Public Domain: Photography and the Preservation of Public Lands

Through the Windshield, on view at Soho Photo Gallery from March 25 to April 19, 2026, offers an attentive look at the everyday theater of Manhattan’s streets. In a city defined by movement and congestion, Steve Schulman turns his gaze toward those who navigate its dense and unpredictable avenues. Rather than photographing the spectacle of traffic itself, he focuses on the individuals behind the glass, revealing a quieter, more intimate dimension of urban life. Positioned at street corners in the Lower East Side, Schulman observes drivers as they pause momentarily in the flow of the city. These fleeting intervals become opportunities for portraiture. Faces framed by windshields carry expressions of fatigue, concentration, impatience, or calm, each one shaped by the pressures and rhythms of the road. The car, often perceived as a purely functional space, emerges here as a temporary refuge—an interior world set against the surrounding chaos. The photographs extend beyond the drivers themselves to include the personal details that fill these compact environments. Objects suspended from rearview mirrors, small icons arranged across dashboards, and traces of daily routine suggest a form of self-expression within confined space. These elements transform vehicles into extensions of identity, echoing the ways people shape and personalize their homes. In this sense, Schulman’s work reveals the car as both a site of transit and a place of habitation. Alongside these interior views, the artist documents the exterior surfaces of commercial vans moving through the city. Their bold graphics and improvised advertisements act as mobile statements, blending humor, commerce, and visual invention. These vehicles contribute another layer to the visual language of the street, where communication unfolds not only through words but through color, typography, and design. Taken together, the images construct a portrait of a city in motion, defined as much by its inhabitants as by its infrastructure. Through the Windshield invites a reconsideration of the ordinary commute, revealing within it a complex interplay of individuality, adaptation, and shared experience. Image: Statue of Liberty Devotee, courtesy of Soho Photo Gallery © Steve Schulman

Lines of the City, presented at Soho Photo Gallery from March 25 to April 19, 2026, turns attention toward one of the most familiar yet overlooked elements of the urban landscape: the markings beneath our feet. In this quietly perceptive series, Susan Bowen isolates the painted lines, symbols, and surfaces that organize movement through the city, transforming them into subjects of contemplation. Removed from their purely functional role, these fragments of asphalt and pigment begin to reveal an unexpected visual language shaped by time, use, and chance. Bowen’s photographs focus on moments where structure and accident intersect. Crisp white stripes cut across worn pavement, while faded yellows fracture into irregular patterns, their edges softened by weather and traffic. Layers of paint overlap, chip, and erode, producing compositions that feel at once deliberate and accidental. These surfaces carry the marks of repetition and revision, suggesting a continuous negotiation between order and entropy. What once directed movement now invites stillness and reflection. Central to the exhibition is the use of diptychs, where paired images enter into dialogue with one another. Through these juxtapositions, Bowen introduces rhythm and variation, allowing forms to echo, contrast, or disrupt across frames. A curve in one image may find its counterpart in a sharp angle in another; a dense cluster of markings may be offset by an area of near emptiness. These pairings encourage a slower engagement, prompting the viewer to look beyond the immediate and consider relationships that unfold over time. The work resonates with traditions of abstraction, recalling the visual concerns of modernist painting while remaining firmly rooted in the material reality of the street. Bowen does not impose order on these scenes; instead, she discovers it within the existing environment, revealing a quiet elegance embedded in the everyday. Her photographs suggest that the city, in all its wear and imperfection, continuously composes itself. Lines of the City ultimately invites a shift in perception, where attention transforms the ordinary into something precise, lyrical, and enduring, hidden in plain sight. Image: Street-Lines #05, courtesy of Soho Photo Gallery © Susan Bowen

