Collaborations

Transforming our relationships with each other and the more-than-human world requires new ways of seeing and responding. At Kinship, through our calls for engagement, we introduce big themes–that inspire big questions–and big conversations. Together we support and uplift each other knowing that each artists images will be woven into collective and collaborative projects and exhibitions that reveal multiple and varied perspectives. Together, we use the phenomenal power of photography to explore new ways of seeing and being together.

Featured

Delta: An Elementals Water Collaborative Gallery

To close our community-wide exploration of Water, members of the Kinship community shared what they have gleaned from engaging with this element. From the physical states of water, to the metaphors within the water cycle, and celebrating the beauty and power of water, the work developed over this elemental season brought us into the depths of Water.

Mid-Stream Journeys

Halfway through our elemental season of Water, the Kinship community participated in an invitation to share what they have been exploring in their own practice while contemplating this element. During this gathering, members shared images and brief stories that illuminated themes of beauty, ecology, advocacy, sensation, metaphor, and transformation. This gallery shares some of the images presented as a part of this gathering.

Water Stories

Members of the Kinship community responded to a call to share their Water Stories as a way to begin our collective exploration of the element of Water. Images and stories were presented during a community gathering on October 1st and a rich discussion about the relationships that we all have with water followed. This gallery brings together some of the images from that gathering.

Fire Celebration

Fire remains wild, increasingly so today, but its domestication changed the course of human evolution. If fire speaks, what is it saying to us, especially in an era of climate breakdown and mass extinction? How can photography help us keep and tend to our elemental relations with this element with care? The Kinship community spent a season pondering these questions and our relationship with Fire through photography. At the end of the season, we came together in celebration and shared what we had learned through this element.

Re-Imagining Loss & Grief

Between January and November 2024, seven Kinship community members gathered thirteen times to ‘reimagine’ loss and grief. Whether intentional or in our subconscious, we influenced one another in an unspoken call and response: One person’s vulnerability inviting others to let go; another person’s way of seeing inspiring new perspectives. Honestly and bravely we kept messing around in our collective ‘sandbox,’ letting the grit and grime that is loss and grief transform within, between and among us.

Between Bodies

We’ve come together over the past year to explore embodied photographic practices that are grounded in the senses, shared conversations between bodies, noticed and deepened the relationships that connect all bodies. Along the way, we’ve been bringing our own bodies to photography, sharing personal and collective grief through image making, documenting natural disasters as we live through them, expressing the ways our bodies are intimately entwined with each other’s and the earth body we live in.

In Praise of the Earth: An Earth Month Celebration

From April to May 2024, Kinship community members responded to three prompts adapted from Joanna Macy and Molly Brown’s book Coming Back to Life and recently featured on We Are The Great Turning podcast. These are our responses.

A Complex Definition of a Body

Where do our bodies end and other bodies begin? How does our understanding of the edges of our being influence us? For six weeks, practice group participants of A Complex Definition of a Body met and worked in a diverse range of photographic techniques to play with the complexity of defining what a body is.

Listening to the Land: Reimagining the Bartram Trail

Listening to the Land is a visual exploration of the Blue Ridge Bartram Trail that features the photography of thirty-two artists. The photographs featured in this resonant and varied exhibition celebrate the region's rich biodiversity while honoring each person’s unique relationship with the land.

With Rapture and Astonishment at UGA Circle Gallery

This dynamic exhibition reflects the visual experiences of twelve artists as they traveled in Bartram’s footsteps. Each artist worked in the spirit of curiosity, exploration, and wonder while reimagining this well-traveled landscape. Featuring images from coastal Georgia to North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, With Rapture & Astonishment invites viewers to enter an intimate world where Bartram’s trail is alive and waiting to be met and listened to anew.

Meanderings: Instances of Wandering

This collection of photographs were made by students at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina and selected by Anna Helgeson and Susan Martin. Over the course of the Spring 2023 semester students interacted with Kinship in multiple ways including workshops, lectures, and photo responses to recorded gatherings. The end result is a diverse collection reflecting the multitude of ways that one can approach our relationships to each other and the natural world.

Seeing the Land With New Eyes

The photographers featured in this online gallery were participants in a six-week online contemplative photography class offered through The Rowe Center. Using whatever cameras they had available, photographers of all levels were invited to enter an intimate world where the landscape was alive and waiting to be met, understood, and listened to. The resulting photographs are full of subtle grace, beauty, tenderness, and co-creative vulnerability.

With Rapture and Astonishment

The eleven photographers featured in this exhibition reflected upon the same five-mile section of the Bartram National Recreation Trail for twelve weeks between Osage Overlook and Jones Gap near Highlands, NC. Many of the photographers featured here drew inspiration and guidance from William Bartram and the place-based traditions of diverse indigenous peoples, including The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, who have stewarded this land for millennia and who freely shared their wisdom with William Bartram.