March 26, 2025 marked 10 years since Jaroslaw Studencki ended his own life. Jaro was a photo-based artist poised to complete his MFA from the University of South Florida in the spring of 2015. He 

lived for 27 years, beloved by his USF peers and mentors & broader communities of friends and family in Tampa, Illinois, Poland, and beyond, and thus endures through our memory. The life of his artwork, 

too, is deserving of continuity. Jaro s portraits and pauses were approached with mutual vulnerability between photographer and subject, a tacit awareness of the mediation and power exchange in the 

making of any photograph, and a desire to visualize desire (not necessarily one predicated on lack, but on the production of meaning through longing, glimpses of shared understanding, and the 

limitations of empathy). This exhibition of Jaro s photographs is the first solo retrospective of his work. The passing of a decade seems an apt time to revive Jaro s work here in one of his homes, so that it 

might be experienced by the community who remembers him deeply and by those encountering it anew, during a collective moment when seeing others for the fullness of their humanity is ever more 

urgent.



Gallery hours are by appointment only. Please email cassidysantos@usf.edu to make an appointment, or call the School of Art and Art History at 813-974-2360. The gallery is free and open 

to the public.