In the Right Place: Photographs by Barbara Crane, Melissa Shook, and Carol Taback

Process Work: Intersections of Photography and Print ca. 1825 to Today explores the development of photographic printmaking processes and traces its historical legacy into the present day. Starting around 1825, a widespread interest in reproducing visual information faster and more cheaply fueled an explosion of experimentation in photographic printmaking techniques, with wide-ranging effects across visual culture and the fine arts. This exhibition highlights those early experiments and innovations, as well as the culture of mass-market illustration and printed media into which they first unfolded. Across a presentation of over 40 historic and contemporary photogravures, collotypes, photolithographs and relief prints, this exhibition poses the question: What are the social, aesthetic, and technological possibilities that emerge from the marriage between photography and print, both then and now? Curated by Sarah Mirseyedi, Andrew W. Mellon Fellow for Prints, Drawings, and Photographs.

Blur / Obscure / Distort: Photography and Perception brings together photographs that are linked by the common objective of disrupting the viewer’s sense of time, space, place, or scale. Sometimes considered errors, photographic blur, distortion, and obfuscation have also been important creative and aesthetic strategies adopted by artists since the medium’s 19th-century inception. Highlighting photographs from the Norton’s Collection and a selection of special loans, this exhibition points to the constructed nature of perception and, in turn, photography’s vulnerability to manipulation even when it appears to show what is “real.” Image: Jeff Brouws, Interstate 40, Blurred car, New Mexico, 1992

Strange and Familiar Places presents 26 works from 10 contemporary photographers, offering fresh perspectives on rural life in the Midwest, South, and Western United States. These new acquisitions, displayed for the first time, showcase intimate photographs that explore the people, communities, and landscapes of these often-overlooked regions, challenging our preconceived notions of them. Great storytelling is at the heart of these works, where the sense of place is just as vital as character, symbolism, and plot. The artists draw inspiration from music, fiction, history, folklore, and the art of photography itself, creating poetic, evocative images. Their approaches vary, with some using a classic documentary style while others stage or carefully compose their photographs, offering new and sometimes surprising ways of seeing the world. Regardless of technique, each artist highlights the humanity of their subjects, deepening our understanding of place. The exhibition features work by Antone Dolezal, Terry Evans, Laura McPhee, Rahim Fortune, Holly Lynton, Elise Kirk, Kristine Potter, RaMell Ross, Bryan Schutmaat, and Lara Shipley. Image: Holly Lynton, American (b. 1972). Les, Honeybees, the Bosque, New Mexico, 2007 © Holly Lynton

This exhibition reimagines the history of American photography, tracing its evolution from its inception in 1839 through the early 20th century. Showcasing works from The Met’s William L. Schaeffer Collection, it places celebrated photographers—including Josiah Johnson Hawes, John Moran, Carleton Watkins, and Alice Austen—alongside remarkable yet lesser-known practitioners from towns and cities across the nation. Through a diverse array of photographic formats, from daguerreotypes and cartes de visite to stereographs and cyanotypes, the exhibition highlights how photography swiftly shaped America’s cultural, artistic, and psychological landscape. More than a technological breakthrough, photography became a defining lens through which the nation saw itself, reflecting its transformation and identity. Even before the formal announcement of the medium’s invention, American essayist and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson astutely observed in 1835, “Our Age is Ocular,” foreshadowing photography’s profound impact on visual culture. Image: Unknown Maker, Young Man with Rooster, 1850s

