©Yorgos Efthymiadis, Susie and Maria, from The First Ones in Line

2025 was a spectacular year for Yorgos Efthymiadis. When good things happen to good people, it is truly something to celebrate. This past summer, I was thrilled to learn that Yorgos was named a 2025 Foster Prize Recipient, earning an extended exhibition of nearly six months at the ICA Boston. He also received a 2025 Grant for Creative Individuals, Mass Cultural Council as well as the 2025 Collective Futures Fund Grant. I was very fortunate to be in Boston this summer for the opening of his exhibition at the ICA, and witness an incredibly exciting and well-deserved moment in his career.

I first met Yorgos in 2011 or 2012 at the Flash Forward Festival in Boston, where I was invited to give a lecture. Yorgos graciously guided me through the experience and became an enthusiastic and generous cheerleader. It was a bonding moment, and we have remained close friends ever since. Over the years, I have watched his photography deepen and expand, and have loved watching his The Curated Fridge initiative take flight and grow into a beloved organization within our photography community. I also have appreciated his support of the Lenscratch Student Prize winners each year.

An interview with the artist follows.

Installation view of exhibition by Yorgos Efthymiadis, 2025 James and Audrey Foster Prize, ICA Boston, 2025. Photo by Mel Taing

• Purpose: To nurture, recognize, and acquire works by local artists, encouraging them to stay and build their careers in the Boston area.
• Format: A biennial exhibition featuring the work of multiple selected artists.
• History: Established in 1999 as the “ICA Artist Prize,” it was endowed and renamed the James and Audrey Foster Prize in 2006.
• Impact: The program serves as a springboard for artists to gain major museum exposure, and the ICA often acquires works from the exhibition for its permanent collection.

• Alison Croney Moses (woodworking and sculpture)
• Yorgos Efthymiadis (photography)
• Damien Hoar de Galvan (sculpture from reclaimed materials)
• Sneha Shrestha (aka IMAGINE) (painting, murals, and installation)

Installation view of exhibition by Yorgos Efthymiadis, 2025 James and Audrey Foster Prize, ICA Boston, 2025. Photo by Mel Taing

Yorgos Efthymiadis is an artist/curator from Greece who resides in Somerville, MA. A winner of the 2025 James and Audrey Foster Prize, a recipient of FY25 Grants for Creative Individuals by Mass Cultural Council, and of a 2025 Sustaining Artist Grant by Collective Futures Fund, Efthymiadis was also an awardee of the Artist’s Resource Trust A.R.T. Grant in 2024. In addition, a recipient of the St. Botolph Club Foundation 2017 Emerging Artist Award, and a 2017 Finalist of the Mass Cultural Council Fellowship, Efthymiadis has exhibited nationally and internationally and was represented by Gallery Kayafas until its closure in 2024.

Efthymiadis is a board member of Somerville Arts Council and chair of the Visual Arts Fellowship Grants since 2017. Efthymiadis is also a reviewer for the Lenscratch Student Prize Awards since 2023 and finds it very fulfilling to help fellow photographers and give back to the photographic community.

In 2015 he created a gallery in his own kitchen, titled The Curated Fridge. The idea behind this project is to celebrate fine art photography and connect photographers with established and influential curators, gallerists, publishers and artists from around the world through free, quarterly curated calls. The Curated Fridge recently celebrated 10 years of exhibitions and has featured more than 1500 artists in 40+ shows juried by 45 guest curators. More info on how to apply here.

Instagram: @yorgosphoto

Instagram: @thecuratedfridge

Installation view of exhibition by Yorgos Efthymiadis, 2025 James and Audrey Foster Prize, ICA Boston, 2025. Photo by Mel Taing

In Efthymiadis’s recent series “The Lighthouse Keepers” (2019-ongoing) clustered portraits depict the artist’s friends and family in Greece alongside images of their surrounding architecture, personal belongings, and natural environments. These constellations create a sense of place and invite viewers to assemble a complete portrait through scattered fragments.

In late 2024, Efthymiadis began The First Ones In Line (2024-ongoing), a series of portraits of hotel and food service workers from Boston-based union Unite Here Local 26. These photographs show picket captains and strike leaders during their quiet moments, at home, and often with their families. In contrast to more traditional activist photographs that depict protest, action, and organizing, this series focuses on the lives of union members beyond the picket line.

