Being and There: Joseph Lawton

CLAMP is pleased to present “West,” an exhibition of recent photographs by Zack Seckler, continuing his signature aerial perspective, transforming vast landscapes into painterly compositions where land, water, and sky dissolve into near-abstractions. Seckler’s ability to distill the essence of immense terrains into fluid, almost dreamlike visuals, challenges traditional representations of the American landscape. His lens captures the interplay of organic forms and natural forces, revealing a world where the familiar dissolves into the unexpected, and scale becomes elusive. Like Alfred Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, Carleton Watkins, and other painters and photographers of the later part of the 19th century who ventured west to depict and explore America’s vast and uncharted landscapes, Seckler documents the Rocky Mountains, the arid Southwest, and more lush scenes in California. But unlike his predecessors, Seckler is equipped with imaging technologies and means of travel allowing him to record the same landscapes from vantage points and in details incomprehensible in centuries past. The artist’s approach bridges past and present, acknowledging the historical impulse to chronicle and celebrate the wilderness while employing a contemporary, almost abstract sensibility that shifts the focus from romantic documentation to commentary and interpretation. Seckler’s images reveal rhythmic patterns and unexpected color harmonies across various sprawling western terrains now touched by man’s footprint. The images embrace a surrealism of scale—where minute details, like the bend of a river or a lone animal’s tracks, become the focal points of vast, minimalist canvases. The textures of the land, shaped by erosion, water flow, and human intervention, take on a lyrical quality, transforming rugged topographies into soft, painterly gestures. Challenging the viewer’s sense of perspective, Seckler encourages an experience of the landscape as both intimate and infinite, structured yet ephemeral. The aerial vantage offers a view transcending the limitations of the human eye, inviting a reconsideration of the land’s scale and vulnerability. His compositions, at once serene and dynamic, speak to the power of nature and the imprint of time, making visible the otherwise imperceptible rhythms that define these remote and majestic expanses. Zack Seckler was born in Boston and studied psychology at Syracuse University. Then, traveling solo with a point-and-shoot camera in northern India, his mind opened to the visual world. Upon returning to Syracuse, he took coursework in photography at the renowned Newhouse School. With an internship in a Hong Kong photo studio and editorial work in New York City, he developed his vision for image-making. “West” is the artist’s third solo show at CLAMP.

The Fahey/Klein Gallery is honored to present Reverie, photographs by Arthur Elgort. To celebrate his long career, this exhibition showcases Elgort’s spontaneous energy through expertly crafted photographs that have the unforced look of a personal snapshot. Born in New York City in 1940, Elgort discovered his passion for photography after initially studying painting at Hunter College. Finding the solitary nature of painting unfulfilling, he turned to photography and soon found his calling. His early work capturing ballet dancers in motion laid the foundation for his signature aesthetic: natural, unposed, and full of life. In 1971, his breakthrough came when British Vogue published one of his images, launching a career that would redefine the industry. At a time when fashion photography was dominated by rigid, studio-bound compositions, Elgort introduced a fresh, relaxed perspective. He encouraged models to move freely, embraced natural light, and brought his subjects into real-world settings—whether bustling city streets, sunlit gardens, or windswept beaches. His work captured fashion as it was meant to be worn: in motion, alive, and exuding energy. “Taking pictures is what I love and I like my subjects to be varied, a little bit of everything – fashion, jazz, ballet, my kids, landscapes, and even ‘street’ photography. I never want my work to be stuck in one category. Fashion might be what sells, but a girl on a subway could be fashion, a jazz musician in a club could be fashion, and a ballerina at the barre could be too. I’ve always like to integrate all of my interests into my photos and I think that’s reflected in this exhibit of nearly 50 years of my work.” – Arthur Elgort Over the past five decades, Arthur Elgort has not only become one of the most celebrated and imitated photographers in the world, but he has also redefined what fashion photography could be. From his iconic Vogue covers to his influential luxury-brand campaigns, his images remain as fresh and relevant today as ever. Reverie offers a rare opportunity to experience the breadth of his vision—a legacy that continues to inspire and shape the future of photography. Image: Kate Moss at Cafe Lipp, Pairs, Vogue Italia, 1993 © Arthur Elgort, courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

