Aaron Blum • blumaaron@gmail.com

Education
MFA Art Photography 2010, Syracuse University
BFA Art Photography 2007, West Virginia University

Research Interests
Memory, Identity, Media as an educational system, Appalachian Culture, Psychology, Family, and Photographic History.

I grew up in the northern panhandle of West Virginia, a strip of land juxtaposed between Ohio and Pennsylvania. On this tiny piece of the country, the cultures of the South, East, Midwest, and Appalachia co-mingle along with the residue of its Scots-Irish pioneers. It is this hybrid identity that my work explores. Utilizing vintage photographs from my own family albums along with my own documentation of the area and its people, I am creating a granulated depiction of the region. I do so not as a disinterested observer, but as someone who will be investigating his own history and identity through the process.

Exhibitions
2007
High Definition, Mesaros Galleries, Morgantown, WV

Elissa Brown • jellyl0rum@aol.com

Education
MFA Art Photography 2009, Syracuse University
BFA Two-Dimensional Design 2005, Abilene Christian University

Research Interests
Influence, Family, Moving, Adaptation, Football

We tend to think that our most persuasive memories are unadulterated narratives that inform our sense of self. However, memories fade, reform and connive. By reconstructing memories from my own childhood, I want to explore how events are recalled and how they can become embedded into our sense of mortality, fear, and sex. I am mining my own experiences with full awareness that photography, like memory, is a merger of fact and fiction.

Lorraine DeLaney • lldelane@syr.edu

Education
MFA Art Photography 2009, Syracuse University
BFA Photography, Minor in Museum Studies, cum laude, 2003, Plattsburgh State University of New York

Research Interests
Books that blur the line between memoir and fiction, crock-pot recipes, David Lynch, avian behavior, Chilean wine, and curatorial studies.

My current work engages the deconstruction and reconstruction of memory. I am investigating how objects and places can function as triggers to a compound of emotions including, loss, displacement, grief, and dislocation. I explore the ways in which interiors and landscapes can possess intimacy and psychology. I am further interested in the significance assigned to personal belongings as a means of identification of self. Writings, both my own and those of others, often serve as catalysts for my photographic and sculptural works.

Exhibitions (selected)
2006
INKLANDIA - Rueff Galleries, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
A Many Colored Spectacle - University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI
Athens: An ArtistÕs Perspective - Clayton Street Gallery, Athens, GA
2005
El Primero Internacional Symposio de Arte Exposician - Municipality of Navidad, Chile
30th Juried Exhibition - Lyndon House Arts Center, Athens, GA

Christopher Gianunzio • chrisgianunzio@gmail.com

Education
MFA Art Photography 2009, Syracuse University
BFA Photography Central Washington University Ellensburg Washington

Research Interests
Adoption law, American railroad history, Arctic exploration, Gardening, Miniature golf courses, Rainbows, Taxidermy.

Current Research
Questions of nature versus nurture are not so abstract if your DNA does not match those who have raised you. Adoption challenges identity: psychology and biology struggle for primacy, home and heritage are destabilized, and space and time constantly scrutinized. I have always mythologized a reunion with my birthparents as a resolution to the predicaments of my own identity. But can oneÕs perception of the world so easily change after learning to see and know the world under such specific circumstances? In my images, the ground always seems to be shifting beneath oneÕs feet, emotions are kept at armÕs length, and the familiar becomes estranged.

Selected Exhibitions
2007
State of the City. Rochester Contemporary. Rochester, NY
Urban Video Project/Avalanche Collective. Broad Street Gallery. University of Georgia. Athens, GA
Urban Video Project-Volume 2. Spark Contemporary Art Space. Syracuse, NY
Urban Video Project-Volume 1. Spark Contemporary Art Space. Syracuse, NY
Lake Effect. Joyce Goldstein Gallery. Chatam, NY.
Converge II. SPAS Gallery. Rochester Institute of Technology. Rochester, NY
2006
Homesick (solo). Gallery 1101. Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Carbondale, IL
Homesick (solo). Eveleth Green Gallery. Ellensburg, WA
2005
The Postcard Show. The Lab. San Francisco, CA
Exposures. Black Box Gallery. Seattle, WA
Transcendence. Gallery Two. Washington State University. Pullman, WA
Proof. Johnson Center Art Gallery. George Mason University. Fairfax, VA
Snap To Grid. Los Angeles Center for Digital Art. Los Angeles, CA
Lost and Found. Paradox. Seattle, WA

