The 2014 Lenscratch Honorable Mention in Student Photography: Alyssa Minahan
I am please to share the work of our second honorable mention, Alyssa Minahan, and her series Once Seen. Alyssa’s work derives from the romanticism of the vernacular. These brief vignettes are marveled in simplicity, and informed by a transfixed gaze. Not only has Alyssa recently graduated from New England School of Photography, but she is also in a group show, Finding the Light, at the PhotoPlace Gallery. The exhibition was juried by Don Ross, and will be installed from July 1st-July 25th.
After a career in investment banking, Alyssa decided to pursue her passion for photography. Recently graduated from the New England School of Photography with Honors, Alyssa focuses on fine art black and white, fine art color and documentary photography. She works in both analog and digital formats. She has exhibited her work at Panopticon Gallery, F-Stop Magazine, The Center for Fine Art Photography, PhotoPlace Gallery (upcoming), Black Box Gallery and Art Intersection. In addition, she was selected to participate in Flash Forward Festival’s 2014 student exhibition. Alyssa lives in Brookline, MA with her husband, two sons and dog.
Once Seen
Each day, between the joys and challenges of living, small moments present themselves to me, causing me to stop what I am doing to marvel or wonder. Whether out to the movies with my family or walking my dog in the backyard, I find these occurrences that hint at something beyond the subject, something enigmatic that binds us together. This selection of photographs is a visual poem, capturing a singular human experience.
The recognition of an image I want to capture occurs when a visual cue triggers a memory, a thought, a dream. I then decontextualize my subject within the frame in order to focus on a movement, a light, or a color. By being present to my surroundings, a heightened level of awareness is achieved. When this happens, I am acutely aware of the mysterious world we live in.
The magic in every day, once seen, remains with me, creating veneration for all that I will never know about this life. By capturing these images, I have a greater appreciation for the beauty of our existence.
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![In the early morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, four members of the United Klans of AmericaÑThomas Edwin Blanton Jr.,Herman Frank Cash, Robert Edward Chambliss, and Bobby Frank CherryÑplanted a minimum of 15 sticks of dynamite with a time delay under the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, close to the basement.
At approximately 10:22 a.m., an anonymous man phoned the 16th Street Baptist Church. The call was answered by the acting Sunday School secretary: a 14-year-old girl named Carolyn Maull. To Maull, the anonymous caller simply said the words, "Three minutes", before terminating the call. Less than one minute later, the bomb exploded as five children were present within the basement assembly, changing into their choir robes in preparation for a sermon entitled "A Love That Forgives". According to one survivor, the explosion shook the entire building and propelled the girls' bodies through the air "like rag dolls".
The explosion blew a hole measuring seven feet in diameter in the church's rear wall, and a crater five feet wide and two feet deep in the ladies' basement lounge, destroying the rear steps to the church and blowing one passing motorist out of his car. Several other cars parked near the site of the blast were destroyed, and windows of properties located more than two blocks from the church were also damaged. All but one of the church's stained-glass windows were destroyed in the explosion. The sole stained-glass window largely undamaged in the explosion depicted Christ leading a group of young children.
Hundreds of individuals, some of them lightly wounded, converged on the church to search the debris for survivors as police erected barricades around the church and several outraged men scuffled with police. An estimated 2,000 black people, many of them hysterical, converged on the scene in the hours following the explosion as the church's pastor, the Reverend John Cross Jr., attempted to placate the crowd by loudly reciting the 23rd Psalm through a bullhorn. One individual who converged on the scene to help search for survivors, Charles Vann, later recollected that he had observed a solitary white man whom he recognized as Robert Edward Chambliss (a known member of the Ku Klux Klan) standing alone and motionless at a barricade. According to Vann's later testimony, Chambliss was standing "looking down toward the church, like a firebug watching his fire".
Four girls, Addie Mae Collins (age 14, born April 18, 1949), Carol Denise McNair (age 11, born November 17, 1951), Carole Robertson (age 14, born April 24, 1949), and Cynthia Wesley (age 14, born April 30, 1949), were killed in the attack. The explosion was so intense that one of the girls' bodies was decapitated and so badly mutilated in the explosion that her body could only be identified through her clothing and a ring, whereas another victim had been killed by a piece of mortar embedded in her skull. The then-pastor of the church, the Reverend John Cross, would recollect in 2001 that the girls' bodies were found "stacked on top of each other, clung together". All four girls were pronounced dead on arrival at the Hillman Emergency Clinic.
More than 20 additional people were injured in the explosion, one of whom was Addie Mae's younger sister, 12-year-old Sarah Collins, who had 21 pieces of glass embedded in her face and was blinded in one eye. In her later recollections of the bombing, Collins would recall that in the moments immediately before the explosion, she had observed her sister, Addie, tying her dress sash.[33] Another sister of Addie Mae Collins, 16-year-old Junie Collins, would later recall that shortly before the explosion, she had been sitting in the basement of the church reading the Bible and had observed Addie Mae Collins tying the dress sash of Carol Denise McNair before she had herself returned upstairs to the ground floor of the church.](http://lenscratch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/001-16th-Street-Baptist-Church-Easter-v2-14x14-150x150.jpg)