Beyond Botanicals, on view at Soho Photo Gallery from March 25 to April 19, 2026, presents a contemplative exploration of the natural world through the disciplined lens of black-and-white photography. In this series, Barry Guthertz turns away from the descriptive richness of color to focus on structure, rhythm, and form. By stripping botanicals of their expected hues, he reveals an alternate vocabulary—one built from contrast, shadow, and the quiet complexity of organic design. Guthertz approaches flowers and plant life not as decorative subjects, but as sources of abstraction. Petals, stems, and leaves become lines, curves, and textures that unfold across the frame with a sculptural presence. Light plays a central role, carving out delicate transitions between deep blacks and luminous highlights. The resulting images carry a sense of depth and tactility, inviting viewers to look closely and linger on details that might otherwise pass unnoticed. The artist’s process extends beyond the moment of capture. Each photograph evolves through careful consideration, sometimes over long periods, as initial impressions are revisited and refined. Grain, tonal variation, and subtle manipulations contribute to the final print, not as embellishments but as essential elements of expression. These decisions echo the emotional response that first prompted the image, allowing the work to retain a sense of immediacy while embracing the passage of time. There is a quiet intensity in these photographs, a balance between control and intuition. The absence of color does not diminish the vitality of the subject; instead, it amplifies the internal structure and emotional resonance of each form. Guthertz’s images suggest that perception deepens when distraction falls away, revealing a more intimate connection between observer and subject. Beyond Botanicals invites a reconsideration of how nature is seen and felt, offering a space where observation becomes reflection and where the simplest forms hold a surprising and enduring power. Image: Looking Up Enders Dahlia, courtesy of Soho Photo Gallery © Barry Guthertz

Neil O. Lawner: The Fabric of Faith unfolds as a quiet meditation on identity within the restless rhythm of New York City. Presented at Soho Photo Gallery from March 25 to April 19, 2026, the exhibition gathers fourteen candid photographs that linger on the subtle yet powerful dialogue between tradition and modernity. In a city often associated with reinvention, Lawner’s lens reveals a different narrative—one where continuity becomes an act of presence rather than resistance. Moving through neighborhoods shaped by generations of migration, Lawner observes individuals whose clothing carries stories older than the streets they walk. A carefully wrapped turban, a flowing hijab, the simplicity of a habit, or the modest kippah—each gesture of dress speaks to a lineage that extends far beyond the moment captured. These are not staged portraits but fragments of lived experience, where faith inhabits the everyday: a subway ride, a crosswalk, a fleeting pause in conversation. Lawner’s approach echoes the long tradition of street photography in New York, recalling the humanist sensibilities of photographers who sought meaning in ordinary encounters. Yet his work remains distinctly contemporary, attentive to the layered identities that define the city today. The images do not isolate their subjects; instead, they situate them within the vibrant, often chaotic urban fabric, allowing contrast and coexistence to emerge naturally. What resonates throughout The Fabric of Faith is a sense of quiet resilience. The subjects do not perform their beliefs—they inhabit them. In doing so, they transform public space into a site of continuity, where heritage remains visible and alive. Lawner’s photographs invite viewers to look more closely, to recognize the profound within the familiar, and to consider how faith, like the city itself, becomes something worn, carried, and shared. Image: Face to Face Conversation, N.Y.C., courtesy of Soho Photo Gallery © Neil O. Lawner

Max Marienko: Borderless City presents a vivid and often playful reflection on the shifting cultural landscape of New York. Exhibited at Soho Photo Gallery from March 25 to April 19, 2026, the series emerges from Marienko’s daily wanderings through Brooklyn and beyond, where the street becomes both stage and subject. His photographs resist simplicity, inviting viewers into layered compositions where coincidence, tension, and humor quietly unfold. Working in the tradition of candid street photography, Marienko captures scenes that feel at once accidental and carefully composed. A reflection interrupts a gesture, a passerby disrupts a moment, a juxtaposition turns ordinary movement into something subtly absurd. His images carry a sense of visual contradiction—order and chaos coexisting within a single frame. This balance reflects the city itself, where millions of lives intersect without pause, forming fleeting relationships that rarely announce themselves. In Borderless City, cultural identity does not appear as a fixed marker but as something fluid, constantly reshaped through proximity. New York’s reputation as a global crossroads becomes less of a grand statement and more of a quiet, ongoing negotiation. Marienko pays attention to the in-between moments: mismatched symbols, overlapping languages, gestures that echo across backgrounds. These are instances where difference does not disappear but instead cohabits in unpredictable ways. There is a subtle irony running through the work, a recognition that coexistence is not always seamless. Yet within these imperfect encounters lies a distinct beauty. Marienko’s photographs suggest that the city’s identity does not depend on harmony alone, but on its capacity to hold contradictions together. In this shared urban space, boundaries lose their clarity, and what remains is a collective rhythm shaped by movement, collision, and the quiet acceptance of difference. Image: Starfish, courtesy of Soho Photo Gallery © Max Marienko

