Adam Ekberg: Minor Spectacles

Every photograph tells a story. When part of a body of work, the photograph takes on new meaning, becoming part of a bigger and more complete narrative. A portfolio allows the photographer to explore the complexities of their subject, and provide context that gives it richness and meaning that is more than the sum of its parts. Panopticon Gallery is pleased to share “First Look 2023,” our annual juried portfolio showcase, where five portfolios have been selected for exhibition on view from February through March 2023.

The Robert Koch Gallery is pleased to offer works from Edward Burtynsky’s latest African Studies series. Between 2015 – 2019 Burtynsky focused on Sub-Sahara Africa’s complex and ever-changing landscape. A new monograph of the same title published by Steidl accompanies the exhibition. Edward Burtynsky’s works are held in the collections of over 60 major museums around the world, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Guggenheim Museum in New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the Tate Modern London; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Art Gallery of Ontario; and the National Gallery of Canada. Burtynsky is a recipient of the 2004 TED Prize honoring individuals who have shown they can positively impact life in a global context, as well as the ICP Infinity Award for Art (2008), the Rogers Best Documentary Film Award (2006), The Outreach Award at the Rencontres d’Arles (2004), and the Roloff Beny Book Award (2003). The National Gallery of Canada organized and toured in 2003 the first retrospective of Burtynsky’s work, Manufactured Landscapes, which subsequently travelled to the The Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego; and the Cantor Center for Visual Arts, at Stanford University.

Peter Fetterman Gallery is proud to share our first exhibition of the new year, "A Beautiful World: The Power of Nature” opening January 14th, 2023. An opening reception will be held at the gallery on Saturday January 14th from 3:00 – 6:00 PM. Landscapes have inspired some of history’s most striking photographs. Peter Fetterman Gallery curates a collection of photographs focused on the beauty and power of the natural landscape. An homage to our planet, and a call to protect its great vistas, the exhibition is released online in two parts.   The exhibition features 19th and 20th and 21st Century works including Ansel Adams, Wynn Bullock, Paul Caponigro, Jeffrey Conley, Gregory Conniff, George Fiske, Martine Franck, Flor Garduño, Henry Gilpin, Michael Kenna, Andre Kertész, Kurt Markus, Don McCullin, Ryan McIntosh, Sebastião Salgado, Pentti Sammallahti, Charles Scowen, John Szarkowski, Isaiah West Taber, George Tice, Brett Weston and Don Worth. From early 20th century gems to contemporary photography today this body of photographic work captures the imagination of each photographer and their shared respect for our beautiful world. 

P·P·O·W is pleased to present Listening to the Land, Hew Locke’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. Locke is known for exploring the languages of colonial and post-colonial power, and the symbols through which different cultures assume and assert identity. Furthering the themes explored in his celebrated commission Procession at Tate Britain, and his concurrent installation Gilt on the façade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this exhibit engages with contemporary and historical inequities while reflecting on the landscape and history of the Caribbean. The exhibition draws its title from a poem by Guyanese political activist and poet Martin Carter which situates itself between two opposing forces of the landscape – sea and forest. Locke’s show features new sculptures and wall works with recurring motifs of stilt-houses, boats, memento mori, and share certificates referencing tensions between the land, the sea, and economic power. Reflecting on these links, Locke notes, “The land was created to generate money for colonial power, now the sea wants it back.” Translating to ‘land of many waters,’ Guyana and its physical, economic, and political landscape serve as one of the primary sources for Locke’s work. Having spent his childhood in this newly independent nation, the artist witnessed first-hand an era of radical transformation. Now, the country teeters on the precipice of an oil boom and is one of the world’s fastest growing economies. Juxtaposing personal meditations on the climate crisis with political commentary on the history of a globalized world, Locke contemplates the ways in which colonies were exploited to accumulate capital, and observes how Guyana’s economic future lies in the exploitation of its waters. Locke’s new boat sculptures The Relic and The Survivor embody this broad worldview as the two battered wrecks drift through time and history. Evoking the fragmented and diverse legacies of the global diaspora, the boats’ patchwork sails are interspersed with photo transfers of 19th Century cane cutters and banana boat loaders, while their decks are loaded with cargo that could allude to colonial plunder, trade goods or personal belongings. Based on an abandoned plantation house, Locke’s newest sculpture Jumbie House 2 features layered images that unveil the spirits that haunt this colonial vestige. Presented alongside are a series of painted photographs of dilapidated vernacular architecture across Georgetown and rural Guyana. Constantly under threat of being washed away by storms or rising sea levels, these crumbling structures echo anxieties surrounding climate change and historical erasure. A new series of mixed media wall works, Raw Materials, is derived from antique share certificates and bonds. Locke richly decorates the appliques with acrylic, beads, and patchwork to draw attention to the complex ways in which the past shapes the present. The image of an 1898 Chinese Imperial Gold Loan behind painted Congolese figures connects the global economy at the height of Empire to current Sino-African trade networks. In another work, a painted representation of a Nigerian Ife mask, alongside an image of David Livingstone, is layered on a French-African Mortgage Bond from 1923, connecting exploration and exploitation of African land, to current conversations surrounding the repatriation of artifacts. Taken together, the works in Locke’s Listening to the Land echo William Faulker’s adage “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

Holden Luntz Gallery invites you to our exhibition “Of Flesh and Stone” This exhibition explores the relationship between the works of three photographers living in Italy – Massimo Listri, Aurelio Amendola and Christopher Broadbent. Each artist has captured the beauty and history of Italy through their and own unique perspective.

