INSPIRED LIVE provides a platform for a unique group of cross-disciplined artists and industry professionals to reveal their sources of inspiration. In these fast-paced, 6-minute presentations, speakers select 15 images which stay on screen for 20 seconds each.
Presenters: Daveed Baptiste Kevin Claiborne Rosem Morton Jasmine Clarke Teresa Eng Tana Gandhi Sofie Vasquez Jessica Pons
Location: Online
Supported by:
Our Online Talks are proudly supported by our partners PhotoWings with additional contribution by the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation.
INSPIRED LIVE provides a platform for a unique group of cross-disciplined artists and industry professionals to reveal their sources of inspiration. In these fast-paced, 6-minute presentations, speakers select 15 images which stay on screen for 20 seconds each.
What inspires their work–a person, a place, an idea, an object? Where does their passion for the creative industry come from?
Daveed Baptiste is a multidisciplinary maker working in fashion design, photography, and textiles. His migration from Haiti to America inspires all of his work. As an immigrant and queer person, his work examines the multidimensional identities of the Caribbean diaspora living in the United States. Through collaborative projects and various mediums, his work aims to decolonize notions of race, gender, and class within the Haitian community and greater Caribbean diaspora. He is a recent Parsons graduate with a BFA in Fashion Design. His photographs have been published in The New Yorker and VOGUE, and he has exhibited at Red Hook Labs and Aperture.
Daveed’s Lakou NOU project, Between Lands (East Flatbush) centers Haitian-American youths’ migration stories. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, there were no graduation ceremonies in 2020. Daveed partnered with The Flanbwayan Haitian Literacy Project and Rogers Tilden Veronica Garden to create graduation portraits of newly arrived Haitian youth. Daveed collaborated with each senior to create a backdrop that represents their personality and aspirations. His textile collages delve further into each individual’s dreams and imaginations in America.
Kevin Claiborne (he/him, b. 1989, Washington, D.C.) is a multidisciplinary conceptual artist living and working in New York, and whose work examines and questions intersections of identity, environment, and mental health within the Black American experience.
Using photography as a foundation and language as material, Kevin views his art as weapon, and armor in the fight for liberation. He is a graduate of the historically Black college North Carolina Central University (2012), Syracuse University (2016), and is presently a MFA Visual Arts Candidate at Columbia University (2021).
Rosem Morton is a documentary photographer from the Philippines whose work focuses on daily life amidst gender, health, and racial adversity.
As a National Geographic Explorer and an International Women’s Media Foundation Fellow, she explores issues from the effects of gender-based violence and the unheard stories of healthcare workers to the forgotten histories that have shaped Filipino culture and migration. She has written and photographed stories for National Geographic, The Washington Post, NPR, and CNN, among others. She has been recognized by World Press Photo 6×6 Talent, Pictures of the Year International, and The 30: New and Emerging Photographers to Watch. She has received the Leica Women Photo Award and the Visa d’or Daily Press Award.
Jasmine Clarke is a 24-year-old photographer from Brooklyn, New York. Inspired by the surreal qualities of our waking world, her images play with the tension between fiction and reality. Her work has been shown at Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York City, and she has an upcoming group show at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, Oregon.
Teresa Eng is a Canadian photographer who is based in London, England. Her personal work focuses on long term projects that deal with transition and change and book making. Her project China Dream was awarded the 2019 Burtynsky Grant and was a finalist for the 2019 Aperture Portfolio Prize, Images Vevey Book Award, and the Hyères 33rd Festival of Fashion and Photography. Her work has been featured in World Press Photo, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Financial Times, It’s Nice That, Vogue Italia, Aperture, and British Journal of Photography.
Tana Gandhi is a self-taught commercial and still-life photographer. Her clients include Nike, Laura Mercier, Fossil, and Ann Taylor. Brands seek her out for a specific style of sleek and playful imagery, to bridge the gap between creativity and commerce. Tana’s personal work includes a photo series called 100 Years of Kalidas Gandhi documenting her
childhood home and ayurvedic shop that’s over a century old in Pune, India.
Sofie Vasquez (b. 1998) is an Ecuadorian documentary photographer born and raised in The Bronx, New York. Her artwork explores the mediums of photography and filmmaking to create long-term projects focusing on narratives about identity, community, and culture.
Her work has been featured in The New York Times and has been exhibited with the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Bronx Documentary Center, the Ecuadorian-American Cultural Center, The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center, the Shirley Fiterman Art Center, the DGT Alumni Association Gallery House and En Foco Inc.
She is currently a fellow with the International Center of Photography, as well as an undergraduate pursuing her BA at The City College of New York.
Jessica Pons is an Argentinean-American photographer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Growing up navigating this dichotomy has sparked her eternal curiosity for cultural and historical themes as well as explorations of identity through various forms of storytelling. Her work is largely inspired from her years spent working in both photojournalism and documentary film.
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