All About Photo has selected the best photo exhibitions on show right now, special events and must-see photography exhibits. To focus your search, you can make your own selection of events by states, cities and venues.
This exhibition explores the commodification of athletic bodies. Bringing two projects into dialogue, Katinka Herbert delves into the lives of Mexican wrestlers and Cuban athletes. In doing so, her images capture the dilemma of physical performance: a tense relationship between economic necessity and the human form.
While some athletes experience their bodies as vehicles of financial stability and international travel, many grapple with unpredictable incomes, visa barriers, and the looming threat of career-ending injuries. As such, ‘Bodies of Work’ is a study of precarious labor. Here, lives that are ordinarily defined by movement are frozen in the photographic frame. Their muscles resonate with tension and potential; their poses strain under personal and political weight.
‘Slam’ This project offers unprecedented access to the stars of the Mexican wrestling scene. Notoriously secretive about their true identities, it follows these hyper-masculine stars from the drama of the ring to the intimacy of their own homes. Eight years in the making, Slam is a story of trust. In documenting each costumed character, the project unmasks their private lives and alter-egos. Because concealed behind each disguise, many legends of Lucha Libre are a mess. Their foreheads are covered in scar tissue, their lives are marked by self-harm. This series brings a dignified lens to the characters hidden behind a uniquely Mexican ritual of performance, spectacle and machismo.
‘The Movers’ This project explores the subject of mobility through portraits of Cuba’s top athletes. Their lives are dictated by movement: running, dancing, leaping and jumping. For a lucky few, this opens up new kinds of mobility – geographic, economic and social. But most of them remain trapped: frozen inside a communist regime. The Movers captures this dilemma. Each subject is perfectly motionless within the frame. Each static body resonates with tension and potential. Their bodies are either a means of escape – a ticket to freedom – or the very obstacle to it.
This exhibition invites us to consider the labor conditions that determine the lives of professional athletes, and the economic architectures that construct their performing bodies. These are bodies under tension: suspended between action and transaction, poised between freedom and constraint.
KatinKa Herbert – Katinka is a commercial portrait photographer based in London. Her projects explore identity, performance and extroversion. Brought up among filmmakers and circus performers, she is fascinated by characters who visibly manufacture their own identities: wrestlers, cross-dressers, movie stars and burlesque dancers. Her work is highly-constructed, immersing her subjects in a world of seduction, theatre and enigmatic humor.
This approach has fueled a highly-acclaimed career in commercial portraiture, capturing A-listers from Beyonce to Brian Blessed, Hulk Hogan to Heston Blumenthal. Alongside these assignments, she regularly works on commission for clients such as Adidas, English National Opera, Coutts, Casely-Hayford, Iris Worldwide, Gillette, Jaguar Land Rover, Dazed & Confused, The Observer, Guardian, Telegraph, The Times, Wunderman Thompson and Martin Agency.
Her accolades include a catalog of international award shows. Recent highlights include Portrait of Humanity (2019), Portrait of Britain ( 2018), IPA Lucie awards (2018), Taylor Wessing shortlist (2018), LensCulture (2018), SIPA (2018), AOP Open (2017) and the Royal Photographic Society International Photography Exhibition (2017) Finalist in the Sony World Photography Awards (2020) and Shortlisted for the Alpha Female Award, Sony World Photography Awards (2020).
Marlborough New York is pleased to present Nightlife, a group exhibition featuring iconic images by six of the most prominent photographers of the twentieth century whose images all celebrate the nocturnal hours of city life. Featuring works by Berenice Abbott, Brassaï, Bill Brandt, Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, and Weegee, this exhibition unites photographs which capture underground subcultures, illicit activities, subversive fashions, and those otherwise existing on the fringes of society searching for hedonistic escapism. Ultimately, Nightlife will pay homage to the joyous freedoms experienced from dusk to dawn.
Working in Paris and London respectively, Brassaï and Bill Brandt captured the joie de vivre of night-goers in the 1930s, as the recent invention of the flashbulb allowed for the new genre to be possible. Brassaï would often walk around the city at night, carrying his camera, tripod, magnesium flash powder and a box of 24 glass plate negatives to photograph Parisian nightlife. Wandering the dimly lit streets, he captured the excessive nightlife of the demi-monde in bars and brothels, creating a unique visual topography of the city and a colorful chronicle of its subcultures. Inspired by Brassaï’s Paris de Nuit published in 1936, Brandt’s second photobook, A Night in London, chronicles the events transpired on a London evening out, oscillating between capturing a variety of social classes. Interested in shadows, Brandt often used the darkroom to alter his photographs in decisive ways, using the “day for night” technique employed by cinematographers to transform images photographed in daylight into night scenes.
New York-based photographers Berenice Abbott and Weegee employed a documentarian approach when photographing their nighttime scenes. Abbott is most notable for her book Changing New York, which documents the modern skyscrapers, harbors, highways, city squares, neighborhoods, storefronts of New York City as it swiftly evolved. On view in this exhibition will be New York at Night, one of the most iconic images featured in Changing New York which depicts an aerial view looking north on New York’s West Side. Taking a bleaker approach, legendary news photographer Weegee would listen to a police scanner radio installed in his 1938 Chevrolet in order to arrive first at crime scenes to produce gruesome, yet compassionate, photographs of murders, fires, car accidents, burglaries, and brawls.
With a penchant for eccentric trends influenced by nightlife subcultures, Helmut Newton and Irving Penn both produced fashion photography for Vogue magazine. As one of fashion’s most prolific photographers, Newton is most notable for his provocative images which draw from influences such as film noir, Expressionist cinema, S & M, and surrealism. Penn’s fashion photography exercised a more pared-down aesthetic, often staging his motifs in front of white backdrops with minimal lighting.
Nightlife celebrates a pivotal period in the history of photography, when the medium firmly established its position as an independent art form. The show also pays tribute to the critical role Marlborough played at the forefront of exhibiting photography during the 1970s and 80s. Many of the photographs on view have not been seen in decades and are from the gallery’s extensive collection. Marlborough’s program continues to highlight historical shows and artist estates alongside leading contemporary artists.
Jack Shainman Gallery is pleased to present Born Black, an exhibition of Gordon Parks’s photographs—curated in collaboration with The Gordon Parks Foundation. This presentation is inspired by the 1971 book Gordon Parks: Born Black, A Personal Report on the Decade of Black Revolt 1960-1970, which brought together a collection of essays and photographs by Parks that were originally created for Life magazine. Translating the essential themes of the text into an exhibition, Jack Shainman explains, “We seek to commemorate Parks’s ground-breaking 1971 anthology, and the enduring impact of his photographs and writing today. This exhibition is an act of expansion—presenting both seminal and lesser-known works from his renowned photographic series, offering contemporary meditations on his incisive eye and insightful prose.”
Gathered in this presentation are images that were featured in, relate to, and extend beyond the photographs illustrated alongside the nine essays in Born Black. In each photo essay, it is clear that Parks’s images capture momentous scenes that exceed the limitations of language, and simultaneously, the frankness of his prose grounds the accompanying images with vital sociopolitical context and his personal perspective. Through his photography and writing—but also clear in his films, literature, and musical compositions—Parks demonstrated the value of empathy and compassion when creating art. Before picking up his camera, he took a vested interest in getting to know his subjects when embarking on a new project, taking time to situate himself both on the frontlines and front porches of the events and lives he covered. Though positioned as an outsider with his camera and pen, as a Black man in America, Parks never shied away from incorporating his nuanced impressions and political solidarity with his subjects, nor did he conceal his personal investment in the experiences, movements, and history he depicted.
Situating himself between the mainstream and the radical, this selection of works display his efforts to portray Black Americans from youth to adulthood, a multigenerational archive that expresses the inextricable links between the urban and rural, the individual and communal, and the center and periphery. Whether anonymous or celebrated, each of his subjects prompts the viewer’s participation in critically contemplating what it means to be born into, to be shaped by, and to strive to reimagine life in the United States. His images hold both the force of who is represented and what is symbolized, like the memorialized portraits of Muhammad Ali, Stokely Carmichael, and Malcolm X shown alongside photographs of crowds gathering to protest against police brutality. In the final essay of the book, Parks reflects on his conversation with Eldridge Cleaver in which the Black Panther Party leader invited Parks to serve as their minister of information. In response, and reflection, he explained, “my interests go beyond those of the Black Panthers, to other minorities and factions of the black movement who want change…Looking back to that moment I find that I am displeased with my answer. I should have said: Both of us are caught up in the truth of the black man’s ordeal. Both of us are possessed by that truth which we define through separate experience. How we choose to act it out is the only difference. You recognize my scars and I acknowledge yours.” Parks was attuned to the importance of singular moments, everyday and monumental, in developing a comprehensive portrait of his time—a precise but inclusive vision of Black life in the twentieth-century.
This spring, Steidl, in partnership with The Gordon Parks Foundation, will release an expanded edition of Born Black that illuminates Parks’s vision for the book and offers deeper insight into the nine series within it through additional images, related manuscripts, and scholarly essays. Reflecting on the book’s enduring legacy, Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr., Executive Director of the Gordon Parks Foundation shares, “Born Black, the first book to unite Parks’s writing and photographs, illustrates his thorough effort to platform first-person narratives of Black lives and experiences across America at a time of unequivocal revolution. We are also pleased to include two new essays by renowned critics Jelani Cobb and Nicole R. Fleetwood.”
As one of America's most notable documentary photographers, Dorothea Lange offers a compelling glimpse into a pivotal period in American history. Marked by the Great Depression (1929-1939) and the tumultuous years leading up to World War II (1939-1945), this exhibition displays Lange's seamless ability to capture the essence of human experience in times of profound hardship. The photographs in this exhibition – selected from the Oakland Museum of California's Dorothea Lange Archive and the United States Library of Congress – showcase Lange's unwavering commitment to documenting history. Focused on the impacts of life in California, these photographs reveal Dust Bowl migrants, braceros (Mexican laborers brought to the U.S. as seasonal agricultural workers), and life within the migrant labor camps.
Image: Filipinos cutting lettuce. Salinas, California, 1935
Born in 1963 in the South Bronx, Joe Conzo Jr. acquired a passion for photography as a young boy. By some combination of luck and circumstance, as a teenager Joe found himself at the very center of cultural and activist movements changing the Bronx. His father was the personal confidant of Tito Puente, promoting some of the biggest salsa shows of that time; his grandmother, Evelina López Antonetty, was a community activist known as the Hell Lady of the Bronx; and Joe’s classmates at South Bronx High School were literally birthing the culture of Hip Hop.
Starting at the age of 10, Joe began to carry his camera daily, photographing everything from school walkouts, to the infamous fires ravaging the Bronx, to rap battles between the Cold Crush Brothers and other foundational Hip Hop groups. Forty-five years later, Joe’s images provide an unmatched and intimate document of the complex forces that created today’s Bronx.
The silver gelatin prints in this exhibition were created at the BDC from Joe Conzo’s original negatives generously loaned by Cornell University.
We are pleased to share our next exhibition with our friend and photographer, Steve McCurry, will open this January. “Steve McCurry: The Endless Traveler” will be on view January 27th - April 27th, 2024 at the gallery alongside our concurrent exhibition, "Jeffrey Conley, An Ode to Nature".
“Steve McCurry: The Endless Traveler” will feature a selection of Steve's greatest images from across the world, that have touched the hearts and minds of so many. Iconic images will include Steve McCurry's Afghan Girl, which graced the cover of National Geographic in 1985. We look forward to this exhibition, and encourage our audience to RSVP to our opening reception below.
Peter Fetterman Gallery is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition, "Jeffrey Conley: An Ode to Nature" featuring the remarkable works of photographer Jeffrey Conley. The exhibition, opening on January 27th, 2024, promises to transport viewers to a world where nature's beauty takes center stage.
"Jeffrey Conley: An Ode to Nature” is a retrospective showcase of Jeffrey Conley’s exceptional career up to the present. Currently residing in the Willamette Valley, Oregon, Conley’s ability to capture the essence of nature is unparalleled..
Conley is also a master printer, with each photographic print a testament to his meticulous craftsmanship and exacting standards. He works in multiple processes which include traditional gelatin silver darkroom processes, platinum palladium prints and archival pigment prints on Japanese Kozo paper..
The exhibition will feature a carefully curated selection of Conley’s most recognizable works, as well as some new images, never exhibited before. "Jeffrey Conley: An Ode to Nature" promises to be a must-see event for nature lovers and photography enthusiasts. The exhibition at Peter Fetterman Gallery will be on view between January 27th to April 27th, 2024 at Peter Fetterman Gallery, located in Santa Monica, CA.
oseph Bellows Gallery is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition, Sage Sohier: Passing Time. This solo exhibition will feature a remarkable selection of black and white photographs from Sohier's recently published Nazraeli Press monograph of the same title. The show will run from February 17th - April 27th, with a reception and book signing with the artist from 5-7pm, on Saturday the 17th of February. This will be the artist’s second solo exhibition at the gallery.
The images that comprise the exhibition are drawn from the photographer’s compelling and kindhearted portraits made between 1979-85 of people living in working class and ethnic neighborhoods in her hometown, as well as in the towns she visited each summer during her annual road trips through the eastern and southern regions of the country. The exhibition will showcase both a selection of vintage gelatin silver prints, as well as 16 x 20 inch modern gelatin silver prints, which are the result of the photographer revisiting her archive of negatives and contact sheets from the early 1980s where she discovered a trove of captivating images that had never been printed. Of the work, Sohier observes, “ I noticed a kind of relaxed sensuality in many of the pictures. A kind of theater of the streets emerged”. Sage Sohier has been photographing people in their environments for more than 30 years, and has been awarded fellowships from the No Strings Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation in recognition of her work.
Sohier received her B.A. from Harvard University and has taught photography at Wellesley College, Massachusetts College of Art, and Harvard University. Her work is included in numerous public and private collections, including those of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Cleveland Museum of Art; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; Portland Museum of Art; and the Brooklyn Museum. Books by the artist include: Perfectible Worlds (Photolucida, 2007), About Face (Columbia College Chicago Press, 2012), At Home With Themselves: Same-Sex Couples in 1980's America (Spotted Books, 2014), Witness to Beauty, Kehrer Verlag, 2016), Americans Seen, (Nazraeli Press, 2017), Animals (Stanley/Barker, 2019), and Peaceable Kingdom (Kehrer Verlag, 2021) and Passing Time, (Nazraeli Press, 2024).
