2004 CDS / Honickman First Book Prize in Photography
Lisa Kessler - Honorable Mention
Lisa Kessler is a freelance editorial and documentary photographer with degrees from Brown University and Boston University who teaches at Northeastern University and the Maine Photographic Workshops.
Lisa has a long history of photographing the Catholic Church in Boston. Heart in the Wound is a body of work that explores the clergy abuse crisis and links it to the larger issues of sexual violation and the abuse of power. Kessler's photographs offer an intimate portrait of the victims, the perpetrators and those who shielded them.
Heart in the Wound exposes the chilling cowardice of trusted authority figures and the extraordinary strength of the sexually abused victims.
Lisa's work connects what happened in the church to the "broader problem of sexual abuse of children in our society—a problem the American Medical Association calls, a silent, violent epidemic in our country."
An early version of her Heart in the Wound series received the 2002 Award of Excellence from POYi. A film version premiered at the Boston International Film Festival in 2009.
Kessler's work is in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and her work has been exhibited at the Danforth Museum of Art, Framingham, Mass.; Boston Arts Academy; Scollay Square Gallery, Boston; and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.