The Tremaine Art Gallery at The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, CT. is pleased to present works by photographer Lisa Elmaleh from Oct. 28, 2023 through Jan. 14, 2024. The exhibition, Promised Land // Tierra Prometida, features photographs from the U.S.-Mexico border, including some never-before-seen images and documentary video work. Elmaleh spoke about her work in an All-School Meeting on Oct. 24 and spent the past week working with Hotchkiss photography and film students in a residency at the School. 

The Tremaine Art Gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. It is closed on Monday.

Since December 2020, Lisa Elmaleh has been an active volunteer with various humanitarian aid groups, gaining an in-depth understanding of the border and the people migrating between Mexico and the United States and bearing witness to different aspects of migration, including housing and sheltering of migrants en route, search and rescue for missing persons in the desert, food and health care at various facilities, and families who have been deported back to Mexico. It is in this context that she is able to utilize her 1930s large-format camera to converse and connect with people, bringing empathy and awareness to those whose lives have been affected by American policies implemented since the construction of the border wall. She has photographed and worked with migrant families, groups who search for missing migrants in the desert of the US, volunteers, religious sisters, and border patrol.

About the Artist

Lisa Elmaleh is an American visual artist, educator, and documentarian based in Hampshire County, West Virginia. She specializes in large-format work in tintype, glass negative, and celluloid film. Since 2007, she has been traveling across the US documenting American landscapes, life, and culture.

Born in Miami, Florida (1984), Lisa completed a BFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2007, during which time she was awarded the Silas Rhodes Scholarship. Upon graduating, she received the prestigious Tierney Fellowship to work on a project that evolved into an in-depth visual documentation of the impact of climate change on the Everglades. The culmination of this project resulted in a book titled Everglades published in 2016 by Zatara Press. 

Elmaleh's work has been exhibited nationwide and recognized by the Arnold Newman Prize, the Aaron Siskind Foundation, and the Puffin Foundation, among others. Her work has been published by Harper's Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, CNN, The New York Times, National Geographic, Oxford American, Garden & Gun, and NPR, among others.

Lisa travels in a truck containing her bed and a portable wet plate darkroom. She has a traditional black and white darkroom where she prints in West Virginia.