About the Artists

Pao Houa Her was born somewhere in the northern jungles of Laos. She fled Laos with her family when she was a baby, crossed the Mekong on her mother’s back, was fed opium to keep from crying, lived in the refugee camps in Thailand and landed in America on a silver metal bird in the mid 1980s. She is a visual artist who works within multiple genres of photography. She has exhibited in numerous shows both nationally and internationally including a solo show at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University. Her received her BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and her MFA from Yale University.

Manal Abu-Shaheen is a Lebanese-American photographer currently living and working in Long Island City, NY. She was born in Beirut in 1982 and moved from Lebanon to New York in 2000. Abu-Shaheen received a MFA in Photography from the Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT in 2011; a BA from Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY in 2003; and attended Lebanese American University, Byblos, Lebanon in 1999. Her work has been exhibited at the Queens Museum, Queens, NY (2016); The Center for Fine Art Photography, Fort Collins, CO (2016); The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY (2015); The Print Shop at MoMA PS1, Queens, NY (2014); Camera Club of New York, NY (2013); and Welch School of Art and Design Galleries, Atlanta, GA (2012), among others. She is a recipient of the 2016/17 A.I.R Gallery Fellowship and the 2015 Artist in the Marketplace Residency program at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. She currently teaches at the City College of New York.

Johanna Case-Hofmeister received an MFA from Yale University in 2013. She went on to study projection design and technology at the Yale School of Drama. Her photography has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She is currently an Associate Professor in Photography at Long Island University.

Jen Davis is a New York based photographer. For the past fourteen years she has been working on a series of Self-Portrait’s dealing with issues regarding beauty, identity, and body image. She has also been exploring men as a subject, and is interested in investigating the idea of the relationship, both physical and psychological, with her camera. Her first monograph titled Eleven Years, published by Kehrer Verlag (Germany) was released in the Spring of 2014 accompanied by her first solo show in New York City at ClampArt. She received an MFA from Yale University in 2008, and BFA from Columbia College Chicago in 2002. Davis’ work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. In the fall of 2016 Davis will have a solo exhibition in FotoFocus 2016 Biennial in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her photographs are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Sir Elton John Photography Collection, and The Library of Congress, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Davis is represented by Lee Marks Fine Art and ClampArt, NY.

Curran Hatleberg (b. 1982, Washington, DC) received his MFA from Yale University in 2010. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including recent shows at Higher Pictures gallery and Fraenkel Gallery. He is the recipient of a 2015 Magnum Emergency Fund grant, a 2014 Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photographer’s Fellowship grant, and the 2010 Richard Benson Prize for excellence in photography. Hatleberg’s work is held in various museum collections, including the SF MoMA, the Center for Contemporary Photography, the Davison Art Center at Wesleyan University, the Williams College Museum of Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery. Lost Coast, his forthcoming monograph, will be released by TBW Books in fall 2016.

Ka-Man Tse is a photographer and video artist based in New York.  She received an MFA from Yale University in 2009, and a BA from Bard College in 2003.   Her images are informed by the points of intersection between the LGBTQ and the Asian Pacific Islander communities, and what is shared and negotiated between the two seemingly divergent worlds.  Her photography and video begin from small gestures and moments that then unfold in public and private spaces. She has exhibited internationally and nationally; including the Lianzhou Foto Festival in Guangdong, China, the Museum of Chinese in America in New York, NY, the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York, NY; Cornell University, the Palm Springs Art Museum in California, Capricious Gallery in New York, NY, the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, and Gallery 339 in Philadelphia, and the Eighth Veil in Los Angeles.  She was a SPARC Artist-in-Residence through the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and completed the Artist in the Marketplace Program through the Bronx Museum of Arts. She is the recipient of the 2014-2015 Robert Giard Fellowship.  She currently teaches at Yale University, where she was appointed lecturer in 2013, as well Parsons the New School of Design, since 2011. This spring, Tse mounted her first solo exhibition at the Silver Eye Center for Photography in Pittsburgh, PA. Her current project, Narrow Distances is currently on view in a solo exhibition at Lumenvisum in Hong Kong this summer (July 23 – August 21, 2016); her work is also currently on view at the New York Public Library, Mulberry Street Branch in Soho (June 1 – September 7, 2016).

