recent highlights:
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bfa senior kennedy fry opens ‘with love, mother,’ at usu projects gallery
November 18, 2024
Kennedy Fry, from the series, “With Love, Mother”
“With Love, Mother,” a solo exhibition by USU senior BFA photography major Kennedy Fry is on view November 18-22, 2024 at USU’s Projects Gallery.
“With Love, Mother,” features a selection of silver gelatin prints from Fry’s 2024 CCA Summer Arts Research Grant project, in which Kennedy traveled between Utah and Arizona to photograph with her adoptive and birth families and document the landscapes of where she was born versus where she grew up.
“The hands that held me after birth are not the same hands that raised me. While I inherited my olive skin and dark hair from my birth mother, my resilience and sincerity I got from my adoptive mother. From both, I learned how to love,” Kennedy writes. “The photographs in ‘With Love, Mother’ serve as a love letter to my moms, yet they also grapple with the many complexities of familial relationships, motherhood, and the nuanced debate between nature vs nurture.”
Alongside portraits of her biological and adoptive families, Fry photographed along the route her adoptive parents took after picking her up from the Mesa, Arizona hospital where she was born. The physical and photographic journey became a kind of meditation, allowing Fry to find a sense of belonging in previously unfamiliar terrain.
“The resulting images are now archival pieces of my adoption story, standing alongside the few letters and pictures that previously formed my only connection to my birth family,” Fry says. “‘With Love, Mother’ has forged connections that once seemed unattainable, each photograph a beacon in navigating a complex emotional landscape.”
The USU Projects Gallery is located on the ground floor of the USU FAV building and is open Mon-Fri, 9-5.