Grace, by Scott Offen

A solo exhibition and book launch

October 9 - December 5, 2026

Reception: Friday, October 9, 5-8pm
Talk and Book signing: Friday, November 20, 5-8pm

 The Offen family is pleased to donate all proceeds from this exhibition to the MMPA Annual Appeal.  Visitors may support this gift through the purchase of a book or print.

Wood River Valley, Idaho

The haunting, expressive photographs in this publication can be perceived as evocations of a long and fruitful collaboration between two people whose lives have intertwined across many decades. Scott and Grace are parents, they share a profound commitment to their spiritual pursuits, they are each other's best friends. But above and beyond persevering together through the vicissitudes of life, they have, later in their relationship, found a way of making photographs that transcend the tradition of active man with camera and passive wife as sitter. Grace and Scott explore imagination, sense of play, and the possible meanings of the natural world. In the work, they fashion an escape from the bonds of this dimension with its cultural norms and strictures on our behaviors, especially those of women.

In the photographs they devise, Grace literally scales the walls that confine her to her quotidian milieu. On the other side she is delivered into a fairytale forest where logic and responsibility evaporate. In her wanderings, which are always depicted as solitary, she discovers signs and symbols generated by the forest in a reimagining of nature and the place of a modern human in it. Inside the house, Grace's presence is often implied: a hat, a jacket, a shadow, the fluff of dandelions. Outside, she is a Nordic goddess preparing for battle, a sylph resting beneath a tree, a deity of wildness. Women of a certain age become, sociologically speaking, invisible and are not much seen in art. Yet, for the camera, for Scott, for her own ends and ours, Grace operates freely, clearly seen and empowered in these images. She occupies her own unique and compelling alternate universe where she and Scott create narratives the viewer is impelled to interpret.

One should not think that Scott's role is only that of scribe or recorder of events; this is a mutual endeavor, one carefully planned and structured but also one that allows for response to what is found in the landscape, for spontaneous creativity. Scott works primarily with view cameras so the process is slow. There is time for conversation, for planning, for repeated takes. There is also time for Scott and Grace to develop this magical allegory together, an allegory in which the symbols may not be directly legible but one that questions what is knowable in nature, in marriage, between individuals, in one's own mind. Their combined inventiveness allows us — the viewers of this beautiful, dreamlike body of work — to climb out of our own familiar spheres and, for a moment or two or ten, partake of the liberty in theirs.

- Laura McPhee, Writer and Photographer

Scott Offen (b. 1960) is an American East Coast photographer whose work has been exhibited across the United States and prominently featured online. Scott holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Master of Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He was selected as a finalist for the Critical Mass top 200 Photolucida award in 2021 and has been chosen as a participant in the Chico Hot Springs Portfolio Review in 2020 and 2021. Scott became a recipient of the MassArt Graduate Thesis Award in 2024.

The monograph

Offen’s Grace is a poetic and visually compelling collaboration between the artist and his wife, Grace—an intimate creative partnership that transcends traditional artistic roles and redefines the relationship between photographer and subject.

Reviews Of Grace

Len-Scratch: Grace. December 12, 2025, by Vicente Cayuela.

BLIND: The Wife Who Went Over the Wall, One is never too old to make a photograph, or to be one. Past sixty-five, the American photographer Scott Offen publishes his first book, Grace, shortlisted for the 2026 Rencontres d’Arles Book Award. In this black-and-white fairy tale, his wife is no longer a muse to be gazed upon: old and free, she does not merely sit for these images, she signs them. June 17, 2026, by Guénola Pellen.

Lens-Culture: In their first artistic collaboration together, Scott Offen and his wife Grace explore ageing, gender and creativity through a seven-year portrait project shaped by intimacy and play. Interview by Sophie Wright.

Collater.al: Scott Offen Captures His Muse Between Myth and Nature, June 2026, By Anna Frattini

Photo Journel: Scott Offen — Grace, December 22, 2025

Previous exhibit: The Griffin Museum of Photography: Grace, Scott Offen, December 8 – February 28, 2026.

Shop Scotts Work Here

Grace is not simply a portrait of a woman, nor just a photobook by Scott Offen. It is the outcome of a deep, creative collaboration between two people—Scott and Grace—who have chosen to work together in building a visual universe that blurs the lines between subject and author, spontaneity and intention, real and imagined.

Grace is not a muse. She is a co-author. In each photograph, her presence is not posed but felt—embodied, natural, mysterious. Together, Scott and Grace construct images that echo myth and memory: a woman walking through forest light, a gesture lost in time, a house that feels like a sanctuary. Their shared vision opens new spaces for thinking about aging, femininity, freedom, and identity. — Lartiere

Grace is a seven-year collaborative project between my partner Grace and myself, within the context of a 41-year intimate relationship. Our photographs are made entirely together. The intimacy we share allows us to examine how an older woman, Grace, might question aging, representation, invisibility, gender, and autonomy. The work also seeks to understand how domestic spaces and the freedom of the outdoors illustrate or complicate this query. Whether inside or outside, Grace is always by herself. 

The fairy tale landscape functions in the work as more than a backdrop. Like Wonderland or Oz, the natural world is depicted by turns as odd, scary or humorous. It is a character, shaping the narrative structure of the work. Indoors, traces of Grace’s presence are strongly felt even if unseen. Outdoors, she moves alone through mythic scenery, inviting viewers to consider how identity is formed in relation to the natural world — Scott Offen, For Griffin.