Mimi Cherono Ng ok: Closer to the Earth, Closer to My Own Body

Dish Trick is a collection of photographs taken by Jo Ann Callis from 1983 to 1985 that explores the quiet power and emotional resonance of domestic forms, positioning them as stable anchors in contrast to the impermanence of human relationships. The exhibition is presented alongside the release of Dish Trick, a new book by Luhz Press. To highlight this collaboration, ROSEGALLERY will be hosting a conversation between artist Jo Ann Callis and Luhz Press Founder Zoe Lemleson on Saturday, 28 June 2025 at 2PM, with a reception to follow. As Callis notes, “People come and go, but these objects will remain. They’re patiently waiting for us.” With a contemplative lens, she invites viewers to look beyond function and form, revealing how the ordinary can mirror our inner lives in ways that are intimate, enduring, and profound.

Keith de Lellis Gallery is pleased to announce Olympia Through the Lens, an exhibition featuring 25 original vintage exhibition quality prints by Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003) from the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Known for her groundbreaking documentary two-part Olympia (released in 1938), Riefenstahl also produced a striking body of still photography during the Games. Her images captured athletes in motion and repose, employing innovative techniques that helped define modern sports photography. This exhibition explores Riefenstahl’s visual legacy within the full historical and ethical context of the era. While her mastery of light, form, and composition is undisputed, her work remains controversial due to her ties to the Nazi regime and the propagandistic role her imagery played. The 1936 Berlin Olympics were one of the most politically charged events in modern history. Held under Adolf Hitler’s regime, the Games were designed to promote the supposed superiority of the Aryan race and the power of the Third Reich. Despite international calls for a boycott due to the regime’s overt racism and antisemitism, the Games went ahead with broad global participation. To maintain a favorable international image, the Nazis temporarily suppressed antisemitic displays and propaganda during the event. Amid this charged atmosphere, Jesse Owens (1913–1980), an African American track and field athlete, emerged as the hero of the Games. He won four gold medals—in the 100 meters, 200 meters, long jump, and 4x100 meter relay—directly undermining Nazi claims of racial superiority. Owens’ achievements were celebrated internationally and remain a powerful symbol of athletic excellence and human dignity. However, upon returning to a segregated United States, he continued to face systemic racism and was not formally recognized by President Franklin D. Roosevelt or invited to the White House. Despite being commissioned by the Nazi regime, Riefenstahl insisted her work was apolitical, yet her stylized portrayals of athletes and grand spectacle were deeply intertwined with Nazi ideals. Her earlier film, Triumph of the Will (1935), a depiction of the 1934 Nuremberg Rally, explicitly served Hitler’s ideological messaging and remains a stark example of state propaganda in cinematic form. “Riefenstahl’s photographs are technically masterful and historically significant,” says curator Keith de Lellis. “But they also raise urgent questions about art, politics, and responsibility. This exhibition encourages viewers to engage critically with those issues.” Also, of note is Riefenstahl, a new German documentary film by director Andres Veiel, which examines Riefenstahl’s legacy. As of this writing, the film is unavailable for viewing in the United States. This film has been widely shown in international film festivals, and the next screening in the United States will be shown simultaneously at Film at Lincoln Center and Quad Cinema from September 5-11. Join us for a thought-provoking journey through a defining moment in 20th-century visual culture, as seen through the lens of one of its most controversial figures. Image: Leni Riefenstahl (German, 1902-2003), 16 - The Best American Gymnast during the Olympia Games (Consetta Caruccio- Lenz straddling on the balancing beam), 1936, Vintage Gelatin Silver Print, 9” x 11”

Arthur and Anne Goldstein, whose collecting odyssey began with photography, donated nearly one hundred photographs to the Zimmerli Art Museum. This exhibition features thirty black and white photographs from the late twentieth-century including a rare, early self-portrait by Robert Rauschenberg, and one of Hannah Wilke’s performalist self-portraits with Donald Goddard from her series “So Help Me Hannah.” These works emphasize the role of photography within the larger context of avant-garde art, and are accompanied by portraits, landscapes, views of the city, scenes of everyday life, and photographs by artists who use the camera to invent new realities beyond the everyday. Image: Michelle V. Agins, James Baldwin introduces his new book "Evidence of Things Not Seen" at the home of Lerone Bennett in Chicago, 1983. © Michelle V. Agins