Tzu Cheng Liu • autumniac@gmail.com

Education
MFA Art Photography 2008, Syracuse University
BA Mass Communication, 1998, Tam Kang University

Research Interests
Police radios, Horror and disaster films, Travel, Crashing Parties and special events

My works explores the condition of foreignness and strangeness as an outsider to the United States. AmericaÕs material wealth and spiritual prosperity are broadcast overseas to audiences who assume that Beverly Hills 90210 is a perfect facsimile of life in America. In the tradition of Robert Frank, my photographs speak to the alienation its citizens can feel when bypassed by the American dream as well as my own invisibility as visitor to this peculiar land.

Awards
2007 Associate Artist at Atlantic Center for the Arts Residency with Thomas Struth
2007 Top Ten finalist of Americana category and Travel category of the 4th Annual Photo Contest of Smithsonian Magazine
2006 Company Gallery group show selection

Exhibitions
2007
"Through our Readers' Eyes", Smithsonian Castle, Washington, D.C.
"Sadako Me America" SPAS Gallery, RIT, Rochester, NY
2006
Group Exhibition "Behavior Body Skin" Company Gallery, Syracuse, NY
Group Exhibition "Scene" SPAS Gallery, RIT, Rochester, NY

Jared Landberg • jlandber@gmail.com

Education
MFA Art Photography 2010, Syracuse University
BFA Photography 2005, Indiana University

Research Interests
Collections (creating and browsing), bookbinding/making, large -format inkjet printing, field recording, electronic sound+ music, found narratives, the vernacular, abandoned spaces, lives interrupted, social movement/ management, failing/ed bureaucracies, propaganda.

My previous work focused on the remains of fallen institutions and facilities in the contemporary mid-western landscape. In spaces such as medical care, energy production, and military training, technological and social changes have rendered many obsolete or neglected. I photographed the scarred voids left behind. My recent body of work deals with an Indianapolis Urban Housing Project and its desertion. I am reconstructing the lives of the inhabitants through found photographs, documents, and images I have taken of former homes punctuated by distressed memories and domestic paraphernalia. By presenting the photographs and other found materials together, I'm interested in investigating the individual lives and histories of those who lived in this institution. And I am also underscoring the larger network of bureaucratic failure and social marginalization that occurs within the public housing system.

Selected Exhibitions and Awards
2005
Vacant Reflections, BFA Thesis show, SOFA gallery, Indiana University
Works on Paper Exhibition, McNeese School of Visual Arts, Lake Charles, LA, March (group)
2004
Cream, Dean Johnson Gallery, Indianapolis, IN
Spit and Swap, Clayton Gallery and Outlaw Museum, Manhattan, NY (group multi-media show)
Edward S. Hutton International Studies Grant

Kelli Pennington • KelliPenni@yahoo.com • www.kellipennington.com

Education
MFA Art Photography 2010, Syracuse University
BS Fine Art Photography 2003, Towson University, Towson, MD
TEFL 2003, Next Level, Prague, Czech Republic

Research Interests
Modern migration, CocoRosie, hipster ideals, composting, civil service

My practice uses the snapshot aesthetic to engage desire and intimacy. By photographing my friends, family, lover, and myself, I want to mirror the experiences of tenderness, cruelty, and love directly and with limited mediation. I want my viewer to begin to share in the range of emotional storms that my subjects have so generously revealed in front of my camera.

Colin Todd • cbtodd@syr.edu

Education
MFA Art Photography 2009, Syracuse University
BFA Fine Art Photography 2006, Louisiana Tech University

Research Interests
Southern geography, Nineteenth century polar exploration, characters from Harry Crews novels, hand-embroidered animals on western fashion, The Louisiana Purchase, natural history museums.

