Lisa Elmaleh: Tierra Prometida & Douglas Miles: Apacheria

CLAMP is pleased to present “My Life as a Flower,” an exhibition of unique Polaroids produced by Dietmar Busse nearly twenty-five years ago, at the turn of the 21st century in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Coated from head to toe in matte, chalky pigments, Busse transforms his own body into a living canvas. Onto his skin he carefully pressed petals, blossoms, stems, and leaves, crafting self portraits that feel both fantastical and haunting. These images, rich with texture and fragility, suggest a deep intimacy with nature and a performative merging of subject and medium. Busse assembles parts from a wide range of botanical species—anemone blossoms paired with carnation leaves on a stalk of aloe—to create impossible new blooms that exist solely within his imagination. Once complete, these fleeting arrangements are photographed before they vanish, emphasizing the ephemerality at the heart of the work. Through this singular series, Busse collapses the boundaries between painting, sculpture, photography, and performance. His process foregrounds impermanence and transformation while quietly invoking our shared dependency on the natural world—an uneasy tether made more precarious in an age increasingly defined by technological acceleration and impending climate catastrophe. “My Life as a Flower” coincides with an exhibition at FIERMAN of Busse’s camera-less chemical paintings as well as newer digital floral self portraits running from May 8 – June 22, 2025. Dietmar Busse (b. 1966) lives and works in New York. He was born in Stolzenau, Germany, and as a young man learned the world of photography in Madrid before relocating to New York in 1991. His recent solo museum exhibition titled “Dietmar Busse | Fairy Tales 1991-1999” at Amant, Brooklyn, NY, was reviewed in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Cultured, The Guardian, and Paper Magazine. His work has been included in solo and group exhibitions at Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York; CLAMP, New York; FIERMAN, New York; Halsey McKay Gallery, New York; the Museum Schloss Moyland, Bedburg-Hau, Germany; Wereldmuseum, Rotterdam; Invisible-Exports, New York; Museum Sinclair Haus, Bad Homburg; the Leslie Lohman Museum, New York, among other venues. His work has been publicized in The New Yorker, TIME, The London Independent, New York Times Magazine and Interview, among other publications.

The Fahey/Klein Gallery is proud to present Lauren Greenfield: Social Studies, a new photographic exhibition that revisits the terrain of youth culture and identity formation in the digital age. Expanding on her acclaimed five-part docuseries of the same name, Social Studies (FX/Hulu) marks Greenfield’s return to a subject she has explored since her groundbreaking 1997 debut, Fast Forward: Growing Up in the Shadow of Hollywood. Shot during the 2021–2022 school year across Los Angeles—a city synonymous with image and aspiration—Social Studies follows a diverse group of teens navigating high school, home life, and relationships under the influence of ever-present social media. This new body of work builds on Greenfield’s legacy as a visual sociologist, capturing the tensions between online performance and private identity, aspiration and anxiety, vulnerability and self-curation. Lauren Greenfield’s photographic approach parallels her immersive filmmaking: both document a reality that is evolving in real-time. Lauren Greenfield: Social Studies is a continuation and an evolution of the artist’s decades-long interrogation of American culture. Through the raw honesty of her subjects and the clarity of her vision, Greenfield creates a powerful meditation on adolescence, what she calls “comparison culture”, and the search for authenticity in a curated world. As she continues to investigate the themes of status, beauty, identity, and power, this new series reflects her ongoing commitment to making the invisible visible—revealing how young people see themselves and how we construct and consume those images. Lauren Greenfield is an Emmy-award-winning photographer and filmmaker and has been a preeminent chronicler of youth culture, gender, and consumerism for over twenty-five years. Her documentary The Queen of Versailles won the Best Documentary Director Award at Sundance in 2012 (coming to Broadway as a musical this fall, starring Kristin Chenoweth with music by Stephen Schwartz), and her films The Kingmaker, Generation Wealth, and THIN have garnered Emmy, Critics Choice, WGA, & DGA recognition. Greenfield’s award-winning books include Fast Forward (1997), Girl Culture (2002), THIN (2006). In recent years, she directed the ambitious documentary Generation Wealth (2018) and published a retrospective monograph, a global investigation of materialism and social status that synthesizes decades of her photographic work. In partnership with the Annenberg Foundation, who also collaborated with Greenfield on the Social Studies docuseries, the Generation Wealth exhibition toured museums around the world opening at the Annenberg Space for Photography, and traveling to the ICP, the Nobel Peace Center, Deichtorhallen Hamburg, the Hague Fotomuseum, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Copenhagen), and Fotografiska. Greenfield’s photographs—including entire bodies of work such as Fast Forward, Girl Culture, THIN, and Generation Wealth—are held in major institutional collections, including the Harvard Art Museums, the Center for Creative Photography (Tucson), Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, the International Center of Photography, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, among others. Image: Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge, 2025 © Lauren Greenfield, courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