ARTISTS INCLUDED: Lucinda Bunnen | Keith Calhoun | Rosalind Fox Solomon | Jill Frank | Carlos Gustavo | Betty Press | Jared Ragland | Mark Steinmetz Growing up in the Deep South often feels like growing up in a different time or country. The unique landscape, history and ways of being stand apart from the monolith of mainstream culture. Viewed from the outside as backwards and lacking; stereotypes of southerness are inert, and fail to include the South’s true complexity, enduring charm, and diversity. The reality of the South is lived, active and chosen every day. There’s a colloquialism here that “pretty is as pretty does”, or in other words, pleasant behavior always outweighs pleasant looks. In this exhibition, featuring work from eight photographers collected by The Do Good Fund of Columbus, GA, each artist captures what we do—a farmer fashioning a scarecrow for his garden, parading dancers, or a brass band performing for a church service. These images convey the ways we live, with intricate layers of identity and belonging woven into the fabric of Southern life. These are decisive moments. Intimate portraits and landscapes alike embody the spirit of the South as lived and living. As Pretty Does celebrates ways of being, the familiar and unexpected alike. Through the lenses of these photographers, history and modernity intersect, and the ordinary becomes extraordinary. While not always traditionally beautiful, the allure, honesty, and unpredictability found in these everyday moments resonates like jazz through humid Southern air. This exhibition was curated by Micah Mermilliod for Alabama Contemporary in the fall of 2024 in partnership with The Do Good Fund, and is on view at the University of Alabama Gallery in Tuscaloosa. The Do Good Fund is a collection of contemporary, post World War II photographs capturing the rich culture in the Southeastern United States. Since 2012 this public based Georgia charity has collected works from Guggenheim Fellows and emerging regional artists alike, and stands as one of the most complete artistic views of modern Southern living. Image: Jessica, Athens, Georgia © Mark Steinmetz

Robert Koch Gallery is pleased to present New World Atlas: California & Nevada, the third solo exhibition at the gallery by American photographer Matt Black. Known for his visceral approach to documentary photography, Black turns his focus to the evolving climate of the American West, using thermal and infrared imaging to examine the effects of extreme weather events and the vulnerabilities of a rapidly shifting landscape. New World Atlas is organized in a series of 17 chapters, one for each state lying west of the 100th meridian. This exhibition presents California & Nevada, the first two chapters of this larger body of work. In this series Black departs from conventional photographic representation and incorporates technologies that extend human perception. Thermal imaging makes the invisible visible, allowing viewers to witness heat as a signifier of change, from drought and fire to evaporation. Infrared photography distinguishes the living from the inert, exposing a shifting terrain beneath what once seemed immutable. Based in California’s Central Valley, Black draws on his own experience with the region’s environmental volatility. He writes: “Giga-fires, mega-droughts, and thousand-year floods are reshaping the American West. From my home, I have seen massive Sierra wildfires fill the sky with smoke, and over 500,000 acres of farmland fall fallow for lack of water.” By working across the sub-humid and arid zones of the American West, areas particularly susceptible to shifts in temperature and moisture, New World Atlas offers an urgent and deeply felt chronicle of ecological transformation. Rather than documenting catastrophe alone, Black’s images invite viewers to consider new ways of seeing and understanding a landscape increasingly defined by extremes Image: Gold Butte, Nevada. 2024. Cactus., 2024 © Matt Black

Joseph Bellows Gallery is pleased to announce its upcoming solo exhibition, Nan Brown: Trailers Collected. The show will run from June 7th through July 26th in the gallery’s Atrium space and will feature Brown's stunning typology of mobile homes. Her skillfully made, thiocarbamide-toned gelatin silver prints, in both 6 x 6 and 10 x 10 inch image size, are exceptionally beautiful, rendering many of these aluminum abodes with a radiant glow. Although some remain austere, sleek and unadorned, many showcase their quirky individuality through various exterior customizations, interior design and surrounding environments. Despite the limitations of space and construction of these modest homes, Brown's tightly-cropped images share their inhabitants' efforts for unique personalization and expression of identity. As a child, traveling across California, Nan Brown (American 1952 - 2013), was drawn, through her car window, to the otherness of the small, roadside communities and the dislocation of lone trailers. The artist comments, "From the side they are billboard-like and wonderfully two-dimensional. Their facades are of subtly beautiful tones and textures, a black and white photographer’s dream. The squares and rectangles of windows within the squares and rectangles of trailers, I trapped within the square camera format. The repetition of form causes people to look closely at each trailer for variation. Portrait-like, individual personalities are revealed, and later their fascination began to include the seeming license expressed in the treatment of the exteriors and yards". In the 1970’s Nan studied photography at the San Francisco Art Institute. She taught herself Ansel Adams’ Zone System, and was especially influenced by his philosophy of craft. While largely self-instructed, she has studied with Mark Citret, John Sexton, and Peter Goin, as well as Ansel Adams. Her work is in the permanent collections of Museum Fine Arts, Houston and the Southwest Museum of Photography. Recently, a complete set of her series, Trailers Collected, was acquired by the Special Collections Department at Stanford University's Art and Architecture Library.