Pace is pleased to present an exhibition of work by Josef Koudelka at its 540 West 25th Street gallery in New York.
On view from March 29 to April 27, this will be the artist’s first solo show in New York in nearly a decade, bringing together six large-scale panoramas he created between 1987 and 2010 as part of a project titled Industries. The exhibition will also include a display of small-scale, accordion-style maquettes of Mission Photographique Transmanche, Beyrouth Centre Ville, The Black Triangle, Reconnaissance-Wales, Lime Stone, Teatro del Tempo, Camargue, Piemonte, WALL, Ruins, and Solac. This presentation at Pace coincides with the release of Josef Koudelka: Next, the definitive and only authorized biography of the artist, published by Aperture. The book will be available for purchase on-site at the gallery during the run of the exhibition.
Born in Czechoslovakia in 1938, Koudelka trained as an aeronautical engineer but began photographing Romani people—their everyday lives, their struggles, and their traditions—mainly in central European countries in the early 1960s, making a full-time commitment to photography later that decade. In 1968, he photographed the Soviet invasion of Prague, publishing his works under the initials P.P. (Prague photographer). Koudelka, who was anonymously awarded the Overseas Press Club’s Robert Capa Gold Medal for those photographs, left Czechoslovakia seeking political asylum in England, with assistance from the Magnum Photos cooperative, in 1970. His first book, Gypsies, was released by Aperture in 1975, and he has since produced more than a dozen publications of his work.
Koudelka’s interest in the social and political dimensions of photography, evident in his earliest bodies of work, would endure through the following decades. He has been working in large-format, panoramic photography since 1986, capturing images of changing landscapes around the world—places that have been reshaped, altered, and in some cases devastated by the effects of industry, time, and war.
Adopting a semi-nomadic lifestyle in pursuit of documenting these haunting, elegiac scenes, Koudelka produced deeply interconnected bodies of work that speak to the ways that the weight of history lingers within the natural world. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the artist photographed the Berlin Wall; the streets of Beirut immediately following the Lebanese Civil War; outsized industrialization and pollution in the Black Triangle, a border region between Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic; the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland; and other places forever transformed by sociopolitical turmoil, violence, and environmental destruction.
Also among Koudelka’s famous panoramic projects are his Ruins series, for which he photographed more than 200 archeological sites across Greece, Italy, Libya, Syria, and other countries between 1991 and 2015, and his body of work on Israel’s West Bank Wall, which he created over the course of seven trips to Israel and Palestine between 2008 and 2012.
“The face of the wounded landscape—it is marked by trouble, by suffering,” Koudelka tells his biographer, Melissa Harris. “It is the same as the face of people who have a difficult life. I am interested in real people, real faces ... In this wounded landscape, I admire the fight for survival ... Nature is stronger than man.”
The artist’s upcoming exhibition with Pace in New York, his first solo show in the city since 2015, will be presented on the gallery’s seventh floor against sweeping views of the Chelsea skyline. Measuring some nine feet in width, each of the six monumental panoramas that Koudelka has selected for the exhibition—captured across the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Azerbaijan, and Israel between 1987 and 2010—tells a different story.
We are delighted to present the first exhibition in the United States, of Dutch photographer David van Dartel. The exhibition is presented in collaboration with Elliott Gallery, Amsterdam.
This Time Tomorrow brings together a selection of ten color photographs from two of the photographer’s acclaimed projects—On Vlieland and What Once Was—that explore an intimate portrayal of friendship and masculinity.
Initially exploring and documenting his close circle of friends on Vlieland, a remote island in the north of The Netherlands, Van Dartel then photographed subjects as he travelled across several European countries; constructing a vivid portrait of young adults, and raising questions about male friendship and the classical discourse of masculinity.
The photographs portray young men, located in soft, quiet landscapes, isolated from the external noise and distractions of society. Although stylized and constructed, the immense power of the photographs come from their success in conveying emotion across a succession of itimate scenes.
CLAMP is pleased to present The Colossus, an exhibition of photographs by Ian Lewandowski, the artist’s second solo show in New York.
Lewandowski collects source imagery like a bird canvasing for materials to build a nest. The world that the artist documents and builds in his images is populated by the poses and visual artifacts of the past—from art, history, queer life, pornography, erotica, and Instagram.
Lewandowski moved from Indiana to New York in 2011 to study photography at the Pratt Institute clinging to a MTA subway map and a camera phone. Thirteen years post-arrival, Lewandowski no longer needs to carry the now crumpled and outdated map, and instead lugs around his large format camera and tripod.
Many of the photographs in The Colossus were created by the artist during the COVID-19 pandemic and trace the navigation between domestic and public spaces, and a complex negotiation between safety and exposure. The earlier images in the series, often shot in private interior spaces in New York, communicate a level of intimacy between the photographer and subject in a shielded collaborative environment.
During the lockdown, the artist was driven outdoors to maintain a level of comfort and safety for both him and his subjects—the public realm pierced the frame. Bedrooms became parks and the shrouded, intimate process the artist had been executing evolved into something that extended to the landscape of neighborhoods, and as an extension, the entire city.
In “Self Portrait on Studio Floor II (after Tabboo!),” Lewandowski sits on the floor holding a shutter release, shirtless, wearing only thermal long underwear. His torso is adorned in an array of tattoos, each with a distinct visual style and their own respective source materials. The artist’s pose is based on a painting by contemporary artist Tabboo! depicting the photographer, Mark Morrisroe.
Photographing friends, acquaintances, and strangers, Lewandowski makes his images as an inheritor and author of queer history and visual culture. In his reference of an image created through a collaboration of two artists and friends (Tabboo! and Morrisroe), Lewandowski is simultaneously memorializing a past instance of belonging and erecting a new structure for the photograph as blueprint through which to model one’s present and future. The Colossus presents a contemporary existence imbued with the contours and indentations of multiple histories.
The Colossus of Rhodes, a monument to the sun god Helios, was one of the seven manmade wonders of the ancient world before it collapsed. The Colossus was also the theme of an elaborate 2004 beach party in the Fire Island Pines, an event which disbanded when it began to rain and guests sought refuge at a competing indoor event.
Coinciding with Lewandowski’s exhibition at CLAMP, a risograph catalogue, designed by Liam Nolan and printed by TXTbooks (Brooklyn), will be released. There will be two hundred copies of a signed and numbered standard edition available for purchase during the run of the show as well as twenty copies of a special edition version. The special edition will be hand-bound by Sarah Smith and will include a signed and numbered gelatin silver print postcard, unique cyanotype cover, and a mini-pamphlet of Polaroid test shots from the body of work. Both versions of the publication include a foreword written by Nolan and a suite of poems by S. Eath.
Ian Lewandowski (b. 1990) is a photographer from Northwest Indiana. His first solo exhibition, Community Board, was exhibited at The Java Project in Brooklyn in 2019. The Ice Palace Is Gone, his body of large-format color portraits made from 2018-19, was published as his first monograph by Magic Hour Press (Montréal) in 2021. My Man Mitch, his body of photographs and photo-based material native to his home state of Indiana, was published by Kult Books (Stockholm) in 2022. He teaches undergraduate and continuing education courses in photography at The New School and Gowanus Darkroom and manages and prints the photo work of Kenny Gardner (1913-2002). He lives in Brooklyn with his husband, Anthony, and their dog named Seneca.
CLAMP is pleased to present “Networks—George Platt Lynes + PaJaMa,” an exhibition of photographs exploring the web of professional and personal relationships instrumental in the conception and reception of work by George Platt Lynes (1907-1955) and PaJaMa [Paul Cadmus (1904-1999), Jared French (1905-1988), and Margaret Hoening French (1906-1998)].
Photographer George Platt Lynes functioned as a nucleus in the highly interconnected world of New Yorkers, particularly in the 1940s. Moving between high fashion magazine publications, celebrity portraiture, dancers and choreographers, gallery and museum contacts, and the overlapping circles of fairly visible homosexuals of the day, Platt Lynes connected a wide range of individuals through both his professional and personal interactions.
Paul Cadmus, Jared French, and Margaret Hoening French, while primarily regarded as painters, collaborated extensively with the camera beginning in 1937 through the 1940s, and occasionally as late as 1957 under the moniker PaJaMa (comprised of the first syllable of each of their first names). Connected romantically and sexually (Paul Cadmus and Jared French were longtime lovers, while Jared and Margaret French were husband and wife), the ménage à trois often incorporated their social sphere into their photographs, including writer Glenway Wescott, his partner and MoMA coordinator Monroe Wheeler, actor Sandy Campbell, writer and editor Donald Windham, among many others. The photographs not only acted out psychological dramas among the three key players, the process of collaborative art making was a singular “type of game into which any member of their social circle was invited to enter.”(1)
In Body Language: The Queer Staged Photographs of George Platt Lynes and PaJaMa, the first critical study of George Platt Lynes and PaJaMa in tandem, scholars Nick Mauss and Angela Miller extensively discuss the employment of the artists’ extended social networks in the production of their photographic imagery, and the influence the artists projected onto one another. Mauss writes of Platt Lynes: “Fashion models, dancers, artists, assistants, choreographers, editors, curators, novelists, poets, ‘trade,’ and lovers pulsed in and out of the studio with a frequency that was matched only decades later by Andy Warhol’s Factory.”(2) For Platt Lynes, as with PaJaMa, the process of producing photographs was not a proprietary act of “singular originality,” but rather a “condition of play” to which both the photographer and his model claimed a certain degree of agency. The studio of Lynes represented “a space in which the intimate, the social, the imaginary, the commercial, and the personal coexisted.”(3)
Angela Miller discusses PaJaMa’s preferred practice of collaborative staging over “the decisive moment,” akin to the method by which Platt Lynes meticulously staged and lighted compositions in his studio. “PaJaMa’s stories had to be conveyed . . . through the expressive language of the body: through pose, gesture, expression, gaze, attitude, and spatial intervals; through props; and through dramatic stagings”(4), which is not dissimilar from the presentation of a dance, which so intrigued Platt Lynes throughout his life.
Further, PaJaMa’s triad found its mirror in Platt Lynes’s own sometimes stormy ménage à trois with Glenway Wescott and Monroe Wheeler, who lived together in a New York apartment and shared a weekend home in New Jersey, which was often visited by members of their New York circle.
Lastly, the photographs of Platt Lynes and PaJaMa were promoted and disseminated by the same networks involved in the art’s conception and production. Platt Lynes’s imagery was circulated through the pages of popular magazines as both editorial spreads and fashion shoots and well as advertisements; as prints on the walls of public museums and private galleries; in the pages of dance performance programs; and more quiet exchanges as gifts among friends as with his now celebrated male nudes. PaJaMa’s small scale photographic prints were handed out like “play things” or carte de visites, never intended for exhibition or sale. They were given to friends and members of a chosen family who would recognize and appreciate the interpersonal dynamics and tensions enacted and exorcized through calculated compositional strategies.
All of this is underpinned by exhaustive, solid scholarship by writers such as Allen Ellenzweig, whose astounding biography of George Platt Lynes was published by Oxford University Press in 2021(5). Ellenzweig will be presenting a talk on the life of work of Platt Lynes at the gallery on April 13th, toward the end of the exhibition.
Haines Gallery proudly presents Sea of Glass, an exhibition of new work by
San Francisco photographer John Chiara. Focusing on the dynamic forces
that continually re-shape the city, Sea of Glass features a striking new
body of work created during the Chiara’s recent residency on Treasure
Island—located in the waters separating San Francisco and Oakland—as
well as images made on nearby Yerba Buena Island and elsewhere along
the bay. The exhibition marks Chiara’s fourth solo exhibition with Haines.
Chiara describes his creative process as “part photography, part sculp-
ture, and part event.” Using large-scale cameras that he builds himself,
he prints directly onto photographic paper, controlling the exposure time
as he dodges, burns, and filters the images. The resulting works of art are
luminous and one-of-a-kind, inviting us to contemplate their content while
they point to the physical and chemical aspects of their creation.
In 2022, Chiara was invited by the San Francisco Arts Commission to
document changes being made to Treasure Island, a 400-acre man-
made island just minutes from the city. Originally constructed to host the
1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, Treasure Island is currently
in the midst of a massive, decades-long redevelopment plan. Mirroring
the conditions of its creation, the site’s narrative is once again one of
possibility and invention, shaped by complex socio-economic forces.
Chiara’s Treasure Island works reinterpret the experience of meandering
through a neighborhood that straddles the old and the new. Carefully
composed images of aged and industrial exteriors draw our attention to
shifting elements of the landscape and shed new light on seemingly non-
descript places. Navy Mound, Center of Treasure Island (2023) appears
at first glance like one of his oceanscapes, but the work’s horizon line
is marked by wire and nails, and glittering light reflects off of a crinkled
plastic tarp instead of water.
Other images combine the remaining wooded areas on Yerba Buena Island
with flora in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Exposing these prints for
a third time, Chiara turns the paper around and exposes it to sunlight,
allowing the unfiltered light to directly hit the back of the emulsion.
Elements of the landscape emerge and recede from these complex,
layered compositions. Dense with wildlife, they hint at how it might have felt to have experienced the island when it was still an Ohlone fishing
village called Tuchayune. They are also fictive landscapes, a place
that is both and neither, speaking to the subjectivity of our memories
and experience. Within these evocative, atmospheric photographs,
the changing light and fog so distinctive to San Francisco parallels
the story of a city in transition.
Sea of Glass also includes a selection of large-scale photographs of
San Francisco, shot from across the bay on Treasure Island, the city’s
skyline bisecting a wide expanse of sea and sky. These latest land-
scapes capture the effects of light and its movement, as it animates
the water’s surface or filters through dense clouds and marine layer.
Here, Chiara’s inventive methods yield images that subvert and refresh
our reading of these familiar, postcard-perfect vistas, as the stylistic
signatures of his process—uneven hand-cut edges, subtle chemical
streaking, tape marks, and the unexpected placement of recognizable
landmarks—lend a sense of disorientation and discovery.