Zanele Muholi, a pioneering visual activist and artist, has spent two decades using photography, film, and sculpture to document and celebrate Black Queer lives in South Africa and beyond. Their work challenges gender stereotypes, elevates personal narratives, and underscores the urgent need for visibility, respect, and recognition within the LGBTQIA+ community. This exhibition highlights several key series from Muholi’s prolific practice. *Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness)*, an ongoing self-portrait series, features striking black-and-white images in which the artist assumes various personas. Using everyday objects like clothespins, rugs, and plastic bags as adornments, Muholi transforms the ordinary into potent symbols of personal and political commentary. Also on view are selections from *Brave Beauties*, a series that captures trans women and nonbinary individuals in bold, empowered poses, and *Faces and Phases*, a living archive of Black lesbians, gender-nonconforming individuals, and trans men. Initiated in response to the discrimination and violence faced by these communities in South Africa, *Faces and Phases* serves as both documentation and defiance. A never-before-seen selection of portraits from *Somnyama Ngonyama*, presented in lightbox format, intensifies the interplay of light and shadow, further amplifying the series’ dramatic impact. Across these bodies of work, Muholi redefines Black Queer representation, disrupting dominant narratives while offering a powerful and deeply human perspective. Image: Zanele Muholi, "Phila I, Parktown," 2016, edition of 8 + 2 artist’s proofs. Courtesy of Southern Guild and Yancey Richardson. © Zanele Muholi

Nearly 60 years after The Beatles performed their final concert at Candlestick Park, Beatlemania is back in the Bay. Featuring more than 250 personal photographs by Paul McCartney, along with video clips and archival materials, this exhibition offers a behind-the-scenes look at the meteoric rise of the world’s most celebrated band. The images capture the period from December 1963 through February 1964 and the band’s journey to superstardom, from local venues in Liverpool to The Ed Sullivan Show and worldwide acclaim. Photographs of screaming crowds and paparazzi show the sheer magnitude of the group’s fame and the cultural change they represented. More intimate images of the band on their days off highlight the humor and individuality of McCartney and bandmates John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. Rediscovered in the artist’s personal archive in 2020, these images offer new perspectives on the band, their fans, and the early 1960s, as seen through the eyes of Paul McCartney. Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–1964: Eyes of the Storm is organized by the National Portrait Gallery, London, in collaboration with Paul McCartney. It is curated by Paul McCartney with Sarah Brown for MPL Communications and Rosie Broadley for the National Portrait Gallery, London. The presentation at the de Young museum is organized by Sally Martin Katz.

Conversations at a party in Oakland in 1932 changed the history of photography. At that gathering, several now-iconic Bay Area figures — including Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and Edward Weston — banded together to form Group f.64, a collective dedicated to “true” photography and the rejection of the prevailing style of Pictorialism, which mimicked painting. The group’s name was technical, referring to the camera lens setting that permits the greatest depth of field, but their mission was creative: to make photographs of startling clarity and beauty that rivaled art made in other mediums. Although Group f.64 lasted for less than a year, its legacy endured, marking the Bay Area as an epicenter for modernist photography. Around Group f.64: Legacies and Counterhistories in Bay Area Photography takes the work of this influential collective as a nexus from which to examine other local developments in the medium. The exhibition begins with a selection of pictures in the gauzy Pictorialist style, which every member of Group f.64 practiced before turning to the crisp, sharply focused compositions for which they are best known. The second gallery includes work by all eleven members of the collective made around the time they joined together. Beyond that, the exhibition branches off in related but varied directions, including an exploration of the link between Group f.64 members and the poet Langston Hughes and a presentation of contemporary artist Tarrah Krajnak’s work in dialogue with that of Weston and Adams. The final gallery serves as a visual and thematic counterpoint to those that precede it, featuring street photography from the 1970s to the present that reveals the wilder side of San Francisco. Image: Jim Jocoy, Muriel with bruised knees, 1980, courtesy of the artist and Casemore Gallery

