Mona Kuhn: Timeless

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.”

The first major survey of Southern photography in 25 years, this exhibition, organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, examines the South’s place in the history of photography and reveals the region’s critical impact on the evolution of the medium. The South has occupied an uneasy place in the history of photography as both an example of regional exceptionalism and as the crucible from which American identity has been forged. As the first major survey of Southern photography in twenty-five years, this exhibition will examine that complicated history and reveal the South’s critical impact on the evolution of the medium, posing timely questions about American culture and character. Featuring many works from the High’s extensive collection along with important loans from private and public collections, A Long Arc will include photographs of the American Civil War, which transformed the practice of photography across the nation and established visual codes for articulating national identity and expressing collective trauma. Photographs from the 1930s–1950s, featuring many created for the Farm Security Administration, will demonstrate how that era defined a new kind of documentary aesthetic that dominated American photography for decades and included jarring and unsettling pictures that exposed economic and racial disparities. With works drawn from the High’s unparalleled collection of civil rights-era photography, the exhibition will show how photographs of the movement in the decade that followed galvanized the nation with raw depictions of violence and the struggle for justice. Contemporary photography featured in the exhibition will demonstrate how photographers working today continue to explore Southern history and themes to grasp American identity. A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845 is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. Generous support for the Addison’s presentation of the exhibition has been provided by the Francesca S. Woodman Exhibitions Fund. Image: Walker Evans, Allie Mae Burroughs, Wife of a Sharecropper, Hale County, Alabama, 1936, gelatin silver print, 9 5/8 x 7 7/8 inches, gift of Norman Selby (PA 1970) and Melissa G. Vail, 2020.31 © Walker Evans

Organized by the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, this exhibition presents photographs that Robert Frank and Todd Webb created separately during their 1955 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowships. Though the men had no knowledge of each other at the time, their strikingly similar images revealed popular cultural trends and shared ideologies that challenged the idealistic purity of the “American Roadtrip.” In 1955, two photographers received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation for U.S. survey projects: Robert Frank and Todd Webb. Frank’s cross-country trip by car would result in the celebrated book The Americans. Webb was awarded a grant to walk, boat, and bike across the United States to depict “vanishing Americana, and the way of life that is taking its place.” Though the men had no knowledge of each other during the application process, both secured a recommendation from famed photographer Walker Evans, and both completed their cross-country surveys—though in radically different ways. Frank’s resulting work became a landmark text in the history of photography, and Webb’s project remains almost entirely unknown. Robert Frank and Todd Webb: Across America, 1955 brings together both 1955 projects for the first time. In some instances, Frank’s and Webb’s images are strikingly similar—both men took photographs of the highway and dim, smoky barrooms. Because each was unaware of the other’s work, these similarities can be traced to popular cultural trends and shared ideologies. Both men, after all, engaged in projects that challenged the idealistic purity of the “American Roadtrip.” Radically different photographs made in the same location reveal the photographers’ diverse perspectives and approaches. Frank’s grainy, off-kilter style was matched with his harsh examination of the darker side of American life. An immigrant born in Switzerland, Frank (1924–2019) harnessed his outsider perspective. The tender, carefully composed images created by Detroit-born Webb (1905–2000) celebrated the individual oddities of the American way of life. Ultimately, comparing the work of these photographers reveals the complexity of their projects and the impossibility of capturing a singular vision of “America.” This exhibition is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The Addison’s presentation is generously supported by the Mollie Bennett Lupe and Garland M. Lasater Exhibition Fund. Image: Left: Robert Frank, Rodeo, New York City, 1955–56, gelatin silver print, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum purchase funded by Jerry E. and Nanette Finger. © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation; Right: Todd Webb, Cowboy, Lexington, NE, 1956, printed 2023, inkjet print, courtesy of Todd Webb Archive. © Todd Webb Archive