CLAMP is honored to present Flowers Drink the River, a solo exhibition by Pia Paulina Guilmoth—her first with the gallery. In this deeply personal body of work, Guilmoth documents the first two years of her gender transition while living in a rural, predominantly right-wing town in Maine. Her large-format photographs reflect beauty and terror in a world where queer existence can be at turns both euphoric and deeply perilous. Haunting nocturnes replete with moths, snakes, and owls, are animated by raw, animistic rituals, representing Guilmoth’s search for beauty, sanctuary, and resistance amid the wild landscapes and intimate relationships that define her life. Spanning themes of transformation, belonging, and defiance, Flowers Drink the River is an ode to trans women, queer kinship, and working-class survival in the backwoods of central Maine. Guilmoth’s photographs reject easy categorization—mud-drenched bodies intertwine in the dark of night, spider silk drifts across glowing landscapes, and nocturnal creatures move through the frame like quiet witnesses. A burning house rages in the distance with a calm white horse seemingly unawares. Friends piss from tree branches like a warm summer rain. These photographs inhabit the space between land and body, pleasure and threat, inviting viewers into a world where boundaries are blurred, and survival is a necessary act of creation. Guilmoth’s photographic practice is rooted in collaboration—both with her human subjects and the natural world. She constructs delicate sculptures from spiderwebs, flowers, and other found materials, then waits as the environment intervenes, letting wind, water, and light reshape her compositions. This meditative approach extends to her relationship with the animals she photographs, earning their trust over weeks and months before capturing their presence on film. “Each night for a week in August, I would sit in the tall, tick-infested grass behind the orchard, covered in Scent Killer Gold, wearing a ghillie suit, holding a tray full of crushed apples in one hand and a 30-foot makeshift shutter release cable attached to my 4 × 5 camera in the other,” Guilmoth recalls. “The same family of deer would get more comfortable with my presence each night. Eventually, they were eating the ripe fruit from my hands. The following Tuesday, I would have my first HRT consultation. I was keeping it a secret, knowing there was no way I could safely transition in this place, but also no way I could hide my changing body over the following months and years.” Guilmoth’s use of large-format photography is both a technical and emotional choice, emphasizing patience, precision, and physical engagement with the medium. “I have always embraced slowness in my life,” Guilmoth states. “Both in the place I live and the way I aspire to be. Art and being with people I love are the things that allow me to really exist in a moment.” The intricate process of setting up each shot, from building trust with wild creatures to manipulating natural elements, reflects the broader themes of her work: resilience, adaptation, and the search for beauty in unlikely places. At its core, Flowers Drink the River challenges the conventions of documentary photography. Rather than approaching her subjects as an outsider, Guilmoth photographs her own community—trans and queer people navigating life in a region that often denies their existence. The result is a body of work that resists voyeurism, instead offering an intimate, deeply felt portrait of chosen family, survival, and joy. “Resistance for me is saying: ‘You can try and take everything from me—healthcare, safety, affordable housing—but you can’t take away my joy and the ability to find beauty in my life,’” she explains. The exhibition is accompanied by a monograph of the same title published by Stanley Barker.

