Sergio Larrain: Wanderings

Markus Klinko: Bowie Remembered in Black and White, on view at bG Gallery from January 3 through January 28, 2026, offers a moving tribute to one of the most influential artistic collaborations of recent decades. Marking ten years since David Bowie’s passing, the exhibition revisits iconic portraits taken by Markus Klinko and reintroduces them in newly released black-and-white editions that feel both timeless and newly intimate. Originally photographed in color during the celebrated 2001 sessions that accompanied Bowie’s Heathen era, these images take on a heightened emotional resonance when stripped of hue. Light and shadow now carry the weight of expression, revealing Bowie as a figure suspended between vulnerability and control. The absence of color sharpens every gesture and gaze, allowing the viewer to focus on the subtle theatricality that defined Bowie’s presence before the camera. Several key works anchor the exhibition. The haunting Heathen portrait, with Bowie blindfolded and bandaged, evokes fragility, transformation, and inner vision. In The Protector, his silhouette appears both grounded and spectral, while The Pack merges myth and instinct as Bowie stands poised among wolves. In quieter moments such as Smoking, stillness and introspection take center stage, underscoring Bowie’s ability to inhabit multiple identities without ever losing himself. Klinko’s sculptural, cinematic approach plays a crucial role in shaping these images. Known for his collaborations with leading figures in music and fashion, the photographer brings a refined sense of drama and precision to each composition. Yet his work with Bowie remains singular, defined by trust, creative risk, and a shared understanding of image as performance. Seen together, these photographs are more than portraits; they are meditations on legacy, collaboration, and the power of reinvention. Bowie Remembered in Black and White invites viewers to reflect on Bowie not only as an icon, but as an artist whose visual language continues to resonate—quietly, boldly, and far beyond the moment it was made. Image: Markus Klinko - The Realization, 2001Fujicolor Crystal Archive Print © Markus Klinko

BAXTER ST at the Camera Club of New York presents Spark of a Nail, an exhibition of new and recent works by photographer Morgan Levy, on view from November 20, 2025, to January 28, 2026. This body of work foregrounds women and non-binary individuals within the intersections of photography, labor, and architecture. Through collaborative, participatory practice, Levy explores the overlooked gestures of craft and construction, reimagining how acts of making can shape both physical environments and social relationships. Her images invite reflection on the power of creative labor to forge communities of care and resistance in spaces historically dominated by patriarchal structures. In Spark of a Nail, Levy works alongside tradespeople from apprenticeship programs and professional workshops, creating photographs that blend documentary, performance, and staged composition. Each image becomes a site of collaboration and conversation—between gesture and material, between artist and worker. The resulting scenes convey a sense of quiet strength, where moments of exertion and repose coexist, revealing the tenderness embedded within the act of building. Through deliberate framing, Levy positions cis-men at the edges of her compositions, constructing a world primarily inhabited by women and non-binary figures engaged in their own systems of creation and solidarity. Drawing inspiration from early twentieth-century labor photography and the feminist art practices of the 1970s and 1980s, Levy extends this lineage with a contemporary sensitivity. Echoes of Betty Medsger’s investigative photography and Lynda Benglis’ sculptural subversions of industrial materials resonate through her work. By merging visual research, field observation, and reenactment, Levy reclaims and redefines the visual language of labor. Spark of a Nail ultimately proposes a reimagined landscape of work—one where collaboration, artistry, and agency intersect, illuminating new possibilities for representation and belonging in both art and society. Image: © Morgan Levy

