Photo Exhibitions

The upcoming four years promise significant shifts in political, social, economic, and identity politics. These changes demand a reevaluation of how we define and interact with geographic and interpersonal boundaries at all levels. The exhibition "Beyond Boundaries" invited artists to explore the multifaceted nature of these lines. It prompts us to consider not only the limitations boundaries impose, but also their potential as catalysts for innovation and change. The works presented represent a diverse range of perspectives, challenging assumptions and encouraging dialogue about where boundaries are defined, how they are enforced, and what happens when they are crossed or redrawn. Are these lines static or dynamic? Are they inclusive or exclusive? And how can artistic expression help us imagine a future where boundaries are redefined to create a more just and equitable world, especially in the context of evolving political landscapes? The more than 40 works included in this exhibition serve as a platform for reflection and conversation, a space where we can grapple with the complex realities of a rapidly changing world and explore the potential for transformative action in the face of uncertainty. The artists featured offer potent visual and conceptual narratives that reveal the transformative power of art in reimagining our relationships with the boundaries that shape our lives. Juror, Demetri Broxton, is a Bay Area artist, independent curator, and the Executive Director of Root Division in San Francisco. Born and raised in Oakland, CA, he earned a BFA at UC Berkeley with an emphasis in painting and an MA in Museum Studies from San Francisco State University. His artwork has been exhibited internationally and most recently at the Chinese Historical Society of America, Art Gallery of Alberta, de Young Museum, Crocker Art Museum, Kala Art Institute, and the Norton Museum of Art. Broxton’s artwork is held in several private and public collections including the Monterey Art Museum, de Young Museum, and Crocker Art Museum. He is represented by Patricia Sweetow Gallery in Los Angeles, CA.

Obscura Gallery presents IAN MARKUS: Fragments of the Frontier, a photographic exploration of the fading culture of ranching in Montana. With imagery created from a 4 x 5” film camera, Ian composites two or more negatives in the darkroom to create ethereal, large-format gelatin silver prints. The resulting ghostly images give a visceral interpretation of the fading cowboy culture that Ian has encountered in the contemporary ranches of Montana. Santa Fean Ian Markus is the son of the late Obscura Gallery photographer Kurt Markus, who had a long storied career including photographing cowboy culture, and publishing three cowboy monographs since the 1980s. Ian has witnessed this subject matter since he was a young boy accompanying his father on photographic expeditions in the West and assisting Kurt for many long hours in the darkroom. This work provides an insightful perspective into the current state of ranching, showing the juxtaposition of a practice that is facing numerous challenges in our contemporary climate. "’So, you're here to photograph the end?’ a couple of cowboys asked me without any prompting. At the time, I didn’t know how to respond. My father’s photographs of the West and cowboy culture had always inspired me. They made me curious about what it was really like—not staged, not polished. I didn’t want to dress anyone in new, starched clothes or have them stare meaningfully into the sunset. I wanted to capture life as it is now. That was why I was there.” -IM “It wasn’t until I began reviewing contact sheets with Jennifer Schlesinger [Director, Obscura Gallery] that I realized there was more to my work at those ranches. The fading traditions of cowboy culture—the shift from horses to ATVs (or ’ram and jam,’ as one legendary cowboy put it)—mirrored my own journey with photography. Like the cowboys adjusting to a new way of life, I was navigating my practice using film cameras, tools that require patience and a connection to the past.” - IM “The Graflex camera became the perfect medium to reflect this duality. It bridged the time between the cowboys my father photographed and the ones I met—generations still deeply connected to their heritage. To them, wearing that hat still means something.” –IM Ian Markus (b. 1988) grew up in Kalispell, Montana and graduated from Montana State University with a focus on Graphic Design. The son of the late Kurt Markus widely known for his Cowboy and fashion photography, Ian was immersed in the world of photography at a very early age as he spent most of his life working alongside Kurt—whether in the darkroom or out on photo shoots—and those experiences shaped the artist that he is today. In 2009, Ian and Kurt collaborated on the documentary It's About You, a Super 8 film chronicling John Mellencamp's tour of baseball fields across America while recording his latest album. Celebrated for its creativity, the film was featured at SXSW and the Tribeca Film Festival. Ian has been working on his own photographic documentary about the fading Cowboy culture the past several years, and the show at Obscura Gallery is the debut of his first solo photographic exhibition.

This ongoing exhibition celebrates the diverse perspectives artists have brought to the medium of photography, featuring a varied presentation of works from the Museum’s holdings. The latest selection of photographs, on view through spring 2025, focuses on music, from community bands to Tina Turner. Works by Ernest Withers offer a glimpse of the vibrant Memphis music scene of the 1950s and 1960s, while Henry Horenstein captures country music performers and fans alike. With works by seven artists that range across five decades, this installation attests to music’s power to offer us joy, community, and catharsis.

Endicott College is excited to host Fran Forman – Suspended Realities: A 20-Year Journey through Whimsy to Noir, an exhibition showcasing two decades of the artist’s imaginative work. The exhibition will run from January 21 to March 14, 2025, at the Heftler Visiting Artist Gallery in the Walter J. Manninen Center for the Arts. Closing Reception: Join us on March 12, 2025, from 4:00–6:00 PM for a closing reception to meet the artist and explore her work. Fran Forman combines photography, digital painting, and AI techniques to create stunning, layered visual narratives that explore themes of longing, disconnection, and hidden emotions. With 25 years of experience in graphic design and an MFA, Fran’s work blends technical skill with emotional depth. The exhibition highlights her evolution from whimsical imagery to darker, noir-inspired themes, drawing inspiration from Caravaggio, Edward Hopper, Hammerschøi, and Gregory Crewdson. Over 35 images are on display, plus some recent short experimental videos.

Born in 1947 in Douglas, Arizona, and based in Tucson, Louis Carlos Bernal was a pioneering Chicano photographer, among the very first to envision his work in the medium not as documentation, but as an art form. He began his career in the early 1970s in the wake of the Chicano civil rights movement, articulating a quietly political approach to photography with the aim of heralding the strength, spiritual and cultural values, and profound family ties that marked the lives of Mexican Americans who were marginalized and little seen. Initially focusing on the people of modest means he encountered in the barrios of Tucson, the city where he lived and taught, Bernal eventually traveled to small towns throughout the Southwest, where he portrayed individuals and families in outdoor settings or in their homes surrounded by belongings, tabletops filled with religious statuary and curios, and at times, rooms absent of people that nevertheless express the tenor of the lives lived within them. In a relatively short career that spanned the 1970s and 1980s, Bernal demonstrated his profound gift for magnifying the lives of his subjects and for capturing the essence of their character in a single image. In addition to the photographs made in Southwestern barrio communities, the exhibition will also include examples of Bernal’s early experimental work, photographs he made during his frequent trips to Mexico, and a selection of never-seen images he produced in Cuba. It is curated by Elizabeth Ferrer, a specialist in the history of Latinx photography, and will be accompanied by a catalog to be co-published by the Center for Creative Photography and Aperture. Image: ​​Louis Carlos Bernal, El Gato, Canutillo, New Mexico, ​1979, Gift of Morrie Camhi, ​© Lisa Bernal Brethour and Katrina Bernal

An exhibition of photography by the acclaimed German filmmaker Wim Wenders will be on view from January 28 through March 15, 2025 at Howard Greenberg Gallery. Written Once will showcase images made in the 1970s and 1980s when Wenders was researching locations for his films in the American West or traveling the country for film events. A key element of the exhibition is text written by Wenders to accompany a number of the photographs, which will be featured together with the images in the gallery. Wenders’ poetic stories surrounding the images give the viewer an extraordinary window into his filmmaking as well as his day-to-day life in the film world. The title of the exhibition, Written Once, is a nod to the two photographic series on view: Written in the West (1983-1987) and Once (1977-1984). Written in the West In 1983, Wenders set out on a road trip of the American West, photographing the unique light and desolate landscape in preparation for his iconic film Paris, Texas (1984). Wenders’ images from Texas, Arizonia, New Mexico and California are transformed by the filmmaker’s cinematic vision as he searches for the mythology of the frontier in the vast landscape. The trip resulted in the series, Written in the West, which was first exhibited in 1986 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. “It was another way of preparing for the film, too, a different kind of research that had less to do with locations than with the light in the West. I had never made a film in that landscape and was hoping that taking photographs would sharpen my understanding of the light and landscape, my sense of empathy with it. So although these photos were taken in connection with the film we made in that part of the country, they are quite independent of it, despite the fact that a lot of the photos were taken in Houston, Los Angeles, and other locations in Texas, California, Arizona and New Mexico where we did in fact shoot the film. But these large-format photos were my own personal, private way of preparing for the film,” Wenders noted in an interview in his 2015 photography book, Written in the West Revisited (Schirmer/Mosel & D.A.P.) Once In the late 1970s through the mid-1980s, Wenders photographed his travels and encounters in Hollywood. Using the same command of the art of storytelling found in his films, Wenders presents a written anecdote with each image that often starts out with “Once, I…..” These behind-the-scenes accounts feature stories about his travel experiences often with the extraordinary group of actors and directors that have crossed his path including John Lurie, Jim Jarmusch, Dennis Hopper, Claire Denis, Elia Kazan, Isabella Rossellini, and Harry Dean Stanton. Among the highlights is a 1977 photograph, When Martin Scorsese had a flat tire II. Wenders is both the imagemaker and the narrator of an unpredictable moment: while traveling in the remote landscape of the Valley of the Gods in Utah, he encountered a car pulled over by the side of the road with a flat tire. The man underneath the car was Martin Scorsese, who subsequently discovered that the rental car did not have a spare tire! Autobiographical in scope with a literary tradition found in his filmmaking, the narrated texts and photographic trajectories provide an intimate look at the making of picture stills and their relationship to moving images. About Wim Wenders Wim Wenders (born 1945 in Düsseldorf) became internationally known as one of the protagonists of the New German Cinema of the 1970s. Today, he is considered as one of the most important figures of contemporary world cinema. The work of the screenwriter, director, producer, photographer and author includes multiple award-winning feature and documentary films, photo exhibitions presented worldwide, as well as numerous photo books, film books and text collections. He lives and works in Berlin with his wife Donata Wenders. His films Paris, Texas (1984) and Wings of Desire (1987) are today part of the international canon of film heritage, as are his innovative documentaries Pina, Buena Vista Social Club and The Salt of the Earth. His two most recent films had their world premiere at the Festival de Cannes in 2023: Anselm, his documentary film in 3D about Anselm Kiefer, and his Japanese feature film Perfect Days, for which lead actor Kōji Yakusho received the award for Best Actor in Cannes. Perfect Days, became his internationally most successful film and was nominated for an Oscar in the “Best International Feature Film” category in 2024. In 2012, Wim and Donata Wenders established the Wenders Foundation in Wenders' native city Düsseldorf. The non-profit foundation brings together the artist's cinematic, photographic and literary lifework and makes it permanently accessible to the public. In the process, the films are restored to state-of-the-art digital masters. The Wim Wenders Foundation is also engaged in film education for schools and supports (in cooperation with the Film und Medienstiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen) the promotion of young talent in the field of innovative cinematic storytelling with the Wim Wenders Scholarship. Image: Sun Dries, Las Vegas, New Mexico from the series 'Writen in the West' 1983 © Win Wenders

Haines Gallery proudly presents State Shift, our second solo exhibition with artist MEGHANN RIEPENHOFF. Opening in tandem with SF Art Week 2025, this highly anticipated show debuts a poetic, visceral, and personal body of work that expands Riepenhoff’s collaboration with both the cyanotype and the environment. Riepenhoff creates her cyanotypes directly within the landscape, allowing the elements to leave physical inscriptions on paper coated with photographic materials. Marking an important breakthrough in her practice, State Shift sees the introduction of new pigments and gestures into Riepenhoff’s process. The signature inky indigos and glacial blues of her cyanotypes are transformed with vivid flashes of green, coral, magenta, and shimmering metallic hues, the result of organic materials (mica, mushroom ink, and ginkgo chlorophyll) and manufactured pigments (a nod to the human presence in the landscape). The title State Shift, which names both the exhibition and the series on view, is a geological term describing dramatic and sudden changes to ecosystems — often when critical thresholds are crossed. “The physical nature of my work, where photography-based media come in contact with rain, waves, wind, and wintry environments, is a call to be in closer contact with our environment, in a time of deep separation between humans and our ecosystems,” Riepenhoff has said. In issuing this call — both to herself and to viewers — the artist invites us all to consider the personal and collective shifts we might make to preserve our shared home. State Shift emerged from difficulty and explores sites of climate devastation, but is rooted in the possibilities of transformation and hope. “Hope,” the author and activist Rebecca Solnit has written, “is a belief that what we do might matter, an understanding that the future is not yet written.” State Shift coincides with Second Nature: Photography in the Age of the Anthropocene, a major group exhibition opening at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University in February 2025 that features Riepenhoff's work. Originating at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC, Second Nature will travel to the Anchorage Museum, AK following its presentation at the Cantor.