During the 1970s and ‘80s, photographers Colleen Kenyon (American, 1951-2022) and Kathleen Kenyon (American, 1951-2023) were part of the movement of female artists who challenged the photographic establishment with innovative approaches to the medium. Colleen Kenyon was a pioneer in using hand coloring to enhance her portraits of herself and her sister in domestic settings; Kathleen Kenyon was adept at appropriating gender-specfic images of women from the mass media to create ironic photomontages. Beginning in 1981, the two sisters also served as directors of the Center for Photography at Woodstock, where they continued to advocate for the advancement of women in the arts and for artists of color. My Sister, My Self is curated by art historians Tom Wolf and Laurie Dahlberg. Organized by CPW, this retrospective features the Kenyons’ most iconic works, and is presented both at CPW in Kingston, NY, and at the Kleinert/James Art Center in Woodstock, NY. The exhibition materials are drawn from the archives of their works now held by CPW. This exhibition is accompanied by a hardcover catalog, My Sister, My Self: Photographs by Colleen Kenyon and Kathleen Kenyon with text by Wolf and Dahlberg, and CPW Curator Adam Giles Ryan

This exhibition, titled Recess, features the work of 2024 Saltzman Prize winner Keisha Scarville (American, born 1975). Scarville makes photographs that consider her personal experience of in-betweenness, exploring notions of diaspora, transformation, belonging, and loss. In her photographs, she creates spaces, stages, and still lives, often using clothing and textiles belonging to her late mother. When Scarville invokes her mother’s presence in her works, she creates alternate, liminal places that engage both memory and the possibilities of abstraction. In Recess, Scarville refers both to the hollow space beneath a flat plane and to any temporary pause or suspension. In this way, Scarville continues her exploration of thresholds. Neither here nor there, thresholds are spaces of becoming; they mark moments of “passing through,” suspended instants that are full of potential and prospects of the unknown. For Scarville, shadows function as these types of spaces. They are not only dark shapes that lack light and clarity, but also deep, productive zones where alternative temporalities and in-between narratives reside. In her photographs and installations, Scarville activates the shadow as a form in ways that require closer looking, deeper feeling, and the active negotiation of being. Recess is accompanied by a limited edition artist’s book by Keisha Scarville (published by CPW in collaboration with 1080PRESS).

In 1976, photographer MEM embarked on an arduous, self-assigned project with sociologist Dr. Karen Folger Jacobs to document the lives of women living in the high-security, all-female wing of the Oregon State Hospital in the city of Salem. The year before, Mark had photographed there on the set of the Milǒs Forman’s film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and she had met several women who lived on Ward 81 of the hospital. Hoping to better understand and represent their life experiences, Mark and Jacobs arranged to spend a month living alongside the women in Ward 81. The duration of their stay, and their extraordinary access to patients and staff, enabled the collaborators to produce a nuanced and compelling record of female psychiatric treatment in the United States during the mid-1970s. In 1978, Mark and Jacobs published the seminal book Ward 81, which revealed the often-porous line between sanity and mental illness for women relegated to the margins of society. In the words of Jacobs, “They are the women we might have been or one day become.” Mary Ellen Mark: Ward 81 greatly amplifies that earlier study. Most exciting are the newly discovered audio narratives that the women recorded with Jacobs, which have been integrated into a short film, Moonlight Heaven Black, made for the exhibition by Martin Bell, Mark’s husband. As well, the exhibition brings together never-before-seen prints, contact sheets, and rare archival materials. The original exhibition was organized by curators Gaëlle Morel and Kaitlin Booher for the Image Centre, Toronto, in collaboration with the Mary Ellen Mark Foundation, New York. It is accompanied by the publication Ward 81: Voices by Mary Ellen Mark and Karen Folger Jacobs, edited by Martin Bell, Julia Bezgin, and Meredith Lue (Steidl, 2023).

The Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM) proudly presents the evocative work of Kristina Sheufelt, a Detroit-based artist and environmentalist, in its first-floor galleries. Through a diverse practice encompassing sculpture, photography, and living experiments, Sheufelt examines the profound yet fragile connection between humanity and the natural world. By using her own body as a site of inquiry, she investigates how local ecologies shape biological responses, reflecting on what it means to exist within an environment that modern society both depends on and distances itself from. Her haunting sculptures embody a deep sense of loss—mourning not only the erosion of environmental health but also the fading intimacy between humans and nature. Yet within this sorrow, Sheufelt’s work reveals resilience. Microscopic processes, imperceptible to the naked eye, demonstrate nature’s quiet reclamation, an enduring force adapting in unexpected ways. Echoes of a Vanishing World is at once an elegy, a gesture of repair, and a call to action—inviting viewers to confront the ecological future of our planet and reconsider their place within it. Presented as part of the Michigan Artist Series, this exhibition sparks urgent dialogue about our shifting relationship with the natural world and the unseen forces that shape our survival. Image: Burrow, 2022 © Kristina Sheufelt

