Elizabeth Hopkins
MFA ’25 Photography
As an artist, I am hungry for transformative experiences. I hunt for fleeting light in unremarkable places. I harness my camera in search of slippages when the fragility of existence reveals itself to be a source of resilience. Reflections, portals, watery surfaces, passages, darkness and light—these motifs ground my investigation of transience. Through this artistic practice, I hope to create a space of contemplation for the viewer, a visual encounter that may illuminate a renewed way of seeing.
My thesis work is a grieving, healing, and reflective process following my father’s passing from cancer in 2023. In my dad’s last months, I photographed him to mark the moments we had left. With my camera I could make the oppressive sadness feel meaningful, somehow.
Now, I surrender to the same ocean waters that bore my ancestors. I return to the shore with my camera, again and again, to remember. I search for the moments when time opens, a little fissure forms, and I suddenly feel closer to my dad—some mysterious place where the cosmos is felt.
In my thesis installation, I explore opacity and light, layer and surface as metaphors for the unknown, and the fallibility of memory and body. On the shore, life and death aren’t separate enterprises; low tide bears on its breath as much decay as vitality. At times the water reflects more than it reveals. As I continue to grieve, I strive to accept all that I cannot know or control with peace.
Featured in:
A lifelong visual artist, Elizabeth Hopkins (b. 1993, Philadelphia) discovered her passion for photography during a road trip across the Midwest. Based in New England, Hopkins has shown her work in numerous galleries, including Galatea Fine Art, Cambridge Art Association, and the Griffin Museum of Photography. In her practice, she explores themes of family, transience, grief, and the peculiar melancholy of the everyday.