To mark the 25th anniversary of the apexart Fellowship Program, we're presenting 30 Days of Culture Shock, a group exhibition of photography and video works by current and former Fellows from the U.S. and abroad. The apexart Fellowship is an alternative educational program that invites creative individuals to step far outside their comfort zones and engage with unfamiliar cultures, ideas, people and experiences. Differing from residencies that focus on production, the apexart fellowship asks artists to pause their creative endeavors and immerse themselves for thirty days in a city they have never been to. Instead of networking and art tourism, Fellows engage in a rigorous itinerary of activities including: hands-on workshops, lectures, dance classes, and community focused volunteering. Unlike most artist residency programs, the apexart Fellowship provides a rich, 30-day schedule of non-art activities, while requiring Fellows to refrain from producing creative works. The apexart Fellowship schedule prioritizes educational experiences that are outside of the Fellow's stated interests. This diversity of activities leaves Fellows with new ideas, approaches, and content to incorporate into their creative practices. Our NYC fellowship is for internationally based artists to travel to New York City, and our INTL fellowship is for NYC-based artists to travel outside of the USA. In doing new and interesting things, and having time away from their usual responsibilities, apexart Fellows can reflect on what they do with greater perspective. apexart Fellows keep a public journal for the duration of their program, and participate in a recorded exit interview at the end of their Fellowship, which can be found online. By providing a space for contemplation and exposure to new experiences, the apexart Fellowship is designed to be a catalyst for creativity. 30 Days of Culture Shock is a reflection on the transformative power of the program, showcasing how these diverse experiences influence and inspire the Fellows' work. For some of the artists in the exhibition it has been years while for others it has only been months, but all of the work featured is in some way in response to their time in the fellowship. Join us.

Jeff Larason’s Boston and Lynn Saville’s New York is a captivating exploration of quiet moments within two bustling urban environments. This exhibition combines the powerful and evocative urban imagery of Boston photographer Jeff Larason and New York City photographer Lynn Saville. Both artists delve deep into the visual language of cities, capturing moments of solitude and reflection that are often overshadowed by the energy and chaos of urban life. Larason and Saville reveal a serene, reflective, and unexpectedly beautiful side of city life through their unique lenses.

The Norton is proud to welcome Mexican artist Fabiola Menchelli as the 2024-25 Mary Lucille Dauray Artist-in-Residence. Her solo exhibition, certain silence, features photographs through which Menchelli questions how risk and risk-taking impacts our understanding of photography and representation. Created in complete darkness and without the use of a camera, Menchelli relies upon touch and sound to guide her gestures. Each atmospheric work is not only the result of Menchelli’s physical movements, but also her total embrace of chance and accident, allowing streams of color-filtered light to reach each piece of light-sensitive paper.

NMWA presents evocative documentary and studio-based photographs by Bronx-based artist Samantha Box (b. 1977, Kingston, Jamaica) in her inaugural solo exhibition in Washington, DC. Seen together for the first time, Box’s two major bodies of work “Invisible” and “Caribbean Dreams” reveal layered conversations around the intersectionality of nationality, race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. In her breakthrough body of work, “Invisible” (2005 to 18), Box photographed a community of New York City’s LGBTQIA+ youth of color living at Sylvia’s Place, the city’s only homeless emergency shelter. She went on to document at-risk transgender and nonbinary youth participating in Kiki ballroom pageants and performances. Her images depict grief, joy, inner conflict, and resolve, signifying the intense bonds between these young people, who often lost their homes and faced discrimination after revealing their sexual identities to relatives and loved ones. In 2018, Box shifted from documentary photography to a studio-based practice in her ongoing series “Caribbean Dreams.” As the child of a Black Jamaican father and South Asian Trinidadian mother, Box explores her own experiences around her diasporic cultural identity. Staging color still lifes that recall the lush tableaus of 17th-century Dutch painting, Box connects the exploits and long-lasting impacts of colonialism through images of sumptuous, ripened fruit, family heirlooms, self-portraits, and vintage photographs. This exhibition is presented in collaboration with the Des Moines Art Center (DMAC). NMWA and DMAC are staging concurrent exhibitions of Box’s work in fall 2024, each highlighting a different facet of her practice. Image: Kristen, on 34th Street, on her way to work on the stroll, from the series “The Shelter, The Street,” 2008 © Samantha Box

he Center for Photographic Art is proud to present Sky Country, a solo exhibition by award winning photographer, Bob Kolbrener. In celebration of the artist's new monograph of the same name, CPA partnered with Nazraeli Press to create this beautiful exhibition of silver gelatin prints of Kolbrener's iconic images of the West. This special show includes some of the artist’s most recognizable images as well as some that publisher Chris Pichler discovered in Kolbrener's vast archive! We’re excited that both the artist and publisher will be in Carmel in person to launch Kolbrener's latest book project and share copies of this beautiful new monograph, Sky Country (Nazraeli Press, February 2025). A native of Missouri, American artist Bob Kolbrener was born in 1942 and began his career in St. Louis. He established a commercial photography business there in 1969 that was structured to give him and his wife, Sharon, time to photograph the American West. “We would work for five months and then head out for a month of fine art photography…living as nomads for two months of the year for over forty years,” said Kolbrener. A life-long devotion to California landscapes began when he saw six large-format Ansel Adams photographs in a gallery in Yosemite National Park in 1968. A transformational experience, it resulted in Kolbrener meeting, studying under, and ultimately working with Adams throughout the 1970s as he continued to build his own reputation as a superb landscape photographer. Kolbrener’s technical method, which remains grounded in the “old fashioned way,” as the artist describes it, uses fiber-based silver gelatin paper, tray processing and selenium toner. His photographs are made on film, using medium and large format cameras. Kolbrener’s photographs have been exhibited in museums, art galleries and libraries across the country and in Austria, Great Britain, China, Indonesia, and Japan. His images are in collections at the Saint Louis Art Museum, Monterey Museum of Art, High Museum of Art, and Washington University. In 2019, following a retrospective of his work, the Booth Museum acquired nearly two dozen of his works for their permanent collection. The Kolbreners moved to the Monterey Peninsula in 1996, closer to the iconic western landscapes that define his work. Bob Kolbrener has a recent monograph published by Nazraeli Press: California (2022) which features 60 plates of black-and-white photographs taken between 1968 and 2019. Kolbrener's upcoming book, Sky Country (Nazraeli Press, February 2025) is a masterpiece of Western landscapes and includes an essay by CPA's executive director, Ann Jastrab. Both of these beautiful monographs are limited to 1,000 copies.

Artists: Nancy Baron, Matt Henry, Cynthia Johnston Taking its name from Rosecrans Baldwin’s 2021 book about Los Angeles, Everything Now, this exhibition considers the meeting points between fiction and reality, narrative and fragmentary visions, illusions, fantasies and concrete presences, as these are revealed in how artists capture Americana and its presence in visual culture of the recent decades. Against the backdrop of the hot, vast, fiery, lonely American deserts, or lush distant mountains touched by unreachable horizon lines, the works on view chronicle glimpses into the terrains that became synonyms with a cultural experience, connecting abandoned geographies, towering palm trees, ominous interiors, endless roads and bright lights with creative and collective ancestors, personal histories, and a desire to return to nature that always represents more than what meets the eye. Taking place at the Laemmle Theaters, an iconic location in and of itself for film and film enthusiasts in Southern California, this exhibition has pop culture in mind. It is particularly interested in how vast landscapes are imagined and re-imagined and imagined yet again by artists who might work at a great geographical distance from this place, yet in surprisingly close proximity. In many ways, these works exist in the unexpected gaps between the concrete sites and how they were written into popular culture, between the environment and the textured ways in which it came to define a worldview and a desire to belong and remain distant, all at once. Image: Cynthia Johnston, Wyoming III, 2018

Joseph Bellows Gallery is pleased to announce its upcoming solo exhibition by Charles Johnstone, In Search of the Perfect Palm. The exhibition will run February 22nd through March 28th in the gallery’s atrium space, with an opening reception with the artist on Saturday the 22nd of February, from 5-7pm. The exhibition presents Johnstone’s homage to the 19th Century explorer and photographer Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey. In 1842, Girault de Prangey set out on a three-year expedition to the Eastern Mediterranean equipped with a camera and a newfound knowledge of the Daguerreotype process. On this journey he came across a palm tree near the Church of Saints Theodore in Athens that would prove to be a subject worthy of his camera. The view captured by Girault de Prangey in one of photography’s earliest processes was very modern and unusual for its time, depicting a close-up view of the palm’s fronds against the sky. In 2019, upon seeing this full plate daguerreotype image made by Girault de Prangey in the exhibition, A Monumental Journey held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Johnstone was inspired to search for the perfect palm. In Search of the Perfect Palm will feature small-scale direct positive Polaroid prints. These unique Polaroid prints created by Johnstone on expired batches of Polaroid film stock render his selected palms small in scale, and with the intimacy of viewing akin to the solidarity of beholding a Daguerreotype. In Johnstone’s photographs, the palm tree is held against the same cerulean sky that the artist encountered in Girault de Prangey’s photograph, and rendered with the inherent artifacts and image inconsistencies that are characteristic of the unpredictable nature of expired film, recalling results indicative to early Daguerreotype images. With this, Johnstone’s work forms a link to the medium’s past, while suggesting the immediacy of the present through the photographer’s quest to capture a fleeting sense of the beauty and symbolism his subject conveys. Charles Johnstone is a self-taught photographer, whose works feature his immediate surroundings and environments encountered during travel. His work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris and Berlin. Johnstone’s books and photographs are included in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of the City of New York, and the International Center of Photography. He was the subject of the 2022 documentary, Remnants of Memory, a film that celebrates beauty in the overlooked, anonymous objects we pass every day, in which Johnstone explores the vivid canals and ancient passageways of Venice, Italy in search of a new book project.

The epic historical and artistic photographs of O. Winston Link (1914-2001) celebrate the wonder of the now obsolete steam-powered locomotive. With the exhibition Hot Shot, Robert Mann Gallery presents a selection of classic images from Linkʼs body of work produced in the 1950s. When the Norfolk & Western Railway began to convert its operations from steam to diesel, Link spent five years documenting the trains and the towns along the line in Virginia. A longtime hero of railfans, Link received overdue art world recognition for the prescience of his photographic vision in the decades before his death. His flare for cinematic mise-en-scène and for staging images is now acknowledged to have paved the way for the dramatic tableaux of luminaries such as Gregory Crewdson and Jeff Wall, while his interest in the socio-historical infrastructure of the railroad has inspired another vein of photographers such as Jeff Brouws and Mark Ruwede A consummate craftsman, Link yielded an array of artificial lighting innovations to produce exactly the atmosphere he desired, resulting in images that are uncanny and magical. A plane, a train and some automobiles are all aspects of high-speed American imagery in the iconic Hotshot Eastbound, Iaeger, West Virginia, 1956. Here the dramatic nature of Linkʼs production thematized by the eroticism-tinged space of the drive-in movie theater. Carefree summer nights continue for the children splashing playfully at the Hawksbill Creek Swimming Hole as a locomotive barrels by overhead. That his works have variously been described as surrealist, futurist, Norman Rockwell-ian, filmic, an (constructed) historical documents, is testament to their profound appeal as images. Indeed, for all their artful construction, his railroad photographs do not merely fetishize the sumptuous effects of smoke and light, but contextualize the trains within human narratives. Linkʼs works brilliantly animate the iconic steam railroad as a fantastical aspect of a bygone, everyday American life. Having worked directly with the artist in the last decade of his life, Robert Mann Gallery remains the premier source for and expert on the photographs of O. Winston Link. His legacy is honored in the O. Winston Link Museum in Roanoke, Virginia. Linkʼs photographs are held in numerous prominent museum collections internationally, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, The Permanent Collections at Haverford College, Pennsylvania, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

This February and March, Pictura Gallery is showing My Weather Diary by Finnish artist Jari Silomäki. Since 2001, Silomäki has made and catalogued one photograph for each day, starting with the idea that world events, personal events, and the weather will always repeat themselves.Silomäki examines our access to world news and the effect it can have on our emotional states. The series shares the artist’s private moments on any given day, and also a shared experience of history, despite our geographic locations.

Featuring work by: Man Ray, György Kepes, André Kertész, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Oliver Gagliani, Jaromír Funke, Florence Henri, Josef Sudek, Ruth Bernhard, Bill Brandt, Josef Bartuška, Josef Ehm, Foto Ada, Ferenc Haar, Miroslav Hák, Philippe Halsman, Tibor Honty, István Kerny, Jiří Lehovec, Nathan Lerner, Emila Medková, László Osoha, Vilém Reichmann, Jan Saudek, Jindřich Štyrský, Drahotín Šulla, Karel Teige, Geza Vandor, František Vobecký, and Eugen Wiškovský. The Robert Koch Gallery is pleased to present an homage to Surrealism with an exhibition of surrealist photographs created between the years 1924 -1989. Drawn from the gallery’s holdings, this exhibition celebrates the centenary of Surrealism and its broad, historical influence on art. Surrealism revolutionized art and visual culture. Emerging in the aftermath of World War I, Surrealism responded to the disillusionment and trauma of the time, seeking to unlock the unconscious mind and explore alternate realities. Its influence endures, continuing to inspire contemporary artists and their exploration of the subconscious. This curated exhibition brings together works by American, British, Czech, French, Hungarian and Mexican photographers, examining how surrealism has shaped and intersected with artistic traditions over the past century. This exhibition illuminates Surrealism’s lasting legacy in photography, offering an insightful exploration of how artists from diverse backgrounds redefined the boundaries of visual art over the past century. Surrealism challenged conventional perspectives and continues to influence contemporary art, pushing the boundaries of how we perceive the world and our subconscious. This exhibition underscores the movement’s pivotal role in reshaping visual language and expanding the possibilities of photographic expression.

