About the Artist

Anne Leighton Massoni, is a Specialist Professor of Photography, she joined the faculty at Monmouth University in 2008 to design and implement the new Photography Concentration and Minor. Prior to teaching at Monmouth she has held professorships at Marshall University, Cornell University, Tyler School of Art, Washington College and Memphis College of Art.

The act of remembering is what currently drives Massoni’s work. To visually navigate the stories in her mind… to remember stories that may not exist, to imagine stories not yet told. She utilizes both created images and found imagery to present to the viewer this place between truth and fiction. The images themselves reinforce the concepts of memory and often use mnemonic elements and notions of artifact to represent an underlying story which touches on the personal while still attempting the collective. The concept is rooted in the details presented… sometimes revealing and yet often holding secret. There is truth in her tales but not necessarily a truth of hers alone. There is a sense of shared ideas but uncertainty as to the origin of the authorship of those ideas. This place between revealing and holding secret is what she’s after… Massoni is interested in its intangibility. She is searching for that which we experience and cannot express… evidence of memory, evidence of experience, evidence of existence.

Each body of work, regardless of the disparity in appearance is motivated by the same underlying themes and ideas. With different approaches in medium and minor variances in concept Massoni is able to work with a consistent set of ideas over time. Whether she stages her images or appropriates and manipulates them, evidence of memory and the act of remembering consistently finds a place in her work.