Born and raised in Shanghai, China, Pixy Liao is an artist currently resides in Brooklyn.She is a recipient of NYFA Fellowship in photography, En Foco’s New Works Fellowship and LensCulture Exposure Awards, etc. She has done artist residencies at Pioneer Works, Light Work, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Center for Photography at Woodstock, and Camera Club of New York. Liao’s photographs have been exhibited internationally, including He Xiangning Art Museum (China), Asia Society (Houston), Flower Gallery (NY),  VT Artsalon (Taiwan), Kips Gallery (Korea), The Running Horse Contemporary Art Space (Lebanon),  Format (UK), Noorderlicht (Netherland), etc,.Liao holds a MFA in photography from University of Memphis.

Joel W. Fisher (b. Newport, VT) received a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of New Hampshire in 1997 and a Master in Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2006. From 2006-2007 he worked and studied at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig, Germany on a Fulbright Fellowship. His work has shown both nationally and internationally in both group and solo exhibitions. Work in collaboration with J.T. Leonard entitled Landmark was shown in group and two person exhibitions including Wassaic Projects’ Return to Rattlesnake Mountain, AD/HD at KNOWMOREGAMES and P-R-I-M-E-T-I-M-E Galleries in Brooklyn, and solo exhibitions in Kansas City and Indianapolis in 2013 and 2014. A monograph entitled Landmark was published by Daylight Books in the spring of 2015 and was short-listed for the Aperture Foundation First Book Prize. Work from an on-going solo project entitled Agapage appeared in exhibitions Shifting Practices: Allusions, Interventions, and Conventions in Contemporary Photography at The Art Gym at Marylhurst University and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter at the Fraenkel Gallery in 2015. Joel has received grants from the Oregon Arts Commission, Ford Family and Mellon Foundations and was a participant in the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace Program (2015-2016). Joel also co-curated and wrote the introduction for the exhibition catalog Reinventing Documentary: The Art of Allan Sekula (2015). Joel was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, an area head of photography at the City College of New York (CUNY), and is currently an Assistant Professor of Art and Studio Head of Photography at Lewis and Clark College.

Dru Donovan received a BFA from California College of the Arts in 2004 and an MFA from Yale School of Art in 2009. Donovan’s work has shown nationally and internationally and was included in reGeneration2: Tomorrow’s Photographers Today at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland, and in the 2010 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, Fraenkel Gallery, Yancey Richardson Gallery, Hap Gallery and Philadelphia Photo Arts Center. Donovan’s photographs have been published in Aperture Magazine, Blind Spot, Picture Magazine, Matte Magazine, The New York Times Magazine and Vice. Her work is in the collections of Deutsche Bank and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 2011TBW Books published her first book, Lifting Water. In 2011-2012 she participated in the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace studio residency. Awards Donovan has received are the John Gutmann Photography Fellowship in 2015 and is a 2016-2017 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow. She has taught at many institutions including Parsons School for Design, Pratt Institute, Lewis & Clark College, University of Hartford and Yale University and will be a Visiting Lecturer at Harvard in the fall of 2016.

Michael Marcelle was born in New Jersey in 1983, received a BA from Bard College in 2005 and an MFA from Yale University in 2013. His work has been exhibited at Aperture Foundation, Interstate Projects, Pioneer Works, Austin Center for Photography, and has been featured in The New Yorker, Vice Magazine, Vogue, Paper Journal, and more.