Exhibiting artists Gabo Azurdia, Roma Bartel, Jennifer Collins, Haley Cooper, Olive Cotton, Gisele Depina-Teixera, Margaret Furtado, Ty Gagliardone, Jason Higgins, Cat Nguyen, Izzy O’Hagan, Bella Olsen, Nick Ortoleva, Carlos Paronis, Autumn Porter, Michael Radford, Chloe Ronco, Ingrid Sampaio, Jordan Sanchez, Ben Spiewak, Cora Steffenson, Anna Sullivan Stories of Humanity is a collaborative exhibition between MassArt and Lesley University photography students, curated by MassArt Senior Ben Spiewak, and Lesley University Senior Anna Sullivan. The concept for Stories of Humanity began in November 2023 at the Boston Art Book Fair. Ben Spiewak was tabling with the MassArt Photography Department, promoting student work and their annual Photobook Auction, and by chance their table was situated next to the Photographic Resource Center table run by Jessica Burko. After the second day of the fair, Ben had envisioned a collaborative show that would bring both MassArt and Lesley University photography students together. He had noticed that for years, Boston photography schools have been very isolated from each other and he wanted to start an initiative to bring students together in a collaborative context. With the help of artist and photo professor, David Hilliard, Ben was connected with Anna Sullivan, a senior photography major at Lesley, and together they started planning a show. At the same time, Ben wanted to expand efforts to bring students together outside of the context of a show. In January 2024, Ben and Anna organized a small critique group with both schools hosted at MassArt, which helped bring the two groups together and become familiar with each other’s work. This collaboration displayed what current Boston photography students are interested in making work about, informing the idea behind Stories of Humanity. The exhibition continues the collaboration between schools by bringing together these two groups of photography students who have never before shared a gallery wall. The exhibition surveys the landscape of life in this present moment from the perspective of 25 emerging artists. The varying backgrounds and interests of this group creates a visual narrative about life as young adults in this current day and the many issues that are on the forefront of their minds. Stories of Humanity presents work of recently graduated seniors from the BFA photography programs at MassArt and Lesley University, putting them in dialogue with one another within the context of a contained photographic canon. This exhibition explores themes from a new generation of photographers, taking inspiration from a critique group between the two schools this past winter, Stories of Humanity seeks to take this collaboration further by putting them in the public sphere. Inspired by New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape (on view at SanFrancisco MoMA in 2010) the show also aims to serve as a marker in time in conversation with the past, present, and the future. Topics that have carried throughout time have found new visual language and newer, more contemporary additions are brought to light. Ultimately, the show’s goal is to present a snapshot of photographic time that can be viewed now, in this moment, as well as being reflected on in years to come.

Robert Koch Gallery proudly announces an exhibition of iconic portraits by the legendary photographer Irving Penn. Coinciding with Penn’s retrospective at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, this exhibition offers a glimpse into the work of one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century. During his travels, Penn used a portable studio to capture images of indigenous people, resulting in his iconic portraits from Papua New Guinea, South America, and Africa. The gallery exhibition will feature some of his small vintage gelatin print portraits of Quechuan Indians from his 1948 trip to Cuzco, Peru, printed before he began producing platinum prints. Additionally, the exhibition will include a selection of platinum palladium prints of Picasso at La Californie, Cannes, 1957/1973; Rock Groups, San Francisco (Big Brother and the Holding Company and The Grateful Dead), 1967/1980; Cuzco Children, Peru, 1948; Three Asaro Mudmen (New Guinea), 1970/1972; and Four Unggai Warriors (New Guinea), 1970/1972. Irving Penn’s portraits stand as timeless monuments to elegance, simplicity, and emotional depth. A master at capturing the essence of his subjects, whether through the stark simplicity of his fashion photography or the intimate, revealing nature of his portraits, Penn had a remarkable ability to convey emotion and narrative in a single frame. From celebrated cultural icons to anonymous individuals, each portrait tells a compelling story, inviting viewers to explore the intricate complexities of the human experience. The Museum of Modern Art in New York organized Penn’s first retrospective in 1984, which subsequently traveled to over 14 countries. Numerous monographs have been published on Penn’s work, including Worlds in a Small Room (1980, Grossman Publishers), A Notebook at Random (2004, Bulfinch Press), The Small Trades (2009, J. Paul Getty Museum), and Irving Penn: Portraits (2010, National Portrait Gallery Publications). His work is featured in most major museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