Haines Gallery proudly presents Earth and Sky, a new exhibition with the celebrated photographer Linda Connor. Her 7th solo
exhibition at Haines, Earth and Sky will highlight seminal images from Connor's distinguished practice, reproduced as luminous
sublimation prints on aluminum.
''Above all, I’m interested in the power of imagery—in how a medium as factual as photography can evoke responses on the
border between the world we know, and the one we can’t.''
Throughout her career, Connor has traveled extensively with her 8x10 view camera, investigating remote landscapes and the
sacred and spiritual worlds across multiple continents. Her peripatetic approach to photography demonstrates a longstanding
interest in the relationship between systems of belief and the natural landscape, resulting in profound images of wide-ranging
subjects.
Bridging the terrestrial and the celestial, Earth and Sky includes images from Connor’s ongoing series Once the Ocean Floor,
which depicts the intricately jagged cliff faces in the mountainous Ladakh region in Northern India—carved over millennia
by the power of nature, as well as iconic images of the cosmos. In 1995, Connor began printing with the historic glass plate
negatives in the archives of California’s Lick Observatory, located at Mt. Hamilton just east of San Jose. Numbering in the
thousands, the Lick Observatory has one of the most extensive collections of glass plate negatives, most of which have not
been used to make prints since their original production in the late 19th century. In both cases, time—the latent subject of
every photograph—moves both backward and forward, as we traverse
its geological and astronomical aspects in order to locate ourselves
within a universe defined solely by flux.
In Connor's hands, the camera is not an instrument of precise control;
instead, she leaves her process open to unknown possibilities. She
usually makes unmetered exposures and has a proclivity for photo-
graphing in uncontrollable situations. What results are contemplative,
quietly powerful images invoke a sense of timelessness and invite us
to contemplate our place in the world, and emphasize the ethereal,
diffused light so signature to her imagery.
Gestures of Refusal: Black Photography and Visual Culture is no ordinary investigation of how we experience and render blackness visible.
Gestures of Refusal: Black Photography and Visual Culture is an exercise in the unconventional and the splendid—bringing attention to the ways that contemporary photographers wield the visual power of the camera to discern, behold, celebrate, and document people, places, events, collective memories, encounters, and other ever-present moments of blackness that refuse erasure.
From the invisible to the obvious, the mundane to the spectacular, the overlooked to the known, the erased to the remembered—the artists in this exhibition explore a range of photographic frequencies, styles, tenses, punctuation, and rhythmic scores creating new visual vocabularies for futurity.
Curated by Shana M. griffin, Gestures of Refusal will feature five immersive installations and over 180 photographs and objects covering a spectrum of narrative styles, compositions, techniques, and approaches, showcasing the photographs of nearly one hundred contemporary Black photographers with ties to New Orleans from the 1950s to the present.
Exhibition coincides with the publication of Metamorphosis, a monograph published by The Grenfell Press with an Artist Conversation with Lesley M. M. Blume and a short story by Colm Tóibín.
“I’m interested in what makes up our essence as human beings and what the person on the outside sees. If people are placed in a safe emotional space, often a complex interior world will reveal itself'' - Elizabeth Heyert
Known for her groundbreaking photographs of the interior lives of others, most famously The Sleepers and her controversial series of postmortem portraits The Travelers, American fine art photographer Elizabeth Heyert delves once again into the deepest emotional landscapes of strangers in Metamorphosis, a provocative, and visionary new exhibition and book about the power of transformation.
Heyert takes the viewer on a fascinating journey into the transcendent worlds of her subjects who after being hypnotized in her studio by a trained hypnotherapist are then photographed naked, acting out childhood memories or transforming themselves emotionally into animals, birds, or other creatures unique to their subconscious fantasies.
This new photography exhibition brings together the unique perspectives of two distinguished photographers, Jamie Johnson and John Day. This showcase, running from February 2nd until April 20th, delves into the heart of Ireland’s history, presenting two distinct approaches to documenting a culture through the lens of monochrome photography. “The Travelers and The Troubles” presents a unique journey through time as well as a poignant reflection on Ireland’s past.
JAMIE JOHNSON
Jamie Johnson has spent her photographic career traveling the world to document children. This current body of work, ‘Growing Up Traveling’, focuses on the Irish Travellers who live in caravans along the roadside and in open fields across Ireland. The Travelers are a community of oral tradition, and Johnson’s work will help to visually document their rich culture. She returns frequently to record these families as they grow up, forging generational connections with this historically misunderstood community.
JOHN DAY
John Day spent the summer of 1972 in Belfast, Ireland, armed with newspaper press passes and a dream to become a journalist. He was there to write about The Troubles, and just happened to bring his Leica M2R along for the ride. After immersing himself in the community, it became clear this story was meant to be told on film. Capturing the atmosphere of daily life during this conflict, Day brings the viewer back in time with compositions full of joy hidden around corners alongside the tension. Day was in the area with his friend, Richard Dunne, on July 21st, now called Bloody Friday. After seeing the aftermath and following the victims to the hospital, Day vowed to become a doctor. For the last forty years, he worked as a Pulmonary and Critical Care Physician and now is happily retired in Woodstock, CT.
All About Photo is pleased to present 'Child Labour' by Hana Peskova
Part of the exclusive online showroom developed by All About Photo, this exhibition is on view for the month of April 2024 and includes twenty photographs from the series ‘Child Labour’
Child Labour
The collection has been gradually forming since 2018, when I first visited Bangladesh and saw child labour with my own eyes. Child labour is common worldwide, with an estimated 170 million children working across our planet, most notably in Asia. This isn't just about occasional help for parents, but in some countries, it's about consistent, everyday, often hard work.
Child labour is defined as work that deprives children of their childhood, potential, and dignity, and that is harmful to their physical and mental development. The sight of hard-working children who are proud to help their parents is often pitiful. Instead of play, they only know hard toil; instead of attending school, they have working hours. They can still play and laugh, but more often, sadness is seen in their eyes.
In this collection, I wanted to show the work of children from various perspectives, not just the hard labour, but also the common work, which is also an integral part of their childhood world. Some forms of work may at first glance be mistaken for begging or acrobatics, but the children have no choice, contributing significantly to the family budget.
The photographs are from Asia - Bangladesh, India, Kyrgyzstan, and Iran. Finally, it's worth mentioning that June 12 is World Day Against Child Labour.
Robert Mann Gallery is pleased to present Cig Harvey’s exhibition, FEAST, opening on Saturday, February 10, and on view through April 5, 2024.
The exhibition approaches the heart of the human condition, where stories hold secrets as dark as a chocolate-frosted cake pressed with blackberries. FEAST becomes a sensory experience of apples gracefully descending the tree and wisteria engulfing a lady swaying in satin.
Harvey delves into the science of color and explores taste and perception. The result is a photographic experience of wonder, unraveling the intricacies of how we engage with sight, light and feeling. Rooted in specific moments, her work transforms the mundane into a captivating conversation, for instance by exploring the quiet life of the coy and poisoned red berries no one dares to pick, while their color and texture tempt us to do just that.
Harvey introduces a delectable discourse in FEAST with the inclusion of cake—a staple at gatherings ranging from birthdays to weddings and funerals—encompassing time, mortality, and the senses. She joyously celebrates maximalist cakes, drawing inspiration from the imaginative, homemade creations of loved-ones. These cakes boast multiple layers, lavish frosting, and a decadent overflow of fudge. Within FEAST, Harvey plays with the placement of this treat, whether stowed inside a trunk floating down the river, passionately smashed upon a table, or glowing warmly with flickering candles amidst the embrace of darkness.
Concurrent with her solo exhibition at Robert Mann Gallery, Harvey is featured in a group exhibition at New York’s Fotografiska entitled Human / Nature. This exhibition delves into the complex and symbiotic connection between humanity and the natural world.
Harvey's work is included in permanent collections of major institutions including the Library of Congress, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; the International Museum of Photography and Film at the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine; and the distinguished corporate collection of JPMorgan Chase.
Harvey earned distinction as one of the 2021 recipients of the Farnsworth’s Maine in America Award and was also awarded the title of the 2018 Prix Virginia Laureate, a prestigious international photography accolade in Paris. In 2023, Eat Flowers, a documentary film about Harvey by River Finlay, premiered at film festivals worldwide winning the Special Jury Prize at the Santa Fe International Film Festival for Documentary Short.
In FEAST, Harvey aspires for viewers to share in her initial experience upon discovering the images—the sensation that accompanies bearing witness to something rare. The palpable blend of desire and neon vigor in photographs encapsulates a lifetime of journeys, hopes, and perpetual curiosity.
Movie studios have long employed professional photographers to document film sets for continuity. In the 1930s and 40s, these photographers used eight-by-ten cameras and contact printed each photo directly from the negative. The resultant photos were sharp and unusually striking for such pragmatic pictures, with every detail rendered visible. But with no practical value after production wrapped, these utilitarian images were discarded, ending up in second-hand stores, flea markets, memorabilia shops, and dumpsters. That’s how they got into the hands of Robert Cumming and John Divola, who discovered them separately in the 1970s and 80s and found in them a deep connection to their own bodies of work.
Curated by California photographer John Divola, Hollywood: Robert Cumming and John Divola showcases the work of two artists who reference or use studio continuity photography as art material. In an extension of his Continuity (1995-) series, Divola presents four new arrangements of found stills, organized and grouped thematically. In a selection from his 1977 Studio Still Lifes, Robert Cumming’s photos of the backlot of Universal Studios capture film production materials and locales as surreal scenes and sculptural tableaux.
Divola (b. 1949) began collecting continuity stills in the 1970s, amassing thousands, primarily from the pre-war golden age of the studio system. He was drawn to the enigmatic aura of these images, their strange stillness, pristine legibility, and their uncanny resemblance to real life. “Even the most mundane and generic rooms were previsualized, constructed, and completely artificial,” writes Divola. “I am interested in how these stills collectively construct a fictive sense of the normal.” Though innocuous at first, the presence of a clapper board across many of the stills becomes destabilizing, reminding us that the images are simulacra. To the artist, they function almost like crime scene photographs: haunting and filled with clues to decipher.
Thematically and aesthetically, Divola’s Continuity groupings align with his own photo works: abandoned spaces left with remnants of actions past (Zuma series, 1977/78), film sets shot to expose their artificiality (MGM Backlot, 1979/80), and anonymous figures immersed in the scenery (As Far as I Can Get, 1996/97). In the early 2000s, partially inspired by his stills collection, Divola photographed abandoned sets of the television series The X-Files (X-Files, 2003), embodying the role of a continuity still photographer himself.
Painter, sculptor, and conceptual artist Robert Cumming (1943-2021) was equally drawn to the strange and staged artificiality of old Hollywood continuity stills. To Cumming, the mundane subjects of these found stills were made absurd by their obviously fabricated qualities: optical tricks, backdrops, and forced perspective architecture, all constructed for the movie camera’s lens. He drew inspiration from what he called their “language of rebuilt reality,”creating staged, surreal, and often humorous tableaux that played with scale, materiality, and the illusion of motion.
In 1977, Cumming was invited by the studio executive and photo collector Al Dorskind to photograph Universal Studios. For six months, Cumming freely traversed the backlot with his eight-by-ten camera. He found scenes similar to his sculptures but on a much grander scale–readymade rather than fabricated by the artist: an elevated boat and dummy fisherman created for the Universal Studios Tour attraction, a cross-section of a submarine for the naval drama Grey Lady Down (1978). These studio elements became sculptural once photographed. To Cumming, they were akin to “involutions,” puzzles inviting a viewer to untangle, and “documents of the hardware employed in the ultimate illusion.”
In both artists’ series, there is a playful tension between artifice and reality. In movies, illusions encourage viewers to suspend their disbelief. But in these works by Divola and Cumming, artificiality is the central subject, and the viewer becomes complicit in the ruse.
PDNB Gallery presents its second iteration of DEEP DIVE. A new group exhibition opens March 30th, DIVING DEEPER, which includes more treasures from deep inside portfolio boxes and flat files that have not been exhibited in recent years.
In the 1990’s, Dutch artist, Jan van Leeuwen, was featured in an exhibition at PDNB. Van Leeuwen created still lives, influenced by early Dutch master painters, He also photographed himself in allegorical images. His preference was to work with early photo-based print processes including cyanotype and kallitype. A stunning sunflower image by van Leeuwen is included in this exhibition.
Neal Slavin, a photographer, and filmmaker, was commissioned by England’s National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, to photograph groups in Great Britain. Slavin had already made a splash in the 1970’s contemporary art scene with his series, When Two or More are Gathered Together. The project in England was co-sponsored by Polaroid, by lending their large format camera. One of these extraordinary Polaroid prints is included in this exhibition, a jovial group of Channel Swimmers from 1984.
An early iconic photograph by Argentine artist, Esteban Pastorino Diaz, illustrates the artist’s keen sense of awe for flying. Early in his career, he would attach a handmade box camera to a kite to create aerial photographs. Later he would take photographs from his ultralight flying machine. The 2006 photograph included in this exhibition is from his series of bullfight images at the famous Las Ventas bull ring in Madrid, Spain.
Many other PDNB treasures will be included by the famous Native American tribe documenter, Edward S. Curtis, Spanish surrealist, Chema Madoz, New York artist Chris Verene and Dallas artist, Chris Regas.
Image: Neal Slavin, Channel Swimmers, 1984
International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF) Ceremony (BDC Annex, 364 E. 151st St.)
Introduction by co-curator Kathy Gannon, followed by words from Associated Press Senior Vice President, Jessica Bruce, co-curator Ami Beckmann, Anja's sister Elke Niedringhaus-Haasper, Christine Longiere, and BDC Founder/Creative Director, Mike Kamber. The IWMF will then announce the winner of the 2024 Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Award. Q&A to follow with co-curator/photographer Muhammed Muheisen and the awardee.
“I do my job simply to report people’s courage with my camera and with my heart.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Anja Niedringhaus died on April 4, 2014, killed by an Afghan police commander, who emptied his AK-47 rifle into the car in which she was sitting. It occurred in eastern Afghanistan on the eve of a critical vote for president, an event Anja knew would test the courage of Afghans. She was ready with her camera and with her heart.