Von Lintel Gallery is pleased to present Chloe Sherman’s photographs from her renowned series RENEGADES San Francisco: the 1990s. Sherman’s photographs provide an unparalleled look into San Francisco history as a queer cultural renaissance unfolded. In today’s political climate, where LGBTQ+ rights are increasingly under attack across the United States, Sherman’s photography is more relevant than ever. It offers a poignant reminder of the resilience and strength of queer communities during challenging times. By preserving these stories, the exhibition inspires younger generations to continue fighting for equality and safe spaces, while honoring those who paved the way. Chloe Sherman’s work reminds us that joy, creativity, and solidarity are acts of resistance. This series is a window into a time of revolution and change, demonstrating a frenetic energy in even the simplest moments. It captures a time when wayward youth, outcasts and artists could show up, join forces, make new rules, work little, and live free. Offering a view of history that is crucial to the culture of San Francisco, Sherman’s photographs are timeless and relevant. They serve as a compelling ode to a unique era in the city's queer history, with a familiarity that rings true now. Known for her keen eye and remarkable ability to capture raw emotions, Sherman's work transports viewers back in time, immersing them in the city's underground scene, activism, and innovative subcultures. As Sherman explains, “In the early 1990s, I began documenting a generation of young, self-identified queers in San Francisco's Mission District. Rent was affordable, community was palpable, and gay youth, artists, and free spirits migrated to the city to find each other. Women-owned bars, clubs, tattoo shops, galleries, and cafés proliferated, and cultural norms were eschewed in favor of a vibrant and resilient lifestyle. I was there as a new wave of feminism embraced gender-bending, butch/femme culture flourished, and transgender pioneers forged a new path.” Chloe Sherman’s work has been exhibited in galleries internationally, including a current Group show at SF MOMA, San Francisco, CA. Her work is held in public collections such as SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA, The National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC and The Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover MA. The artist lives and works in San Francisco. Sherman’s monograph, RENEGADES San Francisco: the 1990s, published by Hantje Cantz, will be available at the gallery. Image: Corner Store 14th & Guerrero St. San Francisco, CA 1996 © Chloe Sherman

Our tendency is to make something of the photograph, to try to say immediately what it means and how it works and why it is made. But these images are more disjunctive than that, and often frustrate our impulses. Though approaches to photographic abstraction are varied, the end results all deny the viewer a discernible reference to reality, defying the most conventional norm in photography. There is a tendency among photographers to rebel against the photographic norm and revel in the basic appeal of the unpredictable impact of abstract processes." —Lyle Rexer is an author, curator, critic, and columnist who lives in Brooklyn, New York and has taught at RISD and the School of Visual Arts in NYC. DEB DAWSON BRYAN GRAF CAROL EISENBERG TARA SELLIOS PAUL RIDER LUC DEMERS RUSH BROWN JOHN GINTOFF JOAN FITZSIMMONS CAROLINE SAVAGE ANDREW O’BRIEN BRENTON HAMILTON Image: Caroline Savage, Trees are Dancing, Alvin Ailey.

