BY CHRISTIAN MILES | Having opened Thurs,, April 24, Beyond Boundaries is a cosmopolitan photo exhibition of juried winning photos from around the world. Sponsored by LensCulture, an online platform for showing the works of emerging talent in photography, the exhibition is presented in association with Aperture Foundation Gallery (527, W. 27th St., fourth floor), and is an extraordinary display of notable talent.

The exhibition contains both traditional print and multimedia presentations of 101 photo artists from 34 countries, and is an impressive “survey of global image making today,” according to literature provided at the gallery, which also notes, “Each photographer exhibited at lens culture has been recently selected by an international panel of top photographers and industry experts.”

The expansive gallery space is well-curated and leads the viewer through the exhibit with a sense of discovery and surprise. Works are presented as both individual large prints or grouped as smaller clusters of prints that assist in giving order to the diversity of work presented. Additionally, two multimedia monitors display photos as slide shows and include the full series from each artist.

Cat Lachowskyj, editor for LensCulture, described the show at its April 24 opening: “We’re exhibiting a number of winners and finalists from our last year of awards at LensCulture. We do a bunch of awards at LensCulture, including Black and White, Visual Story Telling, Art Photography and Portraiture. Our [online] audience is quite expansive and global. We get entries for awards from every corner, from 150 countries for each award [category]—which thus makes the output for the work and the finalists so diverse in the way they tell stories, the way they interpret their personal stories and other people’s stories.”

The idea for the show, Lachowskyj explained, “expanded, because we began planning it in the Aperture space, which is larger. I also think a lot of artists benefit from being in a space associated with Aperture, which is what winning award is about. It’s not just about a line on your CV, it’s about exposure and platforms for exposure. We want to show this to our community, and by our association with Aperture, we can show a great number of artists.”

The diversity Lachowskyj speaks about was echoed in both the photos on display and in speaking with the artists about their work.

Walter Plotnick, a photo-based artist from Philadelphia, took Second Place overall. A graduate of the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Plotnick began working making images in his parents’ basement at age 12, and now teaches at many universities.  While at Temple, Plotnick explained, he had a teacher gave him the most significant advice he received in his training.

“The teacher would tell me stop carrying your camera with you, and start visualizing what’s in your head,” Plotnick recalled. “Photograph what’s in your head, as opposed to what’s in front of you. This piece is a digital collage of cardboard and images from a model airplane club in the 1940s. A lot of the images I incorporate tend to expand in the way a box expands or folds.”

He went on to say, “I don’t submit my work to many competitions but Lens Culture had the who’s who for jurors. The jurors were impressive and came from a variety of background and around the world.”

Anne Charlotte Guinot spoke of seeking to portray a sense of love and compassion as a form of protest against violence in Mexico. “The picture is a series called Rojo Sangre,” she noted. “I’ve been living in Mexico for one and a half years. Before that I lived in Montréal, Canada. I would say that it can be really confusing [when you arrive in Mexico], because you can see the best and the worst of humanity. People are incredibly nice, loving and friendly. But there is a kind of violence that you know is there which is not talked about. In Mexico, there are a lot of people in their day-to-day life that are really suffering. There are a lot of masquerades –people disappearing, and nobody talks about that.”

Her series, she said, “is about living in the landscape which is tainted in blood. You know it’s not normal, but you pretend it is normal to live through [it]. I reacted very strongly, asking ‘How are these people not helped? Why are these people not speaking for the disappeared people? Why are they not getting answers?’ and people were saying to me, ‘Calm down—you’ll get used to it.’ The story of the landscape is [as] though it’s normal, but, if you open your heart, it’s not. Red is the color of love, and the red in this series of landscapes is to say someone can do something about it.”

Venessa Filley produced a series depicting 20 women representing women throughout history whose “Me Too” stories should also be accounted for and remembered.  “[The Me Too Movement] started with a woman from Hollywood who had a platform, and because they were so vocal, many other woman started coming out. There were housekeepers and undocumented immigrants telling their stories. I started thinking that historically, so many women had a story too, and that their stories have not been told. So how do we go back in time and acknowledge that these stories exist?”

The stories in her series, Filley said, “are a reconstructed history. The women are dressed in black Victorian mourning gowns. But they are of great diversity, representing European colonization around the world.  Each wears the Hester Prynne, Scarlet Letter reference placard, and, rather than being shamed for an act of adultery, they announce it. In that way, the more the people who tell their stories, the greater chance for change culturally.”

Beyond Boundaries is a rare exhibit of exceptional talent and diverse perspectives that is not to be missed. It is free and open to the public now through May 2. Coinciding with the exhibit, LensCulture has also produced The Best of LensCulture 03, Third Edition, a new publication featuring the work from this exhibit. The collection is available for purchase through lensculture.com.