The Griffin Museum of Photography presents Portraits of Solidarity: Photographing Community and Resilience, an online panel bringing together Yorgos Efthymiadis, Susie Coehlo, Zahra Warsame, and Will Lee.
This panel will explore photography's capacity to build connection and solidarity through shared experience. Efthymiadis will reflect on his project, The First Ones In Line, and the relationships that shaped access to its participants, while Coehlo, Warsame, and Lee, will speak to their work as organizers and the stakes of representation within labor movements.
Together, the panelists will open toward a broader call to action, inviting audiences to consider how engagement, advocacy, and collective attention can extend the impact of these images beyond the frame.
The First Ones In Line(2024-ongoing)
Earlier this year I saw for the first time ICE agents walk down my street. During my fourteen years living in the United States, I have never felt such paralysis and frustration as an immigrant. As families are separated and workers are snatched on their way to the job, people retreat in fear into their homes and close their doors. Immigrant workers become even more invisible than they already were. The First Ones In Line are unionized workers who, instead of retreating, decide now, more than ever, that they must be out in front.
My partner is a labor organizer with the Boston Local of Unite Here, the hotel and food service workers' union. Over the years, I have walked on many strikes and rallies, alongside housekeepers, doormen, cooks, waiters and dishwashers fighting for better pay and dignity on the job. I developed a relationship with many of them.
Generations of photographers have captured compassionate portraits of workers nobly toiling in uniform, or on the picket line heraldically giving speeches. I want to showcase a unique perspective -- their individuality. I strive to portray the quiet parts: the workers in their homes, how they live, with their families. Each of my subjects has overcome incredible obstacles to get here and make a life for themselves. Each of my subjects has been part of a union fight, transforming who they are as individuals even as they unify with their coworkers. They are the best of fighters. They are irascible, brilliant, charismatic. They challenge authority, lead their coworkers out on strike, and refuse to take no for an answer. Most importantly, they know how to bring people together.
About the Panelists
Susie Coehlo has worked for 22 years as a telephone operator at the Hilton Logan, where her mother, Maria, worked as well as a housekeeper. In 2024 she led her coworkers in contract negotiations and also out on strike for 23 days at her hotel.
Zahra Warsame is an organizer with Unite Here Local 26. She has worked for 20 years in the dining halls at Tufts University, where she led her coworkers in a historic vote in 2018 to form the union and win a first contract. She then went on to organize hotel workers on their citywide strike in 2024.
Will Lee is an Organizing Director with Unite Here Local 26. He helped organize hotel worker strikes in 2018 and 2024 that won record setting wages in the hospitality industry. He now organizes with non-union hotel, food service, airport and casino workers seeking to unionize their workplaces.
Yorgos Efthymiadis is a visual artist and an independent curator from Greece who resides in Somerville, MA. He is a 2025 Foster Prize Winner (Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston) and a recipient of Collective Futures Fund 2025 Grant (The Warhol Foundation). Efthymiadis is a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow (2025, 2017), a St. Botolph Club Foundation Fellow (2017), and was represented by Gallery Kayafas until its closure in 2024.
Efthymiadis finds it very fulfilling to help fellow photographers and give back to the photographic community. He has served as a board member of Somerville Arts Council and Chair of the Visual Arts Fellowship Grants from 2017 to 2025, and has been a reviewer for the Lenscratch Student Prize since 2023. In 2015 he created a gallery in his own kitchen, titled The Curated Fridge. The idea behind this project is to celebrate fine art photography and connect photographers with established and influential curators, gallerists, publishers and artists from around the world through free, quarterly curated calls. During its 11 years of exhibitions, The Curated Fridge has featured more than 1500 artists in 45 shows juried by 50 guest curators.