Exhibitions

CAROLYN BENEDICT FRASER: HOLIDAY

E. Bronson Ingram Studio Arts Center (Vanderbilt University) / 1204 25th Ave. S. August 29 - September 27th

Carolyn Benedict Fraser

The Vanderbilt University Department of Art and Space 204 announces Holiday – a solo exhibition from Carolyn Benedict Fraser, a Nashville based photographer, artist, and educator. Holiday presents a series of images taken from the balconies from each room of the Holiday Inn Vanderbilt, a view that faces West End Avenue over-looking Centennial Park.

Fraser writes, “…taking a picture is an outlet for the impulse to replicate a time and a place so we can experience it later and from a distance.”

While capturing the view from each room’s balconies, she acknowledges that pictures from these locations seeing the same view have been taken countless times in the fifty-five year history – tucked in away attics, as undeveloped film rolls, outdated digital camera storage, lost in the expansive world of smart devices camera albums, or published photo books – much like William Eggelston’s The Democratic Forest, a photo book where he photographed from one of the Holiday Inn rooms. Fraser uses the hotel as a framework to consider the longing, curiosity, and desire to position ourselves outside of our immediate experience. She reflects on the persistent urge to immerse oneself in places other than where we are and questions whether we will ever be satisfied with attempts to do so.

Carolyn Benedict Fraser is a photographer and educator based in Nashville, Tennessee. Her work utilizes the constraints of the camera, the frame, and vision to address how we orient ourselves to mental and physical limitations. She studied psychology and photography at Mills College in Oakland, California, and received an MFA in Visual Art from Cornell University. She presented her work at the 2017 SPE North Eastern Conference, Is Photography Enough?: Interdisciplinary Approaches Beyond the Still Image. In recent years, her work has been exhibited at Site:Brooklyn in Brooklyn, New York, Washington State University, the Millepiani Gallery in Rome, Italy, Medium Photo in San Diego, and Zeitgeist Gallery in Nashville.

Holiday will be on view in Space 204 from August 29 – September 27, 2024 and will open with a reception on August 29, 2024 from 3pm to 5pm in Space 204. The gallery is located on the second floor of the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Arts Center. Gallery hours are Mondays thru Fridays 10am to 4pm. Outside of these hours appointments can be made by emailing the gallery at the email below.

All questions can be emailed to the Vanderbilt University Department of Art at artdept@vanderbilt.edu.