Julian Wasser | Pop and Burn

Leica Gallery Los Angeles presents Peter Turnley: Paris, California, an exhibition and book that capture the poetic resonance between two distant yet kindred places. Through his lens, Peter Turnley reveals how light, emotion, and the human spirit transcend geography, weaving an intimate conversation between the timeless allure of Paris and the sunlit openness of California. Turnley’s photographs move effortlessly between continents, connecting the cobblestone streets of the Seine with the wide horizons of the Pacific. In Paris, his camera finds tenderness in fleeting gestures—a shared glance, a quiet café, the poetry of rain-soaked boulevards. In California, he discovers that same sense of wonder, translated through brightness, freedom, and possibility. Together, these images form a portrait not of place, but of humanity itself—universal moments of love, solitude, and connection. Renowned for his decades as a photojournalist, Turnley has always sought to reveal the beauty and dignity within everyday life. His photographs bear witness to history’s triumphs and sorrows, yet they are united by empathy and grace. In Paris, California, this vision takes a lyrical turn, as he captures the fragile balance between nostalgia and renewal, intimacy and distance, memory and hope. The exhibition offers visitors a chance to engage directly with Turnley’s poetic vision. During the artist talk and book signing, he reflects on a lifetime spent documenting the shared heartbeat of humanity—moments of truth that unfold in the ordinary and the extraordinary alike. Peter Turnley: Paris, California invites viewers to slow down and see the world with tenderness. Through the dialogue of two landscapes and the light that binds them, Turnley reminds us that beauty exists not only in where we stand, but in how we choose to see. Image: © Peter Turnley

Jon Henry’s project Stranger Fruit emerges from a place of anguish, urgency, and unyielding love—a visual response to the ongoing crisis of police violence against Black men in the United States. Built around the haunting question, Who is next? the work reflects the fear carried by families and communities who live with the knowledge that loss can arrive without warning. Through photography and text, Henry creates a space where that fear is acknowledged, honored, and confronted head-on. For years, Henry traveled across the country, inviting Black mothers to hold their sons in compositions inspired by Renaissance depictions of the Virgin Mary mourning Christ. The resulting portraits, both tender and devastating, reveal the sacredness of each life and the weight of a grief that could be. In some images, the mothers stand alone, embodying the quiet terror of that possible absence. Their written reflections, included in the project, articulate a truth too many know: while their sons are alive, the shadow of potential loss is constant, unshakable. For this installation, Henry revisits his archives, bringing forward maps, documents, and materials that trace the evolution of the project. This gesture of openness offers visitors an intimate understanding of the labor—creative, emotional, and logistical—required to sustain a long-term artistic inquiry rooted in social justice. It is an invitation to witness not only the final images but the process that shaped them. Henry’s broader practice draws from the complexities of family, trauma, and resilience within the African American community. His photographs have been exhibited widely, recognized for their cultural activism and their ability to hold both sorrow and strength in a single frame. As a faculty member at the International Center of Photography, he continues to guide emerging imagemakers with clarity and conviction. Presented as part of the ICP Incubator Space program, this exhibition highlights work created in response to the world as it is now—urgent, searching, and unafraid to confront the truths we live with. Image: Jon Henry, Untitled #36, North Minneapolis, MN © Jon Henry

