Deb Leal: Abre Camino

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

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

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

Robert Koch Gallery presents a contemplative exhibition devoted to the poetic universe of Yamamoto Masao, offering a rare opportunity to trace the breadth of his vision across several of his most celebrated series. Rooted in a Zen-infused understanding of the world, Yamamoto’s work invites viewers to slow down and rediscover the quiet marvels hidden in daily life. His photographs remind us that attentive looking can reveal moments of grace that often pass unnoticed. Working primarily with small-format toned silver gelatin prints, Yamamoto turns his lens toward the natural world that surrounds him: a fleeting shadow across a stone, a bird poised in mid-flight, the texture of aging bark, or the gentle shift of light along a rural path. These subtle images carry a sense of stillness, yet they also feel alive, as though the air around them continues to move. Some prints bear hand coloring or traces of intentional wear—creases, soft abrasions, or delicate surface treatments—that echo the passage of time and lend each work a sense of intimate history. Animals appear throughout his photographs with a quiet but striking presence. They rarely dominate the scene; instead, they seem to drift into the frame as companions or messengers. Their calm gaze and understated gestures create a bridge between the physical world and a more spiritual realm, offering a reminder of our shared place within the natural order. Yamamoto considers each photograph an autonomous object, yet he is equally attentive to the relationships that form when images are arranged together. In groupings or installations, one picture subtly extends into the next, creating visual rhythms that behave like layered musical notes. The exhibition embraces this approach, allowing works from different series to converse across time and theme, revealing harmonies that might otherwise remain unseen. Born in Gamagori City in 1957 and now living in Yamanashi, Yamamoto has exhibited widely around the world. His photographs, celebrated for their meditative depth and refined simplicity, are held in major museum collections and continue to inspire viewers to search for meaning in life’s smallest gestures. Image: Kawa=Flow #1674, 2016, Gelatin silver print with mixed media 5 7/8 x 8 3/4 in. © Yamamoto Masao

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

Spirit and Shadow unfolds as a quiet meditation on the fleeting brilliance that inhabits the natural world, offering a space where brief illuminations linger like whispered memories. Fireflies rise and fall along the curve of a river, sketching trembling pathways of light that feel both ancient and newborn. Snowflakes drift with equal delicacy, each one a tiny, vanishing universe. Whether glowing or glistening, these small wanderers move through darkness as though guided by an unseen rhythm, their trails weaving together like strands of breath suspended in time. Presented by Robert Mann Gallery, Spirit and Shadow brings together the evocative work of Elijah Gowin, an artist whose photographs uncover the luminous pulse within nocturnal landscapes. Traveling to places as varied as Virginia, Malaysia, and Thailand, Gowin seeks the fireflies’ quiet radiance, capturing their shimmering presence at dusk. Against these summer scenes, he sets the winter hush of falling snow, the flakes’ pale blues and whites echoing the electric trails of lightning bugs. The exhibition becomes a meeting point of seasons, light sources, and states of being. Gowin’s approach invites chance and mystery into each frame. Working in complete darkness, he embraces unpredictable visual effects that blur edges, dissolve distinctions, and allow colors to erupt with surprising intensity. Lines of yellow sweep across the compositions while bright orbs shimmer like crystals in motion. Trees, riverbanks, and other natural forms emerge softly from the shadows, as if recalled from a dream. At times, the fireflies seem like stars loosened from the sky, drifting downward with the gentleness of falling snow. In this interplay of movement and stillness, light becomes both spirit and shadow—an emblem of transformation and reverence. Gowin aligns his practice with seasonal rhythms and lunar cycles, honoring the fragile ecosystems that give rise to such wonders. Each photograph invites viewers to pause, to dwell in the threshold between presence and disappearance, and to consider how even the smallest glimmer can reshape the darkness that surrounds it. Image: Tree 1, 2012 © Elijah Gowin

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

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

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

Currents 2025, on view from December 12, 2025 through February 1, 2026, presents a vibrant snapshot of contemporary photographic practice in New Orleans through the work of New Orleans Photo Alliance members. As an annual members showcase, the exhibition reflects the creative energy of a city where photography is deeply intertwined with history, community, and lived experience. Bringing together ten photographers, this edition of Currents offers a dynamic cross-section of approaches, subjects, and visual languages currently shaping the region’s photographic landscape. Curated by Brian Piper, PhD, Freeman Family Curator of Photographs, Prints, and Drawings at the New Orleans Museum of Art, the exhibition is thoughtfully assembled to emphasize dialogue rather than uniformity. Each artist contributes up to four images, allowing viewers to encounter focused selections that hint at broader, ongoing projects. From intimate personal narratives to expansive social observations, the works on view demonstrate how photography continues to evolve as both a documentary tool and a conceptual medium. The photographers featured in Currents 2025—Brian Barbieri, Marcus DiSieno, Brian Edwards, Jr., Matt Eich, Amina Massey, Gregory Miller, Horatio Nguyen, Taylor Sacco, and Samantha Yancey—represent a wide spectrum of experiences and perspectives. Their images explore themes of identity, place, memory, and transformation, often grounded in the specific textures of New Orleans while remaining attentive to broader cultural currents. Together, these portfolios form a collective portrait of a photographic community engaged with the present moment. Presented as part of the PhotoNOLA festival at Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Currents functions as both a celebration and a point of connection. It invites audiences to consider how individual practices resonate within a shared creative ecosystem, and how photography can respond to social change while preserving personal vision. The exhibition underscores the role of New Orleans Photo Alliance as a vital platform for artistic exchange, mentorship, and visibility. Ultimately, Currents 2025 is less about defining a single direction than about embracing plurality. It affirms photography as an ever-shifting field, shaped by curiosity, experimentation, and the distinctive voices of those who continue to push it forward. Image: Brian Edwards, Jr., I’m in Your Care, 2024, Pigment print, 24 x 36 inches, Collection of the artist © Brian Edwards, Jr.