AMBIGUITY, a solo exhibition by Alan Sislen, unfolds at Multiple Exposures Gallery from March 10 through April 19, 2026. The exhibition brings together a recent body of photographic work that examines the fragile moment when perception falters. Sislen focuses on the instant in which the eye recognizes shapes and structures, yet the mind hesitates before assigning them meaning. Through this deliberate pause, the photographs open a space where certainty dissolves and familiar environments become unexpectedly mysterious. Architecture plays a central role in Sislen’s visual investigations. Buildings often symbolize order, stability, and permanence, but within these photographs they appear unsettled and fluid. Reflections on glass facades, compressed perspectives, and repeated patterns alter the viewer’s orientation. Lines bend, surfaces mirror one another, and structural forms fragment into layered compositions. What initially appears recognizable gradually shifts toward abstraction, revealing how perception depends as much on interpretation as it does on sight. The exhibition unfolds across three distinct sections within the gallery space, each exploring ambiguity in a different visual register. The first grouping introduces instability through fractured reflections and overlapping architectural details. In these works, familiar urban surfaces multiply and distort, producing images that seem to hover between representation and illusion. The central sequence intensifies this sensation by pushing spatial perception further, compressing depth and perspective until walls, windows, and corridors dissolve into intricate visual puzzles that challenge the viewer’s sense of orientation. In contrast, the final section of the exhibition offers a quieter visual atmosphere. Here, architectural elements gradually give way to simplified forms, where light, shadow, and subtle tonal shifts dominate the frame. Ambiguity transforms from disorientation into contemplation, encouraging a slower and more attentive mode of looking. Across the exhibition, Sislen’s photographs invite viewers to remain within uncertainty for a moment longer than usual. In doing so, the work suggests that ambiguity itself becomes a productive space, where familiar places reveal unexpected dimensions and perception finds new possibilities. Image: Curved Perspectives. © Alan Sislen

Ann Rosen: Being Seen: Part III unfolds at Soho Photo Gallery as a continuation of a deeply collaborative and socially engaged practice. On view from March 25 to April 19, 2026, the exhibition brings together portraits and personal texts shaped through years of workshops with women whose lives intersect with homelessness, incarceration, and addiction. Rather than observing from a distance, Rosen works within a shared creative space where authorship becomes collective and visibility is carefully reclaimed. The origins of the project trace back to 2015, in Brooklyn shelters where conversations gradually evolve into images. Participants paint their own backdrops, write fragments of their stories, and step in front of the camera on their own terms. These layered portraits carry the presence of multiple voices, blending visual and written expression into something that resists simplification. Each image holds a sense of deliberation, shaped not only by the photographer’s eye but by the subject’s intention. As the work expands through collaborations with HousingPlus, the project deepens its engagement with communities navigating systemic hardship. Rosen constructs a temporary studio within familiar environments, introducing professional lighting and materials that shift the atmosphere without erasing context. Within this space, participants shape their representation—choosing posture, clothing, and symbolic objects that reflect both lived experience and imagined possibility. The act of being photographed becomes a form of self-definition rather than documentation. Presented as diptychs, the pairing of image and text invites a slower encounter. The written narratives complicate the act of looking, challenging assumptions often imposed on marginalized women. These works do not seek to resolve the tension between vulnerability and strength; instead, they hold both in view. Being Seen: Part III proposes visibility not as exposure, but as a deliberate and collaborative act—one that restores nuance, dignity, and a sense of agency to those too often overlooked. Image: Veteran A East NY, Brooklyn, courtesy of Soho Photo Gallery © Ann Rosen

