Alumni in the News: Jeremy Dennis '08 Featured in The New Yorker
Ross is pleased to share a recent article published by The New Yorker on the work of alumnus Jeremy Dennis '08, a member of the Shinnecock tribe and fine art photographer known for his work examining cultural assimilation, indigenous identity, and ancestral traditions. He is also the founder of the non-profit Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio, Inc. The New Yorker's A Landscape Shared by Native Americans and the One Percent looks at Jeremy’s photography series, "On This Site," "Stories—Indigenous Oral Stories, Dreams and Myths," "Nothing Happened Here," and "Rise."
"On This Site" documents Long Island locations important to Native American history, from the East End to Brooklyn. To date, the series includes over 200 site photographs. Jeremy has created a book based on the series as well as an interactive map that allows users to view photos and pinpoint the location of each site and offers historical information. The map has become a resource for teachers and students, as well as Shinnecock members working to protect traditional locations.
Sugar Loaf Hill Site, 2022, from the series "On This Site." In 2021, the Southampton town board approved a conservation easement for this Shinnecock burial site, and together with the assistance of the Peconic Land Trust, 4.5 acres at the peak of the hill were purchased. The existing seven-thousand-square-foot house was removed.
Jeremy's "Stories" series is based on indigenous myths and legends of North American tribes and uses photography combined with digital illustration to depict each story, superimposing beings atop an image from within the area where each tale originated.
"Nothing Happened Here" is a stirring body of work that Jeremy describes as "stylized portraits of non-indigenous people impaled by arrows [that] symbolize, in a playful way, the white guilt many Americans have carried through generations and the inconvenience of coexisting with people their ancestors tried to destroy."
Nothing Happened Here #2, 2016
The photographs comprising the "Rise" series depict what appear to be Native American men confronting contemporary, non-indigenous individuals in a variety of different settings.
I Could Stand Here All Night, 2021, from the series "Rise."
