Light Work Podcast

Sayler/Morris and Christina Seely: museumAugust 24 – December 11, 2026Kathleen O. Ellis GalleryOpening Reception: Thursday, September 24, 5-7 PMLight Work is pleased to present museum, a collaborative photographic exhibition by the artists Sayler/Morris (Susannah Sayler and Ed Morris) and Christina Seely.The images in this installation were made in 2014 during the artists’ time as Smithsonian Artist Research Fellows, when they photographed the disassembly of the iconic National Fossil Hall at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. More than a decade later, during a 2025 studio visit, the artists rediscovered the photographs and saw them in a new light. Time had changed the images; it had amplified their disorienting, dreamlike qualities. What is presented inside this exhibition at Light Work is the breaking down of a museum exhibit. The idea of a museum, its authority, certainty, and clarity, is replaced with the rediscovery of the original meaning of museum—a site for muses, a site where knowledge is not fixed but in perpetual development.This exhibition arrives at a time when museums themselves have become contested spaces and facts themselves have become endangered. Sayler/Morris and Seely’s museum installation asks: How do we consider the use of museum spaces to respect evidence while at the same time recognizing knowledge as ever-evolving, contingent, and partial? And what is the power and role of the museum of the future?Susannah Sayler and Edward Morris (Sayler/Morris) are interdisciplinary artists whose work considers the intersection of human histories and ecology. They have been awarded numerous fellowships, including the Guggenheim Fellowship (2023), and have exhibited widely, including an upcoming permanent installation at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Sayler is full professor in the Department of Film and Media Arts at Syracuse University. Sayler/Morris live and work in Hudson, NY.sayler-morris.comChristina Seely’s multifaceted photographic work maps our increasingly tenuous relationship to the nonhuman living world. Her work is held in many collections and has been exhibited widely, including at the Anchorage Museum in Alaska, KunstHausWein in Austria, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. She was a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow and a 2024–25 US/UK Fulbright Scholar. She works between the US and Scotland.christinaseely.com—Special thanks to Daylight Blue Media daylightblue.comLight Work lightwork.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

2026 Light Work Grants in Photography: Maureen Beitler, Hernease Davis, Ian Sherlock Molloy, Amrita Stützle, and Patty TomanovichJune 15 – August 7, 2026Kathleen O. Ellis GalleryReception: Friday, August 7, 5-7pmFor its fifty-first year, Light Work has expanded the region to include all of New York state, with the exception of New York City. The five grant recipients: Maureen Beitler (Columbia), Hernease Davis (Monroe), Ian Sherlock Molloy (Onondaga), Amrita Stützle (Onondaga), and Patty Tomanovich (Monroe). These photographers reflect the strength and vitality of our talented regional community. They explore the full range of what it means to be an image-maker today.More info at https://www.lightwork.org/archive/2026-light-work-grants-in-photography-maureen-beitler-hernease-davis-ian-sherlock-molloy-amrita-stutzle-and-patty-tomanovich/—Special thanks to Daylight Blue Mediadaylightblue.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’re Just Here for the Bad Guys chronicles Brian Van Lau’s relationship with his estranged father. Lau’s father was absent during his childhood due to his incarceration. After his release, he rebuilt his life in Vietnam, remarried, and gradually disappeared from Lau’s life. Nearly a decade later, Lau traveled to Vietnam following his father’s sudden illness, and learned of his terminal cancer. During their final week together, they collaborated on a photographic project that documented his father’s unsuccessful path toward recovery. After his father’s passing, Lau returned to his hometown in Hawai‘i seeking closure, uncovering hidden correspondence that revealed previously unknown parts of his father’s life. Entrusted with dispersing his father’s ashes across O‘ahu, the artist began working with his grandparents to reconstruct this fragmented family history through photography.Image credit: Brian Van Lau, Ritual, 2024—Brian Van Lau (b. 1996, Honolulu, HI) is a self-taught Vietnamese American photographer based between Honolulu, HI, and Los Angeles, CA. His work often explores generational relationships, history, inheritance, and grief. His methods include connecting photographs of his own with other collected and appropriated materials. His first monograph, We’re Just Here for the Bad Guys, was published by Light Work in 2026. He is a 2025 Penumbra Workspace Artist-in-Residence, 2023 Aperture Portfolio Prize runner-up, a recipient of the 2024 Google x Aperture Creator Labs Photo Fund, a winner of the 2023 Innovate Grant, and a selected participant in the 2023 New York Portfolio Review. He has been shortlisted for the Hopper Prize and is the founder of Arcanite Pictures, an online platform and publisher dedicated to highlighting emerging artists. His work was most recently exhibited at the Hō‘ikeākea Gallery in Honolulu, HI, as part of Float On, curated by Phil Jung. Lau has lectured at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and Northwind Art School in Port Townsend, WA. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Vogue, and many more.—brianvanlau.comSpecial thanks to Daylight Blue Mediadaylightblue.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In her first US solo exhibition, Karolina Wojtas is sending us a conceptual care package, as an installation titled Made in Poland. Presented here are images of her family, friends, sometimes herself, kitsch objects, and folkish cultural treasures. These images are printed onto inkjet paper and textiles; soft sculptures, a video, and a text piece in the form of a letter together make up Wojtas’s own little fun fair in the Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery.There is a cultural legend in Poland about a “rich uncle from America” that everyone’s parents or grandparents used to have. This mythological uncle who emigrated from the US would send back care packages with clothes, food, and little treasures from America. This exhibition flips the tale into Wojtas’s own fable and conjures up a rich aunt from Poland who mails Polish cultural treasures to her nephew in America.Wojtas’s work derives from her surroundings and experiences—childhood, education, siblings, first love, and death. Her images originate from amateur pictures found on the internet; all taken in situations that are almost impossible to explain. She is an artist whose work combines photography, installation, and performance to create spaces full of surprise, childlike imagination, and spontaneity. For her, art is an endless game and experiment, where audiences become part of the experience.Made in Poland inhabits an unencumbered visual maze of play that is free of restrictions and traditional conventions—all birthed from Wojtas’s imagination and let loose in Syracuse. This project is truly an export of experimentation and curiosity—like a traveling souvenir shop, but with an underlying absurdity that is both terrifying and terrific.—Karolina Wojtas (b. 1996, Poland) has presented her works in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Poland and abroad, at the Asama International Photo Festival, Japan (2025), Oslo Negative (2024), Foto Arsenal Wien (2023), and Foam Amsterdam (2021), to name only a few. She is a two-time recipient of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage scholarship and has received numerous awards and nominations, including an Images Vevey Book Award 2025–26 Honorable Mention. Her work has appeared in such publications as the British Journal of Photography, Foam Magazine, The Guardian, and King Kong Magazine. Wojtas graduated from the Lodz Film School and the Institute of Creative Photography in the Czech Republic. In 2019 she opened her own museum in her home village of Podkarpacie, Poland.Cover Image: Karolina Wojtas, from the project, Made in Poland, 2026. karolinawojtas.comInstagram: @matriioszkaSpecial thanks to Daylight Blue Mediadaylightblue.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sasha Phyars-Burgess: Everything NiceSeptember 8–December 5, 2025Kathleen O. Ellis GalleryReception: Thurs, Sep 18, 5-7pmSasha Phyars-Burgess’s photographic project Everything Nice traces her family history through Portugal, the Dominican Republic, Florida, and Louisiana, following the paths of sugarcane farmed on colonial plantations and the transatlantic slave trade in relation to her ancestors. The photographs are taken in various locations: Madeira, Portugal, the Dominican Republic, Florida, and Louisiana. The pictures provide clues and details that are layered into a larger story.Looking back at history and locating the present, Phyars-Burgess is thinking through the idea that we are all living in a history, whether it is acknowledged or not. Once acknowledged, and if we allow ourselves to live with the past, with choices made by and for others, we can access a wider view of the present day.Through research and picture-making, Phyars-Burgess’s ongoing project affords us a better understanding of globalization and its languages, and shows us that places which at first glance look “ethnic” can be regarded differently.The work’s title, Everything Nice, is the name of a song by Popcaan. In it, he speaks about the hardships and struggles that people are going through while also joining together in community, getting to the heart of the matter, and being present. This exhibition invites us to slowly look, ask questions, and decipher information to uncover possible and actual answers.—Sasha Phyars-Burgess.b. 1988.Scorpio.Black.Alive.sashaphyars-burgess.com—Special thanks to Daylight Blue Media daylightblue.comLight Work lightwork.