A collection of Anja’s powerful images from Afghanistan and Pakistan will be on display at the Bronx Documentary Center from April 4, 2024, 10 years to the day since her death. They will also be featured in a book accompanying the exhibition.
In the course of her work, Anja traveled through some of the most difficult years of the protracted Afghan war, reaching deep into the soul of Afghans, her pictures often serving to remind us of our own humanity. The exhibition offers rare glimpses into lives seen by few, such as pictures taken during a first-ever embed with the Pakistan army in the freezing Hindu Kush Mountain peaks on the border with Afghanistan.
Among the images to be displayed is a simple, yet powerful reminder of the innocence of children, even as war surrounds them. In the photograph, children play amid mesh-encased blast-proof Hesco bags, designed to protect them from feared terrorist attacks against an election commission office in the eastern Afghanistan town of Khost. The picture was taken the day before Anja died.
The exhibition and the book serve to remind us of the extraordinary sacrifices journalists make to keep us all informed. This is a particularly powerful lesson at a time when journalists are dying, suffering life-changing injuries, being targeted, or being imprisoned at an alarming rate. v
Anja received the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) Courage in Journalism award in 2005. After her death, through a generous grant from the Howard G Buffett Foundation, the Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Journalism Award was established and is awarded annually to an extraordinary woman photojournalist, whose images reflect Anja’s commitment to reporting the courage of others.
The exhibition is curated by Ami Beckmann, Kathy Gannon, and Muhammed Muheisen.
CP's survey of the work of David Seidner (1957–1999) reintroduces this important and rarely exhibited artist of the 1980s and 1990s whose work has largely faded from view since his passing from AIDS-related illnesses in 1999. Primarily drawn from Seidner's archive, which has been a part of ICP’s collection since 2001, highlights include David Seidner’s early fine art photography and fragmented portrait studies, vibrant fashion and editorial photography, images of groundbreaking dancers and choreographers, portraits of well-known contemporary artists and their studios, and works from his final project, abstracted studies of orchids.
During his life, David Seidner was a notable fashion photographer, photographing for designers like Yves Saint Laurent--with whom he had an exclusive contract at the age of just 22—Azzedine Alaïa and Madame Grès among many others. David Seidner also was a prolific editorial photographer for publications such as Harper's Bazaar, Harper's & Queen, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, and international editions of Vogue. His magazine work crossed over into the art world, where Seidner frequently contributed to BOMB Magazine as a photographer, interviewer, and guest editor.
Much of David Seidner's photography and subjects defy easy categorization, like Seidner himself, who now might be referred to as multi-hyphenate for his work across different fields. Similar to many young artists working today, David Seidner pushed the boundaries of the photography industry, collapsing the often unnecessary distinctions between disciplines. In addition to images made for fashion houses and editorial assignments, Seidner maintained a robust personal practice throughout his career. His interest in visual experimentation through techniques like fragmentation, reflection, and double exposures are often seen in both his personal work and his commissions.
Join us at the International Center of Photography to explore the versatile and boundary-pushing work of famous fashion photographer, David Seidner.
Kicking off ICP's 50th anniversary year, ICP at 50: From the Collection, 1845–2019 is a thematic exploration of the many photographic processes that comprise the medium’s history, presenting works from ICP’s deep holdings of photography collected over 50 years since ICP was established in 1974. As a renowned NYC historical museum and one of the top photography galleries in NYC, the exhibition includes work from the 19th century to the present, featuring photographs by well-known artists that ICP has in-depth holdings of—such as Robert Capa, Weegee, Francesco Scavullo, and Gerda Taro among many others—as well as lesser-known and vernacular works and recent acquisitions including images by Jess T. Dugan, Nona Faustine, Deana Lawson, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, and Guanyu Xu. Other photographers featured include Henri Cartier-Bresson, Samuel Fosso, Robert Mapplethorpe, Susan Meiselas, Louise Lawler, Gordon Parks, Laurie Simmons, Lorna Simpson, Mickalene Thomas, Carrie Mae Weems, and more. The exhibition will also offer insight into the breadth and depth of ICP’s collection with historically critical images and media that include images taken of the surface of the moon by NASA in 1966, as well as activist posters from the 1980s and ‘90s groups ACT UP, Gran Fury, and fierce pussy.
ICP’s founder Cornell Capa created ICP in 1974 in honor of his brother Robert Capa, a preeminent photojournalist of his day, who died in 1954. Robert's archive became a key early piece of ICP’s collection, alongside work by other important photojournalists and documentarians. In the ensuing five decades, the collection has expanded to include early photographic works, vernacular images, fashion photography, and fine art photography among many other types of photographic production, leading ICP to become one of the many famous museums in NYC. Dissolving and challenging boundaries between categories—technological, aesthetic, conceptual, and beyond—the collection is a celebration of image culture and the medium’s ability to reflect the values and interests of its time.
ICP at 50 is not only a significant milestone for the institution but also stands as a must-see art exhibit in NYC. It's the first overview collections show since the institution’s move to 79 Essex Street in January 2020. The exhibition will reintroduce the depth and breadth of the ICP holdings to audiences, celebrating 50 years of photography’s evolution.
Native America: In Translation brings together the works of nine Native artists who explore aspects of community, heritage, and the legacy of colonialism on the North American continent. By posing challenging questions about land rights, identity, and the legacy of violence toward Native people perpetrated by settler governments, the artists probe the fraught history of photography in representing Indigenous populations. Representing diverse nations and affiliations, the artists reclaim complex personal and collective narratives to imagine new histories of image-making. “The ultimate form of decolonization is through how Native languages form a view of the world,” exhibition curator Wendy Red Star notes. “These artists provide sharp perceptions, rooted in their cultures.”
Native America: In Translation features works by Rebecca Belmore, Nalikutaar Jacqueline Cleveland, Martine Gutierrez, Duane Linklater, Guadalupe Maravilla, Kimowan Metchewais, Alan Michelson, Koyoltzintli, and Marianne Nicolson.
Native America: In Translation is curated by Wendy Red Star as she expands on her role as guest editor of the Fall 2020 issue of Aperture magazine. The exhibition is organized by Aperture and is made possible, in part, with generous support from the National Endowment for the Arts.
AN AMERICAN PROJECT AND EMBRACING EATONVILLE
Curated from our collection, Light Work is pleased to present a selection from two of Dawoud Bey’s photographic projects: An American Project and Embracing Eatonville.
Black-and-white images from An American Project, made in Syracuse in 1985 during his artist residency, chronicle the community and history of the city. These prints were recently gifted by Bey and Stephen Daiter Gallery to celebrate the dedication of the Jeffrey J. Hoone Gallery. Embracing Eatonville was a photographic survey of Eatonville, FL—the oldest Black-incorporated town in the United States—that featured work by Dawoud Bey, Lonnie Graham, Carrie Mae Weems, and Deborah Willis, and was exhibited at Light Work in 2003. Bey made color photographs of high school students combining their portraits with text sharing personal hopes, fears, and dreams.
“I was invited to do a residency at Light Work in 1985, after being introduced to the organization by my friends, photographers Michael Spano and Sy Rubin. Applying and being accepted has remained an important highlight of my career almost forty years later. It was the first time I was also able to have the kind of absolute support that allowed me to have what is still one of my most productive months ever as an artist. That support was something that I’d never experienced before, and it allowed for a profound burst of creative activity, going out into the Syracuse community every day to make photographs without the worry about how that investment of time would be remunerated.”
– Dawoud Bey
Dawoud Bey (born 1953) is an American photographer and educator renowned for his large-scale photographs including American adolescents in relation to their community, and other marginalized subjects. In 2017, Bey was the recipient of a “Genius Grant” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Currently living in Chicago, Illinois, Bey is Professor Emeritus at Columbia College Chicago, and is represented by Sean Kelly Gallery (New York), Rena Bransten Gallery (San Francisco), and Stephen Daiter Gallery (Chicago).
Our impact on nature has far-reaching consequences, as we know from our changing climate. Human / Nature will explore our faceted relationship with the natural world, including moments of harmony and recovery, as well as our tendency towards destruction.
The show will shepherd viewers through scenes reflecting on the impact of urbanization and climate change on worldwide ecosystems.
Human / Nature is comprised of 14 artists whose work explores, in various ways, humankind’s fraught and mutually beneficial relationship with nature.
Alfredo De Stefano
Brendan Pattengale
Cig Harvey
David Ụzọchukwu
Djeneba Aduayom
Edward Burtynsky
Helene Schmitz
Inka & Niclas
Lewis Miller
Lori Nix / Kathleen Gerber
Ori Gersht
Pat Kane
Santeri Tuori
Yan Wang Preston
The power of photography as a storytelling medium is well-represented in Gannaway's ongoing series Remember Me, now in its 19th year. From intimate portraits to alluring landscapes to everyday vernacular photography, Gannaway takes viewers on an emotional journey with images that feel, at times, voyeuristic and confronting. The use of color as a thread weaving through time is subtle yet observable. This series began in 2006 as a story for a New Hampshire newspaper, Concord Monitor, which followed the St. Pierre family as they navigated through the processes of illness, death and grief. What could have ended with the death of the mother evolved into the beginning of a longitudinal visual narrative focusing on the coming of age of the youngest child, a 4-year old boy. The honesty and rawness come through consistently in images spanning nearly two decades; there is no glossing over the rough edges or overly leading sentimental shots. Gannaway is not telling a tale about a motherless boy in a place far, far away; she is showing us a universally-relatable human story of life, love and remembrance. Photos from the beginning of Remember Me earned Preston Gannaway the Pulitzer Prize in Featured Photography in 2008.
Fotografiska New York is proud to present rising-star French artist Josèfa Ntjam’s solo U.S. museum show debut. Through a multi-sensory video experience, biomorphic sculptures and photomontages printed on plexiglass and aluminum, the exhibition explores the artist’s deep interest and research into African mythology, biological processes, science fiction, and the ingrained but outdated ideas about origin, identity and race that rule our world.
Throughout her work, Ntjam blends memory with historical fact and speculative fiction (from Battlestar Galactica to the novels of Octavia E. Butler) to produce new interpretations of radical liberation movements around the world, from the battle against white supremacy led by the Black Panther Party in the U.S., to the fights in Cameroon and Nigeria against colonial rule.
Ntjam is best known for her work blending science fiction, history, and fantasy to present alternative narratives of African diasporic experiences. Across multiple mediums, her practice deconstructs mainstream discourses on origin, identity, and race. The artist, who earned a degree from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Art, has been featured in exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Barbican Art Gallery in London.
Gitterman Gallery proudly presents Jackie Robinson and the Color Line, an exhibition of the collection of Paul Reiferson, which uses photographs and artifacts to vividly narrate the story of baseball’s journey toward integration. The exhibition opens on Monday, April 15th in honor of Major League Baseball’s Jackie Robinson Day from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and runs through Friday, May 24th.
Jackie Robinson, a trailblazing figure in civil rights, shattered baseball’s color line when Martin Luther King, Jr. was still in college, earning praise from King as “a sit-inner before the sit-ins, a freedom rider before freedom rides.” The exhibition frames Robinson’s odyssey within a larger one that had begun sixty years earlier, when men like Fleet and Weldy Walker, Sol White, Robert Higgins,and Javan Emory played for integrated teams in the late 19th century.
Paul Reiferson is a dedicated collector driven by a passion for preserving American stories. “I saw that the color line transcended baseball, that it was about America struggling to solve a terrible problem, and that the stories of the people in that fight were extraordinary,” Reiferson explained.
This exhibition of photographs, complemented by historic artifacts, illuminates the pervasive racism and the fervent aspirations for integration during that era. We hope everyone from collectors to students and families with children can visit this exhibition. By experiencing these powerful images together, we hope to help foster a deeper appreciation for photography as a medium of storytelling.
Nearly 500 prints from Reiferson’s collection of photographs by Charles M. Conlon have been gifted or promised to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Many others have been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, Bronx Museum of the Arts, American Folk Art Museum, and Tampa Museum of Art, among others.
Eli Klein Gallery is thrilled to present Order out of Chaos, Liu Bolin’s
ninth solo show at the gallery. The exhibition will debut the artist’s much anticipated new sculpture
series Chaos - marking an important evolution of the “invisible man” who now transforms others
“invisible.” The exhibition will also present Liu’s recent photographs, continuing the development of his
world-renowned Hiding in the City series. Running through May 25, 2024, this show is the artist's
response to the increasingly digitized society.
For the first time, Liu’s performance of “concealing” becomes an act of “sensing,” with him holding a 3D
scanner performing the action of scanning his subjects, whether they be a woman holding a cat, a man
texting on a smartphone, or the artist himself. The subject is always in a meditative state. When the
scanning process begins, the target completely releases him/herself (disappearing) from his/her physical
state, and only communicates with his/her inner self. Liu Bolin is the observer and sensor throughout the
performance: he deliberately uses an out-dated 3D scanner due to its unique capability to create a
fragmented and torn aesthetic when the sculptures were produced, hinting at the impossibility of
disappearing completely in the digital world. The out-dated scanner and computer program create a system of colors that are applied arbitrarily as per the different layers of scans. Liu did not attempt to
alter these color patterns upon painting the sculptures, an act of yielding power to the machine.
Trained professionally as a sculptor, Liu Bolin surprisingly sourced his inspiration of Chaos from
Rondanini Pietà - Michelangelo’s final unfinished work. Even though Michelango’s work had been
completed 450 years prior to Chaos, Liu views this sculpture as the grand master’s most contemporary
work which actually depicts multiple faces and out-of-the-body limbs. Liu believes that Rondanini Pietà,
which seems eerily modern, hints at the inevitability of machine-produced imagery taking over
contemporary visual culture.
