MAUREEN DRENNAN
DREAMLAND
solo exhibition
Feb 6 - Mar 15, 2025
Opening: Thursday, Feb 6, 6pm
Field Projects is proud to present DREAMLAND, a solo exhibition by Maureen Drennan. For the past 18 years, Drennan has used photography to connect with overlooked communities. In one project, she formed a bond with a reclusive pot farmer in Northern California. In another, she explored the paradox of life in Broad Channel, Queens—a small island community shaped by water, vulnerable to storms and tides, yet just miles from New York City. While residents cherish their waterfront lifestyle, climate change is threatening the delicate balance between community and nature. In these long term projects Drennan gives us access to unseen complexities and hidden beauties in their everyday lives. In DREAMLAND, Drennan takes us to the center of the carnival, where colors, smells and sounds blur into euphoria and promises are given over distorted bull horns.
In her own words;
The fairgrounds are a temporary geography of dizzying color, gaudy tents, and the unrestrained noise of games and rides. There is a permanent haze of smoke from grilled meat and the scent of fried dough, stale popcorn, and warm sugar is ever present. The carneys, with their gruff, rock and roll voices, sweating through their shirts, beckon to the crowd with promises of prizes. The ferris wheel groans and creaks while riders on the fast-moving tilt-a-whirl scream with joy. Everything shimmers with a kind of manic energy, an attempt to grasp at fleeting moments of pleasure. You can feel the pulse of it, the frantic energy, the need for escape, or perhaps just for the illusion of it.
Amongst this chaos, I rely on the generosity of strangers and draw inspiration from the people I meet and photograph. I’m in no rush—if we talk for a while before I make a photo, that’s fine. You never know what they’ll share.
I’ve heard countless stories from fair workers. One man told me how he got into a fight, was stabbed, and yet he was the one who ended up in prison for four years. When he was released, still in his early twenties, he saw the familiar pull of old habits—drugs, crime—dragging him back into a life that no longer fit. Then the carnival came to town, bringing with it a sense of possibility—a chance to start fresh, he has been with the same carnival since 1988.
Another man I met carried a quiet, Buddha-like wisdom in his demeanor—generous, patient, always smiling. His past was filled with a multitude of lives: among them, he had been a sex worker. He chose the carnival, drawn to its fleeting rhythms and the sense of belonging it offered, something the outside world couldn’t provide.
The carnival, in its transient nature, offers a kind of reinvention, a space where the past is no longer a weight.
Maureen Drennan is a photographer born and based in New York City. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Museum of the City of New York, National Portrait Gallery, JFK, Tacoma Art Museum, Aperture, Transmitter, Mrs. Gallery, and Centotto. Her images have been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, California Sunday Magazine, The Atlantic, Huffington Post, Photograph Magazine, UK Telegraph, Refinery 29, and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.
She teaches photography at LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City.