The J. Paul Getty Museum presents María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold on view February 18 through May 4, 2025, an exhibition drawn from the artist’s family story that examines global histories of enslavement, indentured labor, motherhood, and migration. With these legacies as her backdrop, Campos-Pons foregrounds connections—between people, and between people and their environments. Organized collaboratively by the Brooklyn Museum and the J. Paul Getty Museum, María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold brings together over 50 works, including large-scale photographic grids and immersive installations, videos, paintings, and performance art documentation. While the artist’s photographs and installations are held in many collections on the East Coast and in Europe, this marks the first multimedia survey of her work since 2007, and the first opportunity on the West Coast to experience the breadth of the artist’s vision. “Campos-Pons’s vibrant works grapple with global histories of migration, relevant both to the Getty’s commitment to the preservation of world cultures, and to efforts by the Museum and our Department of Photographs to spotlight important contemporary voices and issues,” says Timothy Potts, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle Director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “We are thrilled to be the exclusive West Coast venue for this exhibition of María Magdalena’s inspirational and thought-provoking work.” Born in Matanzas, Cuba, in 1959, María Magdalena Campos-Pons draws from her personal and familial narratives, incorporating Yoruba-derived Santería symbolism to address interconnected historical and contemporary challenges. Her work reflects the experiences of her African and Chinese ancestors, as well as her life in Cuba, Italy, Boston, and Nashville, where she currently resides and serves as the Cornelius Vanderbilt Endowed Chair Professor of Fine Arts at Vanderbilt University. The exhibition is divided into six sections, all of which highlight forms of connection. The figures, flora, and fauna that abound in Campos-Pons’s art encourage deeper appreciation of the details that surround us. She compels us to look closely, critically, to behold our environs—and each other—with an eye towards forging and repairing relationships, even in fractured times. Among the featured works in the exhibition are Umbilical Cord (1991), a poignant artwork about the women in her family made while the artist was separated from them for more than a decade due to political tensions between the United States and Cuba, Spoken Softly with Mama (1998), an altar-like installation that honors the many generations in her family and in the African diaspora who labored as domestic workers, as well as powerful videos, performance footage, richly hued large-scale glass mobiles, intricate collages, and vibrant watercolors. Unique to the Getty’s installation of the touring exhibition is Elevata (2002), an expansive photographic grid on loan from the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which will be featured in a section of the exhibition that deals with the “extreme weather” of racial oppression and climate catastrophe. Campos-Pons is a 2023 recipient of the MacArthur Foundation “genius” award and in December 2024 was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by ARTnews for her efforts to show “how the past is embedded in us, the people we hold dear, and the objects we collect.” “For decades Campos-Pons has committed herself to deploying art as a tool of healing,” notes Getty curator Mazie Harris. “As Los Angeles mourns all that has been lost in the recent wildfires and comes together to help rebuild, we hope that the exhibition can serve as a space for solace and for reflection on our relationships with nature and with each other.” Complementing the exhibition is an audio guide that includes Campos-Pons speaking about works in the show in both English and Spanish. María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold is organized by the Brooklyn Museum and the J. Paul Getty Museum. The exhibition is curated by Carmen Hermo, formerly Associate Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, now Lorraine and Alan Bressler Curator of Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Dr. Mazie Harris, Associate Curator, Department of Photographs, J. Paul Getty Museum. Major support from Alicia Miñana and Rob Lovelace. Image: The Calling (detail), 2003, María Magdalena Campos-Pons. Diptych of Polaroid Polacolor Pro photographs. Collection of Jonathan and Barbara Lee. Courtesy of and © María Magdalena Campos-Pons

