Stacy Kranitz & Chris Verene

Psychic Readings is pleased to present The Safety Net, a two-person exhibition that examines life in today's American small towns through the work of documentary photographers Stacy Kranitz and Chris Verene. The exhibit highlights the resilience of human spirit and the importance of mutual aid. It features a selection of images from throughout the photographers' careers, including unseen work.

Kranitz and Verene focus on a unique, sensitive, and intensely personal approach to the documentary tradition. They have dedicated their careers to photographing communities which are often overlooked and underserved. Verene has been photographing his family and friends in the small midwestern town of Galesburg, Illinois since the late 1980s, while Kranitz has documented communities in the Appalachian region for the past fifteen years. These communities share similar situations thousands of miles apart. The artists show us that the government’s social safety net doesn’t work for people living near the poverty line.

Stacy Kranitz explains, “On paper, there are resources available through government programs, but in reality, they are nearly impossible to access. I find this is the biggest disconnect for people. If you have never needed these resources, you do not understand how difficult they are to obtain and keep.”

Kranitz and Verene both work in communities where the safety net does not provide accessible and adequate resources. Both see declining rural health care (rural hospital closures, maternity care deserts) the rise in rural homelessness and the lack of economic opportunity as significant factors in declining quality of life.

Verene writes, “The local government condemned my friend’s home, arrested the occupants for trespassing when they tried to return, then bulldozed houses they deemed to be where people used drugs. Now, those people have no where to live and the situation is far worse.”

The exhibition’s curator, Ani Cordero, has long worked in grassroots organizing, and aims to highlight the intersection of art and activism with this project. Cordero notes the artists’ commitment to harm reduction and their active encouragement of positive change from within the community through their work.

Stacy Kranitz and Chris Verene are both recent Guggenheim Fellows, and both have monographs including these topics published by the prestigious Twin Palms Press.

Stacy Kranitz is an American photographer born in Kentucky and currently lives in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Tennessee. She has received numerous awards including the Michael P. Smith Fund for Documentary Photography and a Center for Documentation Fellowship. She recently collaborated with ProPublica on a project about abortion rights in Tennessee. Her work is included in public collections including The Harvard Art Museum, The Museum of Fine Art, Houston, and The Duke University Archive of Documentary Arts. Kranitz’ work has been featured in publications including The Atlantic, Bomb Magazine, The New York Times, Time Magazine and The Washington Post.

Chris Verene, born in DeKalb, Illinois in 1969, began photographing his father’s small hometown of Galesburg in 1987. For nearly four decades, he has continued intensively photographing the stories of his family members, friends, and their community in the same area. Verene is currently working on the third book in his series. Verene’s work is in numerous museum collections including The Met, The Whitney, The Jewish Museum, The Getty, and SFMoMA, and has been featured in many major art publications, including ArtForum, Art In America, The New York Times, Frieze, and Parkett.

Ani Cordero is a Puerto Rican singer, composer, activist, and co-founder of Puerto Rican Independent Musicians and Artists (PRIMA), which has provided support in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane María. She has been featured on Democracy Now, All Things Considered, and profiled in The New Yorker. Cordero is the director of Chris Verene’s ongoing performance work, The Self-Esteem Salon®, is Verene’s long-time artistic collaborator and partner. Cordero worked with the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA). Cordero is partnered with Action Lab, a strategy center for social movements that sparks political and personal liberation.