Open Book: Linda K. Alpern

Monira Foundation is pleased to present Open Book with Linda K. Alpern. This exhibition of archives, photography and notes from conversations with Linda K. Alpern was created as an annex project to the exhibition Inner Mirror, Linda K. Alpern. In this presentation, visitors can get a closer look at Alpern’s creative process of her photographic work as well as stories shared with us about her mylar series. This Open Book display allows us to engage with a variety of images and a selection of stories told by Alpern through time. While on display, a new selection of images and stories by the photographer will be exhibited weekly, drafting new narratives, resembling a book, drawn by Alpern’s interest on the multiple ways of seeing and connecting with others.

Linda K. Alpern was born in Long Beach, New York and raised in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She began doing photography in 1989 after moving from California to Sag Harbor, New York. There, she worked as a nurse for the artist Alfonso Ossorio, who lived in East Hampton. For two and half years, while caring for Ossorio, she photographed the trees in his property (evergreens and conifers sited by the artist himself) while learning the medium, until she became proficient at capturing their essence. Alpern states: ¨It was a natural progression for me to next approach people from different backgrounds and request to photograph them, which led to a one-woman show at the Glenn Horowitz Rare Bookstore, and subsequent exhibitions. I created a storybook of my life by taking photographs of people I knew as well as individuals I encountered in my daily activities, including nursing.¨

Alpern’s work appears in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton, New York and The Parrish Museum, in Watermill, New York, where she has participated in many group shows. She has also exhibited her work at MMGallery Southampton, Tripoli Gallery Wainscott, The Church in Sag Harbor, and multiple other venues in the East End of Long Island.