Filter Photo is pleased to announce Context 2018

Filter Photo is pleased to announce Context 2018, our annual spring open call for lens-based work. This year the exhibition was juried by April M. Watson, Curator of Photography at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

Context 2018 opens March 16, at Filter Space and will remain open through April 28. A juror's choice award and an honorable mention will be awarded at the opening reception.

The myriad conceptual and aesthetic approaches to photography that characterize the medium today were in full evidence as I viewed the submissions for Context 2018. Across the board, the submissions were high caliber. My task was, thus, very difficult; less a matter of selecting the best, but rather choosing works that represented mature, creative ideas and adept techniques, whatever the genre or category of practice. That being said, my subjective proclivities for work that uses the medium to challenge mundane modes of perception are reflected in my final selections. The themes of memory—personal and collective—also weave through these works, though I avoided any stringent thematic underpinning, for fear such an approach would omit too many fascinating works. Ultimately, I hope my selections reflect the incredible wealth of talent that came together, in aggregate, for this exhibition. It is to Filter Photo's great credit that they provide such important opportunities for talented individuals to show and share their works in such a professional and thoughtful manner. To that end, it has been a privilege to serve as this year's juror.
April M. Watson
Curator of Photography
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Participating Artists
Ben Altman
Philip Augustin
Larry Chait
Daniel Chung
Laura Cobb
Troy Colby
Rachel Cox
Elizabeth Claffey
Elena Dahl
Marcus DeSieno
Alexander Diaz
Jim Ferguson
Adam Finkelston
Jennifer Garza-Cuen
Eui-Jip Hwang
Elise Kirk
Jordanna Kalman
Meghan Kirkwood
Susan Kott
Sage Lewis
Molly McCall
Mary McCloskey
Daniel McCullough
Casey McGuire & Mark Schoon
David Ondrik
Miguel Ontiveros
Astrid Reischwitz
Jamie Tuttle
Max Wagner & Megan Pobywajlo
Tara Wray

About Filter Photo Festival:

Filter Photo is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization based in Chicago, Illinois.

Filter Photo's mission is two-fold: first, to serve and support the photographic communities of Chicago and the Midwest; and second, to highlight Chicago as a vital center of the national photographic community.

Since 2009 Filter Photo has organized the annual Filter Photo Festival, a multi-day celebration of photography that includes workshops, lectures, exhibition receptions, artist talks, and other diverse programming. A primary component of the Festival is the portfolio reviews, through which photographers are able to connect with national and international curators, gallery directors, editors, and other elite professionals.

In 2015 Filter Photo opened Filter Space, a permanent gallery and project space located in Chicago's West Town neighborhood at 1821 West Hubbard Street, Suite 207. Filter Space hosts regular social, educational, and professional development activities, including exhibitions, workshops, and lectures.

Cover image © Jordanna Kalman

Virginia Hanusik: Into the Quiet and the Light

By Virginia Hanusik

Publisher : Columbia Books on Architecture and the City

2024 | 184 pages

In South Louisiana, where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico, water―and the history of controlling it―is omnipresent. Into the Quiet and the Light: Water, Life, and Land Loss in South Louisiana glimpses the vulnerabilities and possibilities of living on the water during an ongoing climate catastrophe and the fallout of the fossil fuel industry―past, present, and future. The book sustains our physical, mental, and emotional connections to these landscapes through a collection of photographs by Virginia Hanusik. Framing the architecture and infrastructure of South Louisiana with both distance and intimacy, introspection and expansiveness, this work engages new memories, microhistories, anecdotes, and insights from scholars, artists, activists, and practitioners working in the region. Unfolding alongside and in dialogue with Hanusik’s photographs, these reflections soberly and hopefully populate images of South Louisiana’s built and natural environments, opening up multiple pathways that defy singularity and complicate the disaster-oriented imagery often associated with the region and its people. In staging these meditations on water, life, and land loss, this book invites readers to join both Hanusik and the contributors in reading multiplicity into South Louisiana’s water-ruled landscapes.

With texts from Richie Blink, Imani Jacqueline Brown, Jessica Dandridge, Rebecca Elliott, Michael Esealuka, T. Mayheart Dardar, Billy Fleming, Andy Horowitz, Arthur Johnson, Louis Michot, Nini Nguyen, Kate Orff, Jessi Parfait, Amy Stelly, Jonathan Tate, Aaron Turner, and John Verdin.

Rawsht Twana: Twana’s Box

By Rawsht Twana

Publisher : Fraglich Publishing

2024 | 252 pages

Twana’s Box' can be described in many ways: a journey through a photographer’s rare archive, documenting the Kurdistan region of Iraq from 1974–1992; a son’s quest to find his lost father, who was murdered by a military regime; a young man’s way to piece together the fragments of a scattered family in a scattered culture; the becoming of a photographer who, through the stories of others, starts to understand his own identity in times of war. 'Twana’s Box' is not only the photo book that holds a selection of Twana Abdullah’s archive; it is a unique insight into a time and place in a region that has since completely transformed. Rawsht has spent years piecing together his father’s negatives and stories. His archival work inspired him to become a photographer himself, working for Metrography – the first independent Iraqi photo agency – before immigrating to Europe. ills colour & bw, 21 x 27 cm, hb, Kurdish/Arabic/English

Akinbode Akinbiyi: Being, Seeing, Wandering

By Akinbode Akinbiyi

Publisher : Spector Books

2024 | 252 pages

Taken across Europe and Africa, Akinbiyi’s images of everyday city life muse on the sociopolitical labyrinths of urban society

Whether in Bamako, Berlin, London, Lagos or Durban, British photographer Akinbode Akinbiyi (born 1946) creates black-and-white street scenes that function as visual metaphors, ruminating on cultural change, social exclusion and colonialism’s effect on urban planning.

Grace Wales Bonner: Dream in the Rhythm

By Grace Wales Bonner

Publisher : The Museum of Modern Art, New York

2024 | 184 pages

A deeply personal meditation on and around modern Black expression, curated by the acclaimed London-based designer
This volume, Grace Wales Bonner: Dream in the Rhythm―Visions of Sound and Spirit in the MoMA Collection, is an artist’s book created by the acclaimed London-based designer Grace Wales Bonner as “an archive of soulful expression.” Through an extraordinary selection of nearly 80 works from The Museum of Modern Art’s collection and archives, this unique volume draws multisensory connections between pictures and poems, music and performance, hearing and touch, gestures and vibrations, and bodies in motion. Photographs, scores and films by artists such as Dawoud Bey, Mark Bradford, Roy DeCarava, Lee Friedlander, David Hammons, Glenn Ligon, Steve McQueen, Lorna Simpson and Ming Smith, among others, are juxtaposed with signal texts by Black authors spanning the past century, including Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, June Jordan, Robin Coste Lewis, Ishmael Reed, Greg Tate, Jean Toomer, Quincy Troupe and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Published on the occasion of the exhibition Artist’s Choice: Grace Wales Bonner―Spirit Movers, this resplendent publication is a deeply personal meditation on and around modern Black expression that echoes Wales Bonner’s own vibrant, virtuosic designs.

Filter Photo is pleased to announce Context 2018

Context 2018

Selected Books