Showing: September 4 – 29
Reception: Saturday, September 8, 5 – 7pm
Abrams Claghorn is excited to present The Body Positive as part of Bay Area Month of Photography. We will be showing work by Larry Dyer, photos in collaboration with The Body Positive, a non-profit in Berkeley, CA.
The Body Positive is creating a world in which people value their unique identities and are liberated from self-hatred so they can optimize their energy and intellect to make positive changes in their own lives, communities, and beyond. Since 1996, The Body Positive has been reconnecting youth and adults to their innate body wisdom for more balanced, joyful self-care and a relationship with their whole selves that is guided by love, forgiveness, and humor.
Connie Sobczak and Elizabeth Scott, LCSW, founded The Body Positive because of their shared passion to create a lively, healing community that offers freedom from suffocating societal messages that keep people in a perpetual struggle with their bodies. Connie’s experience with an eating disorder in her teen years and the death of her sister Stephanie inspired her life’s work to improve the self-image of youth and adults. She founded The Body Positive in honor of her sister, and to ensure that her daughter Carmen and other children would grow up in a new world—one where people focus on the things in life that really matter. Elizabeth has been practicing psychotherapy for 25 years, specializing in eating disorders treatment. She is committed to The Body Positive’s work because it brings great meaning to her life when she can help people leave body hatred behind and become free to focus on their precious life purpose. In 2015, Connie and Elizabeth were chosen by La Repubblica, Italy’s leading newspaper, to be on their top 10 list of badass women for their role in founding The Body Positive movement.
Artist Statement
“Over the decade that I’ve collaborated with The Body Positive, we’ve produced many photography and video projects together, from studio portrait shoots to video interviews.
I love it when I can put my 30 years of experience as an image maker to work for a cause and community I believe in. Envisioning and producing this work with The Body Positive aligns with my values — values of liberation, self-actualization, equality, authentic beauty, community and love.
It’s a unique pleasure to photograph folks who work with The Body Positive because they seem to shine from within. Capturing their light and beauty over our years of creative collaboration has been a great privilege.” ~Larry Dyer