Chaos - Me, the largest scale sculpture in the exhibition, shows Liu Bolin’s own body, and is hollow so as
to permit inspection inside out. This is because Liu believes the process of self-inspection creates a
“fourth dimension,” which is illustrated by the fact that this sculpture comes in numerous parts and can
be assembled at varying distances In the Hiding in the City series, Liu Bolin continues to
explore the possibility of his body’s disappearance in
a physical sense by concealing himself. This selection
of photos showcases his acute observations and
questioning of global cultural, social, and political
issues. Central Park is a collaboration between Liu
Bolin and Annie Leibovitz, capturing the autumn
scenery of New York's Central Park. Liu is performing
in this photograph, of which Annie Leibovitz is the
photographer. HK Message Wall is displayed to the
public for the first time since its creation, documenting
Liu Bolin's reflections on the proposed
Anti-Extradition Law Amendment in Hong Kong in
2019. Liu Bolin blends into the wall of the Tai Po Market station in the Hong Kong subway, which is
covered with slogans, drawings, and graffiti. Hidden within these writings and images, which were
quickly removed by the authorities, are the voices of some courageous Hong Kong people advocating for
their rights and interests through non-verbal resistance. Hiding in Italy - Fruit Juices was shot by Liu
Bolin in the suburb of Verona, Italy. Liu Bolin hides among the colorful and vibrant fruit juice shelves to
demonstrate the connection between commodities and consumer life, furthering his critique on the
global inequality in food access.
AdeY’s identity is unknown, but the photographs speak for themselves. The art is in the borderland of photography and performance and depicts the naked body in playful formations and in minimalistic rooms and empty landscapes. On May 16, the exhibition Uncensored by AdeY opens at CLAMP in New York and will continue through May 25.
This is the final stop in AdeY's Uncensored world tour which has been exhibited in Los Angeles (Galerie XII), London (The Little Black Gallery), Stockholm (Fotografiska), and Falsterbo, Sweden (Falsterbo Photo Art Museum).
No one really knows who AdeY is. The British-Swedish artist’s real name, age and place of residence are still unknown. AdeY left a career as a professional dancer, something evident in the photographs which combine photography, choreography, and performance. They have published a series of poetic photobooks and exhibited in several of the world’s best known galleries and museums, including in London, Los Angeles, Helsinki and Stockholm.
''I began taking photographs when I worked as a professional dancer and felt the need to erase what I had done before to be taken seriously. People doubt you when you change art forms. I also do not want people to focus on my background but rather my body of work,'' says AdeY.
The forms of the exhibition Uncensored began to take shape in 2015–2016, when AdeY, during a period of intense travel, was struck by the sexualization of bodies in advertising images. Then and there, a desire was awoken to show the body just as “only” a body, without reducing it into a sexualized symbol. The images in the exhibit are playful and experimental, with bodies often depicted in choreographed poses or formations. The viewer is given the right to interpret the images, which is an important part of AdeY’s artistry.
Systems of belief concerning the medicinal, magical and spiritual uses of plant materials were well established in the lives of European forest, nomadic and ancient peoples. However, these beliefs were forcibly supplanted as pagan practices were displaced across Europe and other continents in the wake of Christianity and the rise of capitalism. The consequences of the suppression and attempted erasure of this plant-based belief system continue to be profound. Knowledge, often held by women, of the healing and spiritual effects of plants has been replaced by a significantly more limited emphasis on their predominantly aesthetic qualities. This separation informs our contemporary relationship to plants as being primarily one of commodification.
The images in worm, root, wort…& bane are part of the re-assemblage of fragments of this old knowledge and, in their ontology, invoke the persecution of wise women, witches and wortcunners who kept this knowledge safe but whose understanding of plants and their
connection with reproduction, in particular, represented a threat to the new order. This body of work asks that we reconsider this complex nexus of lost understanding; that we re-examine the continuing persecution of women, their gender roles and physical bodies, and honour the position they have held in this long-contested space.
Worm, root, wort…& bane engages with botanical knowledge as a sphere in which politics have been played out then and now, continuing to effect Western attitudes to women, to nature and to privilege. Put in the context of ecopolitics and intersectional feminisms, the current environmental emergency and the many impacts of this high capitalist moment, these works signal a rupture that has taken place. This has distanced us economically and spiritually from our environment and ultimately led to our current crisis.
THIS EXHIBITION IS SUPPORTED BY the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Richmond County Savings Foundation, Ruth Foundation For the Arts, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
For the first time, the North Carolina Museum of Art (in Raleigh) and SECCA (Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem), present a shared exhibition on both campuses, bringing awareness of global artists to audiences across our state. Examining place and theology from North Carolina to eastern Texas, From Alpha to Creation: Religion in the Deep South explores the ideological relationships among various belief systems, highlighting the blending of spiritual practices throughout our daily lives.
The exhibition distinguishes itself from antiquated or heavily stereotyped studies of Southern culture that often disregard our complexities. It instead focuses on the spiritual innovations that allow many of us to maintain a dedicated relationship with our religious heritages, from Abrahamic denominations to composite belief systems like Hoodoo. For many artists throughout the exhibition—who originated or worked extensively in the region—the South represents a unique context for religious expression reflected by our racial, political, and economic structures.
From Alpha to Creation leads with documentary photography that grounds its analysis of Southern culture with actual people and circumstances throughout the region. Landscape photography illustrates the physical prominence of iconography and messaging embedded in the environment. Meanwhile, portraiture demonstrates the social effect of adornment throughout different faiths, with examples of people using dress to signify their devotion or hierarchy. The exhibition's video and sculpture complete the survey of spiritual practices by interpreting the extensive rituals and traditions that span as far back as precontact Indigenous societies.
The Winston-Salem installation of the exhibition features works by Allison Janae Hamilton, Ambrose Murray, Baseera Khan, Bill Aron, Brandon Thibodeaux, Debbie Fleming Caffery, Deborah Luster, Earlie Hudnall Jr., Heather Baebii Lee, Jamal Cyrus, Logan Lynette Burroughs, with newly commissioned works by Keni Anwar, Luzene Hill, and Ralph Burns.
From Alpha to Creation: Religion in the Deep South is organized by Maya Brooks, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, with support from Georgia Phillips, Curatorial Intern.
The Jewish Museum presents RBG Collars: Photographs by Elinor Carucci, an installation of two dozen photographs of former US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s collars and necklaces taken by the contemporary photographer Elinor Carucci (Israeli, b. 1971) shortly after Ginsburg’s death in 2020. The suite of photographs is being shown at the Jewish Museum for the first time since they were acquired for the Museum’s collection in 2021. The installation will also include jewelry from the collection, reflecting freely on the expressive possibilities as well as the cultural and religious aspects of adornment. RBG Collars: Photographs by Elinor Carucci will be on view from December 15, 2023, through May 27, 2024, in Scenes from the Collection on Floor Three of the Museum.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020), who was the second-ever woman to sit on the US Supreme Court, wore collars not just to emphasize the long overdue feminine energy she brought to the court, but also to encode meaning into her dress—a sartorial strategy practiced by powerful women throughout history. Her early penchant for traditional lace jabots was later joined by necklaces made of beads, shells, and metalwork from around the world, many of them gifts from colleagues and admirers. Seen as a whole, the photographs of these collars offer a collective portrait of the late Justice through these objects imbued with her personal style, values, and relationships. While Ginsburg often chose them on a whim, she occasionally used them as a form of wordless communication; in every instance, they served as a reminder that her august responsibilities were carried out by a particular human being. Towards the end of her life, Ginsburg’s style helped to make her a feminist pop culture icon: collared and bespectacled, she adorned tote bags, t-shirts, and tattoos as “the Notorious RBG.”
Ginsburg’s Jewish upbringing was formative to the person she became. Questioned about her sensitivity to racial bias, she invoked her experiences growing up Jewish in Brooklyn the 1930s and 1940s, while the horrors of the Holocaust unfolding in Europe cast ominous shadows over antisemitic slights encountered at home. She often noted how the Jewish principle of tikkun olam (repairing the world) guided her work. Over nearly 30 years, she wrote many notable majority opinions that helped to advance legal protections for women and members of other historically marginalized groups.
Alongside Carucci’s photographs is a selection of jewelry from the Museum’s collection. Many of the necklaces, pendants, fibulae, and other items included in the installation bear amuletic inscriptions; some have compartments in which scrolls with magical inscriptions can be stored. For the most part, those who made and wore these items came from corners of Jewish history and geography quite distant from the twentieth century American context in which Ginsburg lived and worked. Yet she too understood how adornment—particularly jewelry, given its close association with the body and its ability to express individuality in settings where possibilities for self-expression are limited—can communicate beauty and power, joy and defiance, optimism and resolve.
The installation is organized by Shira Backer, Leon Levy Associate Curator, the Jewish Museum.
I move, I move a lot.
People ask me how I find my pictures. I tell them I move around. I move and move and I mostly don’t find anything that is interesting to me. But then, something calls out. Something that looks sort of off or maybe an empty space. Sometimes it’s a lovely scene. Sometimes it’s just a ray of sunlight. I like that kind of stuff. So I take the photos and some are good. And so I keep moving and looking and taking pictures.
Todd Hido (American, b. 1968) is a prolific photographer whose works of suburban and urban homes have been shown in galleries and businesses throughout the nation. He was born in Kent, OH, and is now based in San Francisco, CA.
Todd Hido works with the Leica SL2, SL2-S and S3 Cameras in recent work.
In Their Own Light: Photographs from Chicago Public Schools by Melissa Ann Pinney, is on view at Pictura Gallery from April 5th to May 31st. During a five year artist residency, Pinney documented the daily lives of students from a variety of schools in the city. Her portraits capture their evolving identities as they move through the particular challenges of the pandemic and continuing racial inequality.
The Fahey/Klein Gallery is pleased to announce the debut solo exhibition of Magdalena Wosinska, held in conjunction with the release of her newest monograph, Fulfill the Dream. This exhibition will include a selection of photographs from Fulfill the Dream, in addition to Wosinska’s photojournalism imagery which captures the intimacy of human connection that balances adventure and introspection.
Central to Wosinska’s photography is the celebration of spontaneity. Viewers find themselves immediately immersed in Wosinska’s world, where authenticity reigns supreme and every moment is overflowing with a hint of rebelliousness. Through intimate portraits she explores the complexities of selfhood, highlighting the interplay between inner emotions and outward appearances. Her subjects are portrayed genuinely, without artifice or pretense, inviting viewers to reflect on their own sense of identity. Whether it’s skateboarding down city streets or basking in the golden hues of nature, each frame exudes a sense of liberation and outlaw attitude. The sensual and sun-drenched photographs of women roaming nude in nature are quintessentially Magdalena, as are her portraits of the South-Central Cowboys and vignettes of motorcycles in the desert.
At a young age, Magdalena Wosinska immigrated to the United States with her parents in 1991 from communist Poland. She found solace and belonging in the skateboarding subculture during the 90s, which became her passion and inspiration. At 14 years old, she began photographing with a dream of shooting the cover of a skate magazine (Thrasher). In time she found success in fine art, editorial, and commercial photography. Now, 25 years later, she’s revisiting her roots with her most recent monograph “Fulfill the Dream,” which will showcase her early images of skateboarding icons and highlight her artistic journey. Her book serves as a time capsule of the skateboarding scene and her evolution as an artist, capturing intimate moments from a unique perspective as one of the few women deeply embedded in the culture.
Magdalena Wosinska’s hardcover monograph, Fulfill the Dream, (Homecoming Gallery, 304 pages), is available for purchase at the gallery while supplies last.
Please join us as we celebrate the winning photographs from the 2024 Members' Juried Exhibition! Our juror selected 45 images for the gallery exhibition, from over 2,600 entries submitted by photographers throughout the United States and abroad. 45 additional juror selections will be on view on our website starting April 20. A catalog of the gallery exhibition and online images will be available for purchase. Congratulations to all the artists!
Juror:
Catherine Couturier is the owner and director of Catherine Couturier Gallery. Upon its inception, the gallery quickly evolved into the premier photography gallery in Houston and sits at the center of Gallery Row. Couturier has worked in the fine art photography world since 1999 and is involved in many different aspects.She reviews portfolios for organizations and festivals such as Fotofest, Photo Nola, Texas Photographic Society, and more, works with private organizations to review fine art photography including classes both public and private, builds and curates collections both private and corporate, worked as an art consultant on a nationwide healthcare project, is a juror for Critical Mass, serves on the advisory council of Houston Center for Photography, and give lectures to artists and collectors alike on a myriad of subjects. She is incredibly proud to be on the board of Aipad (Association of Photography Art Dealers), the most prestigious institute of its kind in the world. Catherine Couturier Gallery specializes in classic 20th century photography and contemporary work of the highest quality and also sells a wide range of rare and vintage books and publications by many of today's best-known contemporary artists. The Catherine Couturier Gallery is committed to excellence with a dedication to the medium in all its forms, with the goal to showcase the best fine art photography available.
Participating photographers: Ansel Adams, Wolf Ademeit, Carol Beckwith & Angela Fisher, Daniel Beltra, Niki Boon, Phil Borges, Nick Brandt, Ernest H. Brooks Ii, Kevin Bubriski, Tom Chambers, Imogen Cunningham, Virgil Dibiase, Tj Dixon & James Nelson, Melinda Hurst Frye, Maurizio Gjivovich, David Gonzalez, Misha Gordin, Robert & Shana Parke Harrison, Michael Kenna, Angela Bacon Kidwell, Marla Klein, Jon Kolkin, Lisa Kristine, Joey Lawrence, Ruth Lauer Manenti, Rania Matar, Beth Moon, Nasa / William Anders, Wayne Quilliam, Chris Rainier, Antonio Aragon Renuncio, Manjari Sharma, Maggie Taylor, Joyce Tenneson, Jerry Uelsmann, Dave Walsh, Alice Zilberberg and Zoe Zimmerman.
Compassion--defined as the intention to respond with kindness towards those in need, including all living things, one’s self, and Planet Earth, motivated by a a true concern for their well-being--is good for you, for everyone you come in contact with, and the the entire planet. The exhibition Shades of Compassion will guide you to intentionally evoke and sustain positive constructive emotions such as compassion.
Curated to engender a nuanced experience of compassion, the exhibition invites the viewer to dig deeper in their understanding of compassion, an opportunity for growth and exploration. The photographs, fifty outstanding fine art photographs by forty-one internationally recognized photographers, are sequenced and organized into three thematic groups: Environment, Humanity and Spirituality.
Meditation stations preceding and following the photographs, as well as six intervening Pause Stations, invite deeper exploration into specific images. The exhibition concludes with an Action Station where visitors are invited to express their intentions concerning acts of compassion, and take away reminders and additional online resources for continued growth and exploration.
