First Look 2025

On View: February 13th - April 28th, 2025
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 13th, 6-8pm

Every photograph tells a story. When part of a body of work, the photograph takes on new meaning, becoming part of a bigger and more complete narrative. A portfolio allows the photographer to explore the complexities of their subject, and provide context that gives it richness and meaning that is more than the sum of its parts. Panopticon Gallery is pleased to share “First Look 2025,” our annual juried portfolio showcase, where five portfolios have been selected for exhibition on view from February through April 2025.

This year, we are pleased to announced the addition of a secondary gallery space within Panopticon, called The Wall at Panopticon Gallery. The Wall’s first exhibiton, First Look: Second Glance, will run in tandem alongside First Look 2025. First Look: Second Glance can be viewed here.

Join us for an in-person reception of both First Look 2025 and First Look: Second Glance Thursday, February 13th from 6pm to 8pm.

Diana Cheren Nygren, Mother Earth

“A city girl and skeptic to my core, I feel an overwhelming sense of awe in the face of a desert spread before me or the expanse of the ocean. Within these magnificent landscapes, humanity seems small and insignificant. Geologic eras are etched into layers of rock and our time on earth seems short in contrast. So far there have been thirty-seven epochs in the history of this planet. Humans have been on Earth for less than two of these, though our impact on the shape of the planet has been tremendously outsized. What will the next epoch look like?

I have mounted scenes of human habitation behind acrylic, plastic walls that we imagine can safely separate the things we do from having an impact on the natural world. I have then affixed these scenes onto and within sweeping landscapes. I am presenting this work without glass. The constructed world behind the acrylic is literally protected, while the landscapes remain exposed and vulnerable. A continuity of line and color between these two parts of the work hints at their interconnectedness. I use the desert southwest of the United States as a stand-in for what the majority of the land on our planet might look like as it continues to be shaped by rising temperatures, drought, and fires. Ultimately, I present these multi-layered images in hand-painted wooden frames, alluding to the next chapter in the planet's history. As the image pushes beyond its edges, the story continues to evolve.

In spite of human activity, the Earth continues to transform and reinvent itself. The Earth is not coming to an end. Its inhabitants cannot escape its permanence, and the power it has to shape their existence. The question remains, as nature reinvents itself, can we adapt with it? Will we be part of that next chapter?” -Diana Cheren Nygren

Andriana Nativio, As We Rest in the Shadows

“While passing through a small town in Tennessee in 2019, I met two sisters who invited me on the start of an adventure into their world. The landscapes they roamed became spaces for them to bond, rebel, tell secrets, & rest without observation. This reminded me of my own girlhood & the summers I spent wandering through the lakes, woods, brush, & rivers with my girl cousins while we transformed the landscape into one that was just girl and just us. Fairy tales, urban legends, & our parents alike – told us the only thing girls would meet in nature was harm or a harsh lesson to be learned. While we were warned not to stray from the path, our curiosity & desire always rose above our fear. The light wove itself through the trees and pulled us into the depths; there, we were free to disappear into the lush woods & dark waters where we were closest to ourselves. We felt we were the first to discover these spaces– maybe even the first people on Earth– or perhaps it felt like we were the last.

From Genesis' creation story to the cautionary fairytales to the historical stigmatization of witches and healers to modern cultural references such as Twin Peaks and True Crime podcasts and shows, these stories have cast a shadow of fear over women throughout history, creating distance between the natural & feminine. Within this body of work & through the use of black & white photography, I aim to break away from fear-inducing repetitive narratives, & seek to reconstruct both literary & photographic genres historically illustrated by men of their connection to nature or attempts to dominate it. Within this narrative reconstruction, my work also provokes a reevaluation: while young boys' behavior is commonly regarded as more weighty, young girls' actions are dismissed as light-hearted– my work asks why the play of girls is considered less significant.

My photographs meld the sisters' journey & my memories together in an attempt to return to my girlhood. Nostalgia reveals itself to be an immensely potent emotion when making this work: a relentless and uncontrollable yearning to revisit the past while fully aware of its inaccessibility. I have found that our deepest fear was not rooted in the stories passed down to us, but rather, an unspoken understanding existed among us, knowing we'd eventually have to leave this place. The light that drew us in shifted to shadows that loomed over us- a reminder of time itself.” -Andriana Nativio

Austin Bryant, Where They Still Remain

“Where They Still Remain is a project that focuses on the African American and Wampanoag indigenous people who have coexisted for hundreds of years on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts in the northeastern United States. The work is a memorial to these people, past and present. In it I attempt to make the unseen seen by shining a light on histories lost due to erasure. The work consists of my original photography (medium + large format film), vernacular/archival images from both communities, and historical texts that I’ve redacted.