©Yorgos Efthymiadis, Amal, from The First Ones in Line

“The First Ones In Line”
(2024-ongoing)

Earlier this year I saw for the first time ICE agents walk down my street. During my fourteen years living in the United States, I have never felt such paralysis and frustration as an immigrant. As families are separated and workers are snatched on their way to the job, people retreat in fear into their homes and close their doors. Immigrant workers become even more invisible than they already were. “The First Ones In Line” are unionized workers who, instead of retreating, decide now, more than ever, that they must be out in front.

My partner is a labor organizer with the Boston Local of Unite Here, the hotel and food service workers’ union. Over the years, I have walked on many strikes and rallies, alongside housekeepers, doormen, cooks, waiters and dishwashers fighting for better pay and dignity on the job. I developed a relationship with many of them.

Generations of photographers have captured compassionate portraits of workers nobly toiling in uniform, or on the picket line heraldically giving speeches. I want to showcase a unique perspective — their individuality. I strive to portray the quiet parts: the workers in their homes, how they live, with their families. Each of my subjects has overcome incredible obstacles to get here and make a life for themselves. Each of my subjects has been part of a union fight, transforming who they are as individuals even as they unify with their coworkers. They are the best of fighters. They are irascible, brilliant, charismatic. They challenge authority, lead their coworkers out on strike, and refuse to take no for an answer. Most importantly, they know how to bring people together.

©Yorgos Efthymiadis, Constantina, from The First Ones in Line

How did the Award come about?

In September 2024, Tessa Bachi Haas, Assistant Curator of the ICA/Boston, contacted me, inquiring about a studio visit. While in my home studio, I showed her prints from “The Lighthouse Keepers”. In this series, clustered portraits depict my friends and family in Greece alongside images of their surrounding architecture, personal belongings, and natural environments. These constellations of photographs create a sense of place and invite viewers to assemble a complete portrait through scattered fragments. The curator was excited about the work since the theme of the 2025 Foster Prize was, unbeknownst to me, about what uniquely connects artists’ local and global roots. Coincidentally, I had just started making a new body of work titled “The First Ones In Line”, about hotel and food service workers from Boston-based union Unite Here Local 26.

A couple of months later, I received a call from Tessa announcing me as one of four recipients of the 2025 Foster Prize! It was 10am. I literally screamed with joy. Mīlu, our pitty, startled and confused, started barking like crazy! Afterwards I learned that the curator had visited almost 60 artist studios in the Boston area before making her selection. If I’m not mistaken, I’m the first photographer who has been selected for the prize since 2010. Needless to say, I’m deeply honored and still a little bit in denial. 

©Yorgos Efthymiadis, Monike, Caio, from The First Ones in Line

You are the only photographer in the awardees–can you share something about the other artists selected?

Because all of us are based in the Boston area, I knew of their work but, until then, I had not met them in person. Since I was the only photographer of the awardees, the ICA commissioned me to make their portraits for the exhibition. It was so great to get to see inside each of their studios and get to know the craft and process behind their art. I met Damien Hoar de Galvan in his studio basement, where he created one sculpture per day throughout the entire year of 2024. All of them were made from discarded materials and are displayed chronologically in a huge installation covering a whole room. Then I visited Alison Croney Moses, who creates wooden objects that reach for your senses, caring deeply about why and how things are made. Her work is about family and Black motherhood, and how everything is connected to ancestry. Her pieces in the gallery are hanging from strings, floating, almost conversing. Finally, Sneha Shrestha’s (aka IMAGINE) murals are all over Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville. Her work is about being in between two worlds, about immigration and what home means. There’s a huge mural created on site, and the viewer is surrounded by spiritual portals, resembling a temple that brings the community, family and friends, together.

©Yorgos Efthymiadis, Edith, Maria, Greisy, Greyshelis, Camila, from The First Ones in Line

What has been your experience with having a significant exhibition in an iconic museum? Has anything surprised you?

When I moved to Boston, almost 15 years ago, the ICA was one of the first places I visited. Its architecture and design are exceptional. Back then, it was standing on its own in a sea of parking lots. To exhibit in this space is definitely a dream come true. I have 37 prints exhibited one room away from photographs by Nan Goldin, Shellburne Thurber, and Rania Matar, and also near a massive Stanley Whitney retrospective! By now, thousands of people have seen my work. Until last year, I never thought that sharing my photographs with a new, wider audience like this would have been possible. During the opening reception in October there was a huge line outside the museum. The most rewarding moment was when almost every single sitter from “The First Ones In Line” came to the opening to celebrate and take selfies with their portraits together with their families!

