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Aubrey — Melinda Finn
Allegiance, Immigrants presents a solo exhibition featuring an immersive three-channel video installation that explores themes of immigration and national identity. This focused presentation consists of 11 works that utilize the expanded possibilities of multi-channel video to create a comprehensive artistic statement. The exhibition offers visitors an engaging multimedia experience that examines the complex relationship between allegiance and the immigrant experience.
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Melinda Finn's work as a professional photographer began when she was an undergraduate at UC Santa Barbara, serving as a staff photographer for the student newspaper. She has been making photographs in one way or another ever since, working professionally in photojournalism, portraiture, architectural, and other areas of commercial photography.
She served as Palomar College's official photographer for more than 20 years and during that time earned an MFA in photography from Academy of Art University, San Francisco. Currently, she teaches photography at Palomar in addition to working on her own projects, primarily specializing in environmental portraiture.
Minding Hope explores the resilience of the human spirit and the ways individuals are able not only to face their own challenges with courage, but to bring a sense of hope to others through their actions.
During this segment of time in history—and in my own lifetime—I am conscious of the forces that cause fear, worry, and stress on the individual as well as the global scale. It strikes me that during these times, the unique choices each of us makes and the actions that follow take on even more significance.
The individuals in this series continue to make choices that spill over in ways that bring light and hope to others.
Transitions - Inspired by my mother as she gracefully made her final transition into death, I began to ponder meanings related to specific passages in people's lives. The project started with documenting my mother and details alluding to her personal experience. Then, as I emerged from a place of grieving, I looked outward and became aware of a multitude of personal stories that were going on around me.
A friend and her husband were divorcing. Someone else was facing chronic illness. A child was about to enter kindergarten. Another person was facing issues of sexual identity. I became increasingly interested in expressing, through photography, the various ways people experience transition.
This series focuses on a group of individuals, each going through a time of significant adjustment or change in circumstance. Locations were selected that had particular relevance to each person's situation. My intent was to create meaningful connections between the portrait subject, the viewer, and myself as photographer.
Each image illuminates a moment along a segment of time in a personal journey. The series was made to honor the individual struggles each of us faces, and to bring to light both the diversity and commonality of the human experience.
Amanda Dahlgren is a San Diego-based photographic artist whose work opens dialogues about the way we live as a society and what we choose to value. Her work has been featured in exhibitions internationally and in print and online publications. Amanda is also an educator and mentor whose mission is to challenge and inspire everyone in her care to find powerful and authentic ways to express themselves through the photographic arts.
Amanda is currently Director of the Athenaeum's School of the Arts, a Gallery Educator at the Museum of Photographic Arts, Lead Producer for Open Show San Diego, and Chairperson for the West Chapter of the Society for Photographic Education—and formerly an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Grossmont College and Contributing Writer for Lenscratch.
In this ongoing body of work, I am exploring ideas about patriotism, allegiance, immigration, and what it means to be an American. It started because I was thinking about my own experience as an immigrant, moving to the United States when I was roughly the same age as my daughter is now. One of my vivid memories about those first few days after arriving in the middle of 4th grade was learning to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I didn't really understand it, and it made me uncomfortable to be making these promises so formally. More than 30 years later, I still have a complicated relationship with my country. It was founded by immigrants with idealized values of a united nation with liberty and justice for all, and yet today's America is a daily disappointment.
