2025 Pratt Photo Mfa Thesis Exhibitions Opening: (In Truth) Part Three

Please join us on Monday, May 12th, 5-8 pm at the opening reception of Pratt Photo MFA Thesis Exhibition: (In truth) Part Two Location: Dock72, 3rd Floor Photo Gallery In truth? curated by Darling Green.Opening Reception: Monday, May 12th, 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. (...) The third group of K Bodrock, Yujia Ma, Aileen Schretzmayer, and Ming Jin offer us parenthetical statements, images that amend and insert themselves into continuing stories. In Bodrock’s work, play and collaboration become a mechanism for broaching uncomfortable discussions with her family about the past. Her use of framing devices—both literal frames and household items—are settings for a balancing act between her trained photographic eye, and the eyes of her mother, aunt, or cousins, who she invites into the process. Photography, for Yujia Ma, is a way of revisiting a past self, from an interior perspective and the perspective of the other. The impossibility of true recreation leads to the creation of new scenarios, tools which recontextualize memory for adulthood. Aileen Schretzmayer’s photographs take a contrasting view of coming of age—more documentary and formally concerned, where late afternoon light finds young women, and those who are female-identifying, negotiating their places in the world. Many are intimate skin-and-shadow abstractions, showing a deep trust of the person behind the camera. Finally, Ming Jin employs technical confidence to capture fleeting, interstitial moments. Her two series represent the poles of her practice—her works in black and white craft threads of emotional moments, which catch the recurring subject between bracing for an unknown future or enjoying quiet contemplation, while her color works provide a textural counterpoint, immaculately composed, self contained images that can’t help but whisper to one another. --Darling Green More Info below.