Maureen Drennan is a photographer born and based in New York City. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery in D.C., Tacoma Art Museum, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, Aperture Gallery, Mrs. Gallery, Colorado Photographic Arts Center, and Transmitter Gallery. Her images have been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, California Sunday Magazine, Atlantic Magazine, Photograph Magazine, Huffington Post, Art 21 Magazine, American Photo, UK Telegraph, Refinery 29, Narratively, and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. She teaches at LaGuardia Community College.
About The sea that surrounds us – words by Maureen Drennan:
The title of this photographic series, the sea that surrounds us, comes from a love poem by Pablo Neruda and suggests the isolation and protection one can simultaneously experience within a relationship. In trying to comprehend my husband’s vulnerability due to a severe depression, I made images of him and a landscape familiar to me, Block Island, RI. When I was seven years old and my parents separated, I lived there for a year with my father. It was a lonely time, the windblown landscape on Block Island is beautiful but deserted and watching the dissolution of my parent’s marriage was sad to see. When my own marriage was in turmoil, I returned there to photograph. The landscapes work both as self-portraits and as ruminations on isolation and distance. I have often photographed my husband, but this felt different. I was watching him more carefully, trying to understand him. I felt untethered and helpless observing him and trying to comprehend his inner turmoil. The intimacy of making the photographs together during a challenging time was restorative. Where words failed us, the pictures filled in the blanks.
