Larry Sultan: Homeland

Jamel Shabazz’s photography offers a vivid chronicle of urban life, friendship, and resilience from the 1980s to today. His lens captures the essence of community—moments of laughter among friends, the quiet pride of families, and the expressive power of style and self-presentation. Deeply rooted in the culture of the streets, his images reflect the rise of hip-hop as both a musical and visual movement, revealing how fashion, rhythm, and attitude became intertwined forms of identity and empowerment. Whether in black-and-white or color, Shabazz’s photographs radiate warmth and humanity, transforming ordinary encounters into timeless celebrations of connection. The exhibition Love Is the Message marks the fiftieth anniversary of Shabazz’s career and showcases a remarkable selection from his personal archive—prints, cameras, and memorabilia that trace the evolution of his artistic journey. Each image, whether of a Brooklyn block or a moment shared between strangers, testifies to his belief that photography can heal, uplift, and build understanding. His work embodies love not as sentimentality but as a force of dignity and collective memory. Curated in partnership with “Team Love,” the exhibition brings together Jamel Shabazz, Robert “Dupreme” Eatman, Dr. Bilal Polson, Erik Sumner, and the Hofstra University Museum of Art. The presentation is further enriched by the inclusion of Terry Adkins’s Native Son (Circus) (2006) and Archibald J. Motley Jr.’s Bronzeville at Night (1949), works that resonate with the themes of rhythm, visibility, and community pride that define Shabazz’s vision. Accompanied by a series of public programs supported by state arts funding, Love Is the Message invites visitors to reflect on the unifying strength of love, art, and shared experience—affirming photography’s power to connect people across generations and geographies. Image: Jamel Shabazz (American, born 1960) A Time of Innocence Series. East Flatbush. 1980 C-Print 16 x 20 inches Courtesy of the artist © Jamel Shabazz

Stevenson Library at Bard College presents Melissa Shook: Freedom to Create, curated by Fiona Laugharn, an independent curator and Bard alumna. On view from September 18 through December 19, 2025, the exhibition celebrates the enduring influence of Bard on the artistic and intellectual life of Melissa Shook, who studied at the college between 1959 and 1961. The opening reception will take place on September 25, from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM. At just seventeen, Shook wrote in her Bard application, “I have begun to realize how important freedom is for the person who desires to create in any way.” This early insight into the nature of creativity becomes the guiding thread of the exhibition. Drawn from a recent gift by her daughter, Krissy Shook, the presentation gathers an extraordinary array of personal materials—letters, essays, photographs, and ceramics—alongside a rich selection of handmade artist books and camera equipment. Highlights include prints and contact sheets from Shook’s iconic series Daily Self-Portraits 1972–1973 and Wellfleet (1973), which together capture her lifelong exploration of identity, discipline, and the passage of time. Through correspondence, annotated drafts, and early works, Freedom to Create maps the evolution of a young woman who came to Bard as an English major and left on a path toward becoming one of the most reflective and independent voices in American photography. The exhibition reveals how the environment of freedom and curiosity that Bard fostered served as both inspiration and foundation for Shook’s later work as an artist and educator at the University of Massachusetts Boston. By pairing archival fragments with completed artworks, the exhibition encourages visitors to reflect on their own creative beginnings. It asks a question that Shook herself might have posed: What do we require—internally and externally—to create freely? Image: Kemper Peacock Melissa Shook, ca. 1960s Gelatin silver print 10 x 8 inches © Kristina Shook & The Estate of M. Melissa Shook

