we like small things v.3

Filter Photo is pleased to present we like small things v.3, our annual small works exhibition, juried by Roula Seikaly.

Juror's Statement

we like small things v.3 opens as inconceivably large events shape our every thought and action. It may take years – possibly decades – to absorb any creative content produced in 2020 through lenses other than those ground by a global pandemic and a long-overdue social reckoning with systemic racism. This is the zeitgeist.

Photography slows time but does not stop it. With that in mind, the photographs displayed here coalesce to convey temporal passage. Some capture close observations of life’s most minute details, graceful and perhaps cut with unseen anxiety or tedium. It is time as we experience it now: outdoors, enjoying the midday heat with an intimate, or indoors while watching spring and summer light move across the walls; intimacy filtered through barriers that both protect and isolate us.

Other images revive a sense of our former lives: a speeding subway car, an absurdist photoshoot, or a gathering that draws thousands of participants into close contact who have no knowledge of the viral invasion that awaits. Still, other images suggest experimentation with unfamiliar ideas and expressive tests that may sustain the makers for the duration.

As a whole, the images comprising we like small things v.3 craft a visual timeline of life as it was, and as it is amidst unrivaled socio-political upheaval. What remains to be seen is all that comes of this learning, and unlearning, and what registers in the collective photographic mind as life winds its way to a familiar rhythm.

Featured Artists

Christopher Barrett

Gary Beeber

Slim Blanks

Andy Nicole Dennis

Atefeh Farajolahzadeh

Jamil Fatti

Daniel George

Denis Gillingwater

Claudia Ruiz Gustafson

Ileana Hernandez

Michael Joseph

Jordanna Kalman

Lori Kella

Edyta Kielian

Kerry D. Lehmann

Rita Maas

Stefan Petranek

Sarah Pfohl

Tamara Suarez Porras

Maggie Preston

Hugo Zelada Romero 

Iris Brito Stevens

Noah S. Thompson

John Unwin

Jose Velazco

Kelly Xintaris

Ramona Yeefah 

Marko Zink

Lila Zotou

On View: August 28 – October 3, 2020

Location: Filter Space | 1821 W Hubbard St, Suite 207