The 2025 Members' Juried Exhibition highlights the exceptional work of photographers from across the United States and abroad. From more than 2,400 entries, 45 images were selected for the gallery exhibition, with an additional 45 juror selections presented online starting March 29. A catalog featuring both the physical and online exhibitions will also be available for purchase. This year's awards celebrate outstanding achievements in photography. Suzanne Theodora White received First Place for The Drought, part of her series New American Landscape. Second Place was awarded to Charles Ford for his striking 1990 image NYC, and Janet Beaty earned Third Place for her evocative piece Beyond, created in 2024. Honorable Mentions were presented to Lynne Breitfeller, Celia Lara, QT Luong, and Christian Tan, whose works span powerful moments from portraiture to landscapes. The Jack Wasserbach Award for Black & White Photography was given to Shane Hallinan for his compelling photograph Samuella and Dakh, Stuart St, Berkeley, captured in 1997. The 2025 edition reflects a wide range of voices and visions, honoring photographers whose work continues to inspire, challenge, and connect audiences. Image: Michelle Sank, Bathini, Sea Point Pavilion, Cape Town, 2024

Higher Pictures presents more than 300 images from Keisha Scarville’s ongoing Passports portraits. This is the most comprehensive exhibition of the series since its inception in 2012. Working with reproductions of her Guyanese immigrant father’s earliest passport photograph at age 16, Scarville moves beyond their conversations to visually explore what it means to become American. The quotidian identification or ID photograph is a cultural calling card that becomes a powerful seed for understanding the complex strata of a life uprooted, replicated, and replanted a world away from where it began. Again and again, Scarville transforms his youthful likeness into enigmatic, almost sacred icons of a boy, a man, and a spirit. Alternately playful, unsettling, loving, and irreverent, these haptic, palm-sized objects are memento mori of imagined identities, harkening back to 19th century vernacular methods of hand-coloring and assemblage to turn simple photographic prints into elaborated talismanic pictures. Historically rooted in form but grounded in contemporary meaning, Scarville’s interventions on her father’s image evoke disparate personal modes of remembrance, everything from the physically intimate contact of photographic jewelry to playfully scribbled love doodles on an adolescent’s Pee Chee folder. The Passports move beyond sight into multidimensional sensory perception which calls to mind historian Geoffrey Batchen’s description of the daguerreotype in its case, “an object that continuously collapses sight and touch...into the same perceptual experience.” While her markings both obfuscate and enhance the image, “the [resulting] portrait we witness continues to be supported by the truth-value of its photographic base,” Batchen writes, “the epistemological presence of the photograph is strengthened by its perceptual absence.” Scarville’s application of pigment and collage elements does more than transform the appearance of the photograph. Her temporal handwork—at times minimal, at others painstakingly detailed—results in sensory-charged objects which require the viewer to spend more time with them in order to access meaning beyond the surface. As novelist Milan Kundera has written, “The degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.” In this moment when the immigrant experience is a divisively contested space, Scarville’s Passports are both poignant and political, foregrounding the individual experience and self-definition within a world of possibilities. -Carla Williams, 2025