In 2014, I had gastric bypass and my life radically changed. Most of my excess weight lifted within a year. The changes were drastic. Being alive was unbelievably easier. I could breathe, but I was also devastated to learn I had no idea who I was. Fear quickly filled the space where my body had been. My walls were gone. I did not know how to respond to others. I often reacted as if I were still in a bigger body. I felt unsafe. I was angry. For years, I believed I had to atone for having been big, occupying space, for the food I was eating, and merely for existing. I wanted to disappear. I leveraged my past as reason why I should not trust others or myself. I was afraid I would lose control, lose my breath, and lose my life. It is difficult for me to believe these are my self-portraits. They feel distant and unrecognizable. Depersonalization is a defense I use to avoid pain but avoiding pain forces me to keep it. It is not a key to good living. I started Self-Untitled to help alleviate shame I had for my body, build connection, and humanize myself to others. That is still true, but now, self-portraiture is also a way I process life. It is a practice of self acceptance. It is a daily conversation and reminder that I deserve to take up space. I do not need to apologize for my existence.

Tierra Entre Medio is a multi-generational exhibition that foregrounds four Chicana photographers working in Southern California. It features new works by Christina Fernandez installed alongside works by Arlene Mejorado, Lizette Olivas, and Aydinaneth Ortiz. Organized by Fernandez, the exhibition bridges myriad concerns inherent to her own work, highlighting practices that consider the regional, cultural, and topographical diversities that span Southern California Latinx communities. Beyond demonstrating the socio-cultural and physical nuances of landscapes between the border and inland Southern California, the exhibition will provide a framework through which to consider how environments shape the perspectives and experiences of working class, migrant, and diasporic communities. About the Artists Christina Fernandez (b. 1965) is a Los Angeles-based photographer whose practice explores issues related to migration, labor, gender, Mexican American identity, and the unique capacities of the photographic medium. She earned her BA at UCLA in 1989, and her MFA at the CalArts in 1996. She is associate professor at Cerritos College, Norwalk, where she has been on faculty since 2001. Arlene Mejorado (b. Los Angeles) is a Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans analog and digital photography, video, and installation. Mejorado’s work employs documentary forms, visual media, everyday materials, and repurposed documents to counter cultural erasure and personal, collective, diasporic, and migrant experiences and stories. She earned her BA in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas, Austin, and is currently an MFA candidate in Visual Arts at UCSD. Lizette Olivas (b. 1986, El Monte, CA) is a San Bernardino-based photographer whose work chronicles the quotidian moments of inland Southern California through a blend of portraiture and landscape photography that is at once urban and rural. She earned her BA in Art at UCLA in 2014. Aydinaneth Ortiz is a Southern California-based photographer who utilizes documentary, landscape, and portrait genres to examine the intersections among the urban environment, familial relationships, mental illness, drug addiction, and immigration. She earned her BA in Art at UCLA, and her MFA in Photography at CalArts. She is assistant professor of Photography at Cypress College. Culver Center of the Arts Image: Christina Fernandez, Burn Area I, 2021 (detail). Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Luisotti, Los Angeles.

Mark Schwartz and Bettina Katz Photography Galleries | Gallery 230 Since the invention of the medium, the majority of published photographs have been printed through photomechanical processes—images made in printer’s ink rather than produced in the darkroom or digitally. Photographs in Ink explores how artists have responded to the abundance of published photographic images that have saturated our daily lives from the 1850s through the early 2000s. The exhibition presents two intertwined narratives: the use of these processes to widely disseminate images and the adoption of them as content and aesthetic choice by fine artists. These stories are told through historical and contemporary works of art by artists from Eadweard Muybridge and Alfred Stieglitz to Andy Warhol, Sigmar Polke, Carl Pope Jr., and Lorna Simpson. In the 19th century, inventors, scientists, publishers, and journalists circulated photographic images in print to an ever-expanding audience. These were utilized for visual communication; as one prominent example, Charles Darwin included Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne de Boulogne’s 1856 photograph in his volume on emotions and evolution. Artists used the same media for creative expression. Pictorialist artists such as Clarence White and Alvin Langdon valued photogravure’s ability to produce soft tonal passages similar to drawing. The exhibition allows visitors to learn about the particular visual fingerprints of the techniques and see how patterns of dots, lines, and grids come together in our eyes and brains to form varying shades of gray. While the tools of mass media have transformed over the years, contemporary artists have continued to return to these techniques in their artistic practices but for radically different reasons. Through recent acquisitions and rarely seen works from the museum’s holdings, along with loans from several local collections, this exhibition showcases the strength and flexibility of these subtle but ubiquitous processes. Image: Tamara Karsavina in the Firebird, from Studies from the Russian Ballet, 1911. Emil Otto Hoppé (British, 1878–1972). Photogravure; image: 17.2 x 14.5 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Sundry Art—Photography Fund, 2019.40. © E. O. Hoppé Estate Collection / Curatorial Inc.