I come from a small town in north Louisiana. It is a place that I eagerly fled and nowÑunexpectedlyÑ find compelled to return to and make sense of. I am asking many questions: how much of a place courses through the blood of its inhabitants and emigrants? What is the fate of history and tradition in a region that has sought to rebrand itself as Ònew?Ó And how do I make my photographs that record the smell of earth, the weight of humidity, the cloying embrace of geography, and the desire of escape.

Avalanche Collective
The Avalanche Collective is an artist group comprised of and founded by Blake Carrington, Christopher Gianunzio, and Colin Todd. Their work deals with challenging modern notions of spatial practice by utilizing alternative cartography, spontaneous events and interventions, as well as tropes of artic exploration. www.avalanchecollective.net

Selected Exhibitions
2008
Avalanche Collective at: The State of the City Rochester Contemporary, Rochester, NY
2007
Ongoing: Urban Video Project: Avalanche Collective. Outdoor Architectural Video Series 2007-ongoing. Syracuse, NY
Avalanche Collective at Broad St. Gallery, UGA. Athens, GA
Domestic Fear Solo Show. Spark Art Space. Syracuse, NY
Converge II Group Show. RIT School of Art Photography. Rochester, NY
2006
MIX as the MOST Group Show. Museum of Science and Technology. Syracuse, NY

Jennifer Wilkey • jennifer@jenniferwilkey.com • www.jenniferwilkey.com

Education
2006-present Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York
Master of Fine Art in Art Photography
2000 - 2005 Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, Illinois
Bachelor of Science in Anthropology and Bachelor of Fine Art, Summa Cum Laude

Research Interests
medical supplies, alpacas, Twin Peaks, patient psychology, pancakes, repetition, snow.

I am recording the hospital, performing as a patient, and creating visceral artifacts about the experience of illness. Repetitive acts and seemingly long durations allude to the experience of the hospital stay and serves as a marker of illness. My photographs, videos, and installations explore of how pathologies effect both body and mind. The space I work in is between the worlds of the hospital and the outside world.

Selected Exhibition Experience
2007
Spiderbug Kickoff Screening: The Green Lantern Gallery, Chicago, IL
Spark Video Canada: London, Ontario, Canada
Next Door Video Series: The Ellen Curlee Gallery, St. Louis, MO
Around the Coyote Fall Arts Festival: Video Art and New Media Lounge, Chicago, IL
Curator: Catherine Forster of LiveBox Gallery
Regional Sampler: University City Library Gallery, St. Louis, MO, Part of Innovations in Textiles 7 weekend
Spark Video: Spark Galley, Syracuse, NY
Video Art Now: Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY, Juror Tom Sherman, Professor in Transmedia Department, Syracuse University
Great Lakes Emerging Artist Competition: Art Forum, Adams Art Gallery, Dunkirk, NY, Juror: Elizabeth Switzer, Director of Rochester Contemporary, Rochester, NY
Converge II: Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY
2006
Flat Files: Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, MO, Juror Andrea Green, Assistant Curator.

Carrie Will • cw@carriewill.com • www.carriewill.com

Education
MFA Art Photography 2008, Syracuse University
BFA photography 2001, Purchase College, State University of New York, Purchase, NY

Research Interests
Twins, memoirs having to do with grief, yoga and Antiques Roadshow.

My work begins with the notion of loss and the ensuing shifts it causes in family dynamics. It has led me to explore a visual language that articulates intimacy and the assuaging of trauma. As an identical twin, I have a relationship that few people have access to. After the shared experience of losing a mother, I have sought ways to describe the emotional complexity of grief as wells as the unique relationship to a twin sister.

Exhibitions
2008
Onward, (juror: Andrea Modica) Project Basho, Philadelphia, PA
61st Exhibition of CNY Artists, Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Institute, Utica, NY
2007
Upstate Invitational 2007, Rochester Contemporary, Rochester, NY
Lake Effect, Joyce Goldstein Gallery, Chatham, NY
2006
8th Annual Photographic Online Exhibition, Upstream People Gallery, Omaha, NE
ConVerge Ð Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY
2005
Mohawk Hudson Regional (Juror: Ivan C. Karp), Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, NY