The photographs in Male Fiction evoke a sense of familiarity, as though they are fragments from a lost cinematic narrative—scenes without a clear beginning or end. With carefully crafted lighting and composition, these vignettes echo the suspenseful unease of Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpieces, the rebellious masculinity of French New Wave cinema, and the bold, enigmatic personas of Bond-like figures. At times, they even channel the striking aesthetics of high-fashion advertising. Yet, beneath these familiar archetypes lies an intentional ambiguity. While Male Fiction acknowledges traditional portrayals of masculinity—stoic, impenetrable, and composed—it also delves into the complexities hidden beneath the surface. Lindsay McCrum’s portraits challenge long-standing stereotypes, inviting a deeper exploration of male identity, emotion, and self-perception. These images tap into a collective cultural memory, where the performance of masculinity often overshadows its deeper, more nuanced realities. McCrum constructs these evocative portraits through the visual language of cinema and advertising, using costuming, lighting, and dramatic staging to create her own pieces of fiction. However, unlike traditional film stills, her subjects are not captured on artificial sets but in real locations throughout Los Angeles, San Francisco, and the Bay Area. Inspired by Hitchcock’s masterful use of setting, she incorporates iconic San Francisco landmarks such as the Legion of Honor, Aquatic Park, and the Headlands, further grounding her subjects in a world both recognizable and illusory. In addition to cinematic influences, McCrum pays homage to the bold, dynamic aesthetics of Eastern European graphic artists who revolutionized the poster art of the French New Wave. By blending electrifying color with striking composition, she creates a visual language that is at once nostalgic and contemporary, cinematic yet painterly. As a trained painter, McCrum’s understanding of light, form, and gesture is evident in her work, but as a fine art photographer, she recognizes that the true essence of these images lies beneath their surface. The man in a crisp white dinner jacket, martini in hand; the figure hidden behind dark sunglasses, gazing out to sea; the fleeting glance caught in a rearview mirror—each subject exudes confidence, mystery, and strength, yet also vulnerability, longing, and introspection. These figures are more than just cinematic tropes—they are layered characters who reflect the complexities of contemporary masculinity. Their outward personas may be male fiction, but their emotions are deeply real. Lindsay McCrum’s work has been exhibited in museums across the U.S. and Europe, including the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, the MIT Museum in Boston, and the Palm Beach Photographic Centre Museum. Her work has been featured in publications such as TIME Magazine, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and W Magazine, as well as on NPR’s All Things Considered and Today. She currently lives and works in San Francisco and New York. Image: © Lindsay McCrum

“A quiet legacy passes between women through embroidery and handcraft—an inherited resistance. With each stitch, they inscribe their strength and stories, defying the oppressor in thread.” —Spandita Malik Robert Mann Gallery is pleased to present Spandita Malik’s debut solo exhibition with the gallery: Jāḷī—Meshes of Resistance, on view from April 3 - May 10, 2025. Malik, a visual artist from India, lives in New York and spends extended periods of time in India collaborating with a network of women she has formed with the help of several not-for-profit organizations. These organizations support women who are survivors of domestic and gender based violence. Through these organizations, women learn intricate embroidery skills, skills that will help them move towards financial independence. The portraits are made by Malik in the women’s homes, the subject is portrayed as they wish, some covering their faces, some directly gazing at the camera. The photographs are then transferred to Khadi: a hand-spun cloth made from natural fibers including cotton, and sometimes wool and silk. The khadi fabric itself differs from state to state, region to region, and each picture is transferred to khadi that is made local to where the photograph is taken. The powerful images depicted in this exhibition are a collaboration between artist and sitter. Malik asks the sitter to embroider their portrait, an invitation for the subject to have power over how they are perceived, to assert control over their own image. Focusing on women’s rights and the impact of violence against women, Malik’s poignant work was born in response to the government’s lack of action against cases of rape which made Malik acutely aware of how much these acts of violence have become the norm within the culture. These women’s stories are stitched into the fibers of the cloth, and once complete, the works travel thousands of miles arriving to Malik emboldened with emotion, stories, community and strength. The craft of creating, a collaborative act of resistance in itself. “The quiet meditative act of embroidery connects the community into a network with everyone actively taking part. Women mending things. Women holding each other. Each portrait is unique and so specific to each woman but together they form a quilt of interconnectedness, through each of their distinctions rises the relatable human story.” —Sarah Walko Born in India in 1995, Malik has a Bachelor of Design in Fashion from the National Institute of Fashion Technology, New Delhi, India and a Masters of Fine Art in Photography from The Parsons School of Design, New York. Malik’s work has been widely exhibited nationally and internationally with recent solo exhibitions at The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts, Portland, OR and Baxter Street Camera Club, New York, NY among other locations.