BAXTER ST at the Camera Club of New York presents Phantom Sun, a solo exhibition by Swiss-American artist and filmmaker Ohan Breiding, curated by Mathilde Walker-Billaud, the 2025–2026 Guest Curatorial recipient. On view from November 20, 2025, to January 28, 2026, the exhibition brings together photography, video, and archival material to examine how landscapes bear witness to histories of erasure, displacement, and resilience. Breiding’s lens-based approach transforms the natural world into a space of testimony—one that reveals both ecological fragility and enduring forms of care. At the center of Phantom Sun is Breiding’s engagement with the Killed Negatives, a collection of images originally created under the Farm Security Administration (FSA) during the Great Depression. These photographs, once deemed unsuitable for publication and physically punctured to mark their rejection, expose the selective narratives that shaped America’s visual record of that era. By reanimating these discarded negatives, Breiding challenges the authority of the archive and its power to define whose stories are told and whose are omitted. The resulting installation overlays the ghosts of the past with present-day questions about belonging, stewardship, and visibility. Through the recurring motif of the black hole—floating above the rejected images—Breiding transforms absence into a site of inquiry. This circular void becomes both a wound and a portal, inviting viewers to look through the gaps of history and imagine what might emerge from them. In collaboration with Walker-Billaud, the artist expands the documentary tradition pioneered by Roy Stryker and his FSA team, pushing it toward a trans-feminist reimagining of care, ecology, and collective memory. Phantom Sun ultimately proposes a new kind of seeing—one that acknowledges loss while illuminating the persistence of life and meaning in the spaces once cast aside. Image: © Ohan Breiding

In Now, Voyager, Anastasia Samoylova expands her visual vocabulary into the realm of painting, creating a dialogue between photography, gesture, and reflection. Her new body of work merges photographic imagery with poured and dripped paint, producing hybrid compositions that exist between documentation and abstraction. Inspired by Walt Whitman’s call to exploration—“Now, Voyager, sail thou forth to seek and find”—the series continues Samoylova’s journey to understand the shifting identity of America through a lens that is both personal and poetic. While her earlier projects—FloodZone, Floridas, Image Cities, and Atlantic Coast—examined the physical and cultural landscapes shaped by human ambition, Now, Voyager turns inward. Here, paint flows like weather across photographic surfaces, alternately obscuring and revealing what lies beneath. The result is a visual metaphor for transformation: an image constantly in flux, where clarity and dissolution coexist. Samoylova’s compositions shift between moments of elegance and disruption. A peacock feather dissolves into a cascade of pale pigment; a faded flag trembles in a wash of color; handwritten words on a wall echo quiet philosophies about impermanence and growth. Through these juxtapositions, the artist contemplates endurance and fragility—how ideals, memories, and dreams persist even as they fade. Engaging with the legacies of artists such as Rauschenberg, Richter, and Polke, Samoylova’s overpainted photographs resist both sentimentality and despair. They invite viewers to inhabit the uncertain space between image and emotion, to voyage through a landscape that mirrors the complexity of contemporary experience. In this series, America is not a fixed image but a mutable state of mind—shaped by vision, history, and the continual act of searching. Image: © Anastasia Samoylova

Emilia Martin’s exhibition I saw a tree bearing stones in the place of apples and pears at Pictura Gallery invites viewers into a world where the boundaries between myth, belief, and lived experience quietly blur. Drawing on ancient narratives surrounding meteorites, Martin reflects on how these celestial fragments have long held symbolic power, carrying meanings that exceed simple scientific classification. Her work begins with an interest in relics and the way objects are transformed by touch, ritual, and proximity. Just as a modest keepsake becomes sacred by brushing against a saint’s body, a meteorite changes its status the moment it enters human consciousness. Across centuries and cultures, these stones were believed to be messages from the heavens, warnings from angered gods, or companions tethered to the earth to prevent their escape back into the sky. Some communities ground them into powder to ingest, trusting in a celestial medicine; others built rituals, songs, and sites of worship around their mysterious presence. Modern Western science acknowledged meteorites as real only in the late eighteenth century, dismissing earlier accounts as superstition or naive storytelling. This historical gap fascinates Martin. For her, these rocks reveal more than natural phenomena—they reveal who has been permitted to define truth and whose voices have been relegated to the realm of legend. Through her images and research, she questions how narratives are shaped, shared, and suppressed, especially among those like her ancestors who lived and labored under open skies. In this exhibition, the rock becomes a vessel of histories, a wandering body that holds memory without words. Martin imagines it finding its voice at last, reclaiming its stories and speaking across time. With her blend of photography, writing, and sound, she reflects on how myth and fact intermingle, offering a quiet meditation on belief, knowledge, and the fragile spaces that connect the two. Image: © Emilia Martin