The International Center of Photography presents a landmark retrospective dedicated to the visionary Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide, celebrating more than five decades of her profound and poetic exploration of the human experience. This major exhibition, organized in collaboration with Fundación MAPFRE, gathers nearly two hundred photographs that trace the evolution of an artist whose lens has continually bridged the realms of documentation and imagination. Born in Mexico City in 1942, Iturbide first pursued film studies before turning to photography under the mentorship of Manuel Álvarez Bravo. Her early years accompanying Bravo across Mexico became a formative journey—one that revealed to her the camera’s power to observe, translate, and transform. What followed was a lifetime of travel through the landscapes of Latin America and beyond, from the deserts of Sonora to the streets of Havana and the rituals of Juchitán. Everywhere she went, Iturbide sought the meeting point between tradition and transformation, between what is seen and what is felt. Her celebrated series on the Seri Indians and the women of Juchitán exemplify this pursuit. In these works, the ordinary becomes sacred; gestures of daily life take on mythic resonance. Her black-and-white photographs are marked by luminous contrasts and deliberate quiet, balancing the precision of ethnography with the dreamlike pull of poetry. Through her lens, nature and culture converge into symbolic terrain—a living archive of collective memory and personal revelation. This retrospective also reflects the long-standing commitment of Fundación MAPFRE and ICP to socially engaged photography. By gathering Iturbide’s most iconic images alongside lesser-known works and recent self-portraits, the exhibition reveals a practice that continues to question how photography can both witness and create reality. Graciela Iturbide’s art, timeless yet urgent, reminds us that to photograph is to learn—again and again—what it means to be human. Image: Graciela Iturbide, Mujer ángel, desierto de Sonora, México, 1979. Collection Fundación MAPFRE © Graciela Iturbide

The International Center of Photography presents Instead, I spin fantasies, a new exhibition by Naima Green that reimagines the visual language of pregnancy through self-portraiture, landscape, and still life. Moving fluidly between documentation and performance, Green constructs images that question how society defines motherhood and the pregnant body while proposing a more expansive and personal view of its possibilities. Curated by Elisabeth Sherman, the exhibition features dozens of new works that employ both historical and contemporary photographic processes, including albumen and lumen printing. A site-specific vinyl installation transforms the museum’s third-floor gallery, enveloping visitors in Green’s visual world. Sherman notes that the exhibition is a forward-looking meditation on how photography can open up new ways of imagining identity and experience, rather than simply recording what has been. Through fragmented narratives and overlapping scenes, Green’s photographs construct a layered vision of pregnancy as both intimate and collective. Her images depict moments of domestic routine—taking out the trash, resting, self-care—alongside gestures that challenge societal expectations, such as smoking or drinking. These acts become reflections on how notions of respectability shape the visibility of pregnant bodies, particularly in media and art. Friends, lovers, and chosen family populate Green’s photographs, weaving a sense of community into her imagined worlds. The images oscillate between tenderness and defiance, humor and gravity, acknowledging the emotional complexity of creating and sustaining life. Embedded references to medical systems and institutional pressures remind viewers of the broader contexts that frame these personal moments. In Instead, I spin fantasies, Green’s work resists linear storytelling, inviting viewers to move between realities, emotions, and identities. What emerges is not a single story of pregnancy, but a constellation of possible lives—each charged with beauty, uncertainty, and the quiet power of reinvention. Image: Naima Green, Half on a baby (DonChristian), 2025 © Naima Green

The International Center of Photography presents Sergio Larrain: Wanderings, a rare retrospective drawn entirely from the Magnum Photos archive, celebrating the visionary work of one of Chile’s most enigmatic photographers. Curated by Agnès Sire, former Director of the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris, the exhibition revisits the first two decades of Larrain’s career through images made in Valparaíso, Santiago, Paris, and London. These photographs, full of movement and mystery, reveal Larrain’s distinct blend of humanism and formal daring—his ability to find poetry in the everyday and transcendence in the ordinary. A member of Magnum Photos for over fifty years, Larrain saw photography as a spiritual pursuit. He believed that the best images arrived in moments of revelation, describing the process as entering a state of grace. His photographs often defy conventional composition—figures drift beyond the frame, shadows envelop entire streets, and light fractures the scene into fragments of time. The result is a body of work that feels both spontaneous and meditative, alive with the rhythm of the world yet removed from it. From his early series on the children of Santiago to his later portraits of the port city of Valparaíso, Larrain’s camera observed resilience and fragility with equal clarity. His lens traced the tension between poverty and joy, stillness and motion, architecture and the human spirit. The children who wander through his frames seem to exist outside time, emblems of a freedom untouched by material constraint. As the exhibition unfolds, Wanderings offers a new understanding of Larrain’s vision—a photography of restlessness and revelation. His images continue to resonate as quiet miracles: fleeting encounters that bridge the distance between the visible and the invisible, the real and the imagined. Image: Sergio Larrain, Cuzco, Peru, 1960 © Sergio Larrain / Magnum Photos

