Still from Wrestling (2002), by Jen DeNike

(Photo: Frank Schwere)

Jen DeNike
Photographer and Video Artist
As a student in photographer Stephen Shore’s master class at Bard, DeNike captured the Hudson Valley landscape with an eight-by-ten view camera. Less idyllic beauty now interests the young shutterbug, who has appeared in group shows all over town (six in the past year alone) and earned a spot in the Bronx Museum’s Artist in the Marketplace program, which helps young artists learn to position themselves in the art world. Her video projections in “Greater New York” show high-school boys wrestling. An ongoing series (popular with major collectors like David Raymond, Bernard Lumpkin, Carmine Boccuezi, and Carlton de Woody) portrays teen vampire-attack victims; the perpetrator is nowhere in sight. “It’s the photographer,” she says, grinning to reveal a gap between her front teeth. “I’m the vampire.”