Recent Work by Lydia Panas
"These photographs are about relationships. They explore how we see ourselves. They try to describe the stories we reveal. I invite people to stand in front of the camera and watch to see what happens. My subjects are people I know, family, friends, and acquaintances. Mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, brothers, sisters, couples, friends. I look at the details. I watch their postures, gestures, glances. It is a combination of strength and vulnerability that makes me respond. They are complex emotions that guide us. Sometimes what we try to conceal is the most revealing. I am interested in what we know, but do not see, as the familiar becomes commonplace. Relationships are complicated. We are at our best when we are learning who we are. My intention with this series is to show us ourselves." Text by Lydia Panas.

Lydia is an artist/teacher with the MFA program at Vermont College, and the Baum School of Art/Lehigh Carbon Community College. She has received secondary degrees from Boston College, The School of Visual Arts and New York University/International Center of Photography.

She has exhibited widely throughout the United States. She is currently gaining attention in Europe and China. This summer, 2008, she was included in the INTRUDE: Art & Life project sponsored by Zendai Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai. In 2008 Lydia was selected as a finalist in Photolucida’s Critical Mass Book Competition. In 2008, she also received a Puffin Foundation Grant, a John Anson Kittredge Grant, and was a fourth time recipient of the Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts Grant for public projects.

Lydia was one of nine artists to be selected by FotoFest for the International Discoveries exhibit in 2007. She also received First Place in the Texas Photographic Society competition, along with a Curator’s Distinction at the Houston Center for Photography and an Honorable Mention in the Silver Eye Fellowship Competition. Lydia’s work was exhibited in Photography Now 2006 at the Woodstock Center for Photography. In 2006 she was also one of eight artists invited to the Photo Biennial portfolio reviews in England. Lydia was an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada in 2004, and is a recipient of a Whitney Museum Independent Study Fellowship.

Her work is included in numerous collections including Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Allentown Art Museum, Center for Photography at Woodstock, Lehigh University, Muhlenberg College, the Maine Photographic Workshops and numerous private collections She has taught at numerous institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, Lafayette, Muhlenberg, Moravian and Cedar Crest Colleges, Kutztown University and the Maine Photographic Workshops.