Parsons School of Design MFA Photography 2023
Letter from the Director
It is with immense pleasure and pride that I introduce the Parsons Master of Fine Arts in Photography class of 2023. As the Program Director, I am honored to present to you the exceptional work of this talented cohort of emerging photographic artists.
In this catalog and exhibition, you will take a visual journey that captures the values of our program and showcases the remarkable growth and creative explorations that the graduates have made in the past two years. You will see the diverse range of artistic visions and approaches they embrace.
These young artists use the medium of photography and imaging as a language to communicate complex ideas, challenge societal norms, and shed light on our shared experiences. They have explored a range of themes, from social justice and climate change, to personal identity and cultural heritage. From the most private to the public and political, they have challenged our notions of what photography is and what it is becoming. Their work serves as a powerful tool to initiate conversations, provoke emotions, and inspire change.
To the graduates, I offer my sincerest congratulations on your exceptional achievements. Your tireless pursuit of artistic excellence, your willingness to take risks, and your unwavering commitment to your craft has resulted in a body of work that speaks volumes to your talent and dedication. I am confident that you will continue to make significant contributions to the field of photography and shape the future of visual arts for years to come.
This catalog and exhibition owe its success to the collaborative efforts of numerous dedicated individuals. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Interim Executive Dean Yvonne Watson and the Dean’s Office for their unwavering support of this program. A special note of appreciation goes to AMT Dean Shana Agid for their constant encouragement. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to our valued faculty members, whose expertise, mentorship and unwavering support have shaped the artistic trajectory of our students. To the program’s administrative and technical staff, I offer my sincerest gratitude for your tireless contributions to the success of our program. Their dedication and hard work are essential to the overall success of our students. Finally, I want to extend my thanks to Dexter Lopez, Sidian Liu, Sawani Chaudhary, Yulin Gu, Trenton Teinert and their colleagues for their exceptional design of this catalog and website.
– Jim Ramer
Director of MFA Photography
The Sound Crickets Make
There’s a name for the animal
Love makes of us—named, I think, Like rain, for the sound it makes.
– Nicole Sealy, Object Permanence
I’m going to begin from a place of assumptions. If I ask you to think about the sound crickets make, I’m going to assume that you’ll immediately think of darkness, as crickets, being nocturnal, only sing their song during the night. Maybe you’ll move over to thinking about your skin and the crusted old ooze from your mosquito bites, for it’s summertime and the place you’re in must be sticky and wet. Or maybe you’re in the city, nervous about what caused a hush to fall over the room, creating a silence so quiet that you can hear crickets.
Audre Lorde once said that every poem is a love poem. I’m convinced that every love poem is a kind of image production, creating either one or many photographs positioned from the heart (of course), in either a point of pain, pleasure, desire or all of the above. In Nicole Sealy’s poem Object Permanence, she tells us how love has transformed her and her partner into animals. But the focus is not on the kind of animal or even what it may look like, but its name. A name whose etymology is in its sound. So the name exceeds its purpose of being a mode of identification, but also becomes a reference to a sonic happening.
In Tina Campt’s book Listening to Images, she encourages us to go beyond the practice of simply looking at photographs; to consider what can’t be seen in the image’s frame, but can be felt or heard in its details. “Listening attentively to [the] mundane details means not accepting what we see as the truth of the image. Attending to their lower frequencies means being attuned to the connections between what we see and how it resonates.” The Parsons School of Design MFA Photography class of 2023 collectively chose the title, The Sound Crickets Make, for their thesis exhibition which I believe astutely and poetically describes the magic of image making. The phrase “the sound crickets make” acts as an invitation. It calls us to think about the multi-rhythmic, jazz-like chirp of the insect, but first places us into a particular space of personal referent. I have not actually ever seen a cricket but have been enveloped by their sound. In order for me to notice that I can hear it, I’m usually alone or with others sitting in silence. I’m most likely outdoors, or in an interior space that’s somehow vulnerable to the exterior: a window open, a screen door, et cetera. You see what just happened there? The title of this exhibition invited me to revisit the images my memory holds.
The artists — athena, Azelion Manuel, Beiyuan Zhang, Bella Okuya, Ben Rybisky, Blaine Williams, Camilla M. Mecagni, Dexter Lopez, Drishti Verma, Frida Braide, jude Lives, Kuan Hsieh, Paria Ahmadi, Sawani Chaudhary, Sidian Liu, Thomas O. Iacobucci, Trenton Teinert, and Yulin Gu — collectively challenge the notion that photography begins and ends with some sort of physical or digital material that has frozen a moment in time. The work in this exhibition, like reading love poems, like remembering what a cricket sounds like, awakens all of our senses and requires us to consider what lies beyond the frame. Whether it’s to reckon with our personal history and how it shapes our relationship to gender and our ever changing state of becoming, or intervening with the archive as a political strategy, attempting to shield those historically vulnerable to photography’s colonialist ethnographic practices. Or to further complicate our understanding of the true importance of representation and visibility. I’d like to extend this invitation to the wonder and beauty that is the thesis exhibition, The Sound Crickets Make, and would like to encourage you that when you come in, make sure you listen.
-Shala Miller