LATITUDE is pleased to welcome Tara Wray, photographer and founder of the Too Tired Project, for an evening of public conversation on the relationship between mental health and photography. This event will feature an introduction to the Too Tired Project, a viral photo initiative, followed by a slideshow highlighting contributions by Chicago photographers, and ending with a panel conversation and Q&A with Tara Wray, Jess Benjamin, and Dylan Yarbrough (and an art therapist TBA). Brochures by Open Psychotherapy Collective citing local mental health resources will be available at the event.

This event is free and open to the public, though there is a capacity limit. Please register for this event to guarantee your spot.

About #TooTired:
The Too Tired Project is a photo initiative that helps those struggling with depression by offering a platform for collective creative expression and community. Photographer Tara Wray founded the Too Tired Project in August 2018 in response to the positive support she received for her photobook—Too Tired for Sunshine—in which she used photography as a therapeutic tool to express her personal experience with depression and anxiety. In addition to creating a meaningful community that helps break stigma and build connection, it’s a goal of the project to encourage others to make and share photography around the topic of mental health. Recent press includes profiles on NPR and HuffPost.

About Tara Wray:
Tara Wray is an American photographer, writer, and filmmaker. Her first monograph, “Too Tired for Sunshine,” was published by Yoffy Press in 2018. Recently she founded the Too Tired Project, a photo initiative helping those struggling with depression by offering a platform for collective creative expression and community.

Her work has been featured on NPR, Washington Post, VICE, Huff Post, and others, and is held in the permanent collections of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the George Eastman Museum Library, the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale, and the Snite Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame.

Recent and forthcoming solo exhibitions of “Too Tired for Sunshine” will be held at Brush Art Gallery at St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY and McLean County Arts Center, Bloomington, IL. Selections from “Too Tired for Sunshine” will be featured in the group exhibition How to Live and Survive in the Countryside at KUNST HAUS WIEN, Museum Hundertwasser in Vienna, Austria, as part of the inaugural FOTO WIEN festival.

Born and raised in Kansas, Wray graduated from New York University where she studied documentary filmmaking. She is director of two feature length documentaries: “Manhattan, Kansas” (SXSW 2006; Film Society of Lincoln Center) and Cartoon College (2012).

Wray lives and works in Vermont.

About Panelist Jess Benjamin:
Jess Benjamin is a photographer and meditation teacher based in Chicago. With 15 years of practice and retreat experience, their teaching explores the intersection of mindfulness and creative processes. They serve on the Board of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, a non-profit that catalyzes partnerships between social justice movements and Buddhist practitioners, and they are currently teaching a series at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, entitled Learning To See: Viewing With All Senses. Jess is a former Lab Assistant at LATITUDE and the former Director of Photography at Scout Magazines in Boston.

—-

Image by Tara Wray.

Official Website

More events on this date

Tags: Chicago, LATITUDE, Tara Wray, TooTiredChicago: A Conversation on Mental Health and Photography, West Town