this image a mother holds her son in an inflatable pool. Courtesy of Ben Cleeton

Cleeton hopes the project will show Syracuse in a different light.

Elfman’s body of work focuses on the tension between the desire for stability and the impermanence of photography. Even though we think photographs freeze a moment in time, they show how difficult it is to capture life, she said.

Elfman took photos of rocks and statue fragments with large format film and printed them as both permanent silver gelatin and inkjet prints and as impermanent fading anthotypes. The same light that creates the anthotypes eventually causes the images to fade and disappear, she said in an email.

Aaron Turner, another judge for this year’s grant, was an artist in residence at Light Work in 2018. He decided to serve as a judge for the project because he wanted to help other artists and give back to Light Work. Turner said that while judging the submissions, his personal goal was to cultivate an expansive representation of photography.

“In terms of myself as an artist,” Turner said. “I’m always trying to figure out how the medium of photography is constantly being pushed forward: new ideas, new ways of thinking.”

Published on August 23, 2020 at 8:24 pm

Contact Mandy: ackrayna@syr.edu | @MandyKraynak