Looking Back: The Art of Nostalgia

Juror: Mary Ann Lynch
Gallery Exhibition: August 13 - September 6, 2013

Juror's Statement
As the juror for Looking Back: the Art of Nostalgia, my task was to review many images and from those select photographs for the PhotoPlace Gallery exhibition and the Online Annex. In the works here, each photographer seamlessly blends all elements, from the formal and conceptual to craft and materials, to create depth, emotive power, and levels of meaning. On the personal level, a successful image will touch the heart, engage the eye, and hold up to repeat viewings. It's the result of the maker's listening to and being guided by one's own senses, in terms of subject, approach, and finalization. These criteria apply equally to the broad spectrum of styles today, from traditional black-and-white analog photography and alternative processes to digitally enhanced imagery and fabricated works created with a combination of computers, art, photography and technology. All of those are represented in this collection. 

The images' varied sensory and visceral appeals may stir compassion, humor, longing, mystery, pathos, thoughtful moments, even wonderment. This is a grand journey into "The Art of Nostalgia." Take your time and return.

     — Mary Ann Lynch

About the Juror
Mary Ann Lynch, born Mary Ann Bruchac, "bought" her first camera with Popsickle wrappers when she was ten, a country kid ordering things by mail in Greenfield Center, New York. Her role model as a photographer was her Uncle Milt in Connecticut, who photographed every family occasion. Like him, Lynch trained her eye on family & daily life. The spirit of place would remain a constant subject as her photographic sensibility matured.

After graduating in English from Cornell University, she married Jack Lynch, the boy back home, and they headed to California. In the midst of student protests & the Black Panthers, the civil rights & anti-war movements, hippies, the first Human Be-In & psychedelic everything, she sharpened her political and creative skills, campaigned for Bobby Kennedy, and completed a Master's in English at the University of California at Berkeley.

Opting for teaching instead of a doctorate, she took a job teaching English at the University of Hawaii, arriving there in 1968--just nine years after statehood. There followed an explosive decade with Lynch teaching and working in photography, film, media, and as a writer. And then it was time to move back East to Greenfield to raise their two children, Margot and Zack, closer to their extended family.

Mary Ann Lych's website.

Call for Entries
Photography is about time, not just the present moment when a photograph is made, but also the past. For Looking Back: The Art of Nostalgia, we sought work that explores the ways in which a photograph can take us back in time, through subject, outlook, process and other means.

We are pleased to welcome Mary Ann Lynch as the juror for this exhibition. Mary Ann chose 40 photographs for display at PhotoPlace Gallery from August 13th though September 6th. She also selected up to 35 additional photographs for the gallery's Online Annex. All selected work will be included in a full-color exhibition catalog available for purchase. To help artists defray costs, PhotoPlace Gallery offers to mat and frame work selected for exhibition free of charge, providing artists print their images to our pre-cut mat and frame sizes.