Rebellion has long fueled resilience, igniting the courage to challenge norms and reimagine the standards of society. This exhibition explores how creativity becomes an act of defiance, questioning power structures and reshaping narratives. Rebellion describes deliberate acts of resistance that disrupt the status quo. Resilience is the strength to endure and rebuild in the face of adversity. This exhibition captures the interplay between art and resistance in two different ways: art as a form of resistance and the artistic documentation of rebellion. On one hand, there are works born from rebellion—pieces that challenge norms or confront injustice. On the other, there are images that capture the energy of rebellion and youth, reflecting the enduring spirit of defiance. The Art of Opposition was curated by Phillips Academy students enrolled in Art 400 Visual Culture: Curating the Addison Collection. The exhibition is on view in the gallery’s Museum Learning Center; as an active teaching space, it may sometimes be occupied by a class. Image: Bruce Davidson, New York City, USA, 1959. Gelatin silver print, 6 x 8 7/8 inches. Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, purchased as the gift of Katherine D. and Stephen C. Sherrill (PA 1971, and P 2005, 2007, 2010), 2012.71.46

This selection of works from the Addison’s collection explores performance both as visual spectacle and as a way of investigating identity. Acrobats tumble and dancers leap across the first two galleries, revealing how the extravaganza of the circus, the drama of the theater, and the energy of dance have inspired artists across media. These ephemeral performances—from the breathtaking feats of trapeze artists to gestural movements of dancers—prompted creative strategies to preserve their dynamism in painting, drawing, photography, and printmaking. The emergence of modern dance and other performance-based art forms fueled parallel developments in visual media, particularly photography, as artists grappled with capturing the interplay between performer and audience, spectacle and spectators. In the second half of the exhibition, the focus shifts from public stages to private ones, examining the performance of the self. Through costume, roleplay, and shifting personas, the works reveal identity as fluid—an ongoing process of self-definition rather than a fixed state. In this section, artists embrace the freedom of performance to explore new identities and modes of expression, as well as challenge stereotypes and societal norms. Through their use of theatricality and artifice, these works underscore the constructed nature of all identities, inviting viewers to reflect on the roles we perform in everyday life. On and Off Stage includes works by Ida Applebroog, Charles Atlas, Gifford Beal, George Bellows, Nick Cave, Harold Edgerton, Hal Fischer, Glenn Ligon, George Platt Lynes, Barbara Morgan, Laurel Nakadate, Hunter Reynolds, Cara Romero, Cindy Sherman, and Lorna Simpson, among many others. Image: Sally Mann, New Mothers, 1989

Featuring works from the Addison’s extensive photography collection, this exhibition considers the dynamics of two beings sharing space, whether they be romantic partners, family members, close friends, rivals, strangers, or interspecies companions. Each image invites viewers to delve into the stories behind the expressions, prompting questions about the relationship, the context of the encounter, and the emotions at play. It takes two flints to make a fire. —Louisa May Alcott Drawn from the Addison Gallery’s permanent collection, this exhibition explores the dynamics of two beings sharing space. Whether they be romantic partners, family members, close friends, rivals, strangers, or interspecies companions, the joining of two creates an inevitable charge. This spark can manifest in many forms: a shared laugh between friends, the electric tension of rivals, the sudden eruption of violence among antagonists, a wary glance exchanged by strangers, or even the mysterious interpersonal interactions generated by staged scenarios. Each encounter is laden with unspoken narratives, as body language, facial expressions, and subtle social and psychological cues convey a world of emotions, thoughts, and stories. Photographs of these paired encounters—these instants of intersection—serve as powerful windows into narratives of shared experiences. Captured in a flash, they freeze time and encapsulate the essence of that conjoined moment. Each image invites viewers to delve deeper into the stories behind the expressions—legible and illegible, ingenuous and masked—prompting questions about the relationship, the context of the encounter, and the emotions at play. They remind us that behind every interaction—whether planned and momentous or seemingly random and negligible—lie myriad stories waiting to be explored, ultimately weaving a larger narrative of connection that transcends any single interaction of two bodies. Image: Wayne F. Miller, Father and Son at Lake Michigan, 1947