This landmark show will present over 100 photographs by the Austrian-born photographer Trude Fleischmann (1895-1990), one of the most accomplished female photographers of the 20th century. The show, the first solo museum exhibition of the photographer’s work to be presented in the United States, will highlight Fleischmann’s groundbreaking career in Vienna during the 1920s and 1930s, as well as her influential work in the United States after her emigration in 1939. At just 25 years old, Fleischmann opened her own studio in Vienna and achieved great success as a photographer. She became known for photographing artists, dancers, actors, and other key cultural figures of the era. When the Nazis invaded during the 1938 Anschluss, she fled first to London and then to New York. She opened a studio just behind Carnegie Hall on 56th Street in 1940 and photographed many of the artists and intellectuals of the day, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Marian Anderson, and Albert Einstein. Lenders to the exhibition include the Wien Museum in Vienna, Austria, the New York Public Library, and private collectors. Importantly, it will also feature never-before-exhibited works from the Fleischmann and Cornides family collections, as well as the family collection of her student and life-long friend, photographer Helen Post (1907-1979). Together, these works provide an unprecedented and intimate view of the photographer’s personal and professional legacy. Image: Trude Fleischmann, Toni Birkmeyer Ballet in “Cancan,” Vienna, 1930, gelatin silver print. Lent by Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg. © Trude Fleischmann

Joshua Parks is a southern-raised Black image-maker and cultural worker with Gullah Geechee and Gulf Coast Creole heritage. His work analyzes Afro-descendant communities in the Atlantic world, their relationship to land and water as the basis of subsistence, autonomy, survival, and collective memory, and how these elements influence social and cultural development. The Halsey Institute is proud to present Parks’s first solo museum exhibition. In his practice, Parks puts intentional relationships and storytelling first, using image as his medium for communication. Born in We: African Descendants of the Atlantic World explores the interconnectedness among communities of African descendants in the Lowcountry, the Caribbean, and West Africa through photography, film, and sounds of the Atlantic World. Bridging past and present, he presents a continuum of culture across time and space underscoring the resilience and ongoing evolution of African and Afro-descendant identities all while confronting and transcending the enduring legacies of slavery and colonialism. This exhibition is an invitation to see–not only with the eyes but with the spirit, as Parks shares with viewers the result of his early fascination with looking through hundreds of family photographs, seeing rather than reading about the past, the present, and undoubtedly the future of African people worldwide.

