Silver Eye

Fellowship 2020 Keystone Award winner Erik Hagen's exhibition Team Member uses staged photography and poetic text to explore his personal experience working in a large chain grocery store. The artist playfully and painfully records the physical and psychological effects of this environment, the feeling of losing one's identity in the face of corporate dogma, and the unrelenting desires of the customer.

Fellowship is Silver Eye's international juried photography competition. For twenty years this competition has recognized both rising talent and established photographers from all corners of the globe, and from the state of Pennsylvania. This year, Silver Eye received over two hundred submissions of creative, challenging photography. The Keystone Award is awarded to an artist working within working and living within the state of Pennsylvania. Erik Hagen's work was selected by Dan Leers, Curator of Photography at the Carnegie Museum of Art

Participating Artist

1. Erik Hagen (b. 1985) explores the physical and psychological landscapes of low-wage service workers through personal documentary, staged photographs, and narrative text. The images—made during the artist’s time working those same jobs—examine sense of self, inner monologue, and the monotony of daily life.

   Hagen received his Master of Fine Arts from the University of Hartford, and has been awarded the Silver Eye Center for Photography Keystone Fellowship (2020) and the Hannes Wanderer Award (2019). His book They Name a Street After Him_, based on his experience driving a taxi in Los Angeles was published as part of the Penumbra Foundation Risograph Print & Publication Residency (2021). He is originally from the Gulf Coast of Florida and currently lives in Lancaster, PA.