Silver Eye has supported vital new voices in contemporary photography through Fellowship, our annual international juried photography competition, for over twenty years. Taking the Fellowship 24 competition as a point of departure, this exhibition reflects the unique perspectives of this year's artists. Works in this exhibition speak to the power of devotion in many forms, place as an intersection of personal, social, and political concerns, and visual language as a means to new narratives. With care and dedication, Rachael Banks has photographed her family in the Knobs and Bluegrass regions of Central Kentucky for over ten years. Her work expresses intertwined cycles of life and loss between nature and familial generations and challenges narrow representations of this region. Vikesh Kapoor expresses his mother's unwavering devotion to her community as an OBGYN through layered approaches to storytelling. Weaving contemporary works with family album photographs and archival material, Vikesh Kapoor reflects upon her legacy within her small town and beyond. Both William Camargo and Anna Rotty use photography to encourage dialogue on urgent social issues. William Camargo's work examines issues of gentrification in his hometown of Anaheim, California, elevating Chicanx/Latinx histories in this city. In doing so, Camargo responds to esteemed Californian photographers who shaped the medium before him. Anna Rotty examines her relationship with water and its shifting social significance by creating unique installations and photographs. These connect her personal history and concerns around climate change and civic infrastructures. Several of the artists of Fellowship 24 ask how photography can be a powerful tool to claim space figuratively and conceptually. This necessitates dismantling art history and photography's presumed authority. Xavier Scott Marshall reimagines centuries of Christian iconography to create large-format black-and-white photographs that center Black experience and change perceptions of religious image-making. Anthony Francis exposes, redirects, and transforms foundational assumptions about photography, such as pose and gesture, to elevate individual agency and create potent spaces for imagination. Fellowship 24 reflects Silver Eye's mission to support contemporary photography that addresses contemporary artistic and social concerns, often in dialogue with the medium's past. We are grateful to our jurors Zora J Murff, Aline Smithson, and Jeremiah William McCarthy, and to the artists for the opportunity to collaborate to realize their visions. Image: Brandon, Blessings on Blessings and/or Burdens to Lay Down, San Antonio, 2022 © Anthony Francis

Marc Selwyn Fine Art is pleased to present Dancing with Nature, an exhibition of large-scale photographs by Richard Misrach, one of the most internationally recognized photographers working today. This presentation features a never-before-exhibited series shot in Hawaii with the Alonzo King LINES Ballet, focusing on the interplay between art, environment, and the human form. “Photography captures things in the world that are not choreographed for perfect form,” said Misrach. “Choreographers manage every movement, which is spectacular, that’s their art. But photography is the opposite art . . . catching spontaneous moments.” A new video by the artist, Notations – Solo to Symphony, will be on view in the project gallery.

Obscura Gallery presents the group exhibition, Picturesque Summer, radiating the vibrant palettes and warmth of summer through the photography of four female photographers. Each artist in the exhibition works in her own unique approach to the photographic medium: Susan Burnstine captures the essence of her dream-world she captures in photographs taken with self-made cameras; Rania Matar captures the beauty and strength of the women in Lebanon working on the reconstruction of their country; Aline Smithson’s inspiration comes from paintings by James McNeil Whistler, and her work pushes the boundaries of the photographic medium through innovations at the intersection of photographic processes; and Jennifer Spelman captures vibrant moments from colorful Cuba, where she leads photographic exchanges in the country.

In the 100th anniversary of the Surrealist Manifesto, The New Orleans Museum of Art presents works by six women photographers whose work explores the subconscious mind, blurs the boundary between reality and dreams, or magnifies the uncanny in everyday life. Drawn from NOMA’s permanent collection, works by Ilse Bing, Ruth Bernhard, Lola Alvarez-Bravo, Carlotta M. Corpron, Florence Henri, and Lee Miller illustrate ways that women pushed the boundaries of surrealist art. In 1924, French poet André Breton published the first Surrealist Manifesto, setting out ideologies and principles for writers and artists to engage and explore the unconscious mind. While Breton’s text launched Surrealism as a transcontinental movement, Breton’s conspicuous exclusion of work by women artists ignored the reality that women were advancing many of the artistic techniques associated with Surrealism. The title of this exhibition, Double Space, calls attention to some of these techniques, including the use of double exposures, mirrors and reflection, distorted figures, solarization, and multiples. Additionally, while male Surrealists often engaged with notions of the womanly muse as enchantress or childlike, many of the artists in this exhibition challenged these notions of by representing female figures as subjects of agency and queer desire, constructing an alternative to a masculinist uncanny. Image: Untitled (Woman with Hand in Hair) 1931 © Lee Miller

Drawn from the permanent collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art, Road Trip presents images from the 1960s-2000s that engage with the tradition of the photographic road trip. Beginning with Walker Evans’ American Photographs (1938) and Robert Frank’s The Americans (1958), road trips have long fueled photographers’ fascination with the American vernacular and social landscape. Focusing on the half-century following the publication of The Americans, the exhibition features the portfolio American Roads (1981), part of a recent gift of over 150 photographs donated by Richard D. and Kandace A. Riebel. The portfolio brings together work by twenty photographers who variously capture the absurdity, banality, beauty, and horror encountered on the road. Also on view are works by Joel Sternfeld, Stephen Shore and Alec Soth, photographers known for traveling throughout the United States and chronicling the people, places, and sites along the way. Image: Ken Brown (American, b. 1944), Pink Trailer Tilt, 1976, from the American Roads portfolio. © Gift of Richard D. and Kandace A. Riebel. Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University.

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