Marian Goodman Gallery is pleased to present Sparrow on the Sea, featuring the eponymous new film by Yang Fudong, one of the most important Chinese artists working today. Yang opens the exhibition with a series of photographic film stills that provide us with glimpses of what is to come. In addition to the photographs, Yang presents two new series of mixed media and photographic works, Sparrow and Island, that enrich the overarching investigations of light, time, and memory present in Sparrow on the Sea. Please join us for a walkthrough of the exhibition led by Hamza Walker, Director of The Brick, on Wednesday, 21 May, at 7 pm. In 2004, Walker had the pleasure of working with Yang on the exhibition Yang Fudong: 5 Films at The Renaissance Society where Walker served as Associate Curator and Director of Education. Sparrow on the Sea was commissioned in 2024 by the M+ Museum and Art Basel for the museum’s monumental LED façade in Hong Kong overlooking Victoria Harbour. This large-scale film was presented without audio to embrace the ambient noise of the city—the sounds of the sea, the hum of car engines, and the patter of human voices—as a collaborative soundtrack, which led the artist to describe it as a site-specific ‘architectural film.’ In the context of this exhibition, the film is projected as a cinematic installation, accompanied by an original full soundtrack as well as select exchanges of dialogue. Yang’s visual language for the work, which he considers to be a short poem, draws from Hong Kong cityscapes and cinema, but also from a few of his own films, including his early work, An Estranged Paradise (1997). Over the course of an hour, Sparrow on the Sea chronicles a fever dream portrait of an enigmatic protagonist who is played by three separate characters representing various periods of his life. The narrative of the character is an expressionistic stream-of-consciousness—to the viewer, he is at once young and old, light and dark, negative and positive, traveling non-sequentially between years, scenes, and places, often accompanied by a large, vintage, and mysteriously leaking suitcase. Outlining the film’s narrative structure, Yang states, “[a]t the beginning of the film, a middle-aged man picks up the suitcase and prepares to depart. This opening scene conveys the youthful desire to leave and pursue a beautiful life. In the decades that follow, he quietly comes and goes. Coupled with the film’s everyday details, his journey represents a kind of cyclical reincarnation. Time flows slowly, as we experience different life moments. The film therefore attempts to weave together time and memory, re-assembling the confused and ambiguous episodes into a vivid journal of life.” An intentional maze of uncertainty, the film hints at things that Yang never resolves, creating an open-ended space for the viewer to interpret the story based on their own life experiences. Shot in black and white in present day Hong Kong, the film evokes an aesthetic from another era. This furthers the uncanny sense of atemporality that his main character, often intertwined with another actor depicting a version of the protagonist within the same scene, purports throughout the film. A deliberate hallucination, we find ourselves confusing smoke for clouds, day for night, and experiencing a déjà vu of repeating spiral forms, all while the protagonist, with his suitcase in hand, is seen against settings that complement his seemingly perpetual state of transition: stairs, ramps, trams, cars, hotel rooms, and hallways. At several points in the film, the narrative temporarily suspends, cutting to a short sequence observing an open water swimmer within a boundless, dark ocean. Yang has said that the title of the film was inspired by his vision of a sparrow longing for and eventually finding the courage to take flight across the sea. Towards the end of Sparrow on the Sea, we find an octopus escaping from a suitcase and slithering onto the beach. After the surreal journey of the octopus, the viewer is left wondering if it will return to the ocean. Yang describes this sense of ambiguity, as imbued throughout the film, as the most accurate way to articulate feeling: “as in many poems, [ambiguity] is a beautiful form of expression and a way to reach the most beautiful imagination.” Also on view in the Main Gallery, Sparrow (2025), a new series of mixed media, is shown along walls adjacent to the film. Encompassing painting, photography, and drawing, these triptychs, each bearing the name of a month, unveil the passage of time through scenes of nature and historical narrative. “It is as if a sparrow flies over the sea, time leaves traces, year after year, day after day. Everything waits for unexpected encounters. Perhaps time is a continuous, unfinished history and a collection of everyday memories,” says Yang of the works. Nearby, the Island series (2025) includes diptychs based on stills from the film, represented here as both positive and negative photographs. Similar to inverted scenes in Sparrow on the Sea, this change encourages us to see previously hidden or obscured forms, creating a deeper picture of what was always there. Yang’s Seven Intellectuals in the Bamboo Forest (2003-2007) is now on view through 10 August at the Asia Society Museum in New York, a film in five parts that was also recently featured at the Arsenal - Institut für Film und Videokunst in Berlin (2024) and premiered in full at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007 to great acclaim. The Asia Society hosted the North American premiere of Sparrow on the Sea on Sunday, 11 May 2025, which was followed by a conversation with the artist, moderated by Kelly Ma, Curator, Learning & Outreach, Asia Society Museum. Yang Fudong was born in Beijing in 1971 and currently lives and works in Shanghai. Since the late 1990s Yang has developed a significant body of work mainly in film, installation and photography. Yang’s visual language has always been enveloped in a dream-like mystery. His characters, often silent and disembodied, usually move according to choreographed gestures, transport viewers into an aesthetically perfect environment, and are deliberately suspended in time. A self-titled solo exhibition of Yang’s work will be shown at UCCA, Beijing, China from November 2025 – February 2026. His work has been exhibited widely and internationally with solo presentations in major institutions that include Asia Society Museum in New York (2025); M+ Museum in Hong Kong (2024); Zena Zezza, Oregon, U.S.A (2021); Fosun Foundation, Shanghai (2019); the Long Museum West Bund, Shanghai (2018); Savannah College of Art and Design, Georgia (2018); Espace Louis Vuitton, Tokyo, Japan (2017); Daegu Art Museum, Daegu, Korea (2016); Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2016); Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2015); Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand (2015); ACMI, Melbourne, Australia (2014); Parasol Unit, London (2011); National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (2010); Asia Society, New York (2009); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2005); Castello di Rivoli, Torino (2005); and Renaissance Society, Chicago (2004). In 2013, Kunsthalle Zurich and Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive co-organized his retrospective exhibition. The artist has also participated in prestigious international art events including the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale in Saudi Arabia (2024), Sharjah Biennial, UAE (2013); Venice Biennale, Italy (2003 and 2007); The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Australia (2006); and Documenta XI, Germany (2002).