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Our Winchester News photographer Lisa Jo Spencer and fellow photographer Melinda McIntyre recently collaborated on a series of self-portraits for a new exhibit entitled The Body Project, running now through Sept. 1 at WinCam, 32 Swanton St., right here in Winchester.
The Body Project are a series of 12 self-portrait collaborations between photographers Melinda McIntyre and Lisa Spencer.
The Griffin Museum is sponsoring the exhibit and describes The Body Project: Viewed individually, each image is an examination of individual body parts. When combined together as a diptych, the photographs create a new, more intimate dialogue. Some of the diptychs seem to suggest an actual dialogue between the two panels, while others play with shape, tension, and formal comparison.
To create the diptychs, the artists shot one body part at a time in weekly installations. The images were produced without discussion or posing direction in separate workspaces 5,000 miles apart. The images were then revealed and combined as diptychs, with the one artist’s work augmenting, reinforcing, or changing the narrative of the other, often in playful and surprising ways.
While the project was originally designed as a self-portrait exercise – a depiction of the unsexualized, feminine form through the purely female lens – it quickly became a bonding experience and a trust exercise, as each artist learned to trust the other and trust the process of finding the narrative “between” photos.
And while it was a coincidence that the two artists shared a similar hair type, skin tone, and body shape, it added an extra layer of interest to the project, as it was often hard for viewers (even the artist’s own parents) to distinguish who was who. Because the artists’ view and treatment of their own likeness is likely to change with age, Melinda and Lisa have committed to revisiting the project each decade. This is Installment #1: The Thirties.
McIntyre is a photographer who recently repatriated to the U.S. after 13 years abroad. Primarily a self-portrait and motherhood artist, she takes pictures to “explore her role as an expat and mother in an ever-changing environment” as her family follows life in the Foreign Service.
Her work has been featured in N- Magazine, Digital Camera Magazine, Click, The Foreign Service Journal, and This Detailed Life. She is a juried member of the photography communities Click Pro and Hello Storyteller and has written and co-produced two self-paced courses – The Creative Collab and the Self Portrait Collab – through Hello Storyteller platform.
This is her first exhibition.
Spencer is a photographer, writer, and workshop leader based in Winchester. She specializes in documentary storytelling. Named “Best Boudoir Photographer of 2024” by Click Magazine, her work has been featured in books, magazines, and online news content, including Winchester News.
She is a juried member of the photography communities Click Pro and Hello Storyteller, and co-curator of the exhibit “Textures of Light” at the Viridian Moon Art Gallery in Bloomington, IN, an exhibition of fine art photography. Her work has been selected for display at the Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts and is currently on view in Winchester, as part of the “Our Town” exhibition.