Lewis Watts is an internationally exhibited documentary photographer, archivist, curator, and Professor Emeritus of Art at UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley. He focuses much of his art and research on the cultural landscape of the African Diaspora of the Bay Area and the nation. In this exhibition, Watts catches the spirit and individuality of his subjects in photographs taken over five years in many regions of the United States and around the world. Watts has co-authored books, including Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era, (Heyday Books, 2020). A former Bolinas resident, he is affiliated with the Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco. His photographs are in many collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Oakland Museum of California, and The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

KRAPPY KAMERA COMPETITION WINNERS Jean “Gino” Miele, juror First Place: Katie DelaVaughn Second Place: Albano Ballerini Third Place: Marianne McCoy Honorable Mention: Joe Ditchett, Timothy Smith, Levee Wolf Also selected: Chuck Baker, Candido Baldacchino, Janine Brown, Ronald Butler, Bruce Byers, Lou Chapman, Patrick J. Clarke, Myles Coleman, Armen Dolukhanyan, Travis Flack, Bruce Flye, Robert Gervais, Carole Glauber, J.M. Golding, Claudia Gorman, Sharon Harris, Sarah Haske, Saroyan Humphery, Michael Joseph, Hope Kahn-Hoffman, Chae Kihn, Stefan Killen, Ashley Krombach, Stefanie LePape, Dave Linard, Eric McCollum, Aleks Miesak, Carolyn Moore, Denise Moore, K Moore, ChengLun Na, JE Piper, Sasha Prince, Viviana Rasulo, Giulia Ricciotti, Donnas Schaeffer, Shannon Stoney, Ryan Synovec, Steven Taddei, Michael Teresko, Rose Trafford, Jacob Wachal, Yelena Zhavoronkova, Joseph Ziolkowski

For the last two decades, American photographer Gillian Laub has used the camera to investigate how society’s most complex questions are often writ large in our most intimate relationships. Her focus on family, community and human rights is clear in projects such as Testimony (2007), which explores the lives of terror survivors in the Middle East, and Southern Rites (2015), a decade-long project about racism in the American South. Throughout her career she has been simultaneously, and privately, documenting the emotional, psychological, and political landscape of her own family—exploring her growing discomfort with the many extravagances that marked their lives. Intense intergenerational bonds have shaped and nurtured Laub, but have also been fraught. Balancing empathy with critical perspective, humor with horror, the closeness of family with the distance of the artist, Laub offers a picture of an American family saga that feels both anguished and hopeful. As it moves through time, the exhibition becomes a microcosm of a deeply conflicted nation, as the artist and her parents find themselves on opposing sides of a sharp political divide—threatening to fracture the family, and forcing everyone to ask what, in the end, really binds them together. In her book Family Matters (Aperture, 2021), Gillian Laub's photographs are accompanied by her own words. This exhibition showcases her gifts as a storyteller, with much of the writing presented as an immersive audio guide. Moving through the four sequential “acts” of Family Matters, you will see and hear the artist and her family in their own words: funny, poignant, troubled, and challenging. Image: ©Gillian Laub, Dad carving turkey, 2000.

The Art Institute of Chicago has been exhibiting photography since 1900 and collecting it since 1949. During that time—indeed, since its invention in the 19th century—photography has evolved into a diverse and unruly set of creative practices, both responding to and initiating changes across the world. This exhibition celebrates that remarkable history through the Art Institute’s collection and offers an occasion to think anew about the photography’s place in the museum and in the world. Divided into eight sections, the presentation features more than 150 works that cut across time, space, and genre. Themes explored include production and circulation; engagements with identity, politics, and truth; the varied material forms of photography and media; the connections among these disciplines and other art forms; and relationships among artist, subject, and viewer. Reclassifying works in these contexts, the exhibition offers a roadmap for exploring the global, multivocal, and ever-evolving field. This display—curated by Elizabeth Siegel, curator, Photography and Media—accompanies the museum’s first-ever publication to survey our photography collection, The Art Institute of Chicago Field Guide to Photography and Media. Set to be published in spring of 2023, the catalogue features nearly 400 works organized around 75 keywords and 75 thought-provoking essays responding to those keywords, written by artists, scholars, and curators working in the field today. Support for this exhibition is provided by the Black Dog Fund. Publication of The Art Institute of Chicago Field Guide to Photography and Media has been made possible through the Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation. Image: Kenneth Josephson. Anissa (detail), 1969. Gift of Ralph and Nancy Segall. © Kenneth Josephson.