©Mykle Parker, Untitled, 2022

Congratulations to Mykle Parker for being selected for CENTER’s Me&Eve Grant recognizing their project, Rage 4 Rights. The Me&Eve Grant provides financial support to a woman, female-identified, non-binary, transgender, gender non-conforming, or two-spirited photographer, 40 years of age and over. This grant is made possible by Review Santa Fe alumna, Dorie Hagler, whose project Me&Eve amplifies the voices of women. Initiated in 2016 on International Women’s Day, this project was inspired after seeing the transformative effects of witnessing women share their stories. The grant includes a $1,000 cash award, Mentorship, Professional Development Workshop Admission, Complimentary participation and presentation at Review Santa Fe, Group Exhibition of Award & Grant Winners at the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts, Project Publication in Lenscratch & Feature Shoot, and inclusion in the CENTER Image Library & Archive. Also, new in 2022, and in alignment with CENTER’s response for recognition of equity and representation in the field, all Me&Eve applicants will be invited to contribute to SHOTBYWOMEN – an Image Bank platform for license and distribution of content created exclusively by women and female-identifying photographers from around the world.

JUROR: Lucy R. Lippard, Writer, Art Critic, Activist, & Curator shares her thoughts on this selection:

The entries (some 4000 photographs) were a treasure trove, and at the onset choosing a single one seemed impossible. There was pathos, humor, moving documentation, and more. I finally chose an obvious activist on a crucial women’s issue – Mykle Parker’s innovative images of abortion demos with Rage 4 Rights, offering models for ongoing public expressions of love and anger. I hope to see the award devoted to future experimental activism.

As a feminist activist for more than five decades, I found a great many familiar themes in this panoply of visual ideas. Sometimes the project descriptions didn’t sync with the imagery and vice versa, par for the course in issue-oriented work. Portraits, of self and others, were ubiquitous. Age, gender preference, mental health, motherhood, and female generations continue to be frequent subjects, as they have been since the beginning of second-wave feminist art. Long may it thrive in powerful projects like those submitted.

The two runners-up both deal inventively with climate chaos. Barbara Boissevain’s Salt of the Earth consists of striking images of Salt Ponds in San Francisco, simultaneously abstract and factual. Laurel Anderson’s Schrödinger’s Cat offers her personal experience of loss from wildfire – destroyed artifacts being re-used, such as eggs frying in a burned pot, a pristinely beautiful bed in open air. Both of these artists seem to be well on their way to effectively presenting their work, and I hope to see more of them.   

©Mykle Parker, Untitled, 2022

Lucy R. Lippard is a writer, activist, sometime curator, author of 25 books on contemporary art and cultural criticism, including From the Center: Feminist Essays on Women’s Art, Eva Hesse, Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America, The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society, and most recently Undermining: A Wild Ride through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West, and Pueblo Chico: Land and lives in Galisteo Since 1814. She has co-founded various artists’ feminist and activist organizations and publications. She lives off the grid in rural Galisteo, New Mexico, where for 23 years she has edited the monthly community newsletter: El Puente de Galisteo.

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Mykle Parker is a documentary photographer who specializes in social justice and gender equity. I have been working on various long-term projects over the past 20 years that seek out stories and perspectives that are overlooked, clandestine and unseen. My philosophy is that we only record singular versions of events, we won’t have a full picture to inform us. With my work, I hope to record and document elements of “his-story” to ensure various narratives and perspectives are remembered into the future.

Follow Mykle Parker on Instagram: @mykleparkerphotography

Mykle Parker portrait

Rage 4 Rights

Rage 4 Rights is an ongoing series documenting the controversial group Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, and its dedication to the fight for equality and access to free/safe legal abortions available to all women in the United States through daring, nonviolent, disruptive protest that illuminate that rage women are feeling after Roe vs Wade was overturned.

I bear witness to this movement as a feminist heeding the call to document the continued fight for women, non-binary, and trans rights. The images I see coming out of the current abortion movement are predominantly shot by men; solid work but not reflective of the rage we are feeling. As a woman, I have bled for decades, almost died in childbirth, and been told that I could not have a hysterectomy, regardless of the excruciating pain and bleeding I was experiencing, because I was of “childbearing age”. My experience as a woman is not unusual. My ability to comfortably discuss taboo and stigmatized subjects without shame is.

My goal for this project is to document the movement and amplify voices typically underrepresented, such as women, non-binary, and trans. Often, the conversation of women’s health is compartmentalized by stigmas and taboos. Instead of our society having a clear concise understanding to the physical trauma women experience with their bodies, its significance has been trivialized to a romanticized picture of happy women excited to have babies… at any cost, including our own death. The reality is far from the truth.

The desired outcome of this series is to explore questions we are not comfortable talking about and provide a safe space for those who feel alone in their unbridled emotions at the loss of our rights. As I connect and collaborate with others, our voice strengthens, and address the real question of “why are women not trusted to make all decisions for their own bodies… As men have always done for themselves.” – Mykle Parker

©Mykle Parker, Untitled, 2022

©Mykle Parker, Untitled, 2022

©Mykle Parker, Untitled, 2022

©Mykle Parker, Untitled, 2022

©Mykle Parker, Untitled, 2022

©Mykle Parker, Untitled, 2022

©Mykle Parker, Untitled, 2022

©Mykle Parker, Untitled, 2022

About CENTER

Founded in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1994, the 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization CENTER supports socially and environmentally engaged lens-based projects through education, public platforms, funding, and partnerships.

Image-making holds a unique power to confront audiences with uncomfortable truths, advance cultural understandings, and promote social justice. Through our advancement of artists and their work, CENTER serves to deepen public understanding of lens-based media’s complex history and ongoing cultural significance. By establishing trans-disciplinary partnerships between artists and justice-driven communities, historians, cultural critics, students, and the art world, they honor our unique role in advancing projects that respect all people, open minds, and engage our shared humanity.

Characterized by a community of gifted and committed photographers, CENTER has proven for the last 29 years that it can help photographers and lens-based artists grow into their full potential. CENTER programs foster insights and actualizations that ripple and impact all involved by providing platforms where the creative impulse can be engaged and challenged.

ANNUAL PROGRAMS | Includes the Project Launch Grant, Project Development Grant, Me&Eve Grant, the three CENTER Awards: Personal, Social and Environmental, the Excellence in Multimedia Storytelling Award, Santa Fe Fellowship, Callanan Excellence in Teaching Award, and the Review Santa Fe Photo Symposium. Public exhibitions, educational presentations, and expositions of the work are held in conjunction with the awards, grants, and Review Santa Fe. These programs are open for submission to international and national photographers and lens-based artists during our annual Calls for Entry.

Follow CENTER on Instagram: @centersantafe