2026 PRC Student Show, presented from March 14 through April 19, 2026 at the Photographic Resource Center, marks the twentieth edition of an exhibition dedicated to emerging photographers in the Boston area. Over the past two decades, the annual show has become an important platform for students exploring photography at a formative stage of their artistic development. By bringing together work from colleges, universities, and local high schools, the exhibition highlights the vitality of the region’s educational programs and the diverse voices shaping the next generation of image-makers. The 2026 edition features students from leading institutions across Greater Boston, including Boston University, Emerson College, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Northeastern University, and School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, among others. This year’s exhibition also expands its scope by welcoming participants from several Boston-area high schools, reinforcing the role of early mentorship and education in cultivating creative practice. The resulting presentation reveals a broad spectrum of photographic interests, from documentary storytelling and portraiture to conceptual experimentation and mixed-media approaches. Within the gallery space, the works reflect the personal perspectives and cultural experiences of young artists responding to contemporary life. Some photographs examine themes of identity, community, and belonging, while others focus on the quiet details of everyday environments or the imaginative possibilities of constructed imagery. The exhibition provides a rare opportunity for audiences to encounter work at the moment when artists begin shaping their visual language and discovering the expressive potential of the medium. For the Photographic Resource Center, the student exhibition remains central to its mission of education and artistic engagement. Through public programs, discussions, and community outreach connected to the show, the organization continues to support emerging photographers while strengthening the cultural network that surrounds photography in Boston. 2026 PRC Student Show stands as both a celebration of youthful creativity and a reminder that the future of photography grows from spaces where experimentation, curiosity, and learning thrive. Image: © Karl Kang, Northeastern University

Bill Owens: Work and Leisure offers a witty and affectionate glimpse into the everyday lives of Americans in the 1970s, a period caught between the social revolutions of the previous decade and the technological dawn of the 1980s. Owens’ photographs open doors into private worlds—living rooms, backyards, offices, and parties—where leisure, labor, and aspiration blend into a portrait of middle-class life both ordinary and extraordinary. Drawn from Owens’ celebrated series Leisure (1972), Our Kind of People (1975), and Working: I Do It for the Money (1977), the works on view capture a specific slice of America—prosperous, suburban, and largely white—rooted in California and the Midwest. Yet, beneath their regional focus, these images reflect a broader cultural rhythm: the optimism and contradictions of postwar domesticity. Owens’ lens balances humor and empathy, gently poking fun at the rituals of modern comfort while finding sincerity in its subjects’ dreams and routines. His photographs suggest that the suburban ideal, so often mythologized, is as fragile and human as the people who inhabit it. Each image is accompanied by a quote from the subject, a detail that gives voice and agency to the photographed, turning the viewer into both witness and participant. These captions preserve the rhythms of conversation and self-perception from a half-century ago, reminding us how people wanted to be seen in a time of shifting identity and expectation. To some, the scenes may appear quaint or nostalgic; to others, they remain sharply familiar, reflecting enduring themes of community, conformity, and self-expression. Organized by Senior Curator Laura Burkhalter, this exhibition features works generously gifted to the collection by Dr. Steven and Yasemin Miller and Jeff Perry in honor of Jacqueline and Myron Blank. Owens’ photographs invite us all to pause, smile, and step back into a time when the American dream was both celebrated and quietly questioned. Image: Bill Owens (American, born 1938) We really enjoy getting together with our friends to drink and dance. It’s a wild party and we’re having a great time., from the “Suburbia” series, 1971 (printed 1999) Gelatin silver print Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections: The Jeff Perry Photography Collection given in honor of Myron and Jacqueline Blank, 2024.119

