Ian Lewandowski
2023 Aurora Project Residency
During his two-week residency, 2023 Aurora Project Resident Ian Lewandowski will focus on making large-format portraits of queer Hoosiers, in June during Indy Pride, in a continuation of his long-term work imaging queer Midwesterners, notably in his series My Man Mitch.
Originally from Northwest Indiana, Lewandowski writes:
My Man Mitch is about Indiana, manhood, and finding and maintaining queer space. After moving from a working-class, conservative, Christian environment in Northwest Indiana to New York City to pursue a degree and career as a fine artist, I started to analyze my own context and origins through photographic imagery native to Indiana and my family. Simultaneously I was photographing fellow gay men in their New York City apartments. I combined my own large-format portraits with appropriated material, primarily Indiana high school yearbook photographs, as a dialogue on community and belonging, and a way to elaborate and expand upon my relationship to manhood and gay identity.
While photographing in Indiana during Indy Pride, Lewandowski hopes to, “. . . make something sensitive to this place, nuanced and ‘from within’. I do not want to make something sensational. Rather than exploit the identity of those who agree to sit for a portrait, I want to approach this with the same empathy and genuine curiosity I bring to any portrait I make.”
Ian Lewandowski’s first solo exhibition, Community Board, was exhibited at The Java Project in Brooklyn in 2019. The Ice Palace Is Gone, his body of color photographs made from 2018-19, was published as his first monograph by Magic Hour Press (Montréal) in 2021. My Man Mitch, a body of photographs and appropriated photo material native to Indiana made from 2014-17, was published by Kult Books (Stockholm) in 2022. Lewandowski also teaches undergraduate photography courses at The New School and SUNY FIT in New York, as well as continuing education courses at Gowanus Darkroom in Brooklyn. Additionally, he manages and prints the photo work of Kenny Gardner (1913-2002). Lewandowski (ianlewandowski.com) lives in south Brooklyn with his husband Anthony and dog Seneca.
The Aurora Project Residency offers a two-week intensive work period for experimentation, research, and development of new or ongoing projects, with priority for the residency given to projects that engage and incorporate the place and people of Indianapolis. The residency includes a $2,000 stipend and a place to stay.
The Aurora Project Residency would not be possible without the following partnership.
Pending scheduling, Tube Factory Artspace will donate lodging for this residency in their artist bed and breakfast located on Cruft Street in the Garfield Park area of Indianapolis. Aurora PhotoCenter thanks Tube Factory Artspace for its generous support of this residency.
