Aunties: Nadia Sablin

Award-winning artist Nadia Sablin will give a gallery talk and sign copies of her recently released first book, Aunties. Sablin was awarded the 2014 Honickman First Book Prize in Photography by Sandra S. Phillips, SFMOMA senior curator of photography. Sponsored by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and the Honickman Foundation in Philadelphia, the prize is offered every other year and is open to American and Canadian photographers of any age who have never published a book-length work. The prize honors work that is visually compelling, that bears witness, and that has integrity of purpose.

Northlight Gallery curator Liz Allen states, “We are thrilled to feature the work of ASU alumni during the first year in our new space at Grant Street Studios. Nadia’s project caught my attention while she was pursuing her MFA here. I am so pleased to be able to host a solo exhibition of her work.”

Sablin’s project documents the daily lives of her elderly aunts who occupy a family cabin in small village during the summer months. “In these photographs, I record the stories of their lives, and explore the childhood memories I have of them,” Sablin writes of her aunts, who over the seven years of Sablin’s ongoing project began to collaborate with her in reinterpreting her memories and in creating new ones. These images combine observation and invention, biography and autobiography, and are thoughtful meditations on aging and belonging.