Daniel Cooney is pleased to present Shirttail Kin – New Work, the first solo exhibition with Texas-born artist Chivas Clem. Opening one year after his solo museum survey at the Dallas Contemporary, this exhibition features 14 never-before-seen photographs from Clem’s ongoing series Shirttail Kin, a project that began in 2012. The series’ title draws from Southern vernacular, referring to someone considered family through affection rather than blood, setting the tone for a body of work steeped in intimacy, connection, and observation. Shirttail Kin documents young white men living in and around Northeast Texas and Southeast Oklahoma, near Clem’s hometown of Paris, Texas. The photographs present the subjects mostly unclothed, captured within the private and public spaces of motels, trailer parks, abandoned houses, and Clem’s own studio. Some figures pose deliberately, while others are recorded in candid moments, creating a fluid tension between performance and authenticity. Through these depictions, Clem examines themes of masculinity, class, power, and eroticism, while also highlighting the visibility and self-presentation of this marginalized community. Clem has described his models as actors in an unscripted film, emphasizing the improvisational quality of each image. Beyond individual portrayal, the series reflects broader societal concerns, exploring the vulnerabilities of rural working-class life and the shifting notions of masculinity within contemporary culture. The photographs subtly interrogate the larger cultural and political pressures faced by these communities, offering both critique and empathy. Born in 1971 in Paris, Texas, and currently based there, Chivas Clem is a multimedia artist working across photography, film, sculpture, and painting. A graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program, Clem is also the founder of the influential New York artist space The Fifth International. Shirttail Kin – New Work underscores Clem’s ongoing exploration of identity, community, and the cinematic potential of everyday life, presenting a deeply personal yet socially resonant vision of contemporary rural America. Image: Chivas Clem Chris on the Red River, 2025 Archival inkjet print 40 x 30" © Chivas Clem

Here is a unique 300-word text inspired by the press release, with for italics and at the end of each paragraph: Marilyn Monroe’s centenary becomes an invitation to look again, more closely and more quietly, at a life that has long hovered between legend and longing. In Marilyn Turns 100, Melissa Morgan Fine Art presents an intimate body of work by Lawrence Schiller, whose photographs from Monroe’s final year trace a portrait that is both luminous and deeply human. These images, many rarely seen, capture moments when the star stepped out of performance and into vulnerability, revealing the person behind the icon. Schiller’s perspective is shaped by unusual proximity. Granted access during the filming of Something’s Got to Give and throughout private intervals, he observed Marilyn at a pivotal moment: the height of her fame intertwined with the fragility of transition. His photographs do not simply record a public figure; they explore the shifting expressions, hesitations, and quiet confidences that defined her late career. The result is a visual narrative that defies caricature and restores the complexity of her presence. Within this exhibition, viewers encounter Marilyn as collaborator and subject, self-aware yet unguarded. The images reflect a woman negotiating her identity—professional, emotional, and personal—while navigating the relentless gaze that shaped her public life. Schiller’s photographs offer space for contemplation, inviting us to see her anew not as a symbol, but as an individual whose contradictions remain compelling a century later. Lawrence Schiller’s career, spanning photography and film, has earned recognition across major institutions, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the New York Historical Society. His work, widely published in influential magazines, continues to frame cultural memory with clarity and insight. Marilyn Turns 100 extends that legacy, honoring both the photographer’s enduring craft and the timeless presence of a woman who continues to inspire devotion and inquiry in equal measure. Image: Lawrence Schiller Marilyn Monroe at Pool Edge, 1962 Melissa Morgan Fine Art © Lawrence Schiller

Marshall Gallery presents An Introduction to Shadows, an evocative group exhibition that brings together a diverse selection of photographs made in Japan over the past twenty-five years, showcasing both celebrated masters and innovative emerging voices. The presentation unfolds with a quiet intensity, echoing Tanizaki’s belief that what is only partially revealed can leave the strongest impression. Here, subtlety becomes a kind of illumination, guiding viewers through a world shaped by restraint, atmosphere, and a profound sensitivity to the passage of time. The exhibition gathers the work of Kenji Aoki, Chieko Shiraishi, Miho Kajioka, Masao Yamamoto, Mika Horie, Toshio Shibata, Masahisa Fukase, Kenro Izu, Daido Moriyama, and Kensuke Koike. Across these artists, a shared spirit emerges—one that embraces minimalism, tactile beauty, and a muted visual language. Aoki’s meticulously arranged studio compositions reveal a disciplined elegance, while Koike’s inventive collages bend and reimagine photographic form. Kajioka and Yamamoto offer poetic fragments of memory, their small prints carrying the weight of dreams. Shiraishi’s shadow-filled images from the series Shimakage, shown in the United States for the first time, envelop the viewer in a world defined as much by what is unseen as by what is shown. Adding a vibrant counterpoint, Mika Horie’s cyanotypes—printed on handmade gampi paper—pulse with color and texture, while Kenro Izu’s celebrated Blue Nudes extend a lineage of contemplative beauty. Shibata’s stark studies of infrastructure highlight the interplay of nature and human intervention. From an earlier generation, works by Fukase and Moriyama remind viewers of the radical experimentation that shaped modern Japanese photography. Inspired by a recent journey to Japan, the exhibition reflects a renewed appreciation for the country’s deep photographic heritage. By presenting rarely seen works and intimate objects, Marshall Gallery invites visitors to engage with Japan’s distinct visual sensibility and to discover the quietly resonant approaches that continue to define its photographic landscape. Image: Kenji Aoki Japan, b. 1968 Civilizational Collapse No. 1, 2020 Toned Gelatin Silver Print 20 x 16 in. Edition of 10 © Kenji Aoki

