Featuring: Maja Daniels, Lori Grinker, Sofie Mathiassen, Christopher Nunn, Stephen DiRado, Jalal Shamsazaran, Cheryle St. Onge
The Bob and Diane Fund has given seven grants since its inception in 2016 to support storytelling about Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Losing Self collects the projects of the grantees sharing the love and the challenges facing both the caregivers and those struggling with this disease. Many of the projects are about the relatives of the photographers who are telling these stories making them all the more personal and poignant.
Forty-four million people have Alzheimer’s Disease and dementia worldwide, although it is most commonly found in Western Europe and North America. One-third of Americans over the age of 85 are afflicted with the illness.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Maja Daniels, 2016 Grantee, is based in London, England. Her photographic work focuses on identity construction and human relations in a Western, contemporary environment. She uses sociology as a frame of research and approach to her self-initiated long-term personal projects.
She is the recipient of numerous awards, such as the 2013 Contour by Getty Portrait Prize, the 2012 Sony World Photography Award and the 2011 Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize. She was a participant in the 2012 World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass and has been nominated for the 2013 Prix Pictet, the 2014 Foam Paul Huf Award and shortlisted for the 2014 Leica Oscar Barnard Award.
In 2013 she had her first solo exhibition at Galerie Polka in Paris. Daniels’ photographs have also been included in exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Arts (London), The Photographers Gallery (London), The National Portrait Gallery (London), Somerset House (London), Belfast Exposed (Belfast) and Getxophoto (Bilbao) amongst others.
Apart from her dedication to long-term personal projects she also collaborates with the weekly and monthly press worldwide (including New York Magazine, The Guardian Weekend, FT Weekend Magazine, Le Monde Magazine) and with social scientists, using photography as a tool within academic research.
Stephen DiRado, 2018 Grantee, is a documentary photographer, filmmaker, and educator. He is recognized for his raw yet deeply empathetic portraits, often devoting decades to his chosen themes. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1957, he attended the School of the Worcester Art Museum, followed by Massachusetts College of Art receiving a B.F.A. in 1981. In 1982, Stephen joined the faculty at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, where he remains to this day.
Beginning in 1987, DiRado dedicated most of his attention to documenting Martha’s Vineyard. For this work, DiRado was awarded fellowships from the New England Foundation for the Arts/National Endowment for the Arts, Massachusetts Artist Foundation, Massachusetts Cultural council, and a John Simon Guggenheim. In tandem to making stills, DiRado produced his first film Summer Spent, (39 minutes), about the island.
In the late 1980s DiRado turned his 8×10 camera towards his father Gene, now retired and living at home in Marlborough, Massachusetts. Unbeknownst to both during that period, Gene was succumbing to Alzheimer’s. For the next two decades, Stephen produced loving and insightful documents of his family’s changing relationships brought about by this fatal disease. In 2019, Davis Publications published the book With Dad, 88 pages, 39 plates, printed by Puritan Press in Hollis, New Hampshire.
Presently, DiRado is documenting the societal effects of Covid-19, under the title, “In the Present Day.”
Lori Grinker, 2022 Grantee, is an award-winning photographer, artist, educator and filmmaker based in New York. She is committed to exploring themes of memory, identity, history, and home. She is the author of Mike Tyson: 1981-1991 (Powerhouse Books, 2022) and Afterwar; Veterans from a World in Conflict (de.MO) and the co-author of The Invisible Thread: A Portrait of Jewish American Women (Jewish Publication Society.)
Her work has garnered many awards, including W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fellowship; Ernst Haas Award; Open Society Community Engagement Grant; Hasselblad Foundation Grant; Center (Santa Fe) Project Grant; World Press Foundation First Prize; Ochberg Fellow of the Dart Center on Journalism and Trauma.
She has been published and exhibited in many venues including the United Nations, the Museum of the City of New York and the Brooklyn Museum. Her work is held in collections including the International Center of Photography, NYC; Jewish Museum, NYC City; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; New York Historical Society, NYC; Portland Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
She serves on the board of Social Documentary Network, is a Professor of Journalism and Design at the New School University, Lang College, and a part time professor at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Graduate School of Journalism. Grinker is a senior member of Contact Press Images and is represented by CLAMP Gallery in New York City.
