HOLLY LYNTON: BARE HANDED
March 12 – May 30, 2015
Dina Mitrani Gallery is proud to present Holly Lynton’s Bare Handed, with an artist talk on Thursday, March 12th at 7 pm. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition at the gallery.
This series of photographs narrates the stories of New England country farmers who have chosen to sustain ethical farming practices despite the pressures of a rapidly expanding business of agriculture. Bare Handed tells of the impalpable connections between man, creature and the forces of nature. The labor-intensive images reveal this very commitment to the holistic practices of these farmer’s “agrarian traditions.” The innate stillness that is captured in each photograph speaks of a graceful evenness between preeminence and submission.
While photographing this body of work, Lynton often found herself amazed by the countless mythical and religious references that candidly appeared before her lens. With just a tilt of her head, the teenage girl in Sienna, Turkey Madonna, transformed into a rendition of the Virgin Mary. In her statement she writes, “Not always overt, I look for gestures and draw inspiration from religious paintings, mythology, and iconic tales of struggle to convey a sense of mysticism that is in the everyday.”
Holly Lynton received a BA from Yale University, and an MFA in Photography from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. She has also been a visiting lecturer at Amherst College in Massachusetts and the Aegean Center for the Fine Arts in Paros, Greece.
Lynton's photography has been published in ARTnews , The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Village Voice, The Miami Herald, Photo District News, The BostonGlobe, Oxford American, Water ~ Stone Review, and Preview Massachusetts. Recent awards include a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship (2013), as well as The Syngenta Photography Award (2013). She was also nominated for the Prix Pictet (2012, 2013) and received an Artist Resource Trust Grant (2011). Lynton’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally with solo and group exhibitions in New York City, Boston, Santa Barbara, Albuquerque, Atlanta, Berlin, London and the Netherlands.
