Kinship: Photography and Connection

Kinship: Photography and Connection features six contemporary photographers who share a special affinity with their subjects. Relationships are fundamental to each artist’s practice, whether they are familial, platonic, romantic, cultural, or geographic in nature. In each case, the deep connection between the artist and their subject is elemental to the power of the resulting photographs.

For over twenty years, Alessandra Sanguinetti has photographed two cousins living in rural Argentina, exploring their relationship to each other and to the place where they live. In her series What She Said, Deanna Templeton pairs excerpts from her teenage diaries with photographs of young women whose grit and resilience she admires. Paul Mpagi Sepuya makes photographs of himself and his friends, exploring the construction of queer spaces and turning traditional modes of portraiture on its head. In his project Please Take off Your Shoes, Jarod Lew photographs other second generation Asian Americans navigating the gap between their own experience and those of their immigrant parents. The bonds shared between animals and humans figure prominently in the photographs Farah Al Qasimi has made in the United Arab Emirates, where she grew up. Unlike the other artists, Mercedes Dorame does not depict people; in her work included in the exhibition, her kinship connection is to her Gabrielino-Tongva ancestors and the land on which they lived.