Paul Cupido, Cig Harvey, Jeffrey Conley, and Pentti Sammallahti The intricate connection between humanity and nature is as timeless as it is profound: a delicate interplay of observation, reverence, and shared existence. Presented by Peter Fetterman Gallery and Leica Store San Francisco, Interwoven brings together the evocative works of Paul Cupido, Cig Harvey, Jeffrey Conley, and Pentti Sammallahti, each artist offering a unique perspective on our relationship with the natural world. Paul Cupido’s ethereal compositions blur boundaries, inviting us to experience nature as an emotional and spiritual realm. His images, suspended between memory and reality, embody the fleeting and ephemeral beauty of life itself. Cig Harvey’s vivid and poetic imagery bridges the sensory and the symbolic. Through her lens, nature becomes a richly textured canvas, intertwining human presence with landscapes that feel both intimate and otherworldly. Jeffrey Conley’s black-and-white landscapes honor the serene and timeless rhythms of nature. With a mastery of light and shadow, Conley transforms ordinary moments into meditative spaces that quietly remind us of the earth’s enduring beauty. Pentti Sammallahti’s storytelling captures the harmony and humor of life in the natural world. His monochromatic works reveal fleeting moments of connection between humans, animals, and their shared environment, underscoring the unity of all living beings. Together, these artists weave a visual narrative that explores the fragile yet enduring bond between humans and nature. Their works ask us to reflect on our place within this intricate web and inspire us to see the natural world with renewed awe, gratitude, and respect. Interwoven is a celebration of this vital relationship, urging us to recognize nature not only as a backdrop to our lives but as an inseparable part of who we are.

“What knowing watchfulness in the eyes of a twelve-year-old… at once guarded, yet guileless. She is the very picture of contradiction: on the one hand diffident and ambivalent, on the other forthright and impatient; half pertness and half pout. Impossibly, she is both artless and sophisticated, a child and yet a woman.” - Sally Mann from At Twelve (1988) Jackson Fine Art is delighted to announce the premiere of previously unreleased photographs from Sally Mann’s groundbreaking series At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women, a collective portrait of twelve-year-olds on the verge of adulthood. The artist is renowned for her evocative work exploring themes of family, identity, and the American South. The portraits in this exhibition were taken by Mann between 1983-1985 with her large format camera in Rockbridge County, Virginia, the artist’s birthplace and where she continues to live and draw inspiration. She revisited her At Twelve archive last year, discovering unseen treasures, remarking: “One of the advantages of a long life is that you get to go back and revisit parts of your work that were overlooked, sometimes inexplicably, in early years.” Twelve is an age of expanding horizons, enriched by social experiences and shared connections. It is also a transitional period, navigating the delicate space between childhood and adulthood. The At Twelve portraits reveal this delicate balance, portraying both the innocence of youth and the yearning for maturity. The young women in these images are relatives or daughters of friends, but also, many are others living in her small Virginia community who trusted the artist to capture their individual spirit with grace and honesty. Taken nearly forty years ago, these images continue to hold relevance today, bridging the past and present in their exploration of this transformative stage in a young woman’s life. We are honored to be able to present the exhibition in close collaboration with the artist and Gagosian. Jackson Fine Art has exhibited Mann’s work since 1996 and this the artist’s sixth solo exhibition with the gallery. Image: Untitled, "At Twelve" Series (Lisa and Jenny on Car), 1983-1985 © Sally Mann

ROSEGALLERY is pleased to present The Language of Form, a presentation of works by Chiron Duong, Karl Blossfeldt, Manfred Müller, and Rinko Kawauchi that examines the roles that stillness and movement play in artistic endeavors. Viewers are invited to reflect on the enduring beauty of natural forms that illustrate the potential of organic shapes through photographs and collages. Through a blend of meticulously composed still- life photography and evocative collage works, the exhibition bridges the worlds of stillness and motion. Photography captures fleeting moments of exquisite detail, freezing the delicate textures and intricate patterns of flora, fauna, and organic materials. The collages, on the other hand, translate these natural inspirations into tactile, three-dimensional forms that celebrate movement, balance, and structure. The exhibition highlights the works of Manfred Müller, whose sculptures fuse geometric precision with organic inspiration, creating forms that evoke both strength and fragility. Chiron Duong’s still-life photography reimagines traditional aesthetics with modern narratives, celebrating the beauty of flowers and cultural motifs in intricate, layered compositions. Rinko Kawauchi’s serene photographic meditations capture ephemeral moments in nature, blending soft light and subtle textures to evoke a sense of quiet wonder. These contemporary works are presented alongside the pioneering photographs of Karl Blossfeldt, whose striking black-and-white close-ups of plants revealed the architectural elegance of nature and influenced generations of artists with their unique blend of aesthetic and scientific significance. The Language of Form underscores the timeless relationship between art and nature, stillness and vitality, form and flow, and celebrates the artistry of the natural world reimagined through the unique visions of these creators. A substantial amount of the proceeds from this exhibition will be donated to the Photographic Arts Council Los Angeles (PAC LA). PAC LA creates unique collaborative programming that engages and educates the community in an evolving public conversation about photography and photo-based art. Image: Chiron Duong

Mengwen Cao, Jess T. Dugan, Yorgos Efthymiadis, Matthew Leifheit, Laurence Philomene, Anne Vetter What makes a family? How do we define community? These fundamental questions are explored in the exhibition Nuclear Family, which re-imagines the concept of family, expanding our vision beyond traditional norms through the lens of LGBTQIA+ artists. Traditional family values. The universal phrase for how we perceive and accept families in public. We are reminded of the standard visual narrative of a family as two heterosexual parents and their children. Family dynamics are complicated, not all of us fit into this vision of perceived perfection. In expanding the idea of family, we see these photographers present honest and authentic portrayals of themselves, their families and the broader community, challenging viewers to confront their own biases and assumptions through fresh eyes. Featuring a diverse range of photographic and video works, the exhibition presents a compelling exploration of diverse family structures. Jess Dugan‘s A Letter to My Daughter is a poignant video essay that delves into the joys and challenges of parenthood. Mengwen Cao‘s Liminal Space celebrates the everyday beauty, intimacy, and resilience of queer and trans people of color, with a particular focus on Asian queer identities. Yorgos Efthymiadis‘ Lighthouse Keepers offers a series of intimate portraits of friends in their own spaces, providing a glimpse into the artist’s personal connections and his shared community. Laurence Philomene‘s vibrant and colorful images serve as a visual diary reflecting their environment and their own trans and non-binary identity. Anne Vetter‘s Love is not the Last Room explores themes of gender, attachment, and family through intimate portraits of themselves and their partner. Matthew Leifheit‘s Queer Archives delves into LGBTQIA+ history through objects and archives that remind the community of its origins and those who came before. These artists utilize photography and video not only to document their lives but also to challenge societal norms and celebrate the diversity of love and family structures. By reclaiming the genre of portraiture, often used to uphold traditional ideals, they create powerful and moving works that resonate with viewers on a deeply personal level. Nuclear Family was conceived and created by curator and artist Katalina Simon, in collaboration with Crista Dix, Executive Director of the Griffin Museum, and exhibition designer Yana Nosenko. Image: Liminal Space © Mengwen Cao

Imagine a world where it doesn’t matter who you love, just that you love. An Impossibly Normal Life is an artifact from another world, a more loving, inclusive one where who you love is of little societal importance. This fictional story, centered on my imagined uncle’s idealized life, is created from collected vintage snapshots from around the world. Four years ago, my mother offhandedly mentioned that I had an uncle who may have been gay, but he died not long after I was born. Hearing this revelation for the first time, nearly thirty years after I had struggled to come out to my disapproving family, sent my mind spinning. The thought of a family member so close to me going through some of the same things I did inspired me to create this story. Instead of returning to the hiding or shame of most pre-1970’s queer stories, a reality of how our world was (and in some cases, still is), I have created an alternate history where fluidity in gender and sexuality is the societal norm. Re-contexualizing found photographs and creating a new narrative, my Uncle Ken’s life becomes full of acceptance, friends and love, and shows anyone struggling with identity today the joy of what could have been and can still be.

Influenced by my own queer experience and ideals of mid-century American culture, my work investigates a familiar environment that alludes to something more enigmatic. Creating vignettes of this space and time allows for the images to exist in reality or remain fictitious. Initially making work about control of the environment, I am able to create a safe space for the narrative to unfold; purposely diverting from what we may consider conventional. The characters become distant protagonists as the work allows the viewer to respond as a voyeur. “Meditations in an Emergency” explores quiet amongst chaos. By focusing on themes of disaster and tragedy I am able to address the human condition; attempting to thrive in times of turmoil.

Leica Store & Gallery Los Angeles presents a landmark exhibition celebrating a century of innovation in photography: 100 YEARS OF LEICA. This iconic exhibit will feature the work of two renowned artists, Joel Meyerowitz and Barbara Davidson, honoring Leica's transformative role in shaping the world of photography. The exhibition kicks off a year-long celebration of Leica's centennial, with inspiring events, cultural highlights, and exclusive releases throughout 2025. For 100 years, Leica has been at the forefront of photographic technology and artistry, empowering photographers to capture defining moments that have shaped our visual culture. In celebrate this milestone, Leica Store & Gallery Los Angeles invites visitors to experience a diverse range of photographs that reflect the evolution of the medium— from the streets of the 20th century to today's contemporary landscapes. ''When I first began making photographs, my focus was often on capturing an action or event at the center of the frame,'' Joel Meyerowitz explained. ''But as I grew and began questioning my methods, influences, and photography itself, I realized it was time to move beyond what I already did well and aim for more challenging, engaging images. This shift led me to move away from the ‘incident-based photograph' and toward a broader, ‘deep space, field photograph,' where every element in the frame carries meaning. Rather than relying on a single ‘hook' to draw the viewer in, I aimed to capture the essence of the entire frame as a cohesive, meaningful space.'' In her collection of intimate images, Barbara Davidson explores the current American landscape through the lens of social injustice. She delves into the complexities of inequality, empowerment, and hope, capturing the intersections of these themes in contemporary culture. Through her Leica 100 collaboration, Davidson, alongside Meyerowitz, reveals how the American panorama has evolved and devolved since the golden era of street photography in the 1960's and 70's. Her work reflects the stunning persistence of America's complex social fabric, examining how people coexist in a radically changed yet enduring country. This exhibit kicks off the exciting year-long celebration for Leica's 100th anniversary. Throughout 2025, Leica will host a series of events, exhibitions, and exclusive product releases to commemorate its century of photographic excellence. Visitors to Leica Store & Gallery Los Angeles will have the opportunity to experience the enduring legacy of Leica through the works of legendary photographers like Meyerowitz and Davidson, whose contributions continue to shape the visual landscape of today.

Stephen, as the founder and editor of The Photo Review and editor of The Photograph Collector, has a deep understanding of both the artistic and technical aspects of photography. In his body of work, he leverages this expertise to create photographic vignettes that re-imagine the artwork of Baroque, Rococo, and Romantic masters. Using the digital darkroom as his modern-day canvas, Stephen translates the meanings and themes of these 17th- to early 19th-century masterpieces into a contemporary context, bridging the gap between historical and modern visual art. His work reflects a synthesis of classical aesthetics with modern technology, offering a fresh perspective on timeless themes. This approach not only pays homage to the original works but also invites viewers to consider how the meanings and messages of these Baroque, Rococo, and Romantic pieces might change or expand when viewed through the lens of today's world. Stephen is a distinguished figure in the world of photography, known for his role as the founder and editor of The Photo Review, a critical journal that has been exploring the international photography scene since 1976. Additionally, he serves as the editor of The Photograph Collector, a premier publication that provides in-depth insights into the photography art market. His photographs reside in many museum and private collections, including those of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the George Eastman Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the James A. Michener Art Museum, Lehigh University, Haverford College, and the University of North Dakota.