SCNY 149th Annual black & white, on view at the Rockwell Gallery from January 6 to January 30, 2026, continues the storied tradition of the Salmagundi Club’s historic monochromatic exhibitions. As the oldest members’ showcase of its kind in the United States, this juried presentation features black and white or sepia-toned drawings, graphics, photographs, paintings, and sculptures by the Club’s artist members, offering a unique glimpse into both contemporary practice and the legacy of over a century of artistic excellence. The first Annual black & white exhibition took place in 1878, just a few years after the founding of the Salmagundi Club. Originally, participation was open to non-members, creating a rich catalogue of work that reflected the artistic currents of the time. Many of these early pieces found their way into the rapidly expanding magazine market of the late 19th century, linking the exhibition to a broader cultural and commercial context. Over the decades, the show has evolved while retaining its commitment to celebrating the expressive power of monochrome. Today, the Annual black & white exhibition remains a touchstone for artists and audiences alike. Within the restrained palette of black, white, and shades of gray, Salmagundi artists demonstrate technical precision, inventiveness, and emotional resonance across a range of media. Each work highlights the ability of line, texture, and contrast to convey depth, movement, and mood, inviting viewers to engage with form and composition in their purest expressions. Visitors to the Rockwell Gallery will encounter a broad spectrum of artistic voices, from finely detailed sketches and photographic studies to evocative sculptural forms. The exhibition embodies both a warm sense of nostalgia and a celebration of living artists, underscoring the Salmagundi Club’s enduring role as a hub for creativity, mentorship, and community. SCNY 149th Annual black & white is a testament to the timeless allure of monochromatic art and the ongoing vitality of one of New York’s most cherished artistic institutions. Image: Rosemary Hawkins, Harbor in Bonavista, 2026 © Rosemary Hawkins

Lauren Grabelle: Deer Diary unfolds as a quiet yet profound meditation on presence, place, and the porous boundary between the human and the wild. Set within the expansive landscapes of Montana, the project occupies a unique space where fine art, documentary observation, and wildlife photography intersect. Rather than positioning herself as a distant observer, Grabelle invites the land and its inhabitants into the act of authorship, allowing chance, movement, and time to shape the work. At the heart of Deer Diary is the trail camera, a humble tool transformed into a conduit for introspection. Hidden along game paths and fence lines, the camera records deer as they pass through their own routines, unbothered by the human gaze. These encounters become a form of spiritual self-portraiture, where Grabelle’s presence is implied rather than seen. The deer emerge as collaborators, their gestures and pauses echoing ancient narratives that have followed the animal through mythology, religion, and storytelling since humanity’s earliest image-making. The resulting photographs feel both intimate and timeless. Illuminated by infrared glow or soft ambient light, the deer appear suspended between worlds, at once corporeal and symbolic. They inhabit a space that feels ritualistic, recalling cave paintings, medieval allegories, and folktales in which animals serve as guides, messengers, or mirrors of human emotion. In this context, the Montana landscape is not a backdrop but an active participant, shaping the rhythm and mood of each image. Grabelle’s broader practice has long been rooted in honoring people, animals, and environments with empathy and restraint, and Deer Diary extends this ethos with particular clarity. Her sensitivity to place, honed through years of editorial and fine art work as well as solitary time in wilderness settings, lends the series an authenticity that resists spectacle. The images do not dramatize wildlife; they listen to it. Ultimately, Deer Diary is an invitation to slow down and reconsider how we look, not only at animals but at ourselves within the natural world. Through patience and humility, the project suggests that meaning emerges not from control, but from attentive coexistence, where observation becomes a form of reverence. Image: © Lauren Grabelle