"I have spent my entire career photographing children all over the world. The last several years I have focused my eyes on the Irish Traveller that live in caravans on the side of the road or in open fields throughout Ireland. The Traveller community are an Irish nomadic indigenous ethnic minority. There is no recorded date as to when Travellers first came to Ireland. This is lost to history, but Travellers have been recorded to exist in Ireland as far back as history is recorded. Even with their great history they live as outsiders to society and face unbelievable racism growing up. As a mother of two daughters, I became so interested in the culture and traditions and lives of these children. I have spent many years traveling back and forth to Ireland to document these incredible children." "The experience I had photographing the grit and beauty, that is the everyday life of a Traveller child, is one that inspires me every day. Their deep respect for family and cultural values is refreshing, one that can be quite difficult to find in an age with the convince of social media. Not always immediately accepting of an outsider holding a large camera, I took my time getting to know and understand these faces that represent the new generation. My ever-growing fascination with the children of today has led me all over the world, capturing their innocence or in some cases loss of, in its most raw form." "Unlike most children they are unable to refer to a history book to learn about their ancestors, a part of this journey was being able to document an era that is so different to any other I have photographed. It is one that is and will always be rapidly changing, every time I visit it is a whole different world yet with the relationships, I have been lucky enough to make, it seems to feel like I never left. I am exponentially grateful to the young people documented and that I have encountered over my years." "It is with an honest heart I hope to show that these beautiful children who have great hopes and goals and work every day to reach their dreams no matter how hard they must fight racisms and stereotypes placed on them for centuries. A child is an innocent, happy, precious part of the world that should be loved and accepted and encouraged no matter where or how they live."

Portraits are more than images of people—they're reflections of connection, presence, and intention. At their best, they capture not just appearance, but emotion, identity, and the quiet dynamics between photographer and subject. ​ In Portraits and Persons, Cynthia Freeland identifies three core elements of portraiture: a visible body, a sense of inner life, and the act of self-presentation. Together, these form the foundation for how we see—and are seen. ​ Praxis Gallery welcomes photographic portraits that explore these dimensions through craft, concept, and character—portraits that reveal something personal, poetic, or profoundly human. Guest Curated Exhibition by Sandrine Hermand-Grisel

“Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys” is a groundbreaking exhibition that marks the first major showcase of the Dean Collection, owned by renowned musicians and cultural icons Swizz Beatz (Kasseem Dean) and Alicia Keys. Organized by the Brooklyn Museum, “Giants” highlights nearly 100 significant works by Black diasporic artists, including Gordon Parks, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lorna Simpson, Amy Sherald, and more. The exhibition reflects the Deans’ passion for supporting established and emerging artists while fostering important dialogues about art, culture, and identity. “Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys” is organized by Kimberli Gant, Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, and Indira A. Abiskaroon, Curatorial Assistant, Modern and Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum. Image: Kwame Brathwaite. Untitled (Model Who Embraced Natural Hairstyles at AJASS Photoshoot), circa 1970, printed 2018. Pigmented inkjet print. The Dean Collection, courtesy of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys. © Kwame Brathwaite. (Photo: Joshua White / JWPictures.com)

Over the last four decades, image-editing software has radically transformed our visual world. The ease with which images and text can be digitally generated and altered has enabled new forms of creative experimentation, while also sparking philosophical debates about the very nature of representation. Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film examines the impact of digital manipulation tools from the 1980s to the present, for the first time assessing simultaneous developments and debates in the fields of photography, graphic design, and visual effects. Featuring over 150 works, the exhibition traces the emergence of distinctive digital aesthetic strategies, relationships to realism, and storytelling modes. The nearly 200 artists, designers, and makers in Digital Witness illuminate today's visual culture where digital editing tools are easier to access than ever before.

“Although the result is obtained by chemical means, the little work it entails will greatly please ladies.” So wrote one of photography’s inventors, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (1787–1851), about his eponymous daguerreotype in 1839. Daguerre’s words, which associate women with idleness, are clearly misogynistic. Yet in a backhanded way, Daguerre predicted the pivotal role women would play in photography since its invention in the 1830s. Undaunted by photographic chemistry—and often neglected or derided by their male peers—women have made huge contributions to the development of the medium across a variety of genres. In the nineteenth century, photography was more accessible than established artistic disciplines like painting and sculpture because it was new and thus free from conventional training that historically prohibited women. It was relatively inexpensive to start and could be practiced at home with makeshift darkrooms set up in closets or bathrooms. Yet even with fewer barriers to entry, women faced their share of constraints in a male-dominated field. Expectations of gender often dictated the themes they could pursue, encouraging portraiture and still life rather than photographs of war and exploration. Women took up photography in increasing numbers in the twentieth century, and by the 1930s, some of the most successful photographers in the world included Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange, and Imogen Cunningham, all on view in this exhibition. Women in Focus, drawn from The San Diego Museum of Art’s permanent collection (which merged with the Museum of Photographic Arts in 2023), allows for a fuller account of the medium’s history by highlighting how women have shaped photography from the mid-nineteenth century to today. Image: Trude Fleischmann, Sibylle Binder (detail), ca. 1932. Gelatin silver print. Museum of Photographic Arts at The San Diego Museum of Art, Gift of Michael and Joyce Axelrod, M.1993.012.001. © Trude Fleischmann