Keith de Lellis Gallery presents The Poetry of Everyday Life – Master Photographers of the French Humanist Movement, an exhibition that celebrates the grace and humanity found in the work of some of France’s most influential mid-20th-century photographers. Opening in mid-November at 41 East 57th Street, Suite 703, the exhibition invites viewers to rediscover the quiet beauty of everyday life in post-war France. Gathering masterworks by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, Willy Ronis, Edouard Boubat, and Sabine Weiss, the exhibition showcases both celebrated and rarely seen images that helped define the spirit of an era. These photographers, united by a shared belief in empathy and authenticity, turned their cameras toward ordinary people—lovers in a café, children playing in the streets, workers and dreamers alike—capturing fleeting moments that reflect the resilience and poetry of life itself. Through their luminous black-and-white compositions, the artists of the French Humanist movement created an enduring portrait of a society rebuilding itself after war, one rooted in compassion and hope. Their images transcend reportage, transforming simple gestures and encounters into symbols of universal experience. Whether set in the narrow alleys of Paris or the rolling countryside beyond, each photograph reveals a deep affection for humanity and an unshakable faith in the beauty of the everyday. Curated to reflect the breadth and depth of this movement, The Poetry of Everyday Life offers a visual journey through the decades between the 1930s and 1960s—a time when photography became both an art form and a social language. As Keith de Lellis notes, “The humanist photographers found magic in the mundane.” Their work continues to resonate today, reminding us that tenderness, humor, and dignity still shape the rhythm of ordinary life. Image: Édouard Boubat (French, 1923 – 1999), Lovers on Ferry Boat, c. 1950s © Édouard Boubat

LeRoy Robbins: New Deal Photographs revisits a pivotal chapter in American photography, presenting a body of work created during a moment when the nation turned to the arts as both witness and balm. Shown in Joseph Bellows Gallery’s Atrium space, the exhibition brings together vintage prints Robbins produced in California throughout the 1930s while working under the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. These photographs stand as quiet yet resonant documents of a country reshaping itself in the wake of economic devastation. Robbins joined the Federal Art Project in 1936 at the invitation of Edward Weston, entering a circle of photographers who approached their assignments with unusual artistic ambition. Rather than simply recording public works or municipal landscapes, Robbins and his peers explored the subtler intersections of form, light, labor, and social experience. His images linger on unassuming subjects: agricultural structures, small-town streets, and fragments of everyday industry. Yet within these scenes, he found a dignity that aligned social documentation with the clarity and restraint of modernist aesthetics. The photographs on view illuminate the dual aspiration of New Deal photography: to honor the country’s lived reality while elevating the ordinary through exquisite craft. Robbins’ prints — rich in tonal depth and composed with patient attention — transform the material textures of California’s Depression-era landscape into meditations on resilience. They evoke the timeless quality that later led admirers, including Ansel Adams, to praise his unwavering belief in beauty’s persistence. This exhibition also gestures toward the broader legacy of New Deal arts programs, which offered unprecedented support to artists and secured photography’s place as a vital public medium. Robbins’ work, consistently exhibited and widely collected, continues to affirm the power of the photographic image to speak across generations. In these prints, the past remains vividly present, inviting viewers to reflect on the enduring relationship between art, history, and civic life. Image: LeRoy Robbins, Untitled (40-30-P)), 1936, vintage gelatin silver print © LeRoy Robbins

