Toni Pepe
A Found History is comprised of press photographs culled from flea markets and eBay, images that are also objects unto themselves marked by time. Typed and handwritten text along with date stamps, creased edges and stains layer the surfaces of the photographs. These images are time capsules, showing us the event pictured, but also the frame through which they were received. They illustrate movement – both socially/politically as records of women’s liberation and voting rights on a global scale, but also durationally as physical images that were held, touched and eventually abandoned.
Toni Pepe is chair and assistant professor of photography at Boston University. She received her MFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology and an MLA in visual culture from Boston University. Her photographs and installation work explore the construction of identity, specifically the icon of the mother. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally including the Center for Photography at Woodstock and the Wege durch das Land, Music & Literary Festival. Pepe was a finalist for the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship, a Critical Mass top 50, a Review Santa Fe 100, and was most recently awarded an Artist Trust Grant for 2020. Her work is in the permanent collections at the Danforth Art Museum, the Magenta Foundation, as well as many private collections.
instagram: @toni.pepe
