Crawlspace, a group exhibition featuring the Yale MFA Photography class of 2024 – Torry Brown, Pat Garcia, Tanner Pendleton, Andina Marie Osario, Whitney Klare, Patricia Voulgaris, Avion Pearce, Shelli Weiler, Darby Routtenberg, & Jarod Lew. Curated by Elle Pérez

Nearly a quarter century after the seminal photography exhibit ‘Pleasures and Terrors of Domestic Comfort’— the domestic space, and its rituals, have re-emerged as an essential character in the works exhibited, both as a vehicle for personal narrative and a culprit in dissecting photographic truth. The show’s title, ‘Crawlspace’ pays homage to this particular area of influence, while celebrating areas of divergence, as the images presented reimagine the domestic space, offer new perspectives, and explore the voids within.

‘The Medium Wears Many Hats and Appears in More Guises Than Ever’

Words by John Pilson

Begin with the entangled threads of solitary ambitions, economic concerns, institutional values and ever present political realities that resulted in ten artists spending two years together as students within The Yale School of Art’s Graduate Photography Program. Curatorial efforts usually don’t include chance operations but every thesis exhibition represents equal parts cosmic coincidence, shared experience and an array of individual and communal origin stories. A thesis exhibition isn’t obligated to display connective tissue but somehow they always do; the best themes emerge and sometimes, as in this group’s efforts, the state of a particular medium and the discourse that has surrounded it can appear re-mythologized. This Summer suggests Hollywood has taken a related memo: “The Bikeriders”, “Civil War”, the upcoming Lee Miller biopic all revisit the foundational role that the popular imagination has always played in defining photography’s mythic virtues and potential for trespass.

They share what looks, to my eyes, like a serene confidence in photography’s unique syntax and potential for unplanned eloquence and, if not entirely skeptical, ready to displace aging photo polemics such as: analogue/digital, fiction/documentary, commerce and art, authorship and collaboration.

Eschewing diagnostic, photo-materialist object-lessons they’ve responded in varieties of good faith to the daunting ecosystem of a medium that wears infinite hats, appearing in more guises than ever: fashion editorials, fashion campaigns, amateur porn, professional porn, classical journalism, citizen journalism, Instagram™ narcissism, sophisticated advertising and even more sophisticated digital propaganda. There is no secret knowledge in or out of school..but if there was it would be this: Ambitious photographers are the beneficiaries of the notion (and where did it come from exactly?) that their medium has some special relationship to truth while, in practice, the medium presents all the characteristics and requirements of fiction. Now, meet the authors.