Maureen Drennan

Maureen Drennan is a photographer born and based in New York City. She received an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2009 and her work has been included in exhibitions in North America and Australia including the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C., the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Chelsea Art Museum, Silvereye Center for Photography, Newspace Center for Photography, and The Wild Project. Her images have been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, California Sunday Magazine, Photograph Magazine, and the UK Telegraph. She has received honors from Aperture, The Photo Review, PDN, The Photographic Resource Center of Boston, Humble Arts, Artist as Citizen, and the Camera Club of New York. Maureen currently teaches photography at the International Center for Photography and LaGuardia Community College in New York City.

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Meet Me in the Green Glen

Meet Me in the Green Glen is an intimate photographic look at Ben, a reclusive marijuana grower in California. He is an isolated man whose environment is both ominous and verdant. I have been photographing him for nearly seven years and the laws and stigma around marijuana cultivation have changed in California in the meantime. Although marijuana is legal to grow and use within guidelines, there are situations in which it is still illegal. Every year Ben hires young men to help with the harvest season. They work for about one month, and then he is alone again on his farm with his animals. A tangible melancholy pervades Ben’s life: his guard dogs, geese, and the pot plants he tends are his only steady companions.

I am drawn to narratives, photographic, literary, cinematic, or documentary- in which characters are crafted out of place, or in which places actively become the characters themselves.

I work with photography to understand people – to merge with them psychologically and place myself in their environs. I hope that viewers see my projects not only as documents of time and place, but also as avenues for self-reflection.

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To view more Maureen’s work, please visit her website.