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Aaron Turner: The Archive as LiberationMay 12–August 29, 2025Kathleen O. Ellis GalleryReception: Friday, July 25th, 5-7pmThe Archive as Liberation is a publication and exhibition organized by Aaron Turner (Light Work artist–in-residence, 2018, and Light Work exhibiting artist, 2021). Turner has gathered a unique group of artists and writers to engage in dialogue around archival photographic methods. Contributors include Andre Bradley, calista lyon, Raymond Thompson Jr., Harrison D. Walker, and Savannah Wood, alongside writing by Chisato Hughes, Alec Kaus, Andrew Martinez, Aaron Turner, Amelia Wallin, and Wendel A. White, with a foreword by the book’s editor, Donasia Tillery. The publication was designed by Elana Schlenker. Tillery writes, “What if memory is not solely an act of recollection, but of discovery and creation? The Archive as Liberation considers this question from the perspectives of subjects who lack access to traditional modes of documentation—Black and Indigenous cultures creatively preserved despite systemic erasure, landscapes that bore witness to colonial conquests, and the lineages that continue to survive in their wake. These works prompt us to consider not just what we remember but how we remember. In doing so, they work to inspire a more authentic vision of the past and a liberated vision of the future.” To mark the launch of this publication, Light Work has mounted an exhibition highlighting many of the contributing artists. This exhibition includes work by Andre Bradley, Chisato Hughes, Alec Kaus, calista lyon, Raymond Thompson Jr., Harrison D. Walker, Wendel A. White, and Savannah Wood. The exhibition also includes a unique reading room curated by Turner with artists’ books from his personal collection and pieces from Light Work’s collection. The reading room will be in Light Work’s Lab for the duration of the exhibition.Image Credit: Harrison D. Walker, Between Two Worlds, Footnotes, 2025—Aaron Turner is a photographer, educator, and independent curator, born and raised in the Arkansas Delta. Turner holds an MA from Ohio University and an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts. In his studio practice, he uses the 4×5 view camera to create still-life studies on identity, history, abstraction, and archives. He has organized the following selected exhibitions and symposiums: And Let It Remain So: Women of the African Diaspora (Phoenix Art Museum, 2022), Time & Empathy: Arkansas Photographer Geleve Grice (University of Arkansas, 2021–22), and Resounding Sovereign Expressions: Resurgent Indigenuity in Ozark Arts Practice & Scholarship (University of Arkansas, 2025). He most recently joined the University of Michigan’s Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design as an assistant professor.—Special thanks to Daylight Blue Media daylightblue.comLight Work lightwork.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nabil Harb’s project Mater si, magistra no (a macaronic phrase that translates as “Mother yes, teacher no”) presents photographs that describe and depict moments and scenes within his hometown of Lakeland in Polk County, Florida. This Central Florida location is both the backdrop and main character of Harb’s visual narrative: a story that emits surreal qualities which twist ideas of the region through photography’s formal language into a conceptual idea—an idea of how to describe the atmosphere of a place without words. Harb writes, “The landscape is the perfect reflection of our society, our ultimate index—it holds our histories, our secrets, our failures, and our hopes for the future.” Harb uses his camera to look rather than gaze at the wily scenes and moving bodies; his images disturb the before and after of a photograph by showing a moment extended or an instant flashed with a strobe. The project title informs Harb’s reasons and choices around his subject matter with his opinions and beliefs about this landscape, the people who inhabit it and move through it, and his subjecthood. The history of land usage in Central Florida greatly influences where he goes to photograph and how he looks at his surroundings. The narratives in his work are conflicting and intermingle with one another. The overriding story is one of man versus nature, of beauty and destruction coexisting in an atmosphere that is surreal, seductive, and breathtaking. Where the conflicting notions of destruction and rebirth intersect is also the point at which Nabil Harb’s formalism and conceptual photographic practice meet, showing us the potential for beauty in destruction and foreboding rebirth. Image credit: Nabil Harb, Lake Hancock, 2024—Nabil Harb is a Palestinian American photographer born and raised in Polk County, Florida, where he still lives. Harb received his BA in anthropology from the University of South Florida and his MFA in photography from Yale University. His work has been featured in Aperture, The Atlantic, ArtReview, The Guardian, and A24. nabiljharb.com/—Special thanks to Daylight Blue Media daylightblue.comLight Work lightwork.