Sofie Mathiassen, 2019 Grantee, is a Danish photographer working on personal long-term projects and freelance commissions throughout Denmark and Europe. Having studied photojournalism at the Danish School of Media and Journalism (DK) and photography history at Western Kentucky University (U.S) her work focuses on human relations and how society affect these.
Her most recent work, But the Greatest is Love, has been exhibited in various locations, including The Royal Danish Library. Part of the series was awarded Reportage of The Year in Denmark, 2018.
Recently Mathiassen has been a part of the Exhibit, Self-Staged, with thirty-two of Denmark’s most prominent photographers. She is currently working on a project about the Danish healthcare system in collaboration with the national government.
Christopher Nunn, 2017 Grantee, is a British photographer working on personal projects and commissions throughout the UK and Europe. He graduated from Bradford College with a degree in photography in 2004. He is currently working on a long term documentary project in Ukraine, where he has worked over multiple trips since 2013. In 2015 he was nominated for the prestigious Prix Pictet award, and in 2016 was selected as one of Photo District News’s 30 New and Emerging Photographers.
Recent clients include The Financial Times Weekend Magazine, The Telegraph Magazine, I-D, De Coprrespondent, The Asahi Shimbun Globe, The Wire, Le Monde, Morgenbladet, The New Yorker and Weapons of Reason.
Jalal Shamsazaran, 2020 Grantee, is an internationally renowned photographer based in the city of Tabriz, Iran. He is a self-taught visual storyteller and in the past decade he has mostly worked on humanitarian and climate change projects. With a cinematic vision and poetic narratives, he achieved various local and international awards such as Pictures of the Year and he became a recipient of a Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting grant. Jalal’s work has been published globally including Der Spiegel, the Art Asia Pacific Magazine, F-Stop magazine, and the Photographic Museum of Humanity.
Visualizing the hidden layers of life, where the identity, culture and history lays beyond the harsh environment, has been Jalal’s mission in the past twenty-five years, and he wishes the impact of his images could raise awareness and bring hope for better future. Jalal joined NVP Images (New Vision Productions) in 2020 as an Associate Photographer.
Cheryle St. Onge, 2021 Grantee, was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. She grew up on college campuses as the only child of a Physics professor and a painter. She received an M.F.A. from Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, Massachusetts.
St. Onge’s work focus on the crossover of art, science, and photography’s ability to distill our sense of time and curiosity. She makes pictures predominantly with an 8 x 10 view camera and considers her work a collaborative process.
Her photographs have been widely exhibited, most notably at London’s National Portrait Gallery, Princeton University, Griffin Museum, University of Rhode Island, Massachusetts College of Art, Rick Wester Fine Arts, and with the American Institute of Architects traveling exhibition. She has received numerous awards among them a 2009 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a Critical Mass Finalist Exhibition Award, Polaroid Materials Artist Support Grant, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Graduate Fellowship and was named one of the ‘Top 50 Photographers’ in the country by Time Magazine.
Her photographs are in many collections, including the University of New Mexico Art Museum, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Cassilhaus Collection, and the Guggenheim Foundation.
Her work has been widely published, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Photograph Magazine, Vice, Time Magazine, Juxtapoz Magazine, Time Magazine, The Guardian, and Oxford American.
She has been on the faculty at Phillips Exeter Academy, Clark University, Maine College of Art, and the University of New Hampshire. She divides her time between Durham, New Hampshire and coastal Maine.
Organizations
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The Bob and Diane Fund
The Bob & Diane Fund’s goal is to bring visual understanding and dialogue to a disease that has been in the shadows for far too long. As a daughter of an Alzheimer’s parent, I believe that visual storytelling can be a powerful way to advocate for increased public and private research and spending needed to find a cure.
I created this award in honor of my parents. My hope is for people to understand that Alzheimer’s is more than just memory loss and to recognize the heavy toll it takes on the caregiver and family. My parents taught me the importance of giving, and this is my gift to them.
– Gina Martin
Losing Self
Featuring: Various Artists
Curated by: Sarah Leen Bill Marr Gina Martin
Locations
ON VIEW AT: Cross 40
View Location Details Download a detailed map of this location Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza1 Water St
Brooklyn, NY 11201
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