Focal Point: The David Hall Photography Collection brings together forty remarkable works from the extensive holdings of Tampa-based photographer and collector David Hall. Comprising more than four hundred pieces, the collection reflects a lifelong fascination with the art and history of photography. The selection on view traces the medium’s transformation throughout the twentieth century—from its early documentary purpose to its recognition as a vital and expressive art form. Hall’s particular passion for photographs made between World War I and World War II, a period of immense artistic experimentation, is evident throughout the exhibition. The presentation unfolds through themes that recur across Hall’s collection, featuring iconic works such as Ruth Orkin’s American Girl in Italy, August Sander’s Young Farmers, and Ansel Adams’s celebrated view of Half Dome in Yosemite. These images, once circulated in influential publications like LIFE, Harper’s Bazaar, and Vogue, highlight a generation of photographers—among them Richard Avedon, Alfred Eisenstaedt, and Philippe Halsman—whose work shaped modern visual culture. The exhibition also honors the pioneering spirit of Group f/64, whose members including Adams, Ruth Bernhard, and Edward Weston pursued a vision of “pure photography” that rejected pictorialism in favor of sharp focus and formal precision. Women play a defining role within Hall’s collection, both behind and in front of the camera. The works of Berenice Abbott, Diane Arbus, and Lillian Bassman exemplify a generation of women who redefined the possibilities of the medium despite limited recognition in their time. Their portraits of women—muses, artists, sisters—embody strength, elegance, and humanity. Focal Point also includes pieces by Hall’s contemporaries and friends from California, a nod to his years in the Bay Area. More than an exhibition, this presentation stands as a heartfelt tribute to David Hall’s enduring legacy as a collector, photographer, and champion of the arts in Tampa and beyond. Image: Judy Dater (American, b. 1941), Self-Portrait at Salt Flats, 1981. Gelatin silver print. David Hall Collection.

Alejandro Cartagena: Ground Rules is the first major retrospective of the acclaimed photographer, bringing together over two decades of his work through an expansive multi-series presentation. Born in the Dominican Republic and based in Monterrey, Mexico, Cartagena explores pressing social and environmental issues through a striking range of photographic practices that includes documentary images, collage, appropriated vernacular photographs, and AI-generated video. His work captures the complexities of suburban sprawl, the US-Mexico border, and increasing economic inequality. As visually dynamic as they are politically incisive, his photographs prompt viewers to question the systems that shape our world. Though rooted in Mexico, Cartagena’s photographic series speak to shared global conditions of migration, environmental crisis, and unchecked development, offering a powerful reflection on the broader forces defining life in the 21st century.

Speaking in Pairs, on view from February 5 to April 19, 2026, approaches portraiture as a site of tension, dialogue, and transformation. Anchored by August Sander’s 1938 photograph of Hermann Leubsdorf, the exhibition asks whether a single image can hold both violence and healing within its frame. Rather than offering clear answers, the show unfolds portraiture as a layered practice—one shaped by history, power, intimacy, and the shifting relationship between sitter, maker, and viewer. Installed in a gallery endowed by the Leubsdorf family, the exhibition traces how portraits circulate across time, acquiring new meanings as social and political contexts change. Here, photography is not treated as a neutral record but as a dynamic form of evidence—capable of granting visibility, preserving memory, or exposing vulnerability. The works gathered explore the friction between private lives and public histories, revealing how even the quietest images can echo with conflict, resilience, and unresolved questions. Bringing together more than eighty contributors from diverse fields, Speaking in Pairs resists a single authoritative voice. Artists, historians, writers, lawyers, doctors, and curators contribute to an evolving installation that incorporates photographs alongside books, posters, and ephemera. This porous structure blurs boundaries between vernacular imagery and fine art, between the anonymous and the celebrated, and between fact and fiction. In doing so, the exhibition emphasizes exchange—ideas speaking to one another across disciplines, generations, and geographies. Marking significant anniversaries in the histories of photography, literature, and cultural resistance, the exhibition situates itself within a longer continuum of image-making and storytelling. Portraits are presented as acts of witnessing that can affirm presence while also exposing risk. By juxtaposing images made during moments of crisis and change, Speaking in Pairs highlights how meaning is never fixed. Instead, it emerges through sustained looking and conversation, inviting viewers to consider who is seen, who speaks, and how images continue to shape our understanding of survival, memory, and responsibility. Images: Left: Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf at the beach, New York, c. 1936. Photographer unknown. Right : Bertha Leubsdorf, Berlin, Germany, c. 1912. Courtesy John Leubsdorf. Photograph by Martin Balg.