The ICA recently launched an Artist Pass, which is a program that provides free entrance to Massachusetts artists. The museum is also open and free to the public every Thursday evening. I have almost never missed a free day because I get to interact with the audience. The visitors are excited and sometimes surprised when they see that the artist is present. They ask questions, they want to know the stories behind each photograph. I find this very fulfilling and touching.

©Yorgos Efthymiadis, Qing, from The First Ones in Line

How did your project come about and what do you want to achieve by sharing these portraits?

My partner Will is a labor organizer with Local 26, the Boston based local of the hotel and food service workers union Unite Here. Over the years, I have walked on many strikes and rallies, alongside housekeepers, doormen, cooks, waiters and dishwashers fighting for better pay and dignity on the job. I developed a relationship with many of them.

Dorothea Lange and Lewis Hine of the WPA/FSA generation believed that their photos of workers furthered a social mission to expose wretched conditions and compel reforms. Louis Stettner and the radicals of the Photo League documented the lives
and struggles of the American workers. Locally, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Lee Friedlander photographed computer workers at MIT over decades, centering their durational labor over time. Generations of photographers have captured compassionate and arresting portraits of workers in uniform, on the job, on the picket line, heraldically giving speeches, and shouting chants at rallies. Being in close community with union workers in Boston, I wish to expand this story by showcasing a unique perspective – their individuality. I strive to portray the quiet parts: the workers in their homes, how they live, with their families; the lesser known neighborhoods and suburbs further and further away from Boston, like Hyde Park, Revere, and Brockton, to which they are now displaced and which require hours long commutes every day.

These portraits, paired with their stories you can read on my website, bring to life the process of personal change through collective struggle, and invite viewers to contemplate the same. I want to build a project that provides a visual connection with viewers from diverse backgrounds, as the union members I know draw locally from Boston and also from the Dominican Republic, Somalia, Brazil, El Salvador, China, Colombia, Cape Verde, Haiti, Morocco, Bosnia, among other places. By juxtaposing portraits with workers’ stories in their own words, my project calls on the audience to consider everything that is belied behind power and strength. 

©Yorgos Efthymiadis, Sonia, Kylie, Dani, from The First Ones in Line

Who or what is inspiring you lately?

Part because of my peripatetic life, part because of who I am, my photography has always been drawn to home and domesticity, belonging and non-belonging, culture and alienation. While my earlier work focused on quiet, internal images for solitude and reflection, access to a new audience and broader platforms is challenging me as an artist to turn more outward. My images build connection even as they cross boundaries, first immigration and queerness, and now class. Especially in a moment when immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, unions and the arts are under attack, my voice as an artist continues evolving as I draw inspiration from the union members I photograph. Each of my subjects has overcome incredible obstacles to get here and make a life for themselves. Each of my subjects has been part of a union fight, transforming who they are as individuals even as they unify with their coworkers. They are the best of fighters. Most importantly, they know how to bring people together.

©Yorgos Efthymiadis, Wai Chan, Ping, from The First Ones in Line

Finally, congratulations on 10 years of The Curated Fridge! What do you love most about the process of putting on the exhibitions…in your very own kitchen?

Thank you! When I started The Curated Fridge 10 years ago it didn’t even cross my mind how popular and beloved this project would end up being. It has been embraced by photographers all over the world and travelled to festivals and galleries in the US. The most exciting thing is the sparkle in each curator’s eyes when they see the pile of prints in front of them and how thrilled they get when they start going through the prints! Another highlight during the opening parties is when the photographers connect with each other and share their stories and projects. The Boston photographic community is very vibrant and supportive.

©Yorgos Efthymiadis, Wanda, from The First Ones in Line

nything exciting on the horizon?

I will be going back to Greece in May to photograph a couple of more friends in order  to finally conclude “The Lighthouse Keepers.” Maybe I will pursue my first monograph, it’s been long overdue. In the meantime, I’m meeting with union members and making more portraits of “The First Ones In Line”. I have also started researching about a forthcoming project, still in early stages.

As for The Curated Fridge, the next call will be announced in a couple of weeks and it’s going to be huge! TCF will travel to Houston to be a part of the FotoFest Biennial 2026 which marks FotoFest’s 40th anniversary! The show will be co-curated by Madi Murphy, the Associate Curator at FotoFest, and myself. More info soon!

©Yorgos Efthymiadis, Zahra, Nadia, from The First Ones in Line

©Yorgos Efthymiadis, Marta, from The First Ones in Line

https://www.icaboston.org/multimedia/the-artists-voice-2025-james-and-audrey-foster-prize/ (Artist Talk)