Through Her Eyes – Women Photographers of Tampa Bay

Consider it a snapshot into the secret lives of women.

Well, maybe not so secret since they reveal their thoughts so vividly through the lens of a camera. Together, they form a highly focused, locally-based collection of ideas – from whimsical to heartbreaking − in a new exhibition at the University of Tampa.

Through Her Eyes: Women Photographers of Tampa Bay features 30 artists drawn from submissions by artists based in Tampa Bay, and works from the university’s collection and the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts collection.

“It celebrates photography as being a part of our culture, and from a woman’s perspective,’’ says Jocelyn Boigenzahn, director of the university’s College of Arts and Letters galleries. “The show is about photography in Tampa, but specifically through the eyes of women.’’

In a modern gallery space in the heart of campus, the exhibition includes works by Jaime Aelavanthara, Tana Brackins, Jenny Carey, Natalie Diienno, Lisa Fitch, Selina Román, Amy Fitzgerald, Sally Fuller, Simone Leal, Kenna Main, Amy Pezzicara, Agueda Sanfiz, Beverly Stapleton, Emily Will, Kristen Roles, Suzanne Camp Crosby and more.

An impressive variety of subject matter keeps the show engaging, as well as the spectrum of media – digital, tea-stained cyanotype, platinum paint on watercolor, and photographs on metal.

We asked the artists why and how photography is such a potent medium for expression, and each offered a distinct point of view.

“Photography makes the unfamiliar familiar, the familiar surprising, or sometimes astonishing,’’ says Carey. “I love how photography documents a single moment or experience in time, never available the same again except in memory.

“And if I am lucky as a photographer, my work will connect the viewer to memories or stories of their own. That is my purpose for sharing my work.”

Sanfiz calls photography a democratic expression, in part because of quick and easy access to the medium, compared to more traditional art forms such as painting and sculpture.

“Photography is the most accessible intermediary with the world that I have,’’ she says. “Its vast opportunities to capture the environment and process it at any time of the day are incomparable to other visual expressions.”

For Diienno, photographs serve a dual role as a refuge for personal introspection and a canvas for universal exploration. Her self-portraits are about “entwining the concepts of identity and creation.”

Photography echoes the elusiveness of other forms of language, says Roles, but in a humbling way. Her camera can bring order to a messy and overwhelming world – but she sometimes fails to capture it.

However, through error or serendipity, “the refusal of images to tell just one fixed story is a source of their power. I make photographs as a practice of both holding on and letting go.”

Through Her Eyes – Women Photographers of Tampa Bay
Through June 24, 2024
Free
Saunders Foundation Art Gallery
Ferman Center for the Arts
University of Tampa
214 N. Boulevard
Tampa FL 33606
ut.edu

Hours
Weekdays and select Saturdays
8:30 am to 5:30 pm

An artists’ reception will be held
Friday, September 29 from 5:30 to 7:30 pm