Wednesday, June 2, 2021, 6:30-8:30pm
Featuring William Betcher, Jesseca Ferguson, Jaclyn Kain, Cynthia Katz
Photographic methods have greatly changed since its earliest beginnings, most notably in the shift from analog to digital and wet to dry. With cameras in our pockets and printers at the ready one is hard pressed in 2021 to find a traditional wet darkroom to process and enlarge negatives. Despite the many technological changes and shifting trends, there is still a creative attraction to hands-on photographic methods and 19th century processes. During the past year the PRC has been highlighting several of these techniques and the photographers who work with them. Programs have included Sunday Studio Demos on cyanotype with Susan Murie and on lumens with Sarah Pollman, the PRC also co-hosted the Davis Museum’s online symposium, Handmade Photography Today: A Virtual Artist Talk, and from August 7 – September 11, 2021 the PRC is producing a Handmade Photography Workshop. In advance of the workshop and to continue spotlighting photographers working in this genre, PRC Nights Online: Handmade Photography features four photographers who each practice different handmade photographic techniques, William Betcher, Jesseca Ferguson, Jaclyn Kain, Cynthia Katz.
William Betcher’s photographic work has been displayed at the Griffin Museum, Catamount Arts, Danforth Art, Mass Audubon, Massachusetts General Hospital, the Norris Cotton Cancer Center, and the University of New England. His book of landscape photography was included in Photobook 2016 at the Griffin Museum and he is the author of four other nonfiction books. He is a psychiatrist in private practice and Photography Editor at Solstice Literary Magazine. He received an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, his MD from Harvard Medical School, and a Ph.D. from Boston University.
Jesseca Ferguson works with pinhole photography, 19th century photo processes and collage. Her pinhole photographs and collaged “photo objects” have been included in solo and group exhibitions in the United States and Europe. Ferguson has received numerous grants to support her projects and has participated in national and international artist residencies. Her work has also been published in books, catalogues, and articles on the subject of handmade photography and since 1998, she has been engaged in cultural exchange with artists in Poland. Jesseca lives and works in Boston and currently teaches at SMFA.
Cynthia Katz is a Concord, Massachusetts-based artist and teacher. Her work has been shown regionally and nationally, is published in journals, books and blogs, including Manifest’s International Photography Annual 3. Cynthia has a BFA in Photography from the University of New Hampshire and an MFA in Photography from Bennington College. She maintains a studio at The Umbrella Arts Center in Concord, MA and she recently curated “Origin Stories”, an exhibit that showcased 22 former students from her career at Concord Academy teaching photography and handmade books, who have gone onto successful careers in the arts.
Jaclyn Kain teaches photography at Simmons University and works as a corporate art photographer for Fidelity Investments. Her work is represented by Gallery NAGA in Boston and has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout New England. Included in various private, university, and museum collections, her images have been published in national publications. She received her undergraduate degree from Simmons University and completed the MFA Photography program at the New Hampshire Institute of Art in 2016. She resides in Watertown.