Jay Turner Frey Seawell (born 1986, Oswego, NY; lives Los Angeles, CA) earned his BAJ from Indiana University and an MFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago, IL. His work has been exhibited at the Aurora PhotoCenter, Indianapolis, IN; the Aperture Summer Open, New York; and Pingyao International Photography Festival, China. Seawell is a recipient of an Award for Innovation in the Documentary Arts, Archive of Documentary Arts, Duke University, Durham, NC, and is in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago, IL and the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT. His work has been published in Bloomberg Businessweek and the Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward online catalog.
Statement from the Artist:
While photographing the National Mall, I struggled with the mainstream narrative of United States history that marks its landscape. My work is a critical interpretation of a space that was designed and constructed to feel timeless and a resistance of the notion that the Mall is a place that holds absolute truths for all people.