Etherton Gallery presents Alternative Views, an exhibition bringing together two compelling approaches to American landscape photography through the work of Jason Lee and Frank Gohlke. This exhibition offers viewers a rare opportunity to explore the American landscape through distinct lenses: Lee’s spontaneous, road-trip explorations capture overlooked moments of everyday life, while Gohlke’s sustained, methodical attention reveals the deeper narratives embedded in place over time. Jason Lee’s photographs span small towns and rural landscapes across California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Texas. His images, often both black and white and color, carry a cinematic quality influenced by filmmakers such as Terence Malick, Wim Wenders, and David Byrne, and the observational precision of photographers like Henry Wessel. Lee’s work captures the unexpected juxtapositions and visual ironies of the American West, presenting fleeting moments in daily life with a sense of quiet nostalgia. His images ask viewers to pause and reconsider the scenes we often pass by unnoticed, revealing beauty in the unremarkable. Frank Gohlke, known as the poet of the everyday, has dedicated five decades to documenting the intersection of human activity and natural forces. His work shifted the focus of landscape photography from grand vistas to the ordinary landscapes shaped by industry, agriculture, and urban development. Gohlke’s photographs of grain elevators, suburban parking lots, and tornado-affected towns remind us of the consequences of human choices, combining aesthetic rigor with a clear sense of responsibility. His essays and lectures further contextualize his imagery, establishing everyday structures as meaningful symbols within the American photographic canon. Displayed together, Lee and Gohlke’s work offers a dialogue between immediacy and reflection, between the fleeting and the enduring. The exhibition invites viewers to consider both the visual subtleties of overlooked places and the broader impact of human activity on the landscape. Through this dual perspective, Alternative Views emphasizes the importance of attention, empathy, and stewardship, urging a deeper engagement with the environments we inhabit. Image: Jason Lee Highway 90, Texas, 2022 archival pigment print 11 x 14 in, at Etherton Gallery @ Jason Lee

The Gallery at Leica Store San Francisco, in collaboration with Camera West, presents ECHO—a poetic tribute to twenty-five years of photographic exploration, connection, and vision. Marking Camera West’s quarter-century milestone, the exhibition brings together twenty-five photographers whose works converse across time, tracing the evolution of seeing, feeling, and understanding through the lens. ECHO is not merely an anniversary exhibition; it is a meditation on how images shape memory and how memory, in turn, reshapes our way of seeing. Each participating artist reflects on their creative journey, linking early sparks of inspiration with the refined sensibility that only experience affords. The result is a dialogue between beginnings and transformations—a rhythm of curiosity, hesitation, and revelation that defines every photographer’s path. The exhibition embraces the notion that growth in art rarely follows a straight line. Instead, it moves like light itself—bending, diffusing, deepening. Through this interplay of time and perspective, ECHO celebrates the beauty of persistence and the tenderness of artistic evolution. From vibrant urban scenes to quiet landscapes, from portraits that reveal the soul to abstractions that whisper of emotion, each work carries the resonance of both past and present vision. Supported by Camera West and Underdog Film Lab, the show gathers artists such as Dylan Aiken, Maura Allen, Lynn Johnson, Teresa Freitas, and Vincent Ricardel, among others, whose images collectively honor the enduring spirit of photography as both craft and calling. Presented with quiet reverence at the Leica Store San Francisco, ECHO stands as a luminous reflection on what it means to witness, to grow, and to share. It reminds us that in every frame lives a trace of time—an echo of who we were and who we are still becoming. Image: Scaled © Gary Copeland

Holden Luntz Gallery presents Best in Show @ JL Modern, an exhibition that honors the timeless bond between humans and their canine companions. Bringing together photographs created across more than a century, the show explores how dogs—whether posed, wandering, or entirely unaware of the camera—have shaped the emotional and visual language of photography. Here, dogs emerge not only as subjects, but as partners in storytelling, helping artists reveal humor, tenderness, and the subtle rhythms of daily life. At the heart of the exhibition are images rooted in humanist and documentary traditions. Early street scenes, quiet neighborhoods, and improvised encounters capture dogs moving naturally through the world, offering moments of spontaneity that enrich the narrative. In these photographs, the animals often become silent guides, leading viewers through landscapes of childhood, friendship, and fleeting urban interludes. Their presence carries an authenticity that anchors each frame, reminding us that the simplest gestures can evoke lasting meaning. The exhibition also considers how fashion and celebrity photography have embraced dogs as unexpected agents of charm. A poised figure crossing a station with a sleek hound or a glamorous actress sharing a candid moment with her pet shows how canine presence can disarm even the most carefully constructed image. Within these scenes, dogs create openings—revealing personality, softening composure, or adding a note of surprise that lingers in the viewer’s memory. Playfulness and experimentation appear throughout the exhibition as well, especially in works that use dogs as catalysts for visual invention. Performative, humorous, or architecturally composed, these images demonstrate how a simple shift in scale, gesture, or setting can transform an ordinary moment into something extraordinary. Spanning vintage prints to contemporary works, Best in Show celebrates the enduring capacity of dogs to shape mood, deepen narrative, and connect us to shared experiences that transcend time. Image: Elliott Erwitt — England, 1974 printed later Silver Gelatin Photograph 11 x 14 in, at JL Modern Gallery © Elliott Erwitt

