Fern Nesson

    I am a fine art photographer living Cambridge, Massachusetts. I received her MFA in Photography from Maine Media College (2018), a J.D. from Harvard Law School (1971), and an M.A. in American History (Brandeis University 1987).

     My photographs distill reality to its essence, highlighting its energy through the use of form and abstraction. In the past four years, I have had solo exhibitions in Torino, Italy, at Les Rencontres D'Arles, at the MIT Museum, at the Beacon Gallery in Boston, and at Through This Lens Gallery in Durham, NC. Additionally, my work has been selected for numerous juried exhibitions throughout the U.S. and in Barcelona, Rome and Budapest. My next solo show will be in June at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Boston.  

     My photobooks, Signet of Eternity and WORD each received an Annual Photobooks Award from the Davis-Orton Gallery. I is represented by the Beacon Gallery.

                               " Art should not be copies of living things but itself be [a] living thing."

                                                                Malevich, Essays

Roland Barthes asserted that every photograph "is an image of death.” But Barthes is wrong. A photograph may itself constitute a new, living moment. An image that embodies energy and engages the viewer in a mutual experience of it creates new energy.

I use my camera to defy death. My images embody the moment when mass becomes energy. In that moment, we perceive that we will never die; we will merely change in form. Nothing is ever lost. Those we loved exist forever all around us in a different form. And we will too.