All About Photo presents 'Street Photography At The End Of The 80s' by Henk Kosche, on view throughout July 2025. STREET PHOTOGRAPHY AT THE END OF THE 80s A small cardboard box with strips of 35mm negatives has been with me for almost 40 years now. A darkroom, which would be necessary to put these pictures on paper, has gone out of fashion over the years. In addition, piles of new pictures have piled up on new storage media. But at some point the past catches up with you, they say, and the little box revealed its little treasures. Halle an der Saale, where I studied a few years before the Wall came down, had a very special charm. This city was located in the heart of the industrial region of the former GDR. The numerous chimneys of the tenements, chemical plants and coal-fired power stations smoked incessantly and covered the region with a very particular texture. Life was full of inspiration, a lot of improvisation, but also resignation - in short, everything that goes with everyday life in a big city. But sometimes the substance of the buildings and the condition of the people seemed to have something in common, and I tried to capture this impression on film. What would happen to the city, the country and the people in the following years was completely unpredictable at the time of the photo shoot. In the photographs you can see the atmosphere of those years one last time, before the Marlboro Man and the curved typography of a soft drink manufacturer took over the city’s defining image.

Timothy Taylor is pleased to announce The Kids Are Alright, a group exhibition curated by Helen Toomer. Opening in New York on 27 June, this presentation will feature contemporary and historical works that explore cultural conceptions of childhood. The exhibition includes work by Ann Agee, Diane Arbus, Michaël Borremans, Louise Bourgeois, Cecily Brown, Zoë Buckman, Dominic Chambers, Joana Choumali, Larry Clark, Mark Cohen, R. Crumb, Gehard Demetz, Kim Dingle, Madeline Donahue, Marcel Dzama, William Eggleston, Lloyd Foster, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Julia García, Elizabeth Glaessner, Jay Lynn Gomez, Titus Kaphar, Jonathan Lasker, Louise Lawler, Charles LeDray, Sherrie Levine, Sally Mann, Marape, Elizabeth McIntosh, Joel Meyerowitz, Annie Morris, Ragen Moss, Anya Paintsil, Gordon Parks, Erin M. Riley, Kenny Rivero, Antonia Showering, David Shrigley, Ruby Sky Stiler, Katie Stout, Alison Elizabeth Taylor, and Rhys Ziemba. The Kids Are Alright brings together a multigenerational group of artists whose work engages with the realities and mythologies of childhood. Through painting, sculpture, photography, works on paper, and textiles, the exhibition reflects on how childhood is shaped, remembered, politicised, and imagined, and considers what it means to see the world through the eyes of children today. In the hand-embroidered painting fall among the voices (2024), Zoë Buckman pictures her child, from behind, sitting on a bed facing a window. Among the comfort of stuffed animals and pillows, the child holds their neck gently, vulnerably, as if lost in a moment of difficult rumination. Another textile work, Anya Paintsil’s tapestry Weepsville, North Wales (2023) intersects traditions of the artist’s Ghanaian and Welsh heritage: hair braiding and rug hooking. In the richly textured work, a woman embraces a crying child. The figures seem to bleed into each other; both held tight by the woman’s embracing arm. The earliest work in the exhibition, Gordon Parks’s photograph Untitled, Alabama (1956), pictures two young dressed-up girls playing tea party in a puddle on a muddy street. The work belongs to Parks’s seminal series Segregation in the South, which documented the wake of the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. Here, in the context of a tragically racially divided region, two little girls use play to learn about social mores. LaToya Ruby Frazier’s photograph Andrea Holding Her Daughter Nephratiti Outside the Social Network Banquet Hall, Flint, Michigan (2016–17) is likewise part of a larger documentary series, the lauded Flint is Family, which traces a public health crisis caused by government neglect and corporate greed. Frazier’s image centres on a bride and her mother in tender embrace, lovingly holding each other up. Several times in her career, Louise Lawler has returned to the lines that make up the title of the work Once There Was a Little Boy and Everything Turned Out Alright. THE END. (1993), recontextualizing the text each time. Here, the work comprises a small blue text appearing on a light pink wall, subtly referencing childish stereotypes of gender. Though the work constructs a simplified agreeable fiction, it is easy to invent complex contexts for this emphatically reduced story. Elsewhere, Sherrie Levine’s cast bronze sculpture Hobby Horse (2014) is a replica of a wooden toy found in New Mexico and removed from its role as plaything. The work functions on another symbolic level—in French, the word for hobbyhorse is Dada, the art movement from which Levine draws her appropriative practise. Madeline Donahue will create a new painting for the exhibition. In exuberant hues and patterns, her compositions picture mothers and children caught up in various activities, often revealing the chaotic intimacy of caregiving with vivid optimism and humour. A new, totemic sculpture from Annie Morris’s ongoing Stack series features a vertical arrangement of irregularly shaped spheres in vibrant colours. The anthropomorphic structure appears poised to come undone, but it remains in precarious balance. The work abstracts embodied experiences related to childbirth and motherhood into a form that is uplifting in its delicate unwieldiness. Suspended from the ceiling, Ragen Moss’s sculpture Passerby (2023), is a cocoon-like polyethylene form. In visceral red enwrapped by glossy black and white ribbing, the work distils notions of interiority, lifeforce, and evolution.

