| Enjoy the Winter Season at Light Work! Web, 2024. Courtesy of Nabil Harb. Mater si, magistra no: Nabil Harb January 14 – April 25, 2025 | Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery, Light Work Opening Reception: January 23, 5-7 PM Nabil Harb’s project Mater si, magistra no (a macaronic phrase that translates as “Mother yes, teacher no”) presents photographs that describe and depict moments and scenes within his hometown of Lakeland in Polk County, Florida. This Central Florida location is both the backdrop and main character of Harb’s visual narrative: a story that emits surreal qualities which twist ideas of the region through photography’s formal language into a conceptual idea—an idea of how to describe the atmosphere of a place without words. Harb writes, “The landscape is the perfect reflection of our society, our ultimate index—it holds our histories, our secrets, our failures, and our hopes for the future.” Harb uses his camera to look rather than gaze at the wily scenes and moving bodies; his images disturb the before and after of a photograph by showing a moment extended or an instant flashed with a strobe. The project title informs Harb’s reasons and choices around his subject matter with his opinions and beliefs about this landscape, the people who inhabit it and move through it, and his subjecthood. The history of land usage in Central Florida greatly influences where he goes to photograph and how he looks at his surroundings. The narratives in his work are conflicting and intermingle with one another. The overriding story is one of man versus nature, of beauty and destruction coexisting in an atmosphere that is surreal, seductive, and breathtaking. Where the conflicting notions of destruction and rebirth intersect is also the point at which Nabil Harb’s formalism and conceptual photographic practice meet, showing us the potential for beauty in destruction and foreboding rebirth. —Nabil Harb is a Palestinian American photographer born and raised in Polk County, Florida, where he still lives. Harb received his BA in anthropology from the University of South Florida and his MFA in photography from Yale University. His work has been featured in Aperture, The Atlantic, ArtReview, The Guardian, and A24. nabiljharb.com/ BFA Art Photography Annual January 14 – March 7, 2025 | Jeffrey J. Hoone Gallery, Light Work Opening Reception: January 23, 5-7 PM Light Work also presents the 2025 BFA Art Photography Annual. This exhibition features work by seniors from the Art Photography program in the Film and Media Arts Department at the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University. The exhibiting artists are Maxine Brackbill, Charles Lavion, Kelsey Quinn Leary, Lili Moreno Martel, Shawn McCauley, and Hazel Wagner. Maxine Brackbill, Best in Show Awardee “Each spring, seniors in the art photography program have the opportunity to exhibit a selection of images from their senior thesis projects at Light Work. The senior thesis is a yearlong, in-depth photographic exploration of a subject chosen by each student. The subjects of these projects are wide ranging; from very personal explorations of family and selfhood to sharp and humorous experiments playing with the boundaries of fashion and studio photography. Students choose, edit, and print the images in collaboration and with the assistance of Light Work’s curatorial staff and master printers. The BFA Art Photography Annual is not only the first exhibition for many of the students in the Art Photography program, but also an important learning opportunity for them. In addition to giving students the space to imagine how the images they create might exist beyond the walls of the university, the Art Photography Annual introduces their work to their peers, the local community, and the renowned curators and critics who jury the exhibition.”—Laura Heyman, Associate Professor, Art Photography |
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