When: Through April 15, noon-7 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays; noon-6 p.m. Fridays; and in conjunction with film screenings at Melwood Screening Room

Admission: Free

Where: Pittsburgh Filmmakers Galleries, 477 Melwood Ave., Oakland

Details: 412-681-5449

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Updated 2 hours ago

“Fellowship 17,” currently on display at Pittsburgh Filmmakers Galleries in Oakland, features the work of award-winning photographers Kris Sanford and Francis Crisafio.

Winners of Silver Eye Center for Photography's International Award, which carries a $3,000 cash prize, and the $1,000 Keystone Award respectively, they were selected from 196 applications from 16 countries by juror Rebecca Senf, chief curator at the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Ariz, and curator of photography at the Phoenix Museum of Art.

Sanford of Mt. Pleasant, Mich., showcases her series “Through the Lens of Desire.”

Here, nearly two-dozen images from the 1920s to the 1950s have been cropped into circular shapes, focusing on the relationships between the subjects in each.

Each creates an implied narrative, says Sanford, but not one that most would think.

“The whole series is told from my perspective, through the lens of a lesbian reflecting on body language and reading between the lines. The circular crop references that lens.”

In looking through her own old photographs, Sanford says she searched for a family history that spoke to her but did not find any couples that mirrored her own intimate relationships.

“With ‘Through the Lens of Desire' I collected discarded snapshots of same sex pairs from the past and gave them a new, imagined story line through how I select and crop them,” she says.

By cropping out the identities of the figures so they become anonymous and more universal, she says, “For me the series creates an imagined gay and lesbian history, since LBGT couples before the 1960s would likely have been closeted and not photographed in an open and loving way. The project is meant to remind viewers that queer love isn't new, it was just previously hidden in plain sight.”

With the image “Boots,” Sanford has cropped the original tightly to focus on two men linking arms, as they stand ankle deep in water.

“This picture reflects how it used to be more common for men being photographed to hold hands or link arms,” Sanford says.

“Box Camera” was from a wider photograph that pictured four men posing in front of a cannon, but the cannon was the least interesting part of the picture to Sanford. “My eye was immediately drawn to the intimate hand gesture between the two men and to the small box camera that the front figure is holding,” she says.

In “Folding Chairs,” the source image comes from a class photograph containing more than 30 figures, but Sanford says, “I was drawn to the two girls sneakily holding hands in the front row.”

Other images are just as subtly referential or implied. In “Necklace,” two girls, holding hands, smile for the camera. “I just love the soft smiles of these women and how a circle is created when you visually move from their smiles to their gently touching hands.”

In “The Mentor,” one figure sits slightly above the other. “It reminded me of harboring a secret crush on a mentor,” Sanford says. “I was always looking for people or characters to relate to and often imagined them before they were visible.”

Francis Crisafio

Crisafio, a photographer based on Pittsburgh's North Side, showcases his latest series “Holdup in the Hood,” which features work from a collaborative, after-school arts curriculum rooted in self-portraiture.

The photographs in this series document “FACES/a children's arts collaborative,” an after-school arts program Crisafio and fellow artist Meda Rago founded in 2013 at the Manchester Charter School and the Manchester Pittsburgh Public School K-8, both on the North Side. The program is funded by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.

Crisafio is a self-taught photographer who studied painting and printmaking at Carnegie Mellon University before turning to photography as his main form of expression.

To create the self-portraits, Crisafio prints photographs of the students on 13-by-19-inch paper, and then asks the students to create their own image of themselves by tracing over their portrait.

The classes are built around the concept of self-portraiture as it relates to identity. The students begin with a pencil drawing based on their photo portrait by Crisafio.

“The line drawing is the foundation upon which the students then learn how to create a self-portrait collage from cut out textures and images from recycled magazines,” Crisafio explains.

Crisafio says that during this process students encounter issues of identity, gender, class and race through the artistic metaphors of form and color. “The final pieces are made into inkjet transfers ironed onto a T-shirt for each child,” Crisafio says.

“The kids really come together to celebrate the work they did with us all year long,” Crisafio says. “The semester can be chaotic sometimes as it is hard for the kids to visualize the final result of a semester's effort. But in the end. they are usually very happy with their designs and proudly wear their shirts.”

Kurt Shaw is the Tribune-Review art critic.

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