What makes a photograph emblematic of its time? A new exhibition at Howard Greenberg Gallery, exploring photographs from 1932 to 2012 that are rooted in their particular eras, will be on view from May 28 through July 31, 2025. Sign of the Times will present more than 30 works from major photographers including Bob Adelman, Edward Burtynsky, William Gedney, Frank Gohlke, Henry Gruyaert, Danny Lyon, Nathan Lyons, Vivian Maier, Mary Ellen Mark, Steve Schapiro, Ed Van Der Elsken, and Weegee. Sign of the Times serves as a poignant visual chronicle, freezing specific moments within the flow of history. Initially snapshots of their eras, these images have gradually accrued layers of significance, their meanings deepening and evolving with the passage of time. Collectively, the photographs on view coalesce into powerful and iconic reflections on the enduring struggles and triumphs of civil rights, the burgeoning waves of feminism, the stark realities of poverty, climate change, and other pivotal social and cultural forces that have shaped our world. Some images whisper the story of their time through subtle yet telling details – the sleek lines of a particular automobile, the distinctive character of a typeface on a storefront, or the unmistakable silhouette of a hairstyle. These visual cues act as quiet markers, anchoring the photographs firmly within their historical context. Other images, however, deliver their messages with a far more direct and assertive voice. Consider, for instance, Vivian Maier's 1971 photograph of a newsstand where an issue of LIFE boldly proclaims on its cover: "Saucy Feminist that Even Men Like" – a statement that encapsulates the shifting social dynamics and evolving perceptions of women during that era. Intriguingly, many of the messages embedded within these historical frames continue to resonate with profound relevance in our present day. In a stark 1963 photograph by Bob Adelman, the word "Equality" is etched onto the frosted window of a Freedom Riders bus. Similarly, a 1966-67 shot by William Gedney captures a couple seated on the trunk of a car in a seemingly ordinary parking lot, yet their silent protest is amplified by a hand-held sign emblazoned with the stark truth: "Under Paid." Anxieties and uncertainties echo in Steve Schapiro's 1966 photograph, where a woman reclines, engrossed in a newspaper whose screaming headline declares with chilling foreboding, "The Worst is Yet to Come." As curator David Campany has written, “A photograph can be a document and an imagining, a record and a possibility, all at the same time.” Sign of the Times is curated by the gallery staff with each member making a specific selection of three works. Image: The Worst is Yet to Come, New York, 1966 © Steve Schapiro

