2025 Pratt Photo Mfa Thesis Exhibitions Opening: In Truth? Part One

Please join us on Monday, April 28th, 5-8 pm at the opening reception of Pratt Photo MFA Thesis Exhibition: In truth? Part One Location: Dock72, 3rd Floor Photo Gallery In truth? curated by Darling Green.Opening Reception: Monday, April 28th, 5-8 pmExhibiting Artists: Part One - Opening April 28Aidan McLellanLiv DawsonCléo Sương Mai Richez Part Two - Opening May 5Liv DavidsonMatthew CohnJesse Wendelken BrooksDraven Zhao Part Three - Opening May 12K BodrockYujia MaMing JinAileen Schretzmayer In truth—it’s commonplace to say that photography and video pretend to a truth that can never be. But truth persists as a question that these media have to face, and their practitioners have to either embrace or subvert to demonstrate that they are conscious of the dilemma. In truth, the notion that photography could do justice to a specific moment, capture the veracity of an instant removed from context is a fantasy. The changing politics and value of the image in the past decades, the rise of the internet, and the prevalence of the jpeg (which now, too, seem quaint and passé), and the more recent rise of AI generated images and shortened attention spans, have pushed photography ever more towards being a tool for fiction, a true test of the relativity of perception. (...) Aidan McLellan, Liv Dawson, Cléo Sương Mai Richez come together under the sign of the question mark, the unreliability of memory, lying, the uncertainty of how a map relates to the territory it represents. In each there is a shifting of relationships over time, interpersonally and in camera. In McLellan’s intertwining narratives, the forking paths read like road film stills—curiosities perceived for an instant, but in the passing of those instants there is a development. Whether this is of the photographer himself (whose feet we glimpse momentarily), or of the figures depicted (in two instances, couples in each other’s arms) we cannot be sure. Development takes on a different tone in the work of Liv Dawson. Her immersive domestic viewing room represents an ongoing charting of her and her sister’s experiences and shared aspirations. Here, memory and closeness are recast in an idealized dream home, in which the “what could have been” becomes entangled with her retelling of what is. An act of love and dedication takes center stage, which is itself perhaps an encantation for future domestic thriving. The state of becoming is also key in Cléo Sương Mai Richez’s work—most jarringly, her proposal that you come into full personhood only by killing your parents. Richez deals in deception, a property inherent in language as exemplified by the pun lying vs. lying. --Darling Green More Info below.