Scott Alario (b. 1983, New Haven) is an artist living and working in Providence, RI. His practice uses photography and is a collaboration with his wife Marguerite Keyes, and children Elska and Marco. The family works together to stage, perform, and edit the images. Alario received an MFA in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2013 and a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art in 2006.

Recent group exhibitions include shows at RadiatorArts, The LeRoy Nieman Center for Print Studies at Columbia University, and Louis B. James, all in New York. His work has been discussed in Collector Daily, Time Lightbox, Vice.com, American Photograph, and The New Yorker, among other publications. He is a 2016 TIS Books Grant recipient, a 2013 Critical Mass Finalist and received a 2012 Fellowship Merit Award from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts.

Alario currently holds faculty appointments at Lesley University College of Art and Design (Cambridge, MA), Bryant University (Smithfield, RI) and Trinity Academy for the Performing Arts, in Providence RI. Alario is represented by Kristen Lorello, NYC.

Artist Statement from casehofmeister.com: In my work I use the genres of family photography, nude portraiture, religious iconography, and testimony. My art is about love and searching for it in seemingly hopeless and desolate places. It is about moving beneath passion and violence to expose love compromised and deeply misunderstood in this world.

Yahrling is an artist based in Philadelphia. His most recent photographic work investigates the ways in which notions of freedom and independence have been implemented, altered and at times rejected in the contemporary American landscape. He was selected as one of PDN’s 30: New & Emerging Photographers to Watch for 2015. He recently mounted a solo exhibition at the Workspace Gallery in Lincoln, NE and has been included in group exhibitions at the Aperture Foundation, the Perkins Center for the Arts, and the Annenberg Space for Photography. He is currently working on a project on an Army base in Southwest Oklahoma.

When social video first came to mobile phones through Vine and then Instagram, Meagan set aside a successful photography career to dive in headfirst. Her unique visual approach to those mediums quickly amassed a large and loyal following, drew the attention of brands, and won numerous awards (Cannes Lion, 4A’s O’Toole Award, Art Directors Award, a gold Andy, London International Awards, and others).

Today, over one million people follow Meagan on social media…but more than just a social media influencer, Meagan had the foresight three years ago to start her own creative production agency, Visual Country, with her partner and ex-Ebayer, Amber Lee. The company that began in her Brooklyn apartment now counts Google, Coca Cola, Nike, Tiffany & Co, Twitter, and hundreds of other major brands as clients.

Cignoli was named Digital Entrepreneur of the Year by the Hubbies (2014) and top 100 Creative by Ad Week (2015). She was also recently featured in Time Magazine, Wired magazine and in the PBS documentary, Frame by Frame, as an expert in stop motion.

Raised in Fort Collins, Colorado, Hannah Price (b. 1986) is a photographic artist and filmmaker primarily interested in documenting relationships, race politics, social perception and misperception.  Price is internationally known for her project City of Brotherly Love (2009-2012), a series of photographs of the men who catcalled her on the streets of Philadelphia. In 2014, Price graduated from the Yale School of Art MFA Photography program, receiving the Richard Benson Prize for excellence in photography.  Over the past six years, Price’s photos have been displayed in several cities across the United States, with a few residing in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Currently, Ms. Price lives and works in Philadelphia, PA.

Jordan is a Philadelphia based photographer whose work focuses on notions of violence, love and loss. His relationship to that place is deep, and polarizing; he was born there, his parents went to college there, he met and married his wife there and he’s also nearly been killed and witnessed some of the worst tragedies imaginable there. He’s watched the city grow and change, as he has grown and changed beside it. Those experiences and that complicated relationship to place is his cornerstone and remains the driving force in his work and life. Jordan Baumgarten received an MFA in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design and has exhibited his work nationally and internationally. In Fall of 2013, he published his first monograph with Parts and Labor Books. He is currently working on his second book.

Laura Swanson is an artist examining the behavior of looking at physical difference, working across various media including drawing, installation, photography, and sculpture. Born in Minneapolis, she received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2011 and BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2008. Recent solo exhibitions include “Resistance”, presented at the Laurie M. Tisch Gallery in New York in 2016. Her work will be featured on the cover and within “Anti-Portraiture: Challenging the Limits of the Portrait”, published by I.B. Tauris in October 2017. An upcoming solo exhibition of new and recent work will be hosted by the Attenborough Arts Centre in the United Kingdom, opening September 2017. Her awards include grants and scholarships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship program, and the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation. She lives and works in New York, NY.

Shannon Finnegan is an artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She works primarily in drawing and installation. Recent solo exhibitions include “Good Days & Bad Days” at Xiyi Gallery in Chengdu, China, “Should / Can’t” at The Invisible Dog in Brooklyn, NY and “DUEL” at OUTLET Fine Art in Brooklyn, NY. In 2014, she was a nominee for the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant and in 2015, won an Awesome Foundation grant for her collaborative project Sandwich Club.

Breanne is a multi-disciplinary artist with a background in printmaking. Her work explores objects and icons from popular culture, the confluence of high brow and low brow, and mines from her personal history. It presents common experiences and awkward memories that we come to terms with, and commemorates these experiences through humor and playful formalism. Like a giant papier-mâché paper clip or letterpress-printed twitter posts. Objects, observations, and inescapable memories that may seem unimportant but are significant and make us who we are.

Zora J Murff is an MFA student in Studio Art at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Zora attended the University of Iowa where he studied Photography and holds a BS in Psychology from Iowa State University. Combining his education in human services and art, Zora’s photography focuses on the experiences of youth in the juvenile justice system and the role of images in the correctional system; specifically how images are used to define individuals who are deemed criminals, and what happens when these definitions are abandoned or skewed. His work has been exhibited nationally, internationally, and featured online including The British Journal of Photography and Wired Magazine’s Raw File. His work has also been published in VICE Magazine, GOOD Magazine, and PDN’s Emerging Photographer Magazine. Zora published his first monograph, Corrections, through Aint-Bad Editions in the Winter of 2015. You can order a copy here.

Her dream-like sequences and texts employ multiple techniques and methods, fusing traditional, historical and alternative processes with IPhone image-making and street installations. Blackwood received her MA in Studio Art from New York University and a BA in Classics from The University of Oklahoma. Her work has been featured in several publications including The New York Times, NYQ, New York Newsday, The Village Voice and The Chicago Sun Times. She has exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the U.S. and abroad.

She uses the camera to ask and answer questions. She is interested in appearances and absences, short stories, poetry, and movies without happy endings.  She has lectured at Fotofusion and at Columbia Teacher’s College, and her work has been featured in publications such as Lenscratch, Feature Shoot, The Photo Review, and Photo District News among others. She was recommended by our last guest photographer Samantha Geballe.

Currently, Samantha’s work focuses on conceptual portraiture, allowing her to explore human emotion from the inside out. She is working on an on-going self-portrait series focused on body image and healing that challenges viewers to question what is means to accept oneself.  She was recommended by our first guest, photographer Brooke Shaden.

Along with being a photographer, Brooke is also a speaker and an author.  Her fine-art work has been exhibited and published numerous times and she creates fantastic realities with her frames.  She’s on a mission to share compassion and create joy and she was kind enough to join me for the inaugural episode.