Luke Kindle & Jane Alden Stevens

This fall, 1628 will be showcasing the work of nine distinct regional and national artists in two photographic exhibitions: Square of the Distance and Close Contact: Photography, Nature, and the Alternative Process. These exhibitions explore and push the boundaries of what it means to create photography as an artist. The artist is not tied to the traditional taking of a photograph, but has the room to experiment anywhere from the initial capture to the final development of the image. Each artist challenges what it means to create an image using photography and explores how they can use the unique process of film developing to create something beautiful.

Twice a month the 1628 blog will be highlighting multiple artists across exhibitions with similar themes in their bodies of work.

Luke Kindle is an artist living in Cincinnati, Ohio. He received his Bachelor’s of Fine Arts from the University of Cincinnati’s College of DAAP in 2020. Kindle’s primarily photographic practice deals with curiosities regarding human and animal bodies, evolutionary histories, the nature of cross-species empathy & communication, and mediations of the human by a non-human other. His work involves performative self-documentation, collaboration, and field research observation strategies in service of an ever-changing thesis on the visuality of humans and non-humans. Most recently, Kindle has shown at ROY G BIV (Columbus, OH), Skylab (Columbus, OH), and the Carnegie (Covington, KY).

DeCollared View (2020)

Orthographies is an ongoing photographic project—a documentation of studio exercises which attempt to blur the line between human and dog and suggest alternate forms of communication between species, juxtaposed with more sensitive documentation of diaristic interactions between the artist’s once-stray dog and him in their home. It is supported by image-object—print and sculpture—practices and a variety of performance strategies. Orthographies manifests practical approaches towards answering difficult cross-species ontological questions. The term “orthography” here refers to the conventions of writing and spelling in a language, but also describes an illustrated representation which has no vanishing point—the point of view has no bearing on the size of anything depicted and lines of perspective are reduced to parallels. The overarching purpose of this project is the proposal of an alternate, anti-hierarchical visuality of companion animals, a suggestion of their internal lives and animal-ness un-centered from humans and human seeing.

View more of Kindle’s work here.

Jane Alden Stevens is a fine art photographer inspired by history at every level — personal, familial, cultural, and global. Her photographic narratives, whether simple or complex, examine and interpret the relationship between humans and the world they create for themselves. Her artistic practice draws on her inherent thirst for reading and research, as she studies aspects of psychology, sociology, art, religion, music, economics, agriculture, politics and geography. Solo exhibitions of Stevens’s work have been mounted at the Dayton Art Institute, ARC Gallery in Chicago, and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Stevens has exhibited extensively abroad, including in Finland, Ukraine, Belgium, Germany, and Brazil. Her photographs are included in the permanent collections of the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY; the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, TX; the Cincinnati Art Museum; and the Museu da Imagem e do Som in São Paulo, Brazil; among many others. She currently lives in Cincinnati.

(Left to Right) 4:46pm, April 19, 2018 (2020), 4:36pm, April 20, 2018 (2020), 7:55am, May 18, 2018 (2020)

Witness Marks imagines a visual conversation about human presence and transience that persists regardless of location or time of day. During the months it took to empty out her childhood home, Jane Alden Stevens gradually became aware that very little would be left to bear witness to the history of the lives that had unfolded over 70 years within its walls. Her family’s presence was ultimately as temporary as the shadows they had cast during their residency. Thus inspired, she began photographing shadows and reflections of herself in and around the house before it was sold. Her cell phone’s small physical size allowed it to become an invisible but implied part of the photographic experience. Making these photographs connected Stevens deeply to that specific location and moment in time and made permanent a reality that was fleeting. The images encourage a meditative inner dialogue about the impermanence of life, something that the artist has become even more conscious of since the advent of the coronavirus pandemic. These moments of human existence are ultimately ephemeral, leaving no trace. They serve only as witness marks of our presence in the world.

View more of Stevens’ work here.


All exhibit pieces are for sale. If you are interested in seeing the exhibition virtually, click here. If interested in purchasing or displaying art in the 1628 Coworking gallery, please contact us at art@tamaras.wpenginepowered.com.

A portion of the funding for our fall exhibitions was supplied through the FotoFocus 2020 Emergency Art Grant.

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