We are delighted to invite lens-based artists, 18 and older, to submit their work for Winter Light, an exhibition celebrating the season’s luminous glow in all its forms: the golden rays of a low winter sun, the shimmering reflections on snow and ice, and the soft glow of candles on long, quiet nights. This exhibition will be presented at the Jenks Center in Winchester, MA, from February 1 to April 4, 2025. We seek photographic works that interpret Winter Light, capturing its interplay of brightness and shadow, warmth and chill, hope and reflection. This is an opportunity to showcase light as both a physical phenomenon and a symbol of resilience, creativity, and connection during the winter season. Share your vision of Winter Light and join us in celebrating the beauty that radiates in winter’s stillness. Submission details and deadlines are provided below. Let your work inspire reflection and connection in this special community exhibition. Image: The Sound of Snow #26 by Xuan Hui Ng

Jessica Silverman is pleased to announce “Catherine Wagner: Reel to Real,” the San Francisco-based artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, on view February 27 to April 5, 2025. The exhibition features two bodies of work that restage physical sites of our collective imaginations. These include Wagner’s new series Moving Pictures, exploring the film archive at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), alongside never-before-seen photographs from Architecture of Reassurance, her historic 1995 series capturing Disney theme parks in Anaheim, Orlando, Paris, and Tokyo. These curious and often humorous images confront enchantments promised by the twentieth century’s most iconic visual landscapes. Through Wagner’s lens, “Reel to Real” takes us behind the scenes, lifting the curtain on cinematic smoke and mirrors. Image: Catherine Wagner, Do the Right Thing, 2024,

See how documentary photography transformed during the 1970s. The 1970s was a decade of uncertainty in the United States. Americans witnessed soaring inflation, energy crises, and the Watergate scandal, as well as protests about pressing issues such as the Vietnam War, women’s rights, gay liberation, and the environment. The country’s profound upheaval formed the backdrop for a revolution in documentary photography. Activism and a growing awareness and acceptance of diversity opened the field to underrepresented voices. At the same time, artistic experimentation fueled the reimagining of what documentary photographs could look like. Featuring some 100 works by more than 80 artists, The ʼ70s Lens examines how photographers reinvented documentary practice during this radical shift in American life. Mikki Ferrill and Frank Espada used the camera to create complex portraits of their communities. Tseng Kwong Chi and Susan Hiller demonstrated photography’s role in the development of performance and conceptual art. With pictures of suburban sprawl, artists like Lewis Baltz and Joe Deal challenged popular ideas of nature as pristine. And Michael Jang and Joanne Leonard made interior views that examine the social landscape of domestic spaces. The questions these artists explored—about photography’s ethics, truth, and power—continue to be considered today. Image: Helen Levitt, New York, 1972, dye imbibition print , Patrons' Permanent Fund, 1995.36.99

History Reimagined showcases the work of three artists who use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to challenge our understanding of truth in photography. Through their thought-provoking explorations, the artists confront biases in AI algorithms, reimagine historical narratives, and question the boundaries between reality and fiction. In History Reimagined, photographic artists Todd Dobbs, Laura Rautjoki, and Phillip Toledano explore how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can shape our perceptions of truth. By harnessing AI, they challenge traditional notions of photographic authenticity, demonstrating how technology can both reflect and alter our understanding of the world. Photography has long been considered a tool for documenting and understanding the world around us. But as these artists show, the rise of AI forces us to reconsider the very nature of truth in image-making. History Reimagined invites us to examine the complex relationship between image-making, bias, and historical memory, and to ask ourselves: How do we define truth in a world where the lines between real and fabricated are increasingly hard to discern? Todd Dobbs’s work engages directly with the inherent biases embedded in AI’s algorithms. By prompting the AI with the phrase “photograph of a typical American,” Dobbs highlights the limitations and stereotypes that persist. Despite running the same prompt countless times, the resulting images are uniformly American, white, and suburban—a visual echo of dominant cultural norms. Dobbs is interested in AI’s ability to generate, interpret, and transform opening doors to imaginative realms that challenge conventional boundaries. In contrast, Laura Rautjoki’s The Image of a Woman subverts historical portrayals of Finnish women, using AI to create alternative depictions. Drawing from her own identity and the historical imagery of Finnish women, Rautjoki’s work reimagines femininity outside of the male-dominated narratives that have shaped much of art history. Using AI, she creates alternative perspectives on the portrayal of Finnish women, allowing them to break free from the viewer’s expectations Phillip Toledano’s Another America explores the fragility of truth in an age where the boundaries between reality and fiction are increasingly blurred. This series imagines an alternative version of New York City in the 1940s and 50s, telling a history that never was, built upon fictional stories penned by New York Times bestselling author John Kenney. In an era where AI-generated imagery can fabricate entire realities, Toledano’s work reflects on how easily visual evidence can be manipulated, offering a stark warning about the power of images to shape our beliefs, our identities, and even our understanding of the past. As a curator, I am particularly interested in how these works provoke conversation at the intersection of art and technology. And as a center for photography, I feel that we must acknowledge and respond to the technological innovations that are transforming the medium. History Reimagined is a conversation about the future of image-making, the impact of technology on our visual culture, and the urgent need to critically engage with the images that shape our world. — Samantha Johnston, CPAC Executive Director & Curator Image: From the series Another America, © Phillip Toledano

Twenty years ago, in the South Bay region of San Francisco, the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project was established to address the impact of human activity on the diminished marshes of the Bay and the role wetlands play in protecting vulnerable communities from sea level rise. This expansive environmental project is the largest tidal wetland restoration project on the West Coast and is dedicated to converting over 15,000 acres of commercial salt ponds at the south end of San Francisco Bay to a mix of tidal marsh, mudflat, and other wetland habitats. Since the 1800s, the ecosystems of the tidal marshes have been replaced by salt ponds, and in her new book, Salt of the Earth: A Visual Odyssey of a Transforming Landscape (Kehrer), California-based photographer Barbara Boissevain documents the efforts being made to return these spaces to their natural state. She thinks of her book, which explores the nexus of art, science and environmental activism, as a “love letter” to the San Francisco Bay where she grew up and raised her two daughters. In Salt of the Earth Boissevain set out to document humanity’s impact on the environment and raise awareness of the need for preservation of pristine spaces. In addition to the salt industry’s impact on the biodiversity in these regions, the natural systems of the wetlands are a barrier to the encroaching sea level and work much better than the man-made levees that existed to trap the salt water and harvest the salt for the salt industry. Boissevain began the project in 2010 with aerial photography taken from a helicopter. After several years of documenting the salt ponds in this way, she began grouping the images in grids based on palette to present another angle of transformation to the landscape. The high salinity environment resulted in color schemes she has called ‘apocalyptic.’ Then in 2020 she began photographing from the ground at the region’s national wildlife refuge created in the 1970s, and at the Ravenswood salt ponds bordering the Meta/Facebook headquarters. On her website, the artist points out, “These images hint at the vast technology sector that protrudes from the horizon looming just on the other side of the ponds. The cracked surface of the earth looks almost like an alien planet juxtaposed next to the opulent, manufactured structures cocooning the social media headquarters. The dystopian nature of these images reflects the dissonance between man and nature that I see threatening our planet and the disproportionate influence these companies have on our future.” Barbara Boissevain is a contemporary visual artist and photographer, based in Palm Springs, California, whose work focuses on the impact of human activity on the environment. Nature’s ability to regenerate and reclaim human altered landscapes is a central theme in her work. Boissevain was born in Cleveland, Ohio and raised in Silicon Valley. She studied painting at Parsons School of Design in New York before immersing herself in photography, earning a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from San Jose State University. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe, including Mémoire De L’Avenir, Paris; the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA; Galerie Numero Cinq, Arles, France; the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland; and the David Brower Institute in Berkeley, CA. In 2009 Boissevain published her first book, titled Children of the Rainbow, which documented the humanitarian challenges facing Quechua communities in Peru due to climate change. In 2021 her work was featured on NPR’s “The Picture Show” in conjunction with the UN Climate Change Summit in Glasgow, Scotland. She was also featured on the PBS News show Something Beautiful In 2022. Boissevain’s photographs are in public and private collections, including the Google Corporate Art Collection, Sunnyvale, CA; De Pietri Artphilein Foundation, Lugano, Switzerland; and Galerie Huit, Arles, France.

Filter Photo is pleased to present Context 2025, our eleventh annual survey exhibition of contemporary photography. This year's exhibition was juried by Shana Lopes, PhD, Assistant Curator of Photography at SFMOMA, and features the work of 27 artists. "We make sense of the world through images. At its very best, a photograph doesn’t just show us what’s there—it reveals what we’ve overlooked. It reframes the familiar and gives the ordinary a touch of the uncanny. The photographs in Context 2025 do precisely that. They aren’t grand pronouncements or spectacles. They do not demand attention with force. Instead, they operate at a lower frequency, inviting us in with a quieter kind of resonance—the kind that lingers, reshaping how we experience the everyday. The artists in this exhibition train their lenses on living rooms, cars, kitchens, and porches—those in-between spaces where life accumulates in strange ways. Through their eyes, the absurd and the poetic intermingle, and the most unassuming moments become laced with pathos. Because if we are what we celebrate, we are also what we discard, what we pass by, and what we fail to notice. In a time oversaturated with images, these photographs remind us why we still need to look at the world around us. They reveal that meaning isn’t just found in the monumental but in the way light falls on a hand at the kitchen table, in the jagged, surreal silhouette of a tree trunk, and in the humor of a lone gate leading to nowhere. These photographs on view show us who we are, one quiet, absurd, beautiful frame at a time." —Shana Lopes About the Juror Shana Lopes, PhD, is an Assistant Curator of Photography at SFMOMA. Born and raised in San Francisco, she has curated or co-curated exhibitions such as Constellations: Photographs in Dialogue, Sightlines: Photographs from the Collection, A Living for Us All: Artists and the WPA, Sea Change, Zanele Muholi: Eye Me, and the upcoming 2024 SECA Art Award. Over the past sixteen years, she has gained curatorial experience at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Featured Artists Mark Almanza, Michelle Arcila, Filippo Barbero, Tracy Chandler**, Eli Craven, Anastasia Davis, Nykelle DeVivo*, Callum Diffey, Claudio Eshun, Jamil Fatti, Jane Flynn, Robin Glass, Luna Hao, Sharon Hart & Izel Vargas, Gabriela Hasbun, Alexander Iglesias, Zachary Kolden, Auston Marek, Andrew McClees, Mariana Mendoza, Andrea Orejarena & Caleb Stein, Jacob Wachal, Ian White, Rana Young, and Tako Young. *Juror's Choice, ** Honorable Mention Image: Luna Hao

he BDC's upcoming exhibition on celebrated photographer Jamel Shabazz offers a comprehensive look at his work from the 1970s to the early 2000s, including iconic photo albums, early images of his junior high classmates, and photography spanning fashion, street, and documentary styles. It highlights Shabazz's talent for capturing powerful stories of identity, resilience, and community from the streets of New York and beyond. "I embarked on my photographic journey 50 years ago as a curious 15-year-old kid coming out of Brooklyn, using my mother's Kodak Instamatic 126 camera. From 1975 to 2024 I have amassed quite a number of photo albums showing a wide range of images–from my original prints from the 1970's, to some of the very first black and white prints I developed in my makeshift darkroom. There are fashion, street and documentary work featured in all of the albums. " —Jamel Shabazz

The exhibition Seconds of My Life: Photographs from 1975-2024, by Brooklyn-based photographer Jamel Shabazz, offers a comprehensive look at his work, including iconic photo albums, early images of junior high classmates and photography spanning fashion, street and documentary styles. It highlights Shabazz’s talent for capturing powerful stories of identity, resilience, and community from the streets of New York and beyond. “I embarked on my photographic journey 50 years ago as a curious 15-year-old kid coming out of Brooklyn, using my mother's Kodak Instamatic 126 camera. My primary subjects during that time were my junior high school classmates, who were more than willing to pose for me. Back then, I would take the finished film to the local drugstore for processing, and return about a week later to see the results of my efforts. To my surprise, I made some pretty decent prints that I would then put into small photo albums and share with my friends. From that moment on, I developed a profound love for photography and preserving memories. From 1975 to 2025 I have amassed quite a number of photo albums showing a wide range of images–from my original prints from the 1970's, to some of the very first black and white prints I developed in my makeshift darkroom. There are fashion, street and documentary work featured in all of the albums”. — Jamel Shabazz Exhibition curated by Michael Kamber and Cynthia Rivera

Pace is pleased to present an exhibition of recent work by photographer Richard Learoyd at its 508 West 25th Street gallery in New York. On view from March 7 to April 26, the exhibition will feature a selection of photographs Learoyd produced with his custom-built camera obscura between 2018 and 2025. Deeply inspired by Dutch Golden Age painting, Learoyd’s latest works take viewers on a journey through intimate moments and intricate details, examining the relationship between subject, light, and space. The photographs on display explore a range of subjects, from hauntingly evocative portraits to still-life compositions that breathe life into the simplest of objects. Learoyd’s unique photographic processes require an immense degree of technical precision, resulting in incredibly detailed, luminous prints with a tactile richness rarely seen in contemporary photography. Reflecting on the delicate interplay between light, shadow, and form, Learoyd’s work is imbued with a surreal, auratic presence that speaks to his enduring interest in the notion of collective photographic memory—the idea that a picture can be felt and understood on a subconscious level. The artist is renowned for his masterful use of light and his ability to capture the profound depth and stillness of the human experience.. “Light and space have always been central to my work," Learoyd explains. "I want to capture more than just an image; I want to convey a sense of time, intimacy, and presence—things that transcend the immediate and evoke a more timeless feeling.". Highlights in the exhibition, carefully curated by Learoyd, include a photograph of clasped hands, an ode to Alfred Stieglitz’s images of Georgia O’Keeffe’s hands from the first half of the 20th century. Also on view will be the artist’s most recent body of work, a series of photographs created using a new and transformative process of multiple impression printing layered with hand coated gesso on canvas. These multi-dimensional works showcase the artist’s exploration of depth, texture, time, and the relationship between photography and materiality.. In recent years, Learoyd has mounted solo exhibitions at the Fundación Mapfre Casa Garriga Nogués in Barcelona, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Getty Center in Los Angeles, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. His upcoming presentation at Pace in New York will coincide with AIPAD’s 2025 Photography Show at the Park Avenue Armory, where the gallery will organize a special program with the artist—further details will be announced in due course.

