ARTIST TALK: Scott Offen
Friday, October 16th, 2026 at 5:30pm
Free & open to the public
Photographer Scott Offen will present Grace, a collaborative project made with his partner over the past seven years. After a decade spent working in street photography, Offen turned to a more deliberate, narrative approach, photographing Grace not as a documentary subject but as a co-creator. The two developed a working method built on partnership: staged images, sometimes drawn from dreams and worked out over many attempts, and a rule that when they disagreed on a photograph, they kept it and let sequencing do the work of resolution.
The photographs move between domestic interiors and a wild, mythical outdoor world, drawing on influences from Lewis Carroll to Norman Lindsay, and deliberately obscure specific time and place in favor of something more timeless. Offen will talk about the project’s evolution from an elegy on the passage of time into a more feminist meditation on visibility, solitude, and authorship in the aging female body, as well as the technical range behind the images, shot across large format, medium format, and digital cameras depending on what a given moment demanded.
He’ll also speak to the years-long process of turning the work into a book: choosing paper and print quality that could stand alongside gallery prints, working closely with designer Teresa Piardi and publisher L’Artiere.
Come hear directly from Scott about the process behind one of the more distinctive photographic collaborations in recent memory.
About the artist:
Scott Offen is an East Coast photographer whose work has been widely exhibited and prominently featured online. His first monograph, “Grace”, was shortlisted for Les Rencontres d’Arles 2026 The Author Book Award. “Grace” was published by L’Artiere in 2025 and accompanied by book signings at AIPAD in New York and Paris Photo in Paris. The year 2025 also marked his first solo exhibition in Chelsea, New York City, at The Curator Lab, followed by solo exhibitions at Panopticon Gallery and the Griffin Museum of Photography later that year. Scott holds both a BFA and an MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where he received the Graduate Thesis Award in 2024. Working collaboratively with his wife, he creates images that immerse viewers in a fairytale forest where time and restraint dissolve—an uncanny world shaped by the rural landscape of New England. Offen works across a range of photographic formats, from 8×10 to digital. His work has recently been reviewed by LensCulture, LENSCRATCH, Bazar, Forbes, L’Œil de la Photographie, Sky Arte, Collater.al, What Will You Remember, Fotofilmic, Nowhere Diary, BLIND Magazine, The Guardian, and other publications. Scott appeared on the podcasts PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf and Small Photobook Cult.
This event is free, open to all, and no advance registration is required. We hope to see you there!
Find a complete list of upcoming artist talks and events at VCP here.