Regional Workspace Residency

September 14 – December 14, 2026

Louis Ressel is an emerging artist and works as a commercial photographer with local Rochester businesses and festivals such as CineStill Film, City Magazine and the Rochester Cocktail Revival. As a Guatemalan adoptee raised in Rochester, Louis will use their time in residency to create a body of work that focuses on their personal process of reconciliation with their birthplace, Guatemala.

Louis Ressel will be working on a project entitled, In Search of Sandra. It will be a photographic exploration of his identity as a transnational adoptee.

“’In Search of Sandra’ is a photographic body of work that I have been wanting to create for my whole artistic life and feel is the most important endeavor to my life’s journey. It ties to my identity as an artist and as a human, and the journey I’m going to be embarking on in search of my own identity in the world at large is something I think everyone can relate to.

Through my photographic work I’d like to explore themes of identity, otherness and belonging, family, color and space, love, and the universal truths. 

‘In Search of Sandra’ comes from the first tattoo I got when I was 18 years old. My birth mother’s name is Sandra, and I feel that the simple phrase is my entire life in a few words.”