Kim Llerena

Kim Llerena (b. 1984) is a photographic artist and educator currently based in Washington, D.C. She received her MFA in Photographic & Electronic Media from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a BA in Journalism from New York University. She was a 2013 Sondheim Artscape Prize semifinalist and a 2014 Bethesda Trawick Prize finalist. Llerena has exhibited nationally and serves as faculty in Visual Literacy at American University and in Electronic Media and Culture at MICA. Today we share Kim’s series titled Closed for Season.

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Closed for Season

“I’ve been to Boothbay Harbor, Maine every summer since I was born. My visits as an adult became attempts to make the summer stretch further and further into the fall, favoring the idle solitude of that coastal enclave in the off-season to its rowdy tourist routine of July and August. Only the locals remain, and before evenings spent somewhere between the fog and the fireplace, there is a communal feeling of “hunkering down”.

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The winter will be long and frigid and often lonely, but the fall is brief and crisp and contemplative. Summer cottages and businesses are locked up, boats are covered and stored away, year-round residents prepare for the weather and the silence. Photographs can attempt to preserve it, even desperately try to halt it, but the slow passage of time is never more palpable than when the leaves are changing colors along the coast of Maine.”

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To view more of Kim’s work please visit her website.