Lida Suchy
Directing
Biography
Lida Suchy chronicles communities through portraiture. She is a first-generation American, born into a refugee family and often draws on this background as inspiration for her creative work. She earned a BA in cultural anthropology from SUNY Albany, an MA from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communication and an MFA from the Yale University School of Art. Lida taught photography at Rochester Institute of Technology and Hartwick College, she has led master workshops in the USA, Italy and Ukraine. She currently teaches at Onondaga Community College and mentors students both at home and abroad. In recognition of her creative work, Lida’s awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Fulbright Scholarship, a Light Work Artist Residency and a Light Work Grant, a NYSCA Grant, an ArtsLink Grant, and an International Research and Exchanges Fellowship. Lida has exhibited in galleries in the USA and Europe. Her work is included in public collections at the Brooklyn Museum, Bibliothèque Nationale, George Eastman Museum, the Franko Museum, Kryvorivnya, Ukraine and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Known For
Vignettes of life in the village Kryvorivnya in the Carpathian Mountains of Ukraine, where once the novel "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors" was written and later filmed and where, to this day, the passage of time has its own pace.
Pictograph
An ocean stood between Baba and her grandson, so she did the only thing she could: she became a whale and swam to him.
Transmitting Baba
When I first arrived in America, (from my native Slovakia), I neither spoke nor understood a word of English and I soon found myself in the position of a mute creature. Perhaps it was this experience of muteness that inspired me to make a film about America from the perspective of a creature that neither speaks nor understands this country’s language or ways. Dogs can’t speak, but they can tell a lot about the society in which they live. About Dogs and People is an account of my journey across America to explore its’ canine culture. The film is made in the form of an essay: it uses authentic footage, but presents the material in a subjective way. Derived from my experience with non-verbal communication, the film “speaks” through imagery, using the vocabulary of archetypal gesture, tone, melody and rhythm.
About Dogs And People
A love letter told through still photographs
A Short Film for Lida
A film about homes on both sides of an ocean.
Home Movie: A Diary for my American-Born Son
An intimate meditation on exile and home, Prysia’s Garden portrays the quiet life of aging Ukrainian refugee Prysia through the detailed photographic lens of first-generation Ukrainian-American Lida Suchy. By confronting Prysia’s story, Lida reflects upon her own roots, looking to understand what makes a new place a home.