Farah Al Qasimi, born 1991 in Abu Dhabi, is an artist and musician. Farah studied photography and music at Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut) and is currently an MFA candidate in the Photography program at the Yale School of Art. Farah has participated in residencies at the Burren College of Art in Ireland, at her studio in Dubai (with the support of the Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation) and at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Recent shows include Coming Up Roses at The Third Line, Dubai; Biennial for Arab Photography at Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; Emirati Expressions at Manarat al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi; Walls and Margins at the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah; and Black Mirror at the Aperture Foundation, New York.

Sara Maria Salamone is a photographer and independent curator who has earned her BA in Photography from Hampshire College and her MFA in Photography and Related Media from Parsons The New School for Design. Salamone has curated exhibitions at Albany Center Gallery in Albany, NY and LAUNCH F18, NYCAMs, and site95 in NYC. Salamone also comes from a diverse and experienced background, having worked at Casey Kaplan, site95, The Armory Show, Frieze New York among many others. Her most recent solo exhibition was held at GCA in Brooklyn, NY. Salamone lives and works in Brooklyn.

Justine Kurland is an artist who is lives in New York, and is represented by Mitchell-Innes & Nash.

Ryan James MacFarland, born Tallahassee, FL in 1985, is a multidisciplinary artist with a focus in analog photography. Working with both natural and found environments as his primary subject, MacFarland explores the relationship to his surroundings informed by concepts such as nonlinear science, cosmic intervention and conscious existence. His work has been exhibited in the US and abroad since 2004 and written about or published in Art F City, Artinfo, DuJour, Purple, OUT, The New York Times, Vogue, W and Whitewall. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Shane Lavalette, born 1987, in Burlington, VT, is an American photographer, the founding Publisher/Editor of Lavalette, and the Director of Light Work. He holds a BFA from Tufts University in partnership with The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Lavalette’s photographs have been shown widely, including exhibitions at the High Museum of Art, Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, Aperture Gallery, Montserrat College of Art, The Carpenter Center for Visual Arts at Harvard University, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Musée de l’Elysée, in addition to being held in private and public collections. In 2016, a solo exhibition of One Sun, One Shadowwas presented at Robert Morat Galerie in Hamburg, Germany. His editorial work has been published in various magazines, including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Newsweek, Esquire, Bloomberg Businessweek, Vice Magazine, The Wire, Wallpaper*, among others. Lavalette is currently based in Upstate New York.

Rory Mulligan currently lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. He received a BA from Fordham University and a MFA from Yale University in 2010. His work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally and is included in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Mulligan’s work has been published by J&L Books (Atlanta), Blind Spot Magazine (New York) and Art Licks (London) and his writing is featured in The Photographer’s Playbook published by Aperture. He was a 2014 Artist in Residence at Light Work in Syracuse, New York and is currently a Process Space Resident for the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Raised in Fort Collins, Colorado, Hannah Price, born in 1986, is a photographic artist and filmmaker primarily interested in documenting relationships, race politics, perception and misperception.  Price is internationally known for her project City of Brotherly Love (2009-2012), a series of photographs of the men who catcalled her on the streets of Philadelphia. In 2014, Price graduated from the Yale School of Art MFA Photography program, receiving the Richard Benson Prize for excellence in photography.  Over the past six years, Price’s photos have been displayed in several cities across the United States, with a few residing in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Nelson Chan was born in New Jersey to immigrant parents from Hong Kong and Taiwan and has spent most of his life between the States and Hong Kong. Having grown up on two continents with unique cultures, this immigrant experience has influenced the majority of Nelson’s work. He continues to explore this duality of personal and cultural identity through the medium of photography. He is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, where he received a BFA and a graduate of the University of Hartford, Hartford Art School, where is received his MFA. Nelson is based in New York City and is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.

Lilly McElroy is an American photographer born in Wilcox, Arizona. The artistic projects she pursues are a reflection of her complex relationship with the American West and exploring what it means to be an American in a time of diminished expectations. She received her BFA in Photography in 2003 and BA in creative writing in 2004 from University of Arizona, and an MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago in 2006.