Susan Lapides: Sea Change
Sea Change is a ten-year series in which 17 girls hold a live lobster. Many returned summer after summer. The portraits are lit with strobes and photographed along the Bay of Fundy.
Like the lobsters they hold—creatures that molt and regrow their shells—each subject undergoes a process of change.
There is a tension to holding any live animal, especially a lobster with moving legs and a tail that flaps unexpectedly. Some of the subjects appear cautious, others proud, and some nonchalant. One girl's father held the lobster for her, while others cradled it, squirmed, or raised it aloft. As the girls grow older, the lobster becomes less central, and the portraits increasingly trace who they are becoming.
The pose in these portraits—a girl holding a lobster—reimagines the familiar "big catch" photograph, now widespread on social media and dating apps, where men often pose with their trophies.
Across the series, individuality emerges through posture, clothing, makeup, and attitude. Some girls are barely recognizable from year to year. Others remain remarkably themselves, with the same stance and expression. All of them are learning to handle something alive, unpredictable, and a little bit dangerous.
Malachy, age 6
Malachy, age 7
Malachy, age 9
Malachy, age 11
Malachy, age 12
Malachy, age 14
Bio
Susan Lapides is an American photographic artist who creates time-based projects focusing on adolescence and place. Through her portraits and landscapes, she examines social, cultural and community issues.
Lapides earned her BA in Art History from Tufts University and the Museum of Fine Arts School. She had an extensive career as a professional editorial photographer working for national publications. She photographed President Barack Obama, then the first African American editor of the Harvard Law Review and Rose Kennedy on her 91st birthday. The most lifechanging assignment was meeting her future husband photographing for People Magazine.
Lapides exhibits her fine art photography nationally and internationally. Sea Change premiered at Sunbury Shores Art Centre in 2022 and will be exhibited at the Saint John Art Centre in 2025. Solo exhibits of her St. George series were at the Griffin Museum, Sunbury Shores and the Saint John Arts Centre and will be at Beaverbrook Musee de Beaux Arts in 2024.
Lapides is included in the Memory is a Verb Collective which is having four exhibits across the U.S. in 2023. Her awards include 2019 Critical Mass Finalist, and the Beth Block Juried Membership Honoraria from the Houston Center for Photography. Lapides was invited to participate in “Outspoken, Extended,” an invitational exhibit of nine women photographers. In addition, her photographs are often included in juried exhibitions.
Her photographs are in the permanent collections of the Fidelity Corporate Art Collection, and Cooke Aquaculture in New Brunswick, Canada as well as in many private collections. She resides in Boston, Massachusetts, USA and St. George in New Brunswick, Canada.