Obscura Gallery presents its third annual winter holiday exhibition, One-of-a-Kind III, a celebration of originality and craftsmanship that brings together a diverse group of contemporary photo-based artists. The exhibition showcases unique artworks priced under $1,500, offering collectors and art lovers the opportunity to discover pieces available exclusively at the Santa Fe gallery. This year’s show features ten artists, among them Michael Berman, Susan Burnstine, Gordon Coons, Lou Peralta, Sara Silks, Aline Smithson, Eddie Soloway, Lynn Stern, Robert Stivers, and Bryan Whitney. In addition, the gallery introduces Santa Fe jewelry artist Karin Worden, whose handcrafted pieces embody the same spirit of individuality that defines the exhibition. The open house event will take place on Saturday, November 28, from 1–4 pm, with many of the artists in attendance. While photography today is most often associated with reproducibility, One-of-a-Kind III invites viewers to reconsider the medium through the lens of singular creation. In the early days of photography, many techniques inherently produced unique images—prints that could never be exactly replicated. This exhibition honors that lineage while embracing modern experimentation, highlighting how artists continue to reinvent photographic traditions in innovative ways. The works on view span a range of historical and contemporary techniques, including gelatin silver prints enhanced with mixed media, cyanotypes, collages, and gold leaf applications. Some pieces explore texture through hand-applied surfaces or the integration of organic materials, while others incorporate digital processes and even cedar-smoked relief printing. The inclusion of handcrafted jewelry extends the conversation beyond the photographic image, celebrating artistry in all its forms. Together, these works embody the tactile, personal, and unrepeatable nature of true craftsmanship—a reminder that in an era of mass production, there remains profound beauty in the singular and handmade. Image: Japonisme: Fireworks and Cherry Blossoms © Aline Smithson

Lines of Belonging marks the 40th anniversary of New Photography with an exhibition featuring 13 artists and collectives who delve into the complexities of identity, community, and interconnectedness. As artist Sabelo Mlangeni eloquently stated, "Love is the key that takes cultures from oppression to joy," reflecting how, in his work, the concept of love serves as a powerful force for liberation and political unity. Through their varied practices, these artists explore places of belonging and trace connections that transcend generations, histories, and geographies. Some use their personal experiences to connect with broader political narratives, while others challenge historical archives and reimagine future communities through their art. Lines of Belonging focuses on four cities—Kathmandu, New Orleans, Johannesburg, and Mexico City—each of which has long been a hub for life, creativity, and cultural exchange, often predating the modern nation-states in which they now reside. The work presented here offers a stark contrast to the rapid, profit-driven pace of contemporary image production, digital technologies, and artificial intelligence. Instead, these artists advocate for slowness, persistence, and care as a response to the overwhelming speed and commodification of the modern world. This exhibition marks the first time these artists and collectives are being presented at MoMA, and it includes Sandra Blow, Tania Franco Klein, and Lake Verea (Francisca Rivero-Lake and Carla Verea) from Mexico City; Gabrielle Goliath, Lebohang Kganye, Sabelo Mlangeni, and Lindokuhle Sobekwa from Johannesburg; Nepal Picture Library, Sheelasha Rajbhandari, and Prasiit Sthapit from Kathmandu; and L. Kasimu Harris, Renee Royale, and Gabrielle Garcia Steib from New Orleans. Together, these artists offer fresh perspectives on the intersection of place, memory, and identity. Image: L. Kasimu Harris. Come Tuesday (Marwan Pleasant at Sportsman’s Corner), New Orleans. 2020. Inkjet print, 24 × 36" (61 × 91 cm). Courtesy the artist