The Center for Creative Photography (CCP) celebrates fifty years of collecting with a vibrant exhibition titled Picture Party: Celebrating the Collection at 50. The exhibition brings together over 100 photographs and archival objects, drawn from the CCP’s extraordinary holdings, to create visual “conversations” across time and place. The exhibition invites visitors to explore the many ways photography has been used to capture, interpret, and transform our understanding of the world. From the earliest days of the medium to contemporary practices, Picture Party presents iconic works by photographers such as Ansel Adams, Harry Callahan, Susan Meiselas, Graciela Iturbide, Tseng Kwong Chi, Minor White, and Carrie Mae Weems. Alongside these images, the show features archival objects that illuminate the history of photography and the artists who shaped it, including Adams’ darkroom tools, Hume Kennerly’s Vietnam-era helmet, Edward Weston’s wedding ring, and even historical daguerreotypes from the 19th century. Curated by Rebecca Senf, Emilia Mickevicius, and Emily Una Weirich, the exhibition emphasizes the richness of the CCP’s collection, which includes over 300 archival collections and more than 120,000 photographs. Rather than following a linear chronology, Picture Party encourages visitors to engage with the works in open-ended ways, discovering unexpected connections and dialogues between images, objects, and moments across history. This approach allows the exhibition to act as a dynamic celebration of photography’s evolving language and its power to inspire, educate, and provoke thought. Free to the public and held in the Alice Chaiten Baker Interdisciplinary Gallery, Picture Party transforms the CCP’s fiftieth anniversary into a festive, participatory experience. Visitors, students, scholars, and artists alike are invited to join the celebration, gaining insights and inspiration from one of the world’s most remarkable photographic collections while exploring how photography continues to shape the ways we see and interpret our world. Image: ​Barbara Bosworth, Christmas Solar Eclipse in My Father's Hands, Sanibel, 2000, Gift of the artist. © Barbara Bosworth

Marshall Gallery presents Backroom || John Chiara & William Dassonville, an intimate installation that places two artists in conversation across a century of photographic practice. Though separated by time and technological possibility, William Edward Dassonville and John Chiara share a profound commitment to materials, process, and the expressive potential of landscape. By bringing their work together, the exhibition invites visitors to consider how artistic vision endures even as methods evolve. Dassonville, working in the early twentieth century, crafted images that hover between photography and drawing. His richly toned silver prints—soft, atmospheric, and reminiscent of charcoal—capture the eucalyptus groves and rolling hills of the San Francisco Bay Area with a sense of quiet reverence. Known for his mastery of the gum-platinum process and his dedication to pictorialist ideals, Dassonville shaped light into something almost tactile. His works in the exhibition offer a glimpse into a California that feels both familiar and dreamlike, shaped by patience, craft, and a deep respect for the natural world. In contrast, John Chiara approaches similar terrain with a contemporary boldness that pushes the medium to its physical limits. Using hand-built cameras and a process that involves exposing large sheets of Ilfochrome paper directly, Chiara transforms landscapes into vivid, sculptural objects. His colors bloom with intensity, and his surfaces carry traces of their creation—marks, shifts, and imperfections that reveal the artist’s physical engagement with the land and the photographic material. Presented in collaboration with Rose Gallery and The McIntosh Collection, this focused group of eight works highlights how both artists, each in their own era, reimagined photographic technique to reflect their personal response to place. Together, Dassonville and Chiara reveal how San Francisco’s hills, trees, and shifting light continue to inspire renewed ways of seeing. Image: Carolina : Coral : Starr King, 2021 Ilfochrome Paper, Unique Photograph Print: 50 x 40 inches / Framed: 55 x 45 inches Unique © John Chiara