Escaramuza, the Poetics of Home is an immersive collaboration that brings together photography, poetry, and lived testimony to illuminate a tradition shaped by precision, courage, and belonging. Centered on the women of escaramuza charra, the exhibition opens a window onto a world often glimpsed only through spectacle, revealing instead the intimate rituals, relationships, and emotional landscapes that sustain it. Here, pageantry gives way to presence, and performance becomes a language of identity. Through the lens of Constance Jaeggi, the bond between rider and horse emerges as a quiet dialogue of trust and power. Her photographs move beyond documentation, lingering on gestures, glances, and moments of pause that speak to autonomy within a historically male-dominated arena. Horses are not merely companions or symbols; they are collaborators, mirroring the riders’ strength, vulnerability, and resolve. Jaeggi’s imagery frames escaramuza as both a disciplined sport and a deeply personal act of self-definition. Poetry by Angelina Sáenz and ire’ne lara silva weaves through the visual work, adding rhythm and resonance to the exhibition. Their words echo themes of migration, family, inheritance, and memory, grounding escaramuza in the broader experience of home-making across borders and generations. The poems do not explain the images; they converse with them, offering texture and breath, and inviting viewers to listen as much as they look. Together, image and language create a space where cultural continuity and personal voice coexist. Interviews included in the project further deepen this exchange, allowing escaramuzas to speak for themselves about discipline, pride, and the labor behind elegance. These voices reveal how tradition adapts and endures, carried forward by women who claim visibility while honoring lineage. Escaramuza becomes not only a sport, but a living archive shaped by hands, hooves, and stories passed down with care. Ultimately, Escaramuza, the Poetics of Home is a meditation on belonging. It asks how home is formed through movement, community, and shared purpose, and how identity is affirmed through collective ritual. Lyrical yet grounded, the exhibition honors the women who ride at full speed while holding fast to history, imagination, and one another. Image: © Constance Jaeggi

Arne Svenson: Sock Monkeys and Strays, on view from December 15, 2025 through January 31, 2026 at Robert Klein Gallery, brings together two deeply evocative bodies of work by the New York–based photographer. Marking Svenson’s third solo presentation at the gallery, the exhibition highlights his enduring fascination with psychology, projection, and the subtle emotional charge embedded in acts of looking. Across both series, Svenson invites viewers into quiet encounters with subjects that sit at the margins of attention, asking us to reconsider how meaning is formed through photographic observation. In Sock Monkeys, Svenson transforms modest, handmade toys into compelling stand-ins for the human figure. Photographed with a large-format camera and lit with the restraint of nineteenth-century portraiture, these dolls are stripped of their playful context and rendered strangely sentient. Their stitched faces suggest temperament without story, individuality without history. Hovering between whimsy and disquiet, the images reveal how easily viewers project emotion, character, and vulnerability onto inert forms, exposing photography’s power to animate what would otherwise be dismissed as trivial or nostalgic. The series Strays extends this inquiry into empathy and marginality through portraits of kittens temporarily borrowed from a rescue facility. Rather than indulging in sentimentality, Svenson approaches these animals with the same formal seriousness applied to his inanimate subjects. Each photograph suggests an interior life shaped by displacement and uncertainty. The kittens’ gazes, gestures, and postures hint at stories beyond the frame, quietly asserting presence while resisting easy interpretation. Together, these works underscore Svenson’s long-standing interest in the ethics of seeing and the tension between observer and observed. Whether confronting a toy imbued with imagined personality or an animal negotiating its autonomy, the photographs slow the act of looking and demand attentiveness. An artist’s talk on January 10, 2026, offers further insight into these themes through conversation with photo historian Jennifer Stoots. Ultimately, Sock Monkeys and Strays is a meditation on attention itself. Svenson’s images remind us that intimacy in photography does not require narration, only patience—and a willingness to encounter the overlooked with care. Image: Arne Svenson. Strays 99, 2010 Archival pigment print © Arne Svenson

Nuclear Injustice, on view at the Pace University Art Gallery from November 15, 2025 through January 31, 2026, confronts the enduring human, environmental, and political legacies of nuclear testing and bombings. This group exhibition brings together the work of Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, Alan Nakagawa, Michael Wang, and Will Wilson, whose practices span photography, video, sound installation, sculpture, and conceptual interventions. Each artist interrogates the often unseen impacts of atomic history, from poisoned landscapes to Indigenous resistance and global campaigns for a nuclear-free world. Jetñil-Kijiner’s video poems poignantly reflect on the Marshall Islands, where decades of nuclear testing left both environmental devastation and intergenerational trauma. Her work entwines memory, culture, and place, foregrounding the resilience of Marshallese communities and the ongoing struggle to preserve identity in the face of ecological destruction. In a complementary approach, Nakagawa transforms sound into witness: field recordings from the Hiroshima Atomic Dome and the Wendover Hangar are sculpted into immersive audio spaces, prompting reflection on the reverberations of historical violence and the ethical weight of human choices. Will Wilson’s photography highlights the ongoing consequences of uranium mining on Indigenous lands, revealing the connection between nuclear extraction and broader systems of colonial exploitation. His images confront the legacies of displacement, contamination, and cultural erasure while honoring Indigenous resilience. Michael Wang engages scientific and ecological frameworks, exploring nuclear containment and exposure through conceptual installations that link contemporary concerns to the history of land art, emphasizing humanity’s moral responsibility toward the environment. Curated by Sarah Cunningham and Joel Wilson, with the guidance of Emily Welty, Nuclear Injustice challenges audiences to consider the physical, social, and ethical dimensions of nuclear technology. Together, the works transform sites of devastation into spaces for remembrance, renewal, and activism. By connecting history, environment, and culture, the exhibition invites viewers to reckon with past harms while envisioning a more just and nuclear-free future. Image: Will Wilson, Auto Immune Response: Confluence of Three Generations, photography, 2015 © Will Wilson