This exhibition of photographs by Denis Piel is an overview of his varied career. It includes his sensual and cinematic photographs for VOGUE and designers such as Donna Karan in the 1980s, and his abstract Padièscapes works, which are inspired by his organic sustainable farm in southwest France. Denis Piel was born in France in 1944 and his family moved to Australia at the end of the war. After beginning his career in Brisbane and Melbourne, he was encouraged to move to Europe and then New York where he began to concentrate on fashion. His photographs were brought to the attention of Condé Nast and his rise began. Immediately recognizable for their cinematic quality, his images were a sensational departure from the posed models of his predecessors. His always-sensual photographs tell a story which must be guessed at as several interpretations are possible. Often featuring reclining models lost in thought or engaged in mysterious narratives, Piel's photographs were more influenced by filmmakers such as François Truffaut and Stanley Kubrick than photographers. His star rose swiftly and he was soon the fashion photographer of the 1980s, shooting many celebrity portraits along the way. After a decade, Piel moved on to advertising and filmmaking and in 2002 he moved his family to the Château de Padiès in southwest France where he became seriously interested in sustainable agriculture. This newfound passion resulted in his colorful and abstracted Padièscapes photographs; work which celebrates nature in flowers and gardens. These images are a departure from the fashion pictures of Piel’s early career, but reflect his continued interest in the environment and humanity. In addition to his photography, Denis Piel has created film advertisements for Donna Karan and Anne Klein. In 1993, he directed his first feature-length documentary, Love is Blind. Piel's monographs include Moments (Rizzoli, 2012), Down to Earth (2016), Filmscapes (2020), and the upcoming Rosemary (2025). He was awarded the Leica Medal of Excellence for Commercial Photography in 1987 and his photographs are included in the permanent collections of The Victoria & Albert Museum and The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Image: Denis Piel, Joan & Nancy (Reading Time), Castle Howard, North Yorkshire, UK, US VOGUE, 1982

Bruce Nauman: Pasadena Years is a historical reflection on the prolific decade that established one of the most important contemporary artists of our time. The exhibition emphasizes the radical foundation of Nauman’s practice while he lived in Los Angeles between 1969-1979. Across the entire gallery and garden, works on view will include sculptures, installations, sound works, videos, works on paper, and editions. Pasadena Years notably marks Nauman’s first exhibition in Los Angeles in over 30 years and will include a text for a room that the artist is recreating for the first time since its debut at the earliest retrospective of his work, which originated at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1972.

Athens, GA based artist Mo Costello will present a new body of work considering issues of accessibility in homes, communities, and institutions. Her practice considers the social lives of objects and the traces they leave as their uses and contexts shift and evolve. The exhibition will feature photography, ready-made sculpture, and a permanent accessibility intervention in our building’s architecture. Mo Costello (b. 1989) is an artist and educator drawn to the social life of objects. Costello’s working practice revolves around the maintenance of small-scale, community-supported infrastructure for the visual and performing arts. Curatorial and studio-based efforts emerge - and often converge - from within this ongoing commitment to place-based inquiry and infrastructures of care. Mo is a recent recipient of residencies from Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2022) and Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (2024).

Abelardo Morell’s unconventional photographs provoke curiosity and wonder. Using optical science as well as illusion, he reimagines the world around us. Morell (American, b. Cuba, 1948) is best known for his use of the camera obscura process. A camera obscura is an ancient technology—a darkened room that admits light through a pinhole, projecting an image of the view outside onto the opposite wall. Morell’s innovation is in transforming everyday spaces into camera obscura: his projections interact with the room’s furniture and décor, and he photographs the results. Intermingling past and present, indoors and outside, these works encourage reflection on our relationship with memory, nature, and place. New Realities features sixteen of Morell’s inventive photographs, drawn from the Museum’s holdings. In addition to his camera obscura works, this exhibition will also highlight a selection of photographs from Flowers for Lisa. This varied series of floral still lifes alludes to philosophy, art history, and mortality through both physical and digital manipulations. Morell’s complex images subvert our expectations, uncovering new interest and beauty in familiar subjects. As he explains, “It’s encouraging to see strangeness come out of what we all know.”

Haverford College presents Eadweard Muybridge and Harold Edgerton: The Poetics of High-Speed Motion Photography, an exhibition of forty-eight photographic objects selected from the Fine Art Photography Collection. The exhibition’s centerpiece is works by Edward Muybridge (1830-1904) born in England and Harold Edgerton (1903-1990) born in Fremont, Nebraska. Both made important contributions to the art and science of photography that changed our fundamental understanding of reality. Photography means writing or drawing with light; the ability to create memetic images solely by the action of light. This process -part science and part art- was greeted with much enthusiasm and wonder upon its introduction in 1839 by its co-inventors, Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851) in France and William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) in England. The Daguerreotype named after its inventor was a one-of-a-kind image produced on a copper plate. The Talbotype or Collotype was a paper positive made from a paper negative. Neither of these photographic methods had the ability to stop motion or to capture the unseen. Both were impeded by the slowness of the emulsion to interact with light resulting in exposures of many seconds in the creation of the first photographs. This slowness limited early photographic subject matter to still-lives made in the studio or to scenes of nature or architecture made outdoors. After much experimentation both the Daguerreotype and the Collotype where able to capture the likeness of a person by the mid – 1840s. Muybridge’s corresponding use of the following photographic technological innovations in the 19th century included the invention of shutters, anastigmatic lenses, light meters and the standardization of the manufacture of this equipment and material made it possible for him to invent a 12-camera setup in 1872 that made sequential photographs of animals and people moving in rapid succession at the University of Pennsylvania from 1883-1887. Sequential photography was the precursor to Thomas Edison’s invention of the Kinetograph camera in 1890 and the Kinetoscope, which projected moving images, in 1892. Harold Edgerton (1903-1990) continued the evolution of highspeed motion photography in the 20th century. His principal contribution was the use of the stroboscope to study the movement of electric motors while a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology beginning in 1925 and culminating in his doctorate in 1931. The stroboscope generates brief, repeated bursts of light, which allow an observer to view ultra-fast, moving objects in a series of static, images, rather than a single continuous blur. By synchronizing strobe flashes with the motion being examined then taking a series of photos through an open shutter at the rate of many flashes per second, Edgerton invented ultra-high-speed and stop-action photography in 1931. His film Quicker’n a Wink won an Oscar in 1940 for Best Short Subject. The film about Edgerton’s work in stroboscopic photography was one of the ways that the public was introduced to this new method of photography. The publication of Flash in 1939 by Edgerton was another instance of introducing stroboscopic photography to a wider public during the centenary of the invention of photography. It was a how to book as well as a theoretical book about the use of this new tool. Between 1933 and 1966, Edgerton applied for forty-five patents for various strobe and electrical engineering devices. He obtained a patent for the stroboscope- a high-powered repeatable flash device- in 1949. By harnessing the speed of light to make ultra-high-speed and stop-action photography, Edgerton was able to photograph the speed of a bullet at mid-flight. Both Edgerton and Muybridge made possible photography’s ability to capture the unseen at the spur of a moment, which became the ethos of photography for much of the 20th century. Photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassai, Larry Fink and Lisette Model photographs are based on this way of seeing. Key images by the photographers mentioned above and books, manuscripts and pamphlets by Muybridge are included in the exhibition to provide insights into this most important transition in the technology and esthetics of contemporary photography.

Hans P. Kraus Jr. Fine Photographs is pleased to present Artists’ Studies: Photographs Made for Painters by Vallou de Villeneuve and Others 31 January through 30 April 2025. The exhibition opens in conjunction with Master Drawings New York and reflects the sometimes complex relationship between photography and painting with works by Vallou de Villeneuve, Félix-Jacques Antoine Moulin, Bruno Braquehais, Sydney Richard Percy, Gustave Le Gray, and others. The photographs on display date from the 1850s when painters were still wary of the recently invented medium which was perceived as a threat to their livelihoods. Featured are several important works by Vallou, including a standing nude Courbet is thought to have used as the source for his muse in the monumental canvas “L’Atelier du Peintre” in the Musée d’Orsay. Julien Vallou de Villeneuve (1795-1866) was a French painter, lithographer and photographer. A member of the Société héliographique, in 1854 he helped found the Société française de photographie. Vallou created a rich photographic catalog of costumes and poses to make his pictures more marketable to painters. His photographic works are most closely associated with the painter Gustave Courbet who during the 1850s used some of Vallou's photographs as source material for his paintings. The formal affinities between Vallou’s photographs and the central nude figures in Courbet’s Bathers (1853) and The Painter’s Studio (1854-55) are notable. Recent scholarship by Dominique de Font-Réaulx has revealed that Vallou and Courbet shared a sitter, Henriette Bonnion. Félix-Jacques Antoine Moulin (1802-1875) first trained as a painter with Ingres. By 1849 he was selling daguerreotypes of nudes from his Paris studio before he began making photographic prints. He listed himself as a specialist in academies, or artist’s studies—a polite term for nude studies that often bordered on the pornographic—that were intended for artists to use as substitutes for live models. The vase in this albumen print of “Emma” is by Jules-Claude Ziegler, an accomplished ceramicist, painter, and photographer. Gustave Le Gray’s (1820-1884) fine seascape, L’escadre française en rade de Cherbourg, was made with a single large glass negative. The photograph documents the official visit of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to celebrate the opening of the greatly expanded port of Cherbourg. On the invitation of Napoleon III, the royal couple and their retinue observed the French fleet’s maneuvers from the safety of their steam-powered yacht. This view depicts the French ships greeting the royal couple. Upon closer inspection, the ships aren’t the only element in formation. Behind the royal yacht is a three-mast French vessel, its upper rigging packed with dozens of standing sailors preparing to cheer and wave their hats in the air on signal. These agile sailors waving boisterously from the rigging of the fleet’s ships was what the artist Jules-Achille Noël recorded in his 1859 painting commemorating the event, Napoleon III Receiving Queen Victoria at Cherbourg, 5 August 1858, in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Sydney Richard Percy (1821-1886), born into a family of notable painters, made his debut at the Royal Academy in 1842. Percy is a choice example of the interaction of painting and photography. During the 1850s he took up photography to produce source material for his own paintings. Percy was unapologetic in his use of the medium, a highly unusual stance during a period when most artists went to great lengths to hide the fact that they used photographs as a method of organizing their canvases. On view is Percy’s fine albumen print from a collodion negative, Gypsy girls, as well as three albums of 66 of his additional artist studies. Created in the mid-nineteenth century with barely a nod to conventional practice, the photographs of nudes, branches of apples, and trees in L'Album Simart are filled with a great sense of purpose. Assembled circa 1856-1860, the album is the work of an unidentified photographer attributed to the circle of French sculptor Pierre Charles Simart (1806-1857). Large in format, this study of a male nude posed in a torqued gesture of dramatic action is charged with the same energy as a quick pencil drawing in an artist's sketchbook. With arms outstretched, head raised with eyes rolling heavenward, the model enacts a drama of physical and emotional strife, theatrics not uncommon in history painting. Image: Julien Vallou de Villeneuve (French, 1795-1866) Reclining nude, 1853

CLAMP is honored to present Flowers Drink the River, a solo exhibition by Pia Paulina Guilmoth—her first with the gallery. In this deeply personal body of work, Guilmoth documents the first two years of her gender transition while living in a rural, predominantly right-wing town in Maine. Her large-format photographs reflect beauty and terror in a world where queer existence can be at turns both euphoric and deeply perilous. Haunting nocturnes replete with moths, snakes, and owls, are animated by raw, animistic rituals, representing Guilmoth’s search for beauty, sanctuary, and resistance amid the wild landscapes and intimate relationships that define her life. Spanning themes of transformation, belonging, and defiance, Flowers Drink the River is an ode to trans women, queer kinship, and working-class survival in the backwoods of central Maine. Guilmoth’s photographs reject easy categorization—mud-drenched bodies intertwine in the dark of night, spider silk drifts across glowing landscapes, and nocturnal creatures move through the frame like quiet witnesses. A burning house rages in the distance with a calm white horse seemingly unawares. Friends piss from tree branches like a warm summer rain. These photographs inhabit the space between land and body, pleasure and threat, inviting viewers into a world where boundaries are blurred, and survival is a necessary act of creation. Guilmoth’s photographic practice is rooted in collaboration—both with her human subjects and the natural world. She constructs delicate sculptures from spiderwebs, flowers, and other found materials, then waits as the environment intervenes, letting wind, water, and light reshape her compositions. This meditative approach extends to her relationship with the animals she photographs, earning their trust over weeks and months before capturing their presence on film. “Each night for a week in August, I would sit in the tall, tick-infested grass behind the orchard, covered in Scent Killer Gold, wearing a ghillie suit, holding a tray full of crushed apples in one hand and a 30-foot makeshift shutter release cable attached to my 4 × 5 camera in the other,” Guilmoth recalls. “The same family of deer would get more comfortable with my presence each night. Eventually, they were eating the ripe fruit from my hands. The following Tuesday, I would have my first HRT consultation. I was keeping it a secret, knowing there was no way I could safely transition in this place, but also no way I could hide my changing body over the following months and years.” Guilmoth’s use of large-format photography is both a technical and emotional choice, emphasizing patience, precision, and physical engagement with the medium. “I have always embraced slowness in my life,” Guilmoth states. “Both in the place I live and the way I aspire to be. Art and being with people I love are the things that allow me to really exist in a moment.” The intricate process of setting up each shot, from building trust with wild creatures to manipulating natural elements, reflects the broader themes of her work: resilience, adaptation, and the search for beauty in unlikely places. At its core, Flowers Drink the River challenges the conventions of documentary photography. Rather than approaching her subjects as an outsider, Guilmoth photographs her own community—trans and queer people navigating life in a region that often denies their existence. The result is a body of work that resists voyeurism, instead offering an intimate, deeply felt portrait of chosen family, survival, and joy. “Resistance for me is saying: ‘You can try and take everything from me—healthcare, safety, affordable housing—but you can’t take away my joy and the ability to find beauty in my life,’” she explains. The exhibition is accompanied by a monograph of the same title published by Stanley Barker.