Ken Gonzales-Day returns to Luis De Jesus Los Angeles with Afterlife, a striking new exhibition that expands his long-standing exploration of history, race, and representation. On view from November 8 through December 20, 2025, the show marks his sixth solo presentation with the gallery and reaffirms his deep commitment to reinterpreting the narratives held within museum collections. In Afterlife, Gonzales-Day examines the ways cultural objects survive across time—how they carry stories, identities, and contradictions from one civilization to another. Drawing on imagery from the Mexica and other Mesoamerican traditions, and combining them with artifacts from Europe, Africa, and Asia, he creates visually layered compositions that challenge the conventional hierarchies of art history. The resulting works invite viewers to consider how the past continues to shape the present and how museums, often seen as guardians of culture, are also sites of omission and erasure. For over two decades, the artist has photographed artifacts in institutions worldwide, digitally reconstructing them into new visual dialogues. In Xipe Totec with Busts, Gonzales-Day brings together figures of American icons—George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, and Susan B. Anthony—alongside Mesoamerican deities and skulls from a museum of criminal anthropology. This haunting combination reflects on cultural survival, loss, and the uneasy coexistence of power and mortality. Other works continue his ongoing inquiry into what is preserved and what is forgotten. Pairing a Roman Dying Gaul with a Mesoamerican Chac Mool, Gonzales-Day creates a conversation between civilizations separated by time but united by themes of sacrifice, renewal, and human vulnerability. Ultimately, Afterlife is both an artistic excavation and a meditation on continuity. Gonzales-Day reminds us that every object—and every image—has its own afterlife, carrying within it the traces of countless stories waiting to be seen anew. Image: Ken Gonzales-Day Afterlife (Digital composition with Mexico, Effigy of Death, National Museum of Anthropology (MNA), Mexico City; Leonard Wells Volk, Abraham Lincoln, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery (NGP); Mexico, Aztec, Figure of Xipe Totec, LACMA; Jean-Antoine Houdon, George Washington, NPG; Houdon, Benjamin Franklin, NPG; Adelaide Johnson, Susan B. Anthony, NPG; Mexico,Scull Mask, MNA; Jean-Antoine Houdon, Flayed Man; Sculls, Museum of Criminal Anthropology, Turin; Rosenborg Tapestries, Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen), 2025 Archival ink on rag paper 40 x 80 in (101.6 x 203.2 cm) © Ken Gonzales-Day

Filter Photo presents The Tenderness of Tides, a solo exhibition by Alison Chen, curated by María Sprowls-Cervantes. The show unfolds as a meditation on gravity, motherhood, and the unseen currents that connect us across generations. In this poetic body of work, Chen draws a parallel between the pull of the Moon on the tides and the enduring bond between mother and child. Just as the Moon’s gravity shapes the waters of the Earth, maternal love leaves invisible imprints that shift and move through time. Each photograph becomes an echo of that force—sometimes gentle, sometimes overwhelming—revealing how tenderness and distance coexist within the same orbit. The Tenderness of Tides grew from Chen’s reflections on her own experience as a mother, deepened by her discovery of an old photograph of her grandmother holding her newborn daughter. Found after her grandmother’s passing, the image awakened questions about the nature of care, the inheritance of emotion, and the weight of family histories. For Chen, these quiet generational links mirror the ocean’s ceaseless motion: both are shaped by forces we can feel but rarely see. Through photography and video, Chen traces the interplay of intimacy and loss, of cycles that repeat and evolve. Her images suggest that love, like the tides, is not static but rhythmic—rising, retreating, and returning with renewed strength. The exhibition also reflects the sensitivity of curator María Sprowls-Cervantes, whose thoughtful approach amplifies Chen’s exploration of memory and transformation. Together, artist and curator invite viewers to consider how personal experience is tethered to cosmic rhythm, and how, within that vast continuum, tenderness remains our most enduring tide. Image: © Alison Chen

