IV: Members Exhibition

Filter Photo is pleased to present IV, our fourth annual Members exhibition, juried by Jonathan Blaustein, writer and contributor of A Photo Editor. Congratulations to the Juror's Choice artists: Dave Jordano, Mark Lipczynski, and Tanya Lunina; and also to the Honorable Mentions: Denis Gillingwater, Judith Levy, and Kathryn Rodrigues.

Juror's Statement

#2020 has been a year unlike any other. (You know it, and I know it.)

The year has been dominated  by isolation, and the sense that somehow, just when we can't take any  more of this, the intensity ratchets up one more notch.

Certainly, that's how I felt  as I judged the extraordinary set of submissions for Filter Photo's 2020  Members Exhibition.  That there was so much quality is a testament to  the membership, but so many of the submissions felt appropriate for now.  (And there were too many strong portfolios to count.) My job, though,  was to choose three sets of images to present to you.  Due to the  pandemic, the exhibition is entirely online, but I still wanted to offer  a coherent, taut view, based upon what I saw.

In the end, there were really  two groups of images that stood out, and each was its own cohesive  mini-exhibition. It was hard to choose one over the other, as they're  both so great.  But Dave Jordano, Tanya Lunina, and Mark Lipczynski each made razor-sharp, beautifully structured, color photographic  series that offered a unique point of view, in the midst of the quiet,  the loneliness, the ennui.  Each grouping felt like an epic, crammed  into a short, visual poem. Cleveland, at night. Lake Michigan, flattened  into the perspective of a Diebenkorn painting. Trains, whirring through  the Wild West, a futuristic blur, thanks to a long shutter speed.

The three artists receiving honorable mention, Denis Gillingwater, Judith Levy and Kathryn Rodrigues,  created tense, emotional, constructed, black and white worlds that felt  like they were born to critique our own, rather than existing outside  of it.

In a different year, we'd  have the chance to see all six artists' work on the walls of a gallery  space.  We'd drink, and chat. We'd laugh, and gesticulate.

But this is no other year. It's #2020, and I think the photographs selected for this exhibition  have just the right mood for the occasion.