Anna Aude Grevenitis

Website:

www.annagrevenitis.me
annag2325@gmail.com 

Artist Statement:

Regard is a series of staged, controlled and collaborative portraits between my daughter and I. In each composed tableaux, I both invite the viewers in a tender mundane scene and look back at them with the same expression I throw to the unwelcome examinations of my daughter from eyes of strangers in the streets. The crux of what I am striving to show is that being a teenage girl with Down syndrome is, in many ways, a typical pubescent experience – and actually exists – despite the fact a lot of mainstream media and entertainment may lead you to believe the opposite. In these three photographs curated by Makeda Best for Through the Lens of Social Justice, my daughter was 16 years old and is shown looking back at the viewer as well. She has started to assert and advocate for herself, and as such she has been fully participating in the composition of the shots. 

Biography

Brooklyn-based artist Anna Aude Grevenitis found photography in a meandering way. Her formative years were filled with the impassioned study and dedicated teaching of the English language and literature, but when her daughter was born--and a year later her son--her world naturally morphed into full-time mothering. Drawing on these experiences to inform her practice as she was teaching herself the medium, she effortlessly pointed her lens at her family and herself. Anna Grevenitis, who divides her time between research and creation, is interested in photography as an act of establishing visual memory and engaging in social visibility, over time. Her photographs have been exhibited both in the United States and internationally. Anna Grevenitis’ work has been featured in The New Yorker. In 2020, for her series Regard, she was the recipient of the 17th Joyce Elaine Grant Award, the 2nd Annual Foto Awards and became a Critical Mass Top 50 Winner and a finalist of Lensculture Black and White Photography Awards 2020.