CLAMP presents As My Eyes Open and You Disappear, the second solo exhibition by Robert Calafiore, bringing together a new series of nude studies conceived as theatrical compositions. Drawing inspiration from Greek and Roman sculpture, the sensuality of odalisques, and the expressive photography of George Platt Lynes and Duane Michals, Calafiore arranges each image like a staged performance. Within these luminous scenes, light and gesture unfold a drama of presence and fragility, rendering the human body both sculptural and fleeting—illuminated as if through stained glass. Working entirely with analogue methods, Calafiore constructs handmade pinhole cameras that expose light directly onto chromogenic paper. Each image is the result of long exposures lasting several minutes or hours, requiring his models to remain still as time accumulates across the frame. The faint movements that occur—small tremors of breath or shift of limb—become layered traces that collapse time into a single image, transforming the figure into a radiant, spectral form suspended between solidity and dissolution. By presenting these photographs as negatives, Calafiore inverts darkness and light, creating a world that must be slowly deciphered. This inversion invites viewers to look closely and reconstruct what they see, countering the immediacy of digital consumption. His work asks for patience and contemplation, encouraging an encounter with photography as both process and revelation. Calafiore’s practice, deeply rooted in material craft and ritual discipline, reflects his upbringing in a traditional Italian Catholic household, where devotion and labor intertwined. The glowing hues and inverted palettes of his prints evoke the sacred atmosphere of stained glass and devotional painting. In turning away from digital technologies, Calafiore reclaims photography as a tactile art of endurance and wonder—a meditation on how we see, remember, and inhabit the luminous traces of time. Image: Exhausted, At the End 2024 Signed and dated, verso Chromogenic print (Unique) 16 x 20 inches © Robert Calafiore

John M. Valadez: A Two Second Gaze—Street Photography from the 1970s and 80s offers an intimate portrait of East Los Angeles through the keen eye of an artist who walked his neighborhood with a camera and curiosity. Valadez’s images stop time for a beat—two seconds, perhaps—to reveal gestures, fashions, storefronts, and faces that together map a vibrant community. These photographs are at once documentary and tender: they honor everyday life without flattening it into stereotype. Working with Kodachrome film and a practiced instinct for timing, Valadez captured neighbors, friends, and strangers in moments of self-expression and quiet dignity. The streets, theaters, and markets of East L.A. become more than backdrop; they are active characters that shape and reflect the people who inhabit them. Against a landscape marked by social change and political struggle, the images assert presence and pride, making visible the textures of a Chicano experience often overlooked by mainstream narratives. Valadez’s practice—walking, photographing, returning to the images as notes for later paintings—reveals a sustained commitment to seeing. His photographs read like a living sketchbook: spontaneous compositions that later informed his pastels and oils, and that continue to resonate as cultural testimony. Humor, style, vulnerability, and resilience appear together in frames that reward slow looking and attentive listening. More than a historical record, this body of work is an act of recognition. A Two Second Gaze invites viewers to witness a community on its own terms, to appreciate how identity is performed and preserved in public life, and to acknowledge the ordinary gestures that make a neighborhood into home. In Valadez’s photographs, appearing is an assertion—and being seen matters. Image: John M. Valadez Highland, Circa 1978 - 1982 Archival inkjet print © John M. Valadez

Richard Misrach: Rewind at Fraenkel Gallery offers an expansive view of one of America’s most celebrated photographers, presenting a journey backward through five decades of artistic evolution. Organized in reverse chronology, the exhibition moves from Misrach’s recent series Cargo—a meditation on global trade and its environmental and human costs—to his early 1970s project Telegraph 3 A.M., which captured Berkeley’s street culture in the aftermath of the counterculture movement. Together, the works form a compelling portrait of an artist who has continually balanced social engagement with formal and aesthetic inquiry. Across film, digital, and large-scale prints, Misrach’s photography embraces both technical experimentation and emotional resonance. His images of freighter ships illuminated by sunrise hues of pink and violet in San Francisco Bay reflect a fascination with beauty as a vehicle for deeper reflection. As Misrach has stated, beauty can compel viewers to confront issues they might otherwise turn away from. This balance between allure and unease runs throughout his practice—from his haunting documentation of the U.S.–Mexico border wall and Louisiana’s polluted Cancer Alley to his meditative seascapes and desert landscapes. Each image captures a world suspended between stillness and consequence. Since his early experiments with night photography in the American West, Misrach has pursued the intersection of the sublime and the political. Series such as Desert Cantos explore humanity’s complex relationship with nature, while later works like Golden Gate and On the Beach translate natural phenomena into near-abstractions of light, color, and form. His ongoing engagement with abstraction reaches a new dimension in Notations, where inverted negatives reveal ethereal patterns and textures otherwise unseen. Through five decades, Misrach has remained steadfast in his exploration of photography’s capacity to illuminate both the beauty and the fragility of the world we inhabit. Image: Self Portrait, 1975 gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches (sheet) [40.6 x 50.8 cm] © Richard Misrach