Materials for the self guided Pause Stations and the facilitated curriculum were created under the guidance of leading experts, include senior MoMA and Minneapolis Institute of Art educators, Emory University’s Social, Emotional, and Ethical (SEE) Learning program for K-12, and Life University’s Compassionate Integrity Training (CIT) for adults.
The exhibition Taxonomies of Power: Photographic Encounters at the State Silk Museum, Tbilisi will debut at Mishkin Gallery this spring and be on view from March 22 through June 7, 2024. The exhibition has been co-curated by Alaina Claire Feldman (Director and Curator, Mishkin Gallery) and Mariam Shergelashvili (Exhibition Curator, State Silk Museum) and features a selection of black and white historic photographs from the State Silk Museum in Tbilisi, Georgia, alongside the film Raised in the Dust (2022) by Georgian artist Andro Eradze.
Scientific inquiry has long relied on artists to draw evidence or produce empirical knowledge. When an early 20th century collection of microscopic glass plate negatives from the State Silk Museum (formerly known as the Caucasian Sericulture Station) was digitized in 2022, the images exposed the many ways that the Soviet Empire employed artists to extend itself into the molecular. A photography studio was set up in the attic of the science center so that artists could document the smallest living specimen that enabled the silk industry to thrive.
Forty-seven of these photographs, which detail the lifecycle of the Bombyx mori (commonly known as the silk moth), are presented and re-contextualized alongside Andro Eradze’s film Raised in the Dust. The film takes the forest and its nocturnal non-human inhabitants as its central subject matter, and is heavily influenced by the Georgian writer Vazha-Pshavela’s The Snake-Eater (1901), an epic poem whose protagonist has supernatural powers allowing him to understand the language of nature. Raised in the Dust, which premiered at the 2022 Biennale di Venezia and now makes its New York debut, offers an alternative scenario to modernity’s orderly and institutionalized taxonomies. Seen here alongside the photographs, distinctions between wild vs. domestic, native vs. foreign, art vs. science, and past vs. present begin to fall apart.
Coinciding with the exhibition is a publication edited by the curators and designed by Geoff Kaplan/General Working Group that includes full-page image plates and writing on this collection of photographs and the history of the State Silk Museum.
Taxonomies of Power: Photographic Encounters at the State Silk Museum, Tbilisi is made possible by Friends of the Mishkin Gallery and the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College (CUNY). Travel research and initial introduction between the two museums was supported by CEC ArtsLink’s Art Prospect Network Residencies with funding from the Kettering Family Philanthropies and Trust for Mutual Understanding. Additional support provided by Dr. Konstantin Frank Winery.
About the State Silk Museum
The Caucasian Sericulture Station was a research institute and educational center of the Caucasus region established in Tbilisi, Georgia in 1887. Its founder, biologist Nikolay Shavrov, created the institution to control the silkworm population, and to promote and develop sericulture and apiculture throughout the region. The Caucasian Sericulture Station’s various collections of specimens and books played an important role in the educational activities of the institution and contributed to the public’s awareness of the field. The Caucasian Sericulture Station changed its mission and status several times, and since 2006 it has functioned as the “State Silk Museum
Featuring photographs by two of the 20th century’s most important photographers, Death of a Valley is a nearly 70-year-old story full of contemporary issues such as water policy, private property rights, land conservation and local governance vs. state and federal jurisdiction.
Dorothea Lange is famous for her social realist images, including the iconic Migrant Mother which many consider THE image of the Dustbowl and Great Depression era of the 1930s. In 1956 she convinced Life magazine to commission a photo essay documenting the last year of the Berryessa Valley, including the town of Monticello, roughly 80 miles northeast of San Francisco. The entire area was due to be submerged with the opening of the Monticello Dam and the creation of Lake Berryessa to provide water for irrigation and recreational purposes.
Lange then invited Ansel Adams protege Pirkle Jones to collaborate on the project. “The Berryessa Project was one of the most meaningful photographic experiences of my professional life. When Dorothea Lange, a friend, and colleague, invited me to collaborate on this project with her in 1956, I looked forward to the experience.” –Photographer Pirkle Jones.
The essay proved unsettling for Life, and they declined to publish it. In 1960, the photographic journal of the Aperture Foundation published thirty of the photos as an essay entitled “Death of a Valley.” These photographs were then exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and later at the Art Institute of Chicago. Since then, the project has been largely forgotten; until now. The Booth Museum exhibition, organized with Lumière of Atlanta and the Special Collections and Archives at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Robert Yellowlees Special Collection, will include over 80 images, most having never been exhibited before.
Studio/Archive presents photography from the Tang Museum collection—many of them recent acquisitions—that explore studio portraiture and archives. Works on view range from nineteenth century daguerreotypes and vernacular photography, to contemporary portraiture and video. Together these diverse bodies of work explore themes of agency—how people shape their own identities—and visual representation as a tool for empathy and justice.
Organized to complement the Tang Museum’s presentation of Lessons of the Hour by Sir Isaac Julien, this exhibition aims to extend the conversation around the power of photography to (re)frame ourselves and the world around us through the photographic lens.
Studio/Archive is organized by Dayton Director Ian Berry and is supported by the Friends of the Tang.
Beginning March 22, 2024, Fotografiska New York will present the first-ever exhibition dedicated to artist Daniel Arsham’s photography practice. Best known for his sculptures and design collaborations with brands including Tiffany & Co and Hot Wheels, Arsham has taken photographs since he was 11 years old, making it an essential component of his practice that has fundamentally informed his work as a sculptor and designer.
Arsham’s photographs are primarily black and white, which create a unifying aesthetic. The images take viewers on a journey alongside the artist’s travels and experiences with a focus on the juxtaposition of natural and urban environments. His images of skylines and nightscapes bring light, the passage of time, and negative space to the forefront. Visitors will encounter never before seen photographs alongside Arsham’s sculptures that together show the broad impact photography has on the artist’s full practice.
SF Camerawork is proud to announce Ma-kan مكان, a solo exhibition with Ebti, a multidisciplinary artist, a self-taught photographer, and a translator living between Cairo and San Francisco. The exhibition will be on view at our Fort Mason location from March 12 through June 22, 2024. A public opening reception will be held on Friday, March 15, from 6-8 pm. Ebti and SF Camerawork will host a series of open studio visits at the gallery commencing March 1, where visitors and SF Camerawork community members will have the opportunity to learn about the artist's work in progress and witness Ebti's creative practice unfold in real-time. Additional programs and specific open studio dates are to be announced on our website at sfcamerawork.org., and via our email list.
Ma-kan مكان means place in Arabic. Taken apart, the word ma-kan can also mean it was and is not. For her exhibition, Ma-kan مكان, Ebti will present a suite of site-responsive, photo-based installation works crafted from prints on fabric, projections, transparencies, and traditional paper prints. Using images, stories, and objects collected from her travels, home life, and the space itself, a narrative of perpetual departure, arrival, home, and homesickness unfolds.
Filter Photo is pleased to present, High Visibility (Blaze Orange), a solo exhibition of work by Jaclyn Wright.
High Visibility (Blaze Orange) uses debris collected from improvised gun ranges on public lands to create photographic installations that explore the impacts and material traces of late capitalism and settler colonialism on the landscape of the U.S. West. Through the use of original images, archival photographs and maps, and performances, the work shows the crucial role photography plays in codifying land use. The work explores how these codes manifest themselves in behaviors observed in Utah's West Desert.
Much of the West Desert, the ancestral home of the Goshute people, is managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). It is classified by the U.S. Government as "public lands." While the term "public" implies land open to all use, significant acreage is privately leased for mining and cattle ranching. The West Desert is located on the western side of the Great Salt Lake. The Great Salt Lake is rapidly drying up due to drought, population growth, and water diversion for agriculture. The leasing of public land, capitalist water use, and human-caused ecological change are linked to the drying of the Great Salt Lake, threatening millions of migratory birds and those who live in Salt Lake City.
Nearly one-third of the West Desert's 7.7 million acres are used as biological and chemical weapons testing grounds. The remaining areas of the West Desert are open to various uses, including improvised gun ranges. I see this land use as rooted in settler colonial, patriarchal, and capitalist systems that perpetuate ideologies undermining egalitarianism and environmentalism's goals.
The work incorporates the color of the most conspicuous type of debris found in the West Desert on these ranges—blaze orange clay pigeons. These aerial targets are painted a highly saturated and synthetic orange, "blaze orange," to ensure they stand out against the sky on a clear day. The contrast produced between these complementary colors enables shooters to track the unnatural target more easily against the natural landscape. I am interested in the unequivocal struggle between the natural world and its codification by bureaucrats, the visible and invisible, and the inherent ironies of playing out fantasies of freedom and nativism on stolen land.
Jackson Fine Art is pleased
to present new exhibitions from acclaimed artists Lalla Essaydi and Shanequa Gay, each offering a captivating dialogue between
cultural heritage and feminine identity in their respective series, "Conflicted Identities" and "Gateway to the South." Through
a dynamic blend of visual storytelling and multimedia art, both artists invite viewers to delve into rich tapestries of personal
experience, societal norms, and the enduring legacy of colonialism.
In "Conflicted Identities," Lalla Essaydi explores the complexities of cultural identity within the
context of Islamic culture. Born in Morocco in 1956, Essaydi's work reflects her own experiences
growing up in a postcolonial society grappling with issues of tradition, modernity, and gender.
Through innovative visual and conceptual strategies, she challenges conventional representations
of women in Islamic art, reclaiming their narratives and agency. Central to the series is Essaydi's
use of beer bottle caps to construct colonial dresses for her models, a powerful metaphor for
the intersection of tradition and modernity, East and West.
Moroccan-born artist Lalla Assia Essaydi has gained global recognition for her powerful portraits of Arab
women, rooted in her rich Moroccan heritage. By incorporating Arabic calligraphy, henna, and textile art
into her photographs, Essaydi offers a nuanced portrayal that challenges Western stereotypes of the
veiled Arab woman. Born in 1956, the year of Morocco's independence, Essaydi's work delves into the
complexities of postcolonial identity, navigating the intersection of East and West. In her recent series,
"Conflicted Identities," she creates dresses from beer bottle caps, symbolizing the clash between
Morocco's Muslim identity and the prevalence of alcohol. With a background in traditional Muslim society
and Western art education, Essaydi bridges cultural divides, inviting viewers to resist stereotypes and
embrace pluralism in her art. Her work is included in many private and public collections, including the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Spelman Museum of Art, Atlanta; The Museum of
Contemporary Photography, Chicago; the Louvre Museum, Paris; and the Arab Museum of Modern Art,
Qatar, among many others
Image: Lalla Essaydi Conflicted Identities #3, 2023
Jackson Fine Art is pleased
to present new exhibitions from acclaimed artists Lalla Essaydi and Shanequa Gay, each offering a captivating dialogue between
cultural heritage and feminine identity in their respective series, "Conflicted Identities" and "Gateway to the South." Through
a dynamic blend of visual storytelling and multimedia art, both artists invite viewers to delve into rich tapestries of personal
experience, societal norms, and the enduring legacy of colonialism.
Shanequa Gay's "Gateway to the South" offers a
poignant reflection on family history and Southern Black traditions.
Drawing inspiration from her maternal great-grandfather's
photographs, Gay celebrates the resilience and creativity of her
ancestors while exploring themes of identity, heritage, and spirituality.
Through a rich tapestry of multimedia works, Gay blurs the lines
between past and present, weaving together narratives of joy, candor, and myth. Her collaged panels
feature hybrid characters that embody the complexities of human existence, offering a profound
meditation on the power of art to illuminate the past and shape the future.
Together, "Conflicted Identities" and "Gateway to the South" create a compelling dialogue between
cultures and continents, inviting viewers to reconsider preconceived notions and engage with the
complexities of human experience. Both Essaydi and Gay offer nuanced reflections on the
intersections of identity, memory, and imagination, challenging viewers to explore the boundaries
of tradition and the fluidity of feminine identity.
"Conflicted Identities" by Lalla Essaydi and "Gateway to the South" by Shanequa Gay will be on display at Jackson Fine Art April
11 — June 29, 2024. A public opening reception with both artists present will be held on the evening of Thursday, April 11th
from 6:00 to 8:00pm. Visitors are invited to immerse themselves in this thought-provoking dialogue between two visionary
artists and explore the rich tapestries of personal experience and cultural heritage woven throughout their work.
Image: Shanequa Gay x James Battle only a few are invited to toil here, 1930s- 2024
When we have our picture taken, we often try to present our best selves. Even during difficult moments, we might force a smile, sit straighter, move closer together, cover the stain on our shirt. We might take pictures of things as we would like to remember them, present ourselves as we would like to be seen, even if—and especially when—there is significantly more to the story.
Drawing from The Block’s collection, this intimate exhibition weaves together personal snapshots and work by artists who have integrated family photography into their visual language. By incorporating family photographs into their artwork in various ways, these artists make visible some of the memories, realities, and complexities that might lie beneath the facades of family photography.
This exhibition asks us to deepen our own looking practices to better understand the role of photographs in familial memory: What is the relationship between what we see in a photograph and what we know or don’t know? How are memories shaped by what cannot be represented visually? And what is the relationship between private family photographs and broader cultural histories? In our digital age, where photo filters and editing are so prevalent, this exhibition provides a space to reflect on the power of what we cannot, and in some cases, do not want to see.
Parisian bureaucrat by day and tireless inventor after hours, Hippolyte Bayard (French, 1801-1887) was one of the most important, if now lesser-known, pioneers of photography. During his thirty-year career, he invented the direct positive process and several other photographic techniques on paper.
Hippolyte Bayard: A Persistent Pioneer, on view April 9 –July 7, 2024, at the Getty Center, presents a rare chance to view examples of Bayard’s pioneering work, all made between the 1830s and 1860s. Most of these photographs come from the Getty Museum’s Bayard album, one of the first photographic albums ever created.
This exhibition will be the first to highlight one of the Getty Museum’s rarest and most treasured photographic holdings: a collection of prints by Hippolyte Bayard, and to explore his early processes, subjects, and strategies to achieve recognition.