The five groups of photographers in this exhibition worked collectively to capture the unique people, landscapes, and pace of life that distinguish Lexington, Kentucky. Maurice Strider collaborated with his students at Dunbar High School between 1934 and 1966 to create a rich archive of Black Lexington. Ida Nelson and Robert J. Long established Lafayette Studios in downtown Lexington to produce images for a range of commercial purposes between 1923 and 1959. The Lexington Camera Club was founded in 1936 and met regularly, often in room 208 at the UK Fine Arts Building, to encourage amateur photographers to develop more subjective uses for the medium. Their meetings continued for over thirty years with more than fifty members, and the club made its mark on photographic history with images that blend memory and imagination. In 2004, Marcie Crim, Jonathan Rodgers, David Schankula, and Richie Wireman began the Lexicon Project, a documentation of diverse communities in the city. Kurt Gohde and Kremena Todorova posted photographs and narratives on Facebook between 2020 and 2021 to facilitate connection in a time of social distancing.   This exhibition is presented in honor of Lexington’s 250th birthday celebration and features work from our Museum collection, University of Kentucky Special Collections, and the Kentucky Room at the Lexington Public Library.  Image: Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Christopher and the Rebuilding of America from Portfolio Three: The Work of Ralph Eugene Meatyard, 1959 (printed 1974), gelatin silver print. Collection of the UK Art Museum, Robert C. May Bequest.

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.

To see a highly selective survey of the best contemporary photography from Colorado and across the country, don’t miss CPAC’s 62nd Annual Juried Members’ Show. This tradition showcases CPAC’s talented community of over 700 members and provides artists with an important exhibition opportunity. Juror Anne Leighton Massoni, Executive Director of the Houston Center for Photography in Texas, selected photographs by 37 CPAC members to exhibit. She also selected 19 additional works for inclusion in the exhibition catalog and a tv slideshow in the gallery as a Special Mention subset. Members were selected from a pool of 206 photographers who submitted more than 1,000 images. At the Opening Reception and Awards Ceremony on June 28th, Anne will present her selections for Best in Show and two Honorable Mentions. The Best in Show winner will receive $400 and the image will be added to our Permanent Collection. The Director’s Choice winner will receive $150, presented by Samantha Johnston, CPAC Executive Director & Curator. All award winners will also receive an exhibition catalog. Dupuy Bateman IV, Josh Bergeron, Mat Bobby, Ross Borgida, Lynne Breitfeller, Jo Ann Chaus, Giles Clasen, Ron Cooper, Sophia Poppy Ericksen, Bryan Florentin, Susan R. Goldstein, Rob Hammer, Alexander Heilner, Kevin Hoth, Patricia Howard, Constance Jaeggi, Michael Allan Jones, Erin M. Karp, Katie Kindle, Alison Lake, Brady LaVigne, Ernie Leyba, Rodney Gene Mahaffey, Zach Miners, James Montague, Heather Oelklaus, James Olson, Jason Pendleton, Linda Plaisted, Allison Plass, Bob Rosinsky, Erin Schoepke, John Shelton, Steven Silvers, JP Terlizzi, Frank Varney, and Torrance York. SPECIAL MENTIONS John Bonath, Lynne Breitfeller, Thomas Carr, Jo Ann Chaus, Michael Chioran, Teri Figliuzzi, Nicola Huffstickler, Alison Lake, J. K. Lavin, Zoe Congyu Liu, Anthony Maes, Jason Pendleton, Sage Sankofa, John Shelton, Steven Silvers, Laurie Smith, David Thoutt, and Sherry Wiggins and Luís Branco. Image: Couple, BanHo, Vietnam, © Ron Cooper