Phyllis Graber Jensen, a Retrospective | News

On June 12, with Reunion in full swing, Phyllis Graber Jensen, the faculty’s longtime director of images and video, did one thing extremely uncommon. She confirmed up at a Bates College occasion with none digital camera, save the one on her mobile phone, and she or he didn’t make a single picture.

That’s as a result of the occasion was the opening of the Bates College Museum of Art’s exhibition, Phyllis Graber Jensen: Picture Stories, which will likely be up via Sept. 19. Curated by museum Director Carrie Cushman, this can be a true retrospective of Graber Jensen’s work, spanning her time from pupil photographer to employees photographer on the Boston Herald after which her 31 years in Maine at Bates. 

The exhibition takes up the whole first flooring of the museum, and on Friday night, followers of Graber Jensen’s work, from alumni (together with former pupil employees) to college and employees, in addition to her household, stuffed the house to capability.

Speaking to the viewers, Graber Jensen praised the “imagination and vision” of Cushman, who joined Bates in August 2025 and took on the retrospective as the primary exhibit she would curate. 

“It’s a gift and a privilege to have someone of such immense talents and kindness, someone who barely knew me and had just arrived on the scene, take such an interest in offering context and insight to the work I produced during the last 50-plus years of my life,“ Graber Jensen said. “That’s lots of ground to cover in a very short period of time. Yet she persevered, and here we are.”

There are 91 objects on show, together with 51 newly printed and archival images, and ephemera similar to contact sheets, cameras, and newspapers from Graber Jensen’s time as a photojournalist. And in fact, many, many images from her time at Bates.

“Working with Phyllis on this show has meant that I have gotten a crash course on the past 31 years of Bates history, but also a really deep understanding of the spirit of this place, of what makes Bates Bates,” Cushman advised the gathered crowd. Every {photograph} accommodates a narrative, she mentioned, and, “I encourage you to pick one out, and ask Phyllis tonight, and she’ll be able to recall, without hesitation, who is in the photo, what they taught, where they worked, what they majored in, their graduation years! This in addition to all the details that led to the making of the photo.”

That recall is a testomony to her mind and her fortitude on the job, Cushman mentioned, “but also to the tremendous amount of care that she takes with her work.”

Cushman’s scholarly essay on Graber Jensen’s work serves because the introduction to the guide accompanying Picture Stories (accessible for buy on the museum and on the Bates College Store) and an evaluation of her work within the medium. 

In it she writes, “I have not heard Phyllis describe herself as an artist, but she is keenly aware of her responsibility as a maker of visual material (as I believe all great artists should be), and she approaches that responsibility with a creative spirit and relentless curiosity that positions the photographic medium as an essential mode of storytelling, inquiry, and community building — photography at its best.” 

Graber Jensen’s earliest forays into the medium embody photographing her brother Norman, who, once they had been youngsters, was usually mistaken for her (and vice versa) and her documentation of the ladies’s liberation motion in Denmark in 1975 when she was a Cornell undergraduate finding out overseas. She continued to make images throughout  her time in graduate college for journalism at Boston University, after which as a stringer for the Associated Press. About 15 photographs within the exhibit come from Graber Jensen’s eight years as a employees photographer on the Boston Herald.

There can also be a biographical part that chronicles her time as an early — pre-Title IX — advocate for women and girls in sport when she was simply a youngster, eager to play tennis competitively. During the fiftieth anniversary of Title IX, a New York Times reporter wrote about Graber Jensen’s fierce willpower to problem the established order in a narrative headlined The Forgotten Teenage Trailblazer of Women’s Tennis.

Graber joined Bates in 1995 as a employees author however by 2002 was working as a photographer and multimedia producer,  simply because the social media age was taking off.  In the years since, Graber Jensen, greater than some other particular person, has been chargeable for creating, nurturing, and stewarding the faculty’s visible id, a job she honors with a dedication that extends effectively past an eight-hour workday.  On campus, she is just too recognizable — and beloved by college students —  to actually soften into the background the best way she may like, however her strategies are purely journalistic and her vitality unmatched by something however the care she brings to an project. 

Want to go to? Summer hours on the Bates College Museum of Art are Monday-Saturday, 10 a.m. to five p.m. The museum is closed on Sundays.

For Cushman, a scholar who has specialised in Japanese artwork and labored extensively in images, it’s evident that Graber Jensen got here to her occupation with an intuitive strategy to placing topics comfy. In the accompanying guide, Cushman writes that Graber Jensen’s quiet assurance and empathy lead to “images that feel genuinely of their moment.”

“Here’s what I have found,” Graber Jensen mentioned to the gang gathered on the museum Friday night time, telling them she was paraphrasing documentary photographer Eve Arnold. “If a photographer brings compassion and curiosity to an assignment, that’s a lot. It’s those qualities, rather than the camera, that lead to a trust between photographer and subject and yield strong photographs. I hope that the framed ones on these walls reflect some of that compassion and curiosity. Call it an obsession, but it’s really a love story with Bates and its community from which I hope never to recover.”

Graber Jensen plans to retire late this summer season. 

Graber Jensen credit former Vice President of Communications and Public Affairs Sean Findlen ’99, who was her supervisor till 2022, with planting the seed for the exhibition. “At one point, before he left, he said ‘I’d love to see you have an exhibit at the museum,’” Graber Jensen remembers. Findlen remembers that he may need even mentioned it will be a “crime” if such an exhibition didn’t occur.

“Phyllis’ work reflects the soul of the college and its many facets, contours, and angles,” Findlen mentioned. “She has an eye that sees the heart of any situation and the skill that brings it to life in a picture. She’s simply the best of the best.”

The exhibition is made attainable with funding from the Jane Costello Wellehan Endowment Fund, the Dorothy Stiles Blankfort ’31 Fund, the Alex Katz Foundation, and Bates Arts Collaborative.