Melonie Bennett, Wyatt removing the mask, 2019, Pigment print, 13.5 x 19 inches, $1,750.

These photographs are part of an ongoing visual diary of my family and friends and the times we share with each other. Photography helps me process family dynamics and I tend to learn more about them as well. There is always a silver lining. I stopped by the farm to visit my mom and my nephew, Wyatt, happened to be there applying a mud mask - Not expected behavior from a 15 year old. This is what I thrive on. Watching him throughout this process was fun and the time waiting for the mask to dry led to his investigating his physique. - M. B.

Melonie Bennett is a Maine born photographer who has watched her family and friends through the lens of her camera for over 15 years. “My photography is an ongoing visual diary of my family and friends and the times we share together,” she writes in an artist’s statement. “I developed my point of view growing up on a diary farm in Gorham, Maine.” The humor in her work, along with the deep affection she feels for her subjects, sets Bennett’s candid, black and white photographs apart from those of her documentation peers. These images are intimate invitations into the daily lives of one big boisterous rural Maine family. Bennett, who emerged on the Maine art scene in the mid 1990s, has exhibited throughout the state, in galleries in New York City, and around the Northeast.