Danny Lyon: The Texas Prison Photographs at Howard Greenberg Gallery presents a compelling and historic exploration of incarceration in Texas during 1967-68. This exhibition, Lyon’s first with the gallery following its announcement of representation in April 2025, brings together photographs, films, drawings, and ephemeral materials that reveal the lived realities of prison life in vivid, unflinching detail. The show opens with a reception on December 5 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., with the artist in attendance, offering viewers a unique opportunity to engage directly with one of photography’s most influential documentarians. Danny Lyon’s work in Texas captures the complexities of the penal system through a participatory lens. Unlike traditional photojournalists, Lyon immersed himself in the communities he documented, living and interacting with his subjects to create intimate, authentic portrayals. His images in this exhibition convey both the harshness and humanity of prison life, from quiet moments of reflection to the stark architecture of confinement. Through these works, Lyon examines power, control, and resilience, offering a nuanced perspective that challenges viewers to reconsider notions of justice and social structures. Lyon’s approach to documentary photography was radical in the 1960s, informed by his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement and his groundbreaking book, The Bikeriders, which chronicled the Chicago Outlaws motorcycle club. His New Journalism style emphasized participation over observation, allowing him to capture the textures, emotions, and stories that might have been lost to an outsider. In his own words, “I was a participant who also happened to be a photographer,” highlighting his philosophy of deep engagement as the foundation of his practice. The Texas Prison Photographs not only documents a specific time and place but also marks an enduring exploration of the ethics, intimacy, and responsibility of documentary photography. By presenting these works alongside films, drawings, and ephemera, the exhibition offers a multidimensional view into Lyon’s method and vision, cementing his legacy as a pioneering voice in socially engaged visual storytelling. Image: © Danny Lyon, Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Raphael Avigdor’s newest body of work offers a contemplative journey through the quiet drama of the sky, where clouds become both subject and metaphor. In his forthcoming exhibition, the artist invites viewers to linger on the suspended moments he has gathered during his travels, transforming shifting atmospheric forms into reflections on time, movement, and perception. Each image carries the sense of an encounter—an instant when the world seems to pause just long enough for memory to take shape. The title of the exhibition, Both Sides Now, resonates with the spirit of duality at the heart of these works. Like the song that inspired it, the photographs navigate the tension between what is seen and what is felt. Avigdor captures clouds not simply as meteorological formations but as emotional landscapes, places where observation and introspection meet. Light drifts across the images with a soft authority, shaping contours that echo both fleeting impressions and long-held recollections. Through these shifting skies, the artist suggests that every view is layered: outer vision blending naturally with inner response. Avigdor’s longstanding engagement with photography underpins the clarity and purpose of this series. Having spent decades documenting cultures and environments around the world, he brings the same sensitivity to these quiet skyscapes that he has applied to the people and places encountered throughout his career. The clouds become a universal subject, yet they retain a sense of personal dialogue—fragments of experience gathered from journeys across continents. Although rooted in the present, the work reflects the breadth of Avigdor’s practice, one shaped by curiosity, travel, and an ever-deepening attention to the nuances of visual storytelling. The photographs in Both Sides Now express a simple yet profound truth: that in watching the sky, one observes not only the world above but also the shifting landscapes of one’s own interior life. Image: Raphael Avigdor Courageous I, 2025 archival print 101.6 x 152.4 cm 40 x 60 in (RA029) © Raphael Avigdor