The central importance of glass in the history of photography has often been taken for granted: a crucial material that has largely escaped commentary, as if hidden in plain sight. In 1851 English photographer Frederick Scott Archer invented the wet plate collodion, the first practical method for making photographic negatives on glass, which produced sharper and more densely toned pictures than paper negatives. By 1853, photographers had adapted the process for the ambrotype, which grew in popularity as a less expensive alternative to daguerreotypes. The introduction of dry-plate negatives in the 1870s made glass plates an easy-to-use and preferred material, which photographers continued to rely on into the 1930s. Similar technology enabled mass production of jewel-like slides for magic lantern shows, a popular form of visual entertainment into the early twentieth century. Today, contemporary photographers continue to utilize glass for its depth and beauty, as well as to ground their work in histories of photographic imagery. Delicate Sights spans the nineteenth century to the present day and includes works produced around the world. Works on display include glass based photographs from NOMA’s permanent collection, by such photographers as E.J. Bellocq and Joseph Woodson “Pops” Whitesell. Delicate Sights includes unique historical photographs on loan from the collections of Dr. Stanley B. Burns, Elizabeth A. Burns, and Jason L. Burns of New York. The exhibition concludes with an installation of ambrotypes by artist Felicita Felli Maynard that uses a historical process to make an important, contemporary intervention in the photographic record. All together, Delicate Sights is an invitation to consider how glass photographs have always made it possible to see our world more clearly. Image: Vueltiao, from the series Ole Dandy, The Tribute, 2018–ongoing, Felicita Felli Maynard, Ambrotype

Higher Pictures presents Susan Meiselas’ earliest series of photographs, 44 Irving Street 1970 – 1971, following its exhibition at Harvard Art Museums. This is the artist’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. In 1970, while still a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Susan Meiselas was living in a boarding house at 44 Irving Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Boarding houses, like the one at 44 Irving Street, often began as large, single-family homes in cities or college towns. As average family sizes decreased and the socioeconomic makeup of neighborhoods changed, these homes were then divided up into smaller units while maintaining a shared kitchen, bathrooms, and common areas. As a result, each of the rooms at 44 Irving Street retained some of the home’s original single-family character. At Harvard, Meiselas enrolled in a photography course and chose to photograph her neighbors for a class project. Though she didn’t know any of them, she began knocking on their doors and asking to take portraits of them in their rooms. “The camera was this way to connect,” Meiselas remembers. Once she had developed the film, she would make contact sheets to share with her neighbors, initiating a dialogue about how they saw themselves. Their written responses, which Meiselas presented alongside the photographs, provide insights into their lives and how they felt the pictures did or did not capture them. By incorporating their perspectives into the work itself, Meiselas draws out a crucial tension between socially engaged photography as a historical genre and the subjects it purports to depict. The photographs and letters on view in this exhibition are the fruits of those exchanges. Though boarding houses are often transitory living spaces, Meiselas was drawn to the individuality and self-expression she discovered in each room. This comes across in the images themselves, which show her subjects at home and in situ, surrounded by their personal effects. In return, the letters they wrote are sometimes strikingly honest and revelatory, a written punctum—Roland Barthes’ term for something that pierces the viewer—as a counterpoint to the photographs. This series helped Meiselas develop her conception of “photography as an exchange in the world.” “It wasn’t about the formalism of photography,” she says, “It was about the narrative and the connectivity.” The exhibition is accompanied by the first monograph of 44 Irving Street, 1970-1971 by Susan Meiselas published in partnership with TBW books + Higher Pictures. The dates for the opening and book signing are to be announced during the run of the show. Stay tuned! Susan Meiselas (b. 1948) received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College and her MA in visual education from Harvard University. She was a 1992 MacArthur Fellow and is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2015) and the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize (2019), among other awards. Mediations, a retrospective exhibition of Meiselas’ work, was initiated by the Jeu de Paume, Paris, in 2018 and traveled to eight venues including SFMOMA, San Francisco (2018); Instituto Moreira Salles, São Paulo (2020), Kunst Haus Wien, Vienna (2021); and C/O Berlin (2022). She has been a member of the photographic collective Magnum Photos since 1976 and has been the president of the Magnum Foundation since 2007. She lives and works in New York City.