Member Artist Talk: Astrid Reischwitz and her new book, “Spin Club Stories”

April 27, 2023
6pm - 7pm

Join us Thursday, April 27th at 6pm for an Artist Talk with photographer Astrid Reischwitz.

Astrid will discuss her body of work and her path to publishing her photo-book Spin Club Stories (Kehrer Verlag, 2022).

In Spin Club Stories, Astrid explores personal and cultural memory influenced by her upbringing in a small farming village in Northern Germany. She uses keepsakes from family life, old photographs, and embroidered fabric from the village to build a world of memory, identity, and home. The artist takes cues from the old tradition of spin clubs in her village, where village women met to spin wool and create needlework—and share stories while they worked. She transforms this tradition of storytelling into a visual journey. Her own embroidered designs are partial representations of her ancestral linens, emphasizing the fragmentary nature of recollection.

The presentation will be followed by a book signing.

Image: Shadow and Light from Spin Club Tapestry

Astrid Reischwitz is a lens-based artist whose work explores storytelling from a personal perspective. Using keepsakes from family life, old photographs, and storytelling strategies, she builds a visual world of memory, identity, place, and home. Her current focus is the exploration of personal and collective memory influenced by her upbringing in Germany.

 

Reischwitz has exhibited at national and international museums and galleries including the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, Newport Art Museum, Griffin Museum of Photography, Danforth Art Museum, Photographic Resource Center, The Center for Fine Art Photography (CO), Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts, Center for Photographic Art (CA), FotoNostrum, BBA Gallery, Dina Mitrani Gallery, and Gallery Kayafas.

 

She has received multiple awards, including the 2020 Griffin Award at the Griffin Museum of Photography and the Multimedia Award at the 2020 San Francisco Bay International Photo Awards. Her series “Spin Club Tapestry” was selected as a Juror’s Pick at the 2021 LensCulture Art Photography Awards and is the Series Winner at 2021 Siena International Photo Awards. She is a four-time Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50 photographer and is a Mass Cultural Council 2021 Artist Fellowship Finalist in Photography.

 

Reischwitz is a graduate of the Technical University Braunschweig, Germany, with a PhD in Chemistry. After moving to the US, she fell in love with photography and began her journey to explore life through creating art.

 

She is represented by Gallery Kayafas in Boston, Massachusetts.