“This exhibition provides a new understanding of this pioneering artist and his very significant contribution to the early development of the photographic medium,” says Timothy Potts, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle Director of the Getty Museum. “The Getty Museum’s collection of over 200 prints is the second largest holding of Bayard’s work in the world, a highlight of which is our treasured Bayard album.”
Bayard began experimenting in January 1839, the same month in which Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre’s daguerreotype was introduced in Paris and William Henry Fox Talbot’s photogenic drawing was presented in London. Though Bayard developed an innovative direct-positive photographic process on paper, his work was overshadowed by the inventions of Daguerre and Talbot, two more prominent figures who had the benefit of more established connections.
Because Bayard’s photographs are extremely light sensitive, they have been protected in storage since they came into Getty’s collection in 1984. Conservators conducted microfade tests on a selection to determine which works were stable enough to be put on view for this three-month exhibition period, making this a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Museum visitors.
The exhibition also includes a digital reproduction of the Bayard album so that visitors can experience it in its entirety. Bayard’s self-portrait at his garden gate introduces the content of the album, which contains works from 1839 to the late 1840s, 145 of Bayard’s experiments with different processes on paper, primarily salted paper prints from paper negatives, and 23 works by his British photographic peers. This album offers insights into Bayard’s practice, aesthetic choices, and strategies for presenting himself through the order and arrangement of those photographs. It also offers visual evidence of his exchanges across the English Channel with his fellow British photographers who also promoted paper processes.
Hippolyte Bayard: A Persistent Pioneer is co-curated by Karen Hellman, former associate curator at the Getty Museum and Carolyn Peter, assistant curator in the Department of Photographs at the Getty. A publication, Hippolyte Bayard and the Invention of Photography, co-edited by Hellman and Peter accompanies the exhibition. The first book in English devoted to Bayard, it includes over two hundred illustrations of Bayard’s photographs, along with a detailed chronology, four extended essays, twelve shorter examinations of single works by Bayard, and a conversation with contemporary photographer, Paul Mpagi Sepuya to compare his studio practice with Bayard’s.
Image: Three Feathers, 1842–43, Hippolyte Bayard. Cyanotype. Getty Museum
In Sacred Land, legendary American photographer Ralph Gibson, and producer Martin Cohen, have created a unique photographic exhibition and publication that capture the soul of Israel, both ancient and contemporary. The photographs convey the fundamental humanity and underlying affinities that connect all who deem this land as sacred, and express aspirations for mutual understanding and peace. At a time when the war and suffering in Israel and Gaza overwhelm us, Gibson's images offer a compelling and hopeful outlook for the future.
Sacred Land invites us into the eye of the photographer as a first-time visitor to Israel – we see what he sees, what captures his attention. It is in the details, a particular gesture, a candid pose, a fragment, a moment, that we glimpse a deeper meaning. The essence of the images is their intimacy, we are drawn close to people, places, things, the instantaneous and the eternal. Their juxtaposition reveals the convergence of antiquity and modernity.
Ralph Gibson describes Israel as ''the oldest and youngest country in the world,'' a place where ''ancient luminosity refracts into mythology and biblical wisdom'' and the durability of its limestone foundations hardened with exposure to the air, ''speak louder and stronger every thousand years or so…becoming as permanent as time itself.''
The natural beauty of the details of the landscape, nature, and millennia-old archaeological artifacts express a timeless sense of wonder and spirituality. The industrial, urban images convey the impact of human imagination, ingenuity, and necessity. While each individual image captures our attention, it is Gibson's artful pairing of images that creates the special impact of these photographs. Etched stone encounters graffiti. The rugged desert intersects with man-made materials. A quietude amid the cacophony of modern life. Each juxtaposition sparks the viewer's imagination in making the connections – visually, emotionally, and psychologically.
Gibson conveys the complexity and multiplicity of this sacred land – across ethnicities, faiths, and transcending the millennia. His images are captured in the moment – sometimes dramatic, sometimes reflective, always riveting. They express the universal humanity of each being, the transcendence of time, and the pulse of life.
Martin Cohen describes, ''In this relatively small nation one can witness and relive the very beginnings of world history; experience the world's most advanced institutions in science, technology, and medicine – and everything in between. Jerusalem exists at the intersection of nearly all modern religions.''
''In Ralph Gibson's Sacred Land, one senses that this place is holy to all, across all of the differences that rupture this part of the world. This exhibition projects hope for a peaceful future, where all can find healing, empathy, and shared understanding,'' explains Jean Bloch Rosensaft, Director, Heller Museum.
For six decades, János Megyik (Hungarian, born 1938) has been making poetic investigations of fractal geometry and perspectival systems, motivated by questions of point, line, plane, volume, and all that lies between and beyond their innumerable intersections. In 1983, following a decade or so spent building constructions from larch wood, the artist started experimenting with the cameraless technique known as the photogram.
To create a photogram, objects are placed directly upon photographic paper that is then exposed to light, darkening the exposed areas and revealing a shadow-like image of the object in white (or, if the object is transparent, shades of gray). Using his Vienna studio as a makeshift darkroom, Megyik spread six-foot-long sections of photosensitized paper directly on the floor and made photograms of his larch wood constructions—essentially creating reversals of his earlier work.
Over the next five years Megyik made about 50 of these photograms. Working photographically offered the artist a ready means to give negative and positive space equal weight and to emphasize that “drawing” space always involves an interpretation. For Megyik, however, rigorous spatial analysis goes hand in hand with a sense of wonder at the infinite and absolute.
The first US museum exhibition of the artist’s work, János Megyik Photograms includes 12 large-scale photograms and one wall construction, his sculpture Corpus. A projection in three dimensions generated from one of his photograms, Corpus effectively functions as the reversal of a reversal, a prime example of the sort of “new dimension” the artist continuously seeks.
For centuries, what lies above the Arctic Circle has been a source of intrigue and fascination for those who live below its border. Stories from the ancient Greeks mixed with Norse mythology and reports from early voyages gave rise to lively and creative conceptions of ice-free waters and a fabled people who lived at the top of the world. Expeditions to the Arctic in search of resources and trade routes slowly replaced these legends with more accurate information. Yet even these narrative accounts were still filled with details of a foreign world that excited the imagination. Accompanying illustrations further enhanced the appeal of the polar North because they seemed to promise verisimilitude, giving shape to the incredible. Whether as woodcuts, engravings, lithographs, photographs, halftones, or digital prints, these images continue to captivate. They influence and inform our knowledge, bringing a distant region closer to those unfamiliar with its icy shores.
This exhibition, drawn almost exclusively from the rich collections of The New York Public Library, is a large, multipart survey of how the Arctic has been visually depicted, defined, and imagined over the past 500 years, and invites us to consider how this history relates to our current understanding of the Arctic. The presentation ranges from 16th-century explorers who attempted to capture the perceived strangeness of a remote region to contemporary artists whose work conveys the human impact on its changing climate and vulnerable landscape.
This exhibition is curated by Elizabeth Cronin, Robert B. Menschel Curator of Photography, and assisted by Maggie Mustard, Assistant Curator of Photography, in The New York Public Library's Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs.
Marilyn Stafford - A Life in Photography will open at the Akron Art Museum, Ohio, USA, in the Judith Bear Isroff Gallery and the Laura Ruth and Fred Bidwell Gallery on Saturday, February 24, 2024. The exhibition features decades of Stafford’s photography which will highlight the work, people, and issues she found most important.
Marilyn Stafford was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1925 but spent most of her life in Europe. Stafford made a great income by photographing notable performers, models, writers, and celebrities which allowed her to devote time to her stronger interest in humanitarian work. She recorded the Algerian War of Independence in 1958, peacetime Lebanon in the 1960s, and India’s intervention in the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. Marilyn Stafford passed away in 2023 at the age of 97 and this exhibition marks a posthumous homecoming for her work to the USA where she was born.
“The Akron Art Museum has a fondness for photographic work, especially work which showcases natural curiosity and intrigue.” Says Jon Fiume, Executive Director, and CEO of the Akron Art Museum. “Her work is more than excellent photography – it’s connective stories between the subject, Marilyn, and the viewer.”
Photography was the driving force in Marilyn Stafford's incredible life, and it connected her with cultures and historical events across the world.” Says Dr. Jeff Katzin, Senior Curator at the Akron Art Museum. “I am truly excited that this exhibition will honor her boundless curiosity, her humanitarian compassion, and her pioneering role as a female photojournalist in the twentieth century and share all of this with the Akron Art Museum's audiences.
On view in this exhibition is a picture Stafford took during the Algerian War of Independence. The picture showcases refugees in a camp near a bombed hospital. This picture ended up being her first front-page photograph in The Observer, which then sent an additional journalist to report on the situation. That photograph is a remarkable story from Stafford which we get to share with Akron.
“What engages me most about Marilyn Stafford’s work is the extraordinary range of subjects she was able to capture, from celebrities to street photography, fashion, everyday life, and wartime photojournalism.” Says Wendy Earle, Curator at the Akron Art Museum, and co-curator of this exhibition. “Viewers who are interested in almost any facet of photography will find something to connect with in this exhibition.”
This exhibition could not have happened without the support of Marilyn Stafford Photography, who is an archive for Stafford’s work and connects with Museums for exhibitions and events.
“It is very moving, in the year after my mother's death, to see her work exhibited so close to her hometown.” Said Lina Clerke, daughter of Marilyn Stafford and Director of Marilyn Stafford Photography. “This exhibition will also bring me back to Cleveland, for the first time in 25 years. I can't wait to see her photographs on the museum walls, and to meet residents when I give a talk [at the Museum] in April.”
“The exhibition is intended to be a reflective and engaging look at a period of 20th century history through Marilyn's unique gaze.” Said Nina Emett, the Photo Archive Manager, Curator and Director of Marilyn Stafford Photography. “We were able to let Marilyn know the good news [the Museum’s exhibition] before she died in early 2023. ‘Oh, how lovely, my work is going home,’ she said with a big smile on her face.”
This exhibition will allow you to engage with several decades of the twentieth century with glimpses into the locals of Paris, London, Rome, Tunisia, Lebanon, India, and Bangladesh. This combination of children, passersby, pedestrians, and war refugees, with models, artists, celebrities, and politicians makes for a striking contrast. All the subjects are portrayed with respect and dignity, but each showcases a level of humanity that once again proves the major similarities we share as humanity.
Irving Penn is widely recognized as one of the 20th century’s greatest photographers. Vogue’s longest-standing contributor, Penn revolutionized fashion photography in the postwar era. Using neutral backgrounds, he emphasized models’ personalities through their gestures and expressions. The exhibition includes approximately 175 photographs, spanning every period of Penn’s nearly 70-year career. The works range from early documentary scenes, celebrity portraits, and workers with the tools of their trades to abstract nudes and fashion studies. A special section of images from San Francisco’s Summer of Love features hippies, members of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, and local rock bands the Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company.
Time is crucial to Hương Ngô, who investigates the resonances of colonial histories in the present day. She explores various aspects of Vietnamese resistance to French colonialism through archival research, and activates the historical record via imagery, language, and material matter.
For her first solo exhibition in Colorado, Ngô turns to a series of early twentieth-century photographs showing foreign trees and tree grafts planted in Vietnam by the French. For the artist, grafting—a procedure that involves cutting and splicing different species into a single plant—serves as a powerful metaphor for the physical violence inherent in colonialism. Ngô reproduces the archival photographs using the Van Dyke method, which was common at the time the original pictures were made, but alters the fixing process so that the new images will gradually deteriorate and darken.
Accompanying the photographs are other new works by Ngô: altered reproductions of plants that were catalogued in 1919 for a French herbarium (a collection of systematically organized dried plants) and hanging fabric works with visible sutures that are treated with iron, copper, and other materials, many of which carry particular significance in the Southwest region of the United States. Like tree grafts, the tears in these works serve as a reminder of the violence of agricultural and mineral extraction; control of land, the artist proposes, is often accompanied by control over the land’s inhabitants. At the same time, the mends make visible the resistance and repair that may emerge in response to such violence.
To expand on this idea, the artist will bring into the exhibition a selection of cultural heritage items from our Fine Arts Center’s permanent collection that further speak to the history of the region and its cultural intersections. Collectively, the works in the show offer a gesture of what the artist has termed “ungrafting”: a poetic decolonial methodology that weaves together networks of care across time.
The Center for Photographic Art is proud to present The Art of Getting Lost, an exhibition brimming with exciting ideas and photographic possibilities by Brian Taylor. Through decades of university teaching and workshops held coast to coast, Brian has long been highly regarded as an influential teacher and inspiring artist in the realm of alternative photographic processes. Join us for a broad overview of his creative explorations over 50 years, portraying his fascination with beautifully antiquated 19th century processes such as gum bichromate printing, cyanotypes and selectively toned silver prints, as well as handmade books, poetry, and mixing photography with drawing and painting. Brian aspires to create individual artworks which each contain a unique narrative— resulting in a gallery filled with stories.
“My imagery is inspired by the surreal and poetic moments of living in our fast-paced, modern world. I'm fascinated by how daily life in the 21st Century presents us with incredible experiences in such regularity that we no longer differentiate between what is natural and what is colored with implausibility, humor, and irony. I savor the tactile pleasures of making art by hand and believe that certain works of art created by a human touch may contain a resonance of that touch: a discernible, lingering aura.”
This exhibition selects from over a thousand photographs that were accepted as gifts in the last three years, leading up to the recent merging of the Museum of Photographic Arts and The San Diego Museum of Art. This combined collection now contains over fifteen thousand works of photography, video, and new media. From anonymous nineteenth-century photographers to renowned artists such as Berenice Abbott, Martín Chambi, Mary Ellen Mark, Arnold Newman, Alison Rositer, Aaron Siskind, Mike and Doug Starn, Louise Dahl Wolfe, and many more, the photographs presented here reflect a diverse range of processes spanning nearly two hundred years. Picture This: Recent Acquisitions is organized into three sections: Portraiture, Abstraction/Manipulation, and Modernism.
Picture This demonstrates that a photograph is truly worth a thousand words. Sharing the work and the stories that each provide is a vital part of the nature of collecting. This exhibition looks specifically at the most recent acquisitions to the collection, the majority of which were gifted by local collectors or by the artists themselves. In particular, the Museum is grateful for the ongoing generosity of Cam and Wanda Garner, Ken and Jacki Widder, and Forrest D. Colburn. Two significant gifts were bequests, one from Lawrence S. Friedman and the other from Jerry D. Gardner.
