Sea Change  /  Port Saint John Gallery  /  July 4 – August 29, 2025

Artist Statement

‘Sea Change’ is a ten year series of annual portraits that began as a study of 17 girls growing up in a small Atlantic Canadian town. Standing by the Bay of Fundy’s vast, tidal expanse, the subjects face the camera as they take stock of and pose with a lobster. Some of the subjects appear cautious, others proud, and some nonchalant—subtly revealing facets of their character.

The lobster is a symbol of their coastal, close knit community, where fishing has sustained life for millennia and now supports global markets.

Like the lobsters they hold—creatures that molt and regrow their shells—each individual undergoes their own process of change from childhood to adolescence and into adulthood.

Sea Change is a meditation on time, identity, and the forces of family, place, and culture that shape us.

Biography

Susan Lapides is an American photographic artist who creates time-based projects exploring adolescence, community, and sense of place. Through her portraits and landscapes, she examines social and cultural issues, capturing the intricate connections between people and their environment.

Based in Boston MA and St. George, New Brunswick, Canada, Lapides earned her BA in Art History from Tufts University and the Museum of Fine Arts School. She developed her sense of color, composition, and style during her early career as an editorial photographer, fulfilling a wide variety of assignments for national magazines such as Smithsonian, Life, Time, Forbes, and The New York Times. She photographed many luminaries including President Barack Obama, then the first African American editor of the Harvard Law Review and Rose Kennedy on her 91st birthday

Lapides exhibits her fine art photography nationally and internationally, with solo shows in New Brunswick’s Beaverbrook Art Gallery, who also published her book St. George: ebb and flow, Saint John Arts Centre, and Sunbury Shores, and Boston’s Griffin Museum of Photography. Her work is featured in many group exhibitions such as New York’s Foley Gallery, Los Angeles’ Brand Library & Art Center, the Boston Fence and San Diego’s Oceanside Museum. She is recognized in the Critical Mass Top 200 in 2019 and 2024. Her projects are highlighted in publications such as “What Will You Remember,” “Frames,” “Maclean’s,” and “Maritime Edit.” Her photographs are in public collections, including the Beaverbrook Art Gallery and The Tides Institute and Art Museum, the Fidelity Corporate Art Collection in Boston, as well as numerous private collections.