My connection to the work is direct—I am part of the historical tradition of African American families who have found a safe haven on the island since before enslaved people were freed by Abraham Lincoln through Emancipation. It is a place I have spent my life returning to every year of my life as a summer visitor, with my mother now living there year-round.

For those who are either intimately familiar or surface-level familiar with the island, the content of the work also betrays typical U.S. media stereotypes of Martha’s Vineyard. Whether they believe it to be a place where wealthy white New Englanders congregate or know its truth as a Black enclave dating back hundreds of years, it refuses to bow to how it’s commonly depicted. The island has also been in the news over the past several years due to the Florida Governor Ron DeSantis flying 50 Venezuelan immigrants to the island, in an attempt to make a grand political stunt at the expense of human dignity.

In my photography, I intentionally focus on the landscapes I’ve been drawn to since I was a teenager learning how to use a camera. These are rural, pastoral scenes where the landscape is allowed to breathe, hinting at secret histories that lie beneath the surface. The work exists due to the intense amount of collaboration and access it required. Not only did it require the collaboration of my subjects, but also of those people from both communities who answered my cold calls, referred me to others who might be interested in taking part, and keeping me moving. I also worked with the Martha’s Vineyard museum’s staff—first poring over binders of vernacular imagery thanks to their Research Librarian, Bowdoin Van Riper, and then chasing down the histories that were never written with the museum’s Oral Historian, Linsey Lee.”- Austin Bryant

Ira Garber, Kinetic Landscapes

"This series, “Kinetic Landscapes,” is based on expanding earlier single-image panoramic photographs. In the motion images, I am mesmerized by that split second of reversing direction: when it goes right, of that second of becoming weightless. The landscape series holds similar meaning for me but with a focus on stillness. The overlapping component of these images is from modifying the camera back to allow for a continuous and overlapping image across the entire roll. There was no way to know what the assembled roll would look like until processed. It unfolds by chance, in a way similar to the chance taken by those in the photo. Motion and stillness is the way I am working, and at the same time, it is what I am looking to describe.” -Ira Garber

Anne Sol

“For a long time now, an old camera hanging around my neck like a compass, Photography became my language. I learned to process in my local film lab and since then, I never stopped taking photos. Later I graduated from the Gobelins in Paris. My career has since crossed multiple fields, all related to images. I worked as a picture researcher, graphic designer, children’s book illustrator – without ever straying far from the photographic act. Always yearning for representations of the world around me, I have never stopped collecting images, mine and those of others. Over the last few years, drawing has taken a bigger part in my practice making me look at my photo archives in a different way. Naturally, a link was woven between the two activities. I have then expanded my field of expression, integrating artistic techniques to revisit my photographic archives. Today, my practice is part of a transversal approach, at the crossroads of drawing, painting and photography. These disciplines dialogue with each other, forming a process where each technique nourishes the other.

These words from Saul Leiter resonate deeply in my approach. My works are born from a need to revisit time: to capture, then recreate the essence of memories. From personal archives, I combine photography, drawing, and mixed techniques (washes, old papers) for mental landscapes where the tangible gives way to a poetics of the indefinite. My process, hybrid and experimental, erases the boundaries between mediums, provoking an intimate resonance between reality and perception. My approach is based on the idea that memory, like a palimpsest, is built in layers, where reality and imagination overlap. Photography is often perceived as a moment frozen in time, but for me, it constitutes a first step, a malleable base to reinterpret. In a constant dialogue between memory and matter, I am interested in the way in which memory reinvents reality, and this exploration guides my aesthetic choices. I compose my works as one composes a painting: in successive layers, mixing my skills. These hybrid compositions, presented in the form of Pigment Art Print on cotton paper, reflect a constant search for balance between the tactile sensitivity of the materials and the emotional depth of the images.

I try to question the moment captured by the image. What remains of reality when time has passed? How can the alteration of the material or the combination of techniques amplify the initial emotion? The goal is to provoke a loss of bearings, a sensation where the viewer is both destabilized and invited to reconstruct his own vision, and then to project his own story. Memories are never faithful to reality; they oscillate between clarity and blur. My work questions this subjectivity of memory, its capacity to distort, enrich or transcend our experiences. . Through this process, I seek to awaken an emotional dialogue and a reflection on our relationship to time and its perception. The viewer, invited to lose himself in the image, becomes a co-creator of a silent narrative.” -Anne Sol