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this exhibition, Nicholas Muellner offers up photographs depicting people pantomiming in a verdant landscape made complex with surreal lighting; these images are paired with an issue of Contact Sheet that serves as a guidebook to the exhibition. The text in Contact Sheet is wryly poetic and succinct, and loosely leads us from picture to picture. Asea takes us somewhere without making its destination specific, setting a tone and mood that guides our desire for meaning but refuses to precisely locate it.The exhibition conveys a type of suspended drama via an installation that divides the gallery into two rooms, creating an atmosphere in which viewers float, both in space and time. The majority of the portraits are of people connected to the maritime economy and all of the photographs were made in a landscape or setting that the subjects live in: Marseille, Odesa, Milan, Long Beach. The subjects gesture toward the camera, holding the invisible tools of their respective trades, and suggesting an estrangement from their concrete identities.With Asea, Muellner projects a state of limbo and a search for personal meaning within photography’s inevitable narrative limits. We are asked to ponder alone, in a subjective state that is not fixed but which hovers within the parameters established by the photographs and text. Ultimately, we engage with Asea because it is at once thoughtful, beautiful, and curious.—Nicholas Muellner is an artist and writer whose books include Lacuna Park: Essays and Other Adventures in Photography, The Amnesia Pavilions, and In Most Tides an Island, which was shortlisted for the Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Award and named a Best Book of the Year in Artforum. In addition to solo exhibitions in the United States and Europe, his writing has been published by MACK/SPBH, Aperture, Radius, Triple Canopy, Foam, and Routledge, among others. Muellner has performed slide lectures internationally, including at MoMA PS1, Carnegie Museum, The Photographers’ Gallery, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography. His work has been supported by a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography, a John Gutmann Fellowship, and residencies at the MacDowell and Yaddo colonies. Muellner received a BA in comparative literature from Yale University and an MFA from Temple University. He is the founding co-director of the Image Text MFA and ITI Press at Cornell University.nicholasmuellner.com—Special thanks to Daylight Blue Media daylightblue.comLight Work lightwork.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

According to the Laws of Chance: Group ExhibitionMay 31–August 16, 2024Kathleen O. Ellis GalleryReception: Friday, July 26, 5-7pmAccording to the Laws of Chance is a subtitle included in many works by the Dadaist painter Jean Arp that describes his systematic yet chance-driven method of creating his simple and playful paintings. Arp would let torn pieces of paper fall to the floor to determine his painting or collage compositions. Although the outcomes are different, Arp’s ethos can be found in the work of the photographers selected for this group exhibition.The artists in this exhibition—Cheryl Miller, Claire A. Warden, Jaclyn Wright, Josh Thorson, Kyle Tata, Louis Chavez, and Will Stith, and Light Work’s collection artists, Cecil McDonald, Jr., James Welling, Peter Finnemore, and Rita Hammond—are using and defining chance as a core element of their largely divergent practices.Chance is a core tenet of photography. The image-makers in this exhibition embrace the unpredictable and find ways to amplify chance for conceptual and creative purposes. These artists interpret chance via darkroom and analog experimentation, conceptually driven exploration, daily image-making, and studio-based arranging. The results of these methods are surprising expressions of each artist’s voice. Together they showcase the wide-ranging use of chance and highlight it as a vital tool in contemporary photographic practice.Special thanks to Daylight Blue Mediadaylightblue.comLight Worklightwork.orgCover Image by Jaclyn Wright Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1987, Sophia Chai immigrated to New York City from South Korea as a teenager without knowing English. Looking back, she has described that experience as feeling untethered to any internal compass that she could use to navigate her place in a new country with a new language. She visually explains these experiences to us by reinterpreting the Korean language’s characters in photographs that enable us to see the contradictions of visual and verbal communication.Chai uses optics (focal length, perspective, perception, and magnification) to pin down the marks, rubbings, and paintings on her studio walls. The overall effect is a collage of ideas, with an efficient yet complicated economy of picture making with intentional gaps. These gaps can describe the moment right before the sound of a word comes out of the interior space of the mouth.sophiachai.com—Special thanks to Daylight Blue Media daylightblue.comLight Work lightwork.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.