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ARTIST STUDIO: SEAN HEMMERLE

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ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Sean Hemmerle’s photographic projects range from pastel conflict zone landscapes to the rusty industrial ruins of American industry. His portraits of Afghans and Iraqis, “THEM”, was published by Kehrer Verlag in 2018. His work has recently exhibited at the Museum of Civilizations of Europe and the Americas in Marseille, France, the Musei San Domenico in Foil, Italy, and is currently on display at the Saachi Gallery in London. His work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Open Society Foundation, Sir Elton John, and the Miller Collection, among others. He is represented in Europe by Galerie Julian Sander and in the US by Front Room Gallery in Hudson, NY.

 

His “Fall Kill” work was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Grant (collaboration with Mass Design). Teaming with architect William Watson, he received the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. His work has been featured in the New York Times Magazine, Harpers, Vogue, Architectural Digest, Brooklyn Rail, TIME, Brooklyn Rail, British Journal of Photography, and Dear Dave, among others. 

 

Hemmerle shares in a three generation household in the Hudson Valley with his wife, the artist Julia Whitney Barnes, their two magnificent children, and the Rev. Dr. Linda Ulrich Barnes. 

Notes on Process:

 

I take pictures to better understand the world around me. Photographs help me to digest events that in the moment are too dynamic to immediately comprehend. Each frame or sequence of images is a small homage to a fleeting mundanity to be retrieved from the archive at a later time, to be studied, and savored. Each photograph is a small memorial plucked from the slipstream, sometimes to be printed. My archive is a growing maze of fragments executed in film and pixels. My process has evolved from strictly documentary into a more fluid, hybrid practice of revision and refinement, but still the experience of making pictures is how I engage with the world.

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