The Fahey/Klein Gallery is honored to present Reverie, photographs by Arthur Elgort. To celebrate his long career, this exhibition showcases Elgort’s spontaneous energy through expertly crafted photographs that have the unforced look of a personal snapshot. Born in New York City in 1940, Elgort discovered his passion for photography after initially studying painting at Hunter College. Finding the solitary nature of painting unfulfilling, he turned to photography and soon found his calling. His early work capturing ballet dancers in motion laid the foundation for his signature aesthetic: natural, unposed, and full of life. In 1971, his breakthrough came when British Vogue published one of his images, launching a career that would redefine the industry. At a time when fashion photography was dominated by rigid, studio-bound compositions, Elgort introduced a fresh, relaxed perspective. He encouraged models to move freely, embraced natural light, and brought his subjects into real-world settings—whether bustling city streets, sunlit gardens, or windswept beaches. His work captured fashion as it was meant to be worn: in motion, alive, and exuding energy. “Taking pictures is what I love and I like my subjects to be varied, a little bit of everything – fashion, jazz, ballet, my kids, landscapes, and even ‘street’ photography. I never want my work to be stuck in one category. Fashion might be what sells, but a girl on a subway could be fashion, a jazz musician in a club could be fashion, and a ballerina at the barre could be too. I’ve always like to integrate all of my interests into my photos and I think that’s reflected in this exhibit of nearly 50 years of my work.” – Arthur Elgort Over the past five decades, Arthur Elgort has not only become one of the most celebrated and imitated photographers in the world, but he has also redefined what fashion photography could be. From his iconic Vogue covers to his influential luxury-brand campaigns, his images remain as fresh and relevant today as ever. Reverie offers a rare opportunity to experience the breadth of his vision—a legacy that continues to inspire and shape the future of photography. Image: Kate Moss at Cafe Lipp, Pairs, Vogue Italia, 1993 © Arthur Elgort, courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

CLAMP is pleased to present “West,” an exhibition of recent photographs by Zack Seckler, continuing his signature aerial perspective, transforming vast landscapes into painterly compositions where land, water, and sky dissolve into near-abstractions. Seckler’s ability to distill the essence of immense terrains into fluid, almost dreamlike visuals, challenges traditional representations of the American landscape. His lens captures the interplay of organic forms and natural forces, revealing a world where the familiar dissolves into the unexpected, and scale becomes elusive. Like Alfred Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, Carleton Watkins, and other painters and photographers of the later part of the 19th century who ventured west to depict and explore America’s vast and uncharted landscapes, Seckler documents the Rocky Mountains, the arid Southwest, and more lush scenes in California. But unlike his predecessors, Seckler is equipped with imaging technologies and means of travel allowing him to record the same landscapes from vantage points and in details incomprehensible in centuries past. The artist’s approach bridges past and present, acknowledging the historical impulse to chronicle and celebrate the wilderness while employing a contemporary, almost abstract sensibility that shifts the focus from romantic documentation to commentary and interpretation. Seckler’s images reveal rhythmic patterns and unexpected color harmonies across various sprawling western terrains now touched by man’s footprint. The images embrace a surrealism of scale—where minute details, like the bend of a river or a lone animal’s tracks, become the focal points of vast, minimalist canvases. The textures of the land, shaped by erosion, water flow, and human intervention, take on a lyrical quality, transforming rugged topographies into soft, painterly gestures. Challenging the viewer’s sense of perspective, Seckler encourages an experience of the landscape as both intimate and infinite, structured yet ephemeral. The aerial vantage offers a view transcending the limitations of the human eye, inviting a reconsideration of the land’s scale and vulnerability. His compositions, at once serene and dynamic, speak to the power of nature and the imprint of time, making visible the otherwise imperceptible rhythms that define these remote and majestic expanses. Zack Seckler was born in Boston and studied psychology at Syracuse University. Then, traveling solo with a point-and-shoot camera in northern India, his mind opened to the visual world. Upon returning to Syracuse, he took coursework in photography at the renowned Newhouse School. With an internship in a Hong Kong photo studio and editorial work in New York City, he developed his vision for image-making. “West” is the artist’s third solo show at CLAMP.

In 1976, photographer MEM embarked on an arduous, self-assigned project with sociologist Dr. Karen Folger Jacobs to document the lives of women living in the high-security, all-female wing of the Oregon State Hospital in the city of Salem. The year before, Mark had photographed there on the set of the Milǒs Forman’s film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and she had met several women who lived on Ward 81 of the hospital. Hoping to better understand and represent their life experiences, Mark and Jacobs arranged to spend a month living alongside the women in Ward 81. The duration of their stay, and their extraordinary access to patients and staff, enabled the collaborators to produce a nuanced and compelling record of female psychiatric treatment in the United States during the mid-1970s. In 1978, Mark and Jacobs published the seminal book Ward 81, which revealed the often-porous line between sanity and mental illness for women relegated to the margins of society. In the words of Jacobs, “They are the women we might have been or one day become.” Mary Ellen Mark: Ward 81 greatly amplifies that earlier study. Most exciting are the newly discovered audio narratives that the women recorded with Jacobs, which have been integrated into a short film, Moonlight Heaven Black, made for the exhibition by Martin Bell, Mark’s husband. As well, the exhibition brings together never-before-seen prints, contact sheets, and rare archival materials. The original exhibition was organized by curators Gaëlle Morel and Kaitlin Booher for the Image Centre, Toronto, in collaboration with the Mary Ellen Mark Foundation, New York. It is accompanied by the publication Ward 81: Voices by Mary Ellen Mark and Karen Folger Jacobs, edited by Martin Bell, Julia Bezgin, and Meredith Lue (Steidl, 2023).

This exhibition, titled Recess, features the work of 2024 Saltzman Prize winner Keisha Scarville (American, born 1975). Scarville makes photographs that consider her personal experience of in-betweenness, exploring notions of diaspora, transformation, belonging, and loss. In her photographs, she creates spaces, stages, and still lives, often using clothing and textiles belonging to her late mother. When Scarville invokes her mother’s presence in her works, she creates alternate, liminal places that engage both memory and the possibilities of abstraction. In Recess, Scarville refers both to the hollow space beneath a flat plane and to any temporary pause or suspension. In this way, Scarville continues her exploration of thresholds. Neither here nor there, thresholds are spaces of becoming; they mark moments of “passing through,” suspended instants that are full of potential and prospects of the unknown. For Scarville, shadows function as these types of spaces. They are not only dark shapes that lack light and clarity, but also deep, productive zones where alternative temporalities and in-between narratives reside. In her photographs and installations, Scarville activates the shadow as a form in ways that require closer looking, deeper feeling, and the active negotiation of being. Recess is accompanied by a limited edition artist’s book by Keisha Scarville (published by CPW in collaboration with 1080PRESS).

During the 1970s and ‘80s, photographers Colleen Kenyon (American, 1951-2022) and Kathleen Kenyon (American, 1951-2023) were part of the movement of female artists who challenged the photographic establishment with innovative approaches to the medium. Colleen Kenyon was a pioneer in using hand coloring to enhance her portraits of herself and her sister in domestic settings; Kathleen Kenyon was adept at appropriating gender-specfic images of women from the mass media to create ironic photomontages. Beginning in 1981, the two sisters also served as directors of the Center for Photography at Woodstock, where they continued to advocate for the advancement of women in the arts and for artists of color. My Sister, My Self is curated by art historians Tom Wolf and Laurie Dahlberg. Organized by CPW, this retrospective features the Kenyons’ most iconic works, and is presented both at CPW in Kingston, NY, and at the Kleinert/James Art Center in Woodstock, NY. The exhibition materials are drawn from the archives of their works now held by CPW. This exhibition is accompanied by a hardcover catalog, My Sister, My Self: Photographs by Colleen Kenyon and Kathleen Kenyon with text by Wolf and Dahlberg, and CPW Curator Adam Giles Ryan

Higher Pictures presents more than 300 images from Keisha Scarville’s ongoing Passports portraits. This is the most comprehensive exhibition of the series since its inception in 2012. Working with reproductions of her Guyanese immigrant father’s earliest passport photograph at age 16, Scarville moves beyond their conversations to visually explore what it means to become American. The quotidian identification or ID photograph is a cultural calling card that becomes a powerful seed for understanding the complex strata of a life uprooted, replicated, and replanted a world away from where it began. Again and again, Scarville transforms his youthful likeness into enigmatic, almost sacred icons of a boy, a man, and a spirit. Alternately playful, unsettling, loving, and irreverent, these haptic, palm-sized objects are memento mori of imagined identities, harkening back to 19th century vernacular methods of hand-coloring and assemblage to turn simple photographic prints into elaborated talismanic pictures. Historically rooted in form but grounded in contemporary meaning, Scarville’s interventions on her father’s image evoke disparate personal modes of remembrance, everything from the physically intimate contact of photographic jewelry to playfully scribbled love doodles on an adolescent’s Pee Chee folder. The Passports move beyond sight into multidimensional sensory perception which calls to mind historian Geoffrey Batchen’s description of the daguerreotype in its case, “an object that continuously collapses sight and touch...into the same perceptual experience.” While her markings both obfuscate and enhance the image, “the [resulting] portrait we witness continues to be supported by the truth-value of its photographic base,” Batchen writes, “the epistemological presence of the photograph is strengthened by its perceptual absence.” Scarville’s application of pigment and collage elements does more than transform the appearance of the photograph. Her temporal handwork—at times minimal, at others painstakingly detailed—results in sensory-charged objects which require the viewer to spend more time with them in order to access meaning beyond the surface. As novelist Milan Kundera has written, “The degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.” In this moment when the immigrant experience is a divisively contested space, Scarville’s Passports are both poignant and political, foregrounding the individual experience and self-definition within a world of possibilities. -Carla Williams, 2025

The J. Paul Getty Museum presents María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold on view February 18 through May 4, 2025, an exhibition drawn from the artist’s family story that examines global histories of enslavement, indentured labor, motherhood, and migration. With these legacies as her backdrop, Campos-Pons foregrounds connections—between people, and between people and their environments. Organized collaboratively by the Brooklyn Museum and the J. Paul Getty Museum, María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold brings together over 50 works, including large-scale photographic grids and immersive installations, videos, paintings, and performance art documentation. While the artist’s photographs and installations are held in many collections on the East Coast and in Europe, this marks the first multimedia survey of her work since 2007, and the first opportunity on the West Coast to experience the breadth of the artist’s vision. “Campos-Pons’s vibrant works grapple with global histories of migration, relevant both to the Getty’s commitment to the preservation of world cultures, and to efforts by the Museum and our Department of Photographs to spotlight important contemporary voices and issues,” says Timothy Potts, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle Director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “We are thrilled to be the exclusive West Coast venue for this exhibition of María Magdalena’s inspirational and thought-provoking work.” Born in Matanzas, Cuba, in 1959, María Magdalena Campos-Pons draws from her personal and familial narratives, incorporating Yoruba-derived Santería symbolism to address interconnected historical and contemporary challenges. Her work reflects the experiences of her African and Chinese ancestors, as well as her life in Cuba, Italy, Boston, and Nashville, where she currently resides and serves as the Cornelius Vanderbilt Endowed Chair Professor of Fine Arts at Vanderbilt University. The exhibition is divided into six sections, all of which highlight forms of connection. The figures, flora, and fauna that abound in Campos-Pons’s art encourage deeper appreciation of the details that surround us. She compels us to look closely, critically, to behold our environs—and each other—with an eye towards forging and repairing relationships, even in fractured times. Among the featured works in the exhibition are Umbilical Cord (1991), a poignant artwork about the women in her family made while the artist was separated from them for more than a decade due to political tensions between the United States and Cuba, Spoken Softly with Mama (1998), an altar-like installation that honors the many generations in her family and in the African diaspora who labored as domestic workers, as well as powerful videos, performance footage, richly hued large-scale glass mobiles, intricate collages, and vibrant watercolors. Unique to the Getty’s installation of the touring exhibition is Elevata (2002), an expansive photographic grid on loan from the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which will be featured in a section of the exhibition that deals with the “extreme weather” of racial oppression and climate catastrophe. Campos-Pons is a 2023 recipient of the MacArthur Foundation “genius” award and in December 2024 was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by ARTnews for her efforts to show “how the past is embedded in us, the people we hold dear, and the objects we collect.” “For decades Campos-Pons has committed herself to deploying art as a tool of healing,” notes Getty curator Mazie Harris. “As Los Angeles mourns all that has been lost in the recent wildfires and comes together to help rebuild, we hope that the exhibition can serve as a space for solace and for reflection on our relationships with nature and with each other.” Complementing the exhibition is an audio guide that includes Campos-Pons speaking about works in the show in both English and Spanish. María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold is organized by the Brooklyn Museum and the J. Paul Getty Museum. The exhibition is curated by Carmen Hermo, formerly Associate Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, now Lorraine and Alan Bressler Curator of Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Dr. Mazie Harris, Associate Curator, Department of Photographs, J. Paul Getty Museum. Major support from Alicia Miñana and Rob Lovelace. Image: The Calling (detail), 2003, María Magdalena Campos-Pons. Diptych of Polaroid Polacolor Pro photographs. Collection of Jonathan and Barbara Lee. Courtesy of and © María Magdalena Campos-Pons