By learning about the maker along with their influences and motivations, a deeper understanding can be experienced. It was Aristotle who wrote, “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” The core of the Picture This exhibition is to share the humanistic power of photography in all of its facets.
Image: Hendrik Kerstens, Spout, 2011
Captured Earth presents works by artists who create works in photography and installation that use elements from nature to explore place, ecology, and the material and mystical qualities of the land. Depictions range from site-specific performances, including Tarrah Krajnak’s documentations of her nature-centered rituals using rocks and plant material, and Alan Cohen’s walking meditations on the equator. Other artists use natural elements to create experimental process-based works, such as Jeremy Bolen’s prints produced from film developed in a polluted river or Barbara Crane’s photographic transfers of tree bark, leaves, and fungi she gathered at her Michigan cabin retreat. Others attempt to convey things so confounding that they cannot be contained in an image, such as Penelope Umbrico’s 8,146,774 Suns From Flickr (Partial) 9/10/10, that presents an assemblage of photographs of sunsets from one day found on a photo sharing website to underscore the universal human attraction to capture the sun’s essence. Collectively, the exhibition shows ways artists grapple with creating visual language to express their connection to the earth and its magnitude.
Curated by Kristin Taylor, Curator of Academic Programs and Collections.
For the first time as affiliated institutions, the North Carolina Museum of Art and the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art present a shared exhibition between both spaces, bringing awareness of global artists to audiences across our state. Examining place and theology from North Carolina to eastern Texas, From Alpha to Creation: Religion in the Deep South incorporates photography, video, and sculpture to survey various iconography and rituals throughout our landscape.
The exhibition includes works by Alec Soth, Allison Janae Hamilton, Ambrose Murray, Baseera Khan, Bill Aron, Brandon Thibodeaux, Bill Aron, Burk Uzzle, Charles Edward Williams, Debbie Fleming Caffery, Deborah Luster, Earlie Hudnall Jr., Heather Baebii Lee, Jamal Cyrus, Jeffrey Gibson, Keni Anwar, Linda Foard Roberts, Logan Lynette Burroughs, Margaret Sartor, Ralph Burns, and Titus Brooks Heagins.
Organized by the North Carolina Museum of Art. This exhibition is made possible, in part, by the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources; the North Carolina Museum of Art Foundation, Inc.; and the William R. Kenan Jr. Endowment for Educational Exhibitions. Research for this exhibition was made possible by Ann and Jim Goodnight/The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fund for Curatorial and Conservation Research and Travel.
Bay of Life: From Wind to Whales features the captivating photography of Frans Lanting. The exhibition offers visitors a journey through the natural splendor of Monterey Bay – showcasing the ecological resilience of the area and celebrating the power of conservation. Lanting's photographs are a call to action, inspiring stewardship of our natural world. A sister exhibition by the same name, featuring different photographs drawn from the same body of Lanting’s work, will be on display at California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB) from March 15, 2024, to August 2024, further extending the reach and impact of this vital message of ecological recovery and preservation.
About the Artist
Frans Lanting’s influential images of nature have appeared in books, magazines, and exhibitions around the world. Lanting’s books include Into Africa, LIFE, Jungles, Eye to Eye, and Okavango. He is an ambassador for the World Wildlife Fund and has received numerous awards for his work, including the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year’s first Lifetime Achievement Award. Moreover, His Royal Highness Prince Bernhard inducted Lanting as a Knight in the Royal Order of the Golden Ark, the Netherlands’ highest conservation honor.
Born in New York in 1926, Vivian Maier spent her early years in the Bronx. Throughout her years in New York City, she began to photograph and build her visual language, all while working as a nanny. Nearly a century later, Maier now figures in the history of photography alongside the greatest masters of the twentieth century.
Unseen focuses on the whole of her work, from the early 1950s to the mid-1980s, through around 200 works, vintage or modern prints, color, black and white, super 8 films and soundtracks, offering a complete vision of the dense, rich and complex architecture of this archive that provides a fascinating testimony to post-war America and the hell of the American dream.
The exhibition is organized by diChroma photography and Fotografiska New York, in collaboration with the John Maloof Collection, Chicago, and the Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York. Presented for the first time at Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, from September 15th, 2021 to January 16th, 2022, the exhibition was co-organized by diChroma photography and the Réunion des musées nationaux Grand Palais.
The exhibition is supported by Women In Motion, a Kering program that shines a light on the talent of women in the fields of arts and culture.
This exhibition examines the ways in which photography has been read, used, and manipulated as data through objects from the Loeb’s permanent collection. How do these photographs, most of which predate digital technology by decades, relate to data? How are they read as data? How do they reflect upon practices of collecting data? And what do they tell us about how we are captured in and as data? While today we typically associate the relationship between photography and data with servers, digital pixels, and online data mining, this history stretches back to photography’s earliest inventions. We argue that photography has always served as a technology for the augmentation of reality, allowing the human eye to overcome the limitations of vision, and for the extraction of information about people, places, and cultures that are rendered objects of study and consumption.
This project is co-organized by Jessica D. Brier, curator of photography, and Anna Mayer, visiting assistant professor of German Studies. It was developed with students enrolled in the fall of 2023 Vassar course “Of States and Their Terrorists,” offered by Professor Mayer and cross-listed in the departments of German Studies and Media Studies. Through close looking and object-based research, the students contributed ideas, text, and questions.
The exhibition is presented in two complementary parts: Part 1 opens on April 9, 2024 in the Hoene Hoy Photography Gallery, a space dedicated to exhibiting photography from the Loeb’s permanent collection, ensuring that photographs are always on view. Part 2 opens on April 25, 2024 in the downstairs galleries. Both remain on view until September 15, 2024.
This exhibition is generously supported by the Hoene Hoy Photography Fund.
For 30 years, the photographs of artist An-My Lê have engaged the complex fictions that inform how we justify, represent, and mythologize warfare and other forms of conflict. Lê does not take a straightforward photojournalistic approach to depicting combat. Rather, with poetic attention to politics and landscape, she meditates on the meaning of perpetual violence, war’s environmental impact, and the significance of diaspora. “Being a landscape photographer,” she has said, “means creating a relationship between various categories—the individual within a larger construct such as the military, history, and culture.”
An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers/Giữa hai giòng sông/Entre deux rivières is the first exhibition to present Lê’s powerful photographs alongside her forays into film, video, textiles, and sculpture. Never-before-seen embroideries—some large scale, others the size of a laptop screen—and rarely shown photographs from her Delta and Gabinetto series explore the relationship between mass media, gender, labor, and violence. And an immersive installation created especially for the exhibition attests to the artist’s long-standing consideration of the cinematic dimensions of photography and war.
Born in Vietnam in 1960, Lê came to the United States in 1975, after the fall of Saigon, as a political refugee. The two rivers in the exhibition’s title refer to the Mekong and Mississippi river deltas, to Vietnam and the United States. The phrase also gestures toward other subjects that Lê has inflected with her own experiences of war and displacement, from the Seine, to the Hudson River, to the Mexican-American border along the Rio Grande. It is a metaphor that invites viewers to reflect on the circularity of time and history, the layering of disparate geographies, and the intimacies that paradoxically grow out of conflict.
In fall 2024, the Raclin Murphy will present the first major exhibition in the United States featuring the work of Father Francis Browne, SJ, one of the most intriguing Irish photographers of the twentieth century. The Museum recently acquired this selection of 100 works from the artist’s archive. Born into an affluent family in Cork, Francis Mary Patrick Browne (1880-1960) was the youngest of eight children. By the time he was nine, both of his parents had died, and he became the ward of his uncle, Robert Browne, Bishop of Cloyne. The bishop gave Browne his first camera at his graduation from secondary school at age seventeen.
In spring 1912, Browne received the gift of a ticket on the maiden voyage of RMS Titanic. He sailed from Southampton in England, to Cherbourg, France, then to Cobh in County Cork where he disembarked before the ship steamed into the North Atlantic. Following the Titanic disaster, Browne’s photographs of the ship, her passengers and crew, appeared in newspapers and magazines worldwide. Their popularity enticed the Eastman Kodak Company in England to provide him with a continuing supply of film.
Widely regarded as the preeminent Hollywood portrait photographer of the 1930s and 1940s, George Hurrell (1904–1992) created definitive, timeless images of many of the most glamorous figures of filmdom’s golden era. Hurrell began his Hollywood career in 1930 as a photographer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the studio (founded in 1924) that claimed to have “more stars than there are in heaven.” With a keen eye for lighting effects and artful posing, he developed a style of presentation that magnified the stars and influenced popular standards of glamour. Advancing rapidly to become MGM’s in-house portraitist, he produced memorable images of film royalty, from Joan Crawford and Clark Gable to Spencer Tracy and Greta Garbo. He established his own studio on Sunset Boulevard in 1933, where he continued to photograph actors for MGM as well as those under contract with other major studios. After closing his studio in 1938, Hurrell concluded the decade as the head of photography for Warner Bros.
Selected from the National Portrait Gallery’s collection by senior curator of photographs Ann Shumard, this exhibition features golden-era portraits that reveal Hurrell’s skill in shaping the images of Hollywood’s brightest stars.
Through portraiture and biography, “Brilliant Exiles: American Women in Paris, 1900–1939” illuminates the accomplishments of sixty convention-defying women who crossed the Atlantic to pursue personal and professional aspirations in the vibrant cultural milieu of Paris. As foreigners in a cosmopolitan city, these “exiles” escaped the constraints that limited them at home. Many used their newfound freedom to pursue culture-shifting experiments in a variety of fields, including art, literature, design, publishing, music, fashion, journalism, theater and dance. An impressive number rose to preeminence as cultural arbiters, not merely participating in important modernist initiatives but orchestrating them. The progressive ventures they undertook while living abroad profoundly influenced American culture and opened up new possibilities for women. “Brilliant Exiles” highlights the dynamic role of portraiture in articulating the new identities that American women were at liberty to develop in Paris.
“Brilliant Exiles” is the first exhibition to focus on the impact of American women on Paris – and of Paris on American women – from the turn of the 20th century until the outbreak of World War II. Included will be portraits of cultural influencers, such as Josephine Baker, Isadora Duncan, Zelda Fitzgerald, Loïs Mailou Jones, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Anaïs Nin, Gertrude Stein, Ethel Waters, and Anna May Wong.
The exhibition is curated by Robyn Asleson, curator of prints and drawings, and will be accompanied by a major catalogue, published by the National Portrait Gallery and Yale University Press.
Image: Josephine Baker by Stanislaus Julian Walery, Gelatin silver print, 1926 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Long before the term “power couple” found its way into English lexicon, dynamic duos had been making their mark on U.S. history. “Powerful Partnerships: Civil War-Era Couples” sheds light on the stories and faces of five couples whose work and lives shaped the nation around them during tumultuous times. Featuring photography by the iconic Mathew Brady Studio, the exhibition introduces visitors to the exploits of Nathaniel and Mary Banks, John and Jessie Frémont, Ulysses and Julia Grant, George and Ellen McClellan, and Charles and Lavinia Stratton (better known to the public as Mr. and Mrs. Tom Thumb).
From July 13 to November 18, 2024, the Centre Pompidou-Metz is featuring photography in all its forms in the exhibition Seeing / Time / In Colour. It is curated by leading photography specialist Sam Stourdzé, who is currently director of the Villa Médicis in Rome and was formerly director of Les Rencontres d’Arles from 2014 to 2020 and the Musée de l’Élysée in Lausanne from 2010 to 2014. The exhibition brings together around 250 works and 50 photographers, offering a unique overview of the major technical challenges that have marked the history of the discipline. It will provide an opportunity to discover exceptional works: from very rare plates showing the restoration of masterpieces from the Italian Renaissance to rarely exhibited seascapes by Gustave Le Gray and autochrome plates from the collection of Albert Kahn recreated for the exhibition
AdeY’s identity is unknown, but the photographs speak for themselves. The art is in the borderland of photography and performance and depicts the naked body in playful formations and in minimalistic rooms and empty landscapes. On May 16, the exhibition Uncensored by AdeY opens at CLAMP in New York and will continue through May 25.
The municipality of Gauting is delighted to announce the Gauting International Photo
Summer 2024 this summer from June to September. Visitors are cordially invited to enjoy
three extraordinary exhibitions in the open air in the idyllic town hall garden. Impressive
photographic works await you, inviting you to linger, admire and reflect. Admission to this
cultural event is free.
Join us at the 2024 CatchLight Visual Storytelling Summit to hear from visual leaders who are using photography, art, film, and technology to tackle this information crisis. See how visual works can reveal deeper truths to viewers at the individual, community, and even societal levels.
The collection has been gradually forming since 2018, when I first visited Bangladesh and saw child labour with my own eyes. Child labour is common worldwide, with an estimated 170 million children working across our planet, most notably in Asia. This isn't just about occasional help for parents, but in some countries, it's about consistent, everyday, often hard work.
In collaboration with Atelier K84, Koster Fine Art Gallery presents a solo exhibition by Dutch Fine Art photographer Astrid Verhoef from 5 April until 11 May 2024. For the first time, the gallery will showcase a large overview of her award-winning series 'Human//Nature' with surrealist black-and-white photographs on locations in the Netherlands, Spain, and the USA. The exhibition takes place at Atelier K84, an inspiring art space in the heart of Amsterdam.
We are delighted to announce the new exhibition Between Modernism and Surrealism by Mona Kuhn at Edwynn Houk Gallery from 4 April to 11 May 2024, to coincide with AIPAD.
The World Photography Organisation is delighted to announce the acclaimed Brazilian photographer
Sebastião Salgado as the Outstanding Contribution to Photography recipient of the Sony World
Photography Awards 2024. One of the most accomplished and globally celebrated photographers
working today, Sebastião Salgado has achieved international renown for his remarkable
black-and-white compositions captured over a career spanning more than 50 years.
The World Press Photo Exhibition returns to London after a seven-year hiatus. Taking place at Borough Yards, Dirty Lane, London, SE1 9AD between Friday 3rd May and Monday 27th May 2024.
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