DORF proudly presents new work by multidisciplinary artist Táhila Moss in her solo exhibition, Without Borders / Sin Fronteras. Through this powerful exhibition, Táhila explores the intricate dynamics of land sovereignty and the enduring impact of colonial frameworks on ecosystems, Indigenous communities, and relationships with the natural world. Táhila’s work transcends human narratives by weaving together the interconnected lives of animals, plants, water, air, and land. Her photographs document life surrounding various locations along the United States/Mexico colonial border and includes scenes of the landscape, community gatherings, acts of care, and environmental resistance. Also depicted, the jarring presence of fences, borders, and other human-made structures emphasizes the profound disruption of ecosystems by exploitative entities who prioritize profit over the sacredness of the natural world. The imposition of human-made borders, both as a conceptual model and a physical barrier, reflects a colonial worldview that enables commodification of the natural world by fragmenting habitats, obstructing wildlife migration, and creating imagined hierarchies between humans and nature. These boundaries sever ancient ecological and migration pathways, weaken biodiversity, and undermine the delicate balance required for ecosystems to thrive. In her photographs, Táhila highlights sacred sites of the Esto’k Gna Nation (Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe) in the region widely known as Brownsville, Texas, and brings attention to their fight for sovereignty. This work is an expansion of Táhila’s ongoing project, created with support from World Monument Fund and Magnum Foundation as part of the 2022 World Monuments Watch, to document the lifeways and political actions of the Esto’k Gna people around Garcia Pasture. The World Monuments Watch is a proven tool for raising awareness about heritage places in need of protection while galvanizing action and support for their preservation. As guardians and stewards of Turtle Island, Indigenous practices center on reciprocal relationships with Mother Earth. Care, respect, and reciprocity are offered in exchange for what the land provides, fostering a sense of mutual responsibility. Without Borders / Sin Fronteras invites viewers to reimagine and heal their relationship with the natural world, and to honor the deep, sacred ties between Indigenous communities and the land.

1000 Dreams seeks to change harmful refugee narratives through a storytelling project that tells the stories of 1000 refugees across the world. 1000 Dreams is entirely authored by storytellers with a refugee background. Witness Change, the organization behind 1000 Dreams believes that for the narrative to change, the lives of refugees have to be authentically represented – their voices must be heard. They have hosted a series of intensive storytelling workshops, training people with refugee backgrounds on how to make portraits and conduct interviews. With these new skills, the refugee storytellers collect testimonies from other refugees. Their stories amplify the voices of refugees and provide insights into their individual lives and the emotional impact of current policies and attitudes. About Witness Change: Witness Change (@witness_change) produces highly visual storytelling on seldom-addressed human rights abuses. The non-profit organization exists to improve life for marginalized groups by amplifying their stories. Their projects have reached more than 250 million people worldwide and have been on the cover of National Geographic and Time magazine. Witness Change’s current projects include Where Love Is Illegal, stories of discrimination and survival from the LGBTQI+ community, and In My World, a campaign to amplify stories of people living with mental health, psychosocial, intellectual, and cognitive disabilities.

In 1955, two photographers received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation for U.S. survey projects: Robert Frank and Todd Webb. Frank’s cross-country trip by car would result in the celebrated book “The Americans.” Webb was awarded a grant to walk, boat, and bike across the United States to depict “vanishing Americana, and the way of life that is taking its place.” Though the men had no knowledge of each other during the application process, both secured a recommendation from famed photographer Walker Evans, and both completed their cross-country surveys—though in radically different ways. Frank’s resulting work became a landmark text in the history of photography, and Webb’s project remains almost entirely unknown. Robert Frank and Todd Webb: Across America, 1955 brings together both 1955 projects for the first time. In some instances, Frank’s and Webb’s images are strikingly similar—both men took photographs of the highway and dim, smoky barrooms. Because each was unaware of the other’s work, these similarities can be traced to popular cultural trends and shared ideologies. Both men, after all, engaged in projects that challenged the idealistic purity of the “American Roadtrip.” Radically different photographs made in the same location reveal the photographers’ diverse perspectives and approaches. Frank’s grainy, off-kilter style was matched with his harsh examination of the darker side of American life. An immigrant born in Switzerland, Frank (1924–2019) harnessed his outsider perspective. The tender, carefully composed images created by Detroit-born Webb (1905–2000) celebrated the individual oddities of the American way of life. Ultimately, comparing the work of these photographers reveals the complexity of their projects and the impossibility of capturing a singular vision of “America.” Image: Between Lovelock and Fernley, NV 1956 © Todd Webb Archives

Dawoud Bey: Street Portraits is the first standalone museum show to explore a transformational phase of the celebrated photographer and 2017 MacArthur Fellow Dawoud Bey's work. The show features 38 portraits he took between 1988 and 1991, when he collaborated with Black Americans of all ages whom he met on the streets of various American cities. He asked a cross section of people in these communities to pose for him, creating a space of self-presentation and performance in their urban environments. Bey used a large format tripod-mounted camera and a unique positive/negative Polaroid film that created both an instant print and a reusable negative. Bey considers photography an ethical practice that requires collaboration with his subjects. As part of every encounter, he gave each person a small black-and-white Polaroid print as a way of reciprocating and returning something to the people who allowed him to make their portrait.. Street Portraits is organized by the community the photographs were taken in: Brooklyn; Washington, D.C.; Rochester; Amityville; and Harlem. Defying racial stereotypes, the resulting photographs reveal the Black subjects in all of their psychologically rich complexity, presenting themselves openly and intimately to the camera, the viewer, and the world. Image: Young Man Resting on an Exercise Bike, Amityville, NY, from the series Street Portraits, 1988. Pigment print. Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago. © Dawoud Bey

For Shore|Lines, Chicago-based artist Regina Agu (b. Houston, Texas) presents a large-scale panoramic installation at the Museum of Contemporary Photography as part of an exploration of placemaking and community memory—tracing sites and legacies of historical Black North American migration through an expansive tradition of the panoramic form. This Joyce Foundation Award (2023) special project and collaboration, focuses on connecting the landscapes, materiality, and human histories of the Gulf South region to the Great Lakes. Drawing on methods of field work and landscape photography, Shore|Lines examines waterways and natural environments as defining sites of Black life and belonging. This investigation grounds itself in close conversation with Chicago-area land and Great Lakes region environmental advocates and ecologists of color—community historians and academics, members of sailing clubs, librarians, archivists, geographers, and families that live and work along these long-storied bodies of water. The exhibition includes an artist book” documentation that Agu refers to as a “field guide,” connecting her Midwest and Gulf South experiences of the landscapes. Shore|Lines is proud to bring together discourses of Black geographies, landscape photography, and site-specific land histories, using the methodology of landscape panorama as a format for relating ideas and themes of Black cultural memory connected to place. This project uniquely explores and documents a nuanced assemblage of sociocultural geographies and cultures that connect to the Great Migration of the 20th century, in a way that is rarely considered within the wider visual lore or heritage narrative of the Great Lakes. Asha Iman Veal, MoCP Associate Curator. Regina Agu (American, b. Houston) is a visual artist, writer, and researcher based in Chicago, IL. Agu was raised between the United States, the Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, South Africa, and Switzerland. Her interdisciplinary practice includes conceptual and material inquiries into memory, history, representation, and Black geographies. Her work has been exhibited at the New Orleans Museum of Art, New Museum, The Drawing Center, the High Line, Project Row Houses, FotoFest, the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, among other venues. Agu is a 2023 Joyce Award winner with the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago. Agu has received an Artadia Houston award, grants from Houston Arts Alliance, The Idea Fund, a SEED grant from The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and the Center for Art and Social Engagement at the Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts and Project Row Houses fellowship at the University of Houston for her research project Friends of Emancipation Park. Agu holds a BS from Cornell University and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Luke Oppenheimer is a documentary photographer and visual storyteller from rural Oklahoma, with a background in agroforestry and sustainable farming. His work explores the relationships between rural communities, the landscapes they inhabit, and the wildlife they coexist with, revealing how these forces shape each other’s destinies. Having lived and worked extensively across Latin America, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia, Luke’s photography is deeply rooted in personal connections and immersive storytelling. Ottuk chronicles life in a small shepherding village in the Tien Shan mountains of Kyrgyzstan. What began as a month-long project in 2020 grew into a five-year immersion, during which Luke was welcomed into the community and adopted by a local family. The series captures the villagers’ struggles and joys, shaped by their dependence on livestock, resilience against unforgiving winters, and the enduring traditions that guide their way of life.

Sebastião Salgado, reflecting on his experience with the Nenets during his Genesis project, said, "There is so much love in their lives: wife to husband, husband to wife, for their children. Everything around them makes their life very rich, and they tell each other such nice stories." This captures his deep admiration for their connection to nature and to each other, reinforcing the spiritual and essential nature of their existence. Sebastião Salgado’s passion for the Nenets stems from his broader quest to reconnect with untouched territories and communities deeply rooted in nature. After witnessing profound human suffering in his previous projects, such as Exodus, Salgado embarked on Genesis to restore his faith in humanity and nature. The Nenets, a nomadic people of northern Siberia, live in harmony with their environment, dependent on reindeer for survival and maintaining traditions despite the harsh Arctic climate. Their life, defined by reindeer herding, is one of simplicity but rich with love, spirituality, and connection to the land—elements that deeply resonated with Salgado. During his time with the Nenets, Salgado was struck by their resilience, adaptability, and intelligence, particularly the symbiotic relationship between them and their reindeer. He admired how they endured extreme cold, managed to navigate vast white landscapes, and preserved their culture in a rapidly modernizing world. Through his lens, Salgado captured the beauty of their way of life, which he saw as a powerful reminder of humanity's lost connection to nature and the land. This project renewed his sense of hope and purpose, showcasing the importance of preserving the world's untouched cultures and ecosystems, while highlighting the Nenets’ deep spiritual ties to the natural world, something Salgado believes is essential for our own survival.

Long before the term “power couple” found its way into English lexicon, dynamic duos had been making their mark on U.S. history. “Powerful Partnerships: Civil War-Era Couples” sheds light on the stories and faces of five couples whose work and lives shaped the nation around them during tumultuous times. Featuring photography by the iconic Mathew Brady Studio, the exhibition introduces visitors to the exploits of Nathaniel and Mary Banks, John and Jessie Frémont, Ulysses and Julia Grant, George and Ellen McClellan, and Charles and Lavinia Stratton (better known to the public as Mr. and Mrs. Tom Thumb).

Daniel Cooney Fine Art is beyond thrilled to announce our third solo exhibition (our first in Santa Fe) by Christopher Makos titled PARTY. The exhibition features unseen vintage work from the artist’s early career. PARTY features a selection of over 40 unique vintage photographs, that celebrate the artist’s ethos: daring, climactic and outrageous. Makos has spent the past five decades in the company of legendary cultural icons, most famously as confidant to Andy Warhol and as a key member of the Factory from 1976-86. His position in this notorious circle gained him access to everyone that was anyone including models, celebrities and underground royalty. The likes of Divine, Steven Tyler, Debbie Harry, Peter Berlin, Richard Gallo, Georgia O’Keefe and other tantalizing figures mingle on the gallery walls. Never satisfied as just an observer Makos brazenly includes multiple self-portraits in this exhibition. Young surfer boy Makos can be seen in languid repose with long blonde hair, loyal dog “Snake” at his side, sporting a pair of cowboy boots and nothing else. In another image, the photographer is positioned bare-assed between two mirrors, camera in hand, admiring himself from behind. In a photograph titled Self-Portrait I, 1970s, a nude Makos, seen from the chest down “tucks” exploring his androgynous side in a mirrored hotel room. Perhaps even more exciting are numerous one of a kind darkroom compositions including double portraits of hustlers, artists, drag queens, nude muscle boys and more. Equally compelling is the original contact sheet from Makos’s infamous “Andy in Drag” photoshoot revealing the Father of Pop Art in a curly wig and white bedsheet complete with Makos’s mark ups in grease pencil. Makos is the author of 18 books including White Trash (1977), Warhol/Makos In Context (2007), Christopher Makos Polaroids (2009) and Everything: The Black and White Monograph (2014). His work has been published in Interview, Rolling Stone, House & Garden, Connoisseur, New York Magazine, Esquire, Genre and People. His works have been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, the Tate Modern, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The National Gallery and The Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao.

Emerging from Micah Cash’s photography series and photo book of the same name, this exhibition focuses on the built and natural environments as seen through the windows of Waffle House restaurants. Captured from locations across the southeastern United States, these images contemplate the physical and social environments and commerce that surround each location of the southern cultural icon. The natural landscapes beyond the windowpanes are as diverse as the perspectives and stories of each guest at the tables. Yet the similarities of the restaurants’ interiors echo across states and time zones. The images look out from the restaurant’s iconic booths, past the signature midcentury pendant lamps and make viewers newly conscious of buildings so commonplace they often go unseen. Each guest, waiting for their hashbrowns, becomes witness to the intertwined narratives of economic stability, transience and politics. The familiar, well-worn interiors make us think about what we have in common. Yet the differences in environment call to mind the different ways we experience structures built and felt. This exhibition will premiere a newly commissioned time-based media component of the series. This video realizes Cash’s directive to “look up” through prolonged footage of views and sounds from three Waffle Houses. The video and its soundscape disrupt the nostalgia of the still photographs, which the audience animates with actual or imagined memories of a Waffle House meal. Instead, they emphasize a long, time-based vision of the surrounding landscape and architecture.

“While trying to accommodate the growing needs of an expanding, and very thirsty civilization, we are reshaping the Earth in colossal ways. In this new and powerful role over the planet, we are also capable of engineering our own demise. We have to learn to think more long-term about the consequences of what we are doing, while we are doing it. My hope is that these pictures will stimulate a process of thinking about something essential to our survival; something we often take for granted—until it’s gone.” – Edward Burtynsky "I wanted to understand water: what it is, and what it leaves behind when we're gone. I wanted to understand our use and misuse of it. I wanted to trace the evidence of global thirst and threatened sources. Water is part of a pattern I've watched unfold throughout my career. I document landscapes that, whether you think of them as beautiful or monstrous, or as some strange combination of the two, are clearly not vistas of an inexhaustible, sustainable world." – Edward Burtynsky (Walrus, October 2013) "The project takes us over gouged landscapes, fractal patterned delta regions, ominously coloured biomorphic shapes, rigid and rectilinear stepwells, massive circular pivot irrigation plots, aquaculture and social, cultural and ritual gatherings. Water is intermittently introduced as a victim, a partner, a protagonist, a lure, a source, an end, a threat and a pleasure. Water is also often completely absent from the pictures. Burtynsky instead focusses on the visual and physical effects of the lack of water, giving its absence an even more powerful presence." — Russell Lord, Curator of Photographs, NOMA

The San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) Art in City Hall program, in partnership with PhotoAlliance, are proud to present Metaphors of Recent Times: A Dialogue of the Personal, the Political and the Cultural, an exhibition that features artwork from PhotoAlliance’s INSIGHT/INCITE 20/20 portfolio, alongside works by 24 artists who have created work in response to the portfolio. Metaphors of Recent Times will be on display on the Ground Floor and North Light Court at City Hall through June 20, 2025. The exhibition features a wide range of incisive visual perspectives from artists of diverse identities and backgrounds, each responding to the issues of our times.. A public reception to celebrate the opening of the exhibition will be held on the Ground Floor of City Hall on Thursday, January 16, 2025, from 5 – 7 p.m.. “PhotoAlliance has been a vital force in the local arts community for over 20 years, providing a platform for photographers to engage with and reflect on the world around them,” said Ralph Remington, Director of Cultural Affairs. “The Arts Commission is proud to collaborate with PhotoAlliance to present this timely and thought-provoking exhibition at City Hall. Metaphors of Recent Times highlights how art can serve as both a mirror to our current socio-political landscape and a powerful catalyst for activism and change.”. The exhibition’s themes are rooted in PhotoAlliance’s 20th Anniversary portfolio of limited edition prints by local, regional, and international photographers. Curated by PhotoAlliance founder and creative director Linda Connor, the set of 20 prints was conceived as a distillation of the creative responses artists have made to the upheaval seen in our political, cultural, environmental, and personal spheres in recent years. INSIGHT/INCITE captured images of hope, challenges, resilience, and humanity and included work from renowned photographers such as Binh Danh, Mercedes Dorame, Lewis Watts, J. John Priola, Amanda Marchand, Adrian Burrell, among many others.. Metaphors of Recent Times expands on the themes of INSIGHT/INCITE and includes new work that respond to the themes explored in the portfolio. The artists included were juried by photographers Linda Connor, Lewis Watts, and exhibition curator Beth Davila Waldman from a pool of 128 artists who responded to a call for artists held in the fall of 2024. Artists were asked to submit a trio of images that would expand and deepen the dialogues provoked in INSIGHT/INCITE.. “The inspiration behind Metaphors of Recent Times was compelled by the desire to provide an extended platform for the various themes and concerns voiced by the INSIGHT/INCITE 20/20 portfolio,” says exhibition curator Beth Davila Waldman. “The call for artists really showed how resonant these themes are, and we are excited to highlight the spirit of our city’s inclusivity with a group of emerging and established artists, combined with the impact of presenting this selection of work in San Francisco’s City Hall.”. “We are thrilled to collaborate with PhotoAlliance on this exhibition,” states Carolina Aranibar-Fernandez, SFAC Director of Galleries and Public Programs. “Metaphors of Recent Times provides a lens into the complexities of our time, capturing the turbulence of recent years while simultaneously highlighting hope and resilience. Through the camera, eyes of local, regional, and international artists, the work reminds us of the importance of capturing these stories.”. The exhibition will feature work by Pablo Tapay Bautista, Renee Billingslea, Barbara Boissevain, Kennedi Carter, Mima Cataldo, Yu-Chen Chiu, Katie Cofer, Mark Coggins, Izzy Cosentino, Kelly Fogel, David Gardner, Stuart Goldstein, Christine Huhn, Judi Iranyi, Strele Laurin, Anni Lopponen, Darcy Padilla, Eric Robertson, Lance Shields, Nina Sidneva, William Mark Sommer, Liz Steketee, Rusty Weston, and Harry Williams.. Works from the INSIGHT/INCITE 20/20 folio are by Wesaam Al-Badry, Lisa K. Blatt, Leon Borensztein, Adrian Burrell, Jessica Chen, Sarah Christianson, Marna Clarke, Linda Connor, Binh Danh, Mercedes Dorame, Ed Drew, Germán Herrera, Marie-Luise Klotz, Wayne Levin, Amak Mahmoodian, Amanda Marchand, Paccarik Orue, J. John Priola, Zack Schomp, and Lewis Watts.

David Goldblatt: No Ulterior Motive is a major traveling retrospective exhibition that spans the seven decades of this South African photographer’s career, from the 1950s to the 2010s, demonstrating Goldblatt’s commitment to showing the realities of daily life in his country. The exhibition and accompanying publication bring together roughly 150 works by Goldblatt from the collections of the Yale University Art Gallery and the Art Institute of Chicago—two major Goldblatt repositories—including his early black-and-white photography and his post-apartheid, large-format color photography. Also included in the exhibition are photographs by some of Goldblatt’s peers, such as Ernest Cole, Santu Mofokeng, and Jo Ractliffe, as well as a generation of younger South Africans, many of whom Goldblatt mentored, including Lebohang Kganye and Zanele Muholi, placing Goldblatt within a broader and intergenerational network of photographers. This ambitious project honors the life and career of an artist who used his work to celebrate his country’s working-class people, the landscape, and the built environment. On view through June 22, 2025, David Goldblatt: No Ulterior Motive highlights the artist’s commitment to documenting daily life in South Africa, particularly during apartheid. This major traveling retrospective traces Goldblatt’s career from his early black-and-white photography to his later color prints, capturing the impact of racial segregation. Image: David Goldblatt, Miriam Diale, 5357 Orlando East, Soweto, 18 October 1972, 1972, printed later. Carbon ink print. Yale University Art Gallery, Purchased with a gift from Jane P. Watkins, M.P.H. 1979; with the Leonard C. Hanna, Jr., Class of 1913, Fund; and with support from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. © The David Goldblatt Legacy Trust

Nearly 60 years after The Beatles performed their final concert at Candlestick Park, Beatlemania is back in the Bay. Featuring more than 250 personal photographs by Paul McCartney, along with video clips and archival materials, this exhibition offers a behind-the-scenes look at the meteoric rise of the world’s most celebrated band. The images capture the period from December 1963 through February 1964 and the band’s journey to superstardom, from local venues in Liverpool to The Ed Sullivan Show and worldwide acclaim. Photographs of screaming crowds and paparazzi show the sheer magnitude of the group’s fame and the cultural change they represented. More intimate images of the band on their days off highlight the humor and individuality of McCartney and bandmates John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. Rediscovered in the artist’s personal archive in 2020, these images offer new perspectives on the band, their fans, and the early 1960s, as seen through the eyes of Paul McCartney. Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–1964: Eyes of the Storm is organized by the National Portrait Gallery, London, in collaboration with Paul McCartney. It is curated by Paul McCartney with Sarah Brown for MPL Communications and Rosie Broadley for the National Portrait Gallery, London. The presentation at the de Young museum is organized by Sally Martin Katz.

Conversations at a party in Oakland in 1932 changed the history of photography. At that gathering, several now-iconic Bay Area figures — including Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and Edward Weston — banded together to form Group f.64, a collective dedicated to “true” photography and the rejection of the prevailing style of Pictorialism, which mimicked painting. The group’s name was technical, referring to the camera lens setting that permits the greatest depth of field, but their mission was creative: to make photographs of startling clarity and beauty that rivaled art made in other mediums. Although Group f.64 lasted for less than a year, its legacy endured, marking the Bay Area as an epicenter for modernist photography. Around Group f.64: Legacies and Counterhistories in Bay Area Photography takes the work of this influential collective as a nexus from which to examine other local developments in the medium. The exhibition begins with a selection of pictures in the gauzy Pictorialist style, which every member of Group f.64 practiced before turning to the crisp, sharply focused compositions for which they are best known. The second gallery includes work by all eleven members of the collective made around the time they joined together. Beyond that, the exhibition branches off in related but varied directions, including an exploration of the link between Group f.64 members and the poet Langston Hughes and a presentation of contemporary artist Tarrah Krajnak’s work in dialogue with that of Weston and Adams. The final gallery serves as a visual and thematic counterpoint to those that precede it, featuring street photography from the 1970s to the present that reveals the wilder side of San Francisco. Image: Jim Jocoy, Muriel with bruised knees, 1980, courtesy of the artist and Casemore Gallery

“Although the result is obtained by chemical means, the little work it entails will greatly please ladies.” So wrote one of photography’s inventors, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (1787–1851), about his eponymous daguerreotype in 1839. Daguerre’s words, which associate women with idleness, are clearly misogynistic. Yet in a backhanded way, Daguerre predicted the pivotal role women would play in photography since its invention in the 1830s. Undaunted by photographic chemistry—and often neglected or derided by their male peers—women have made huge contributions to the development of the medium across a variety of genres. In the nineteenth century, photography was more accessible than established artistic disciplines like painting and sculpture because it was new and thus free from conventional training that historically prohibited women. It was relatively inexpensive to start and could be practiced at home with makeshift darkrooms set up in closets or bathrooms. Yet even with fewer barriers to entry, women faced their share of constraints in a male-dominated field. Expectations of gender often dictated the themes they could pursue, encouraging portraiture and still life rather than photographs of war and exploration. Women took up photography in increasing numbers in the twentieth century, and by the 1930s, some of the most successful photographers in the world included Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange, and Imogen Cunningham, all on view in this exhibition. Women in Focus, drawn from The San Diego Museum of Art’s permanent collection (which merged with the Museum of Photographic Arts in 2023), allows for a fuller account of the medium’s history by highlighting how women have shaped photography from the mid-nineteenth century to today. Image: Trude Fleischmann, Sibylle Binder (detail), ca. 1932. Gelatin silver print. Museum of Photographic Arts at The San Diego Museum of Art, Gift of Michael and Joyce Axelrod, M.1993.012.001. © Trude Fleischmann

Over the last four decades, image-editing software has radically transformed our visual world. The ease with which images and text can be digitally generated and altered has enabled new forms of creative experimentation, while also sparking philosophical debates about the very nature of representation. Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film examines the impact of digital manipulation tools from the 1980s to the present, for the first time assessing simultaneous developments and debates in the fields of photography, graphic design, and visual effects. Featuring over 150 works, the exhibition traces the emergence of distinctive digital aesthetic strategies, relationships to realism, and storytelling modes. The nearly 200 artists, designers, and makers in Digital Witness illuminate today's visual culture where digital editing tools are easier to access than ever before.

Navigating the Waves: Contemporary Cuban Photography traces the evolution of photography in Cuba from the 1960s to the 2010s. The exhibition looks at contemporary Cuban photography from its role in promoting the Cuban Revolution after Fidel Castro’s 1959 overthrow of the Batista government to engaging in social and political critique following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. In subsequent years, Cuban photographers created powerful personal expressions by exploring individual identity, the body and spirit, Afro-Cuban heritage, and the margins of society, all while navigating the changing prescriptions and proscriptions of official cultural policy. Showcasing 100 images, Navigating the Waves: Contemporary Cuban Photography celebrates the Museum's acquisition of some 300 photographs from Chicago-based collectors Madeleine and Harvey Plonsker. Image: Alberto Korda, Heroic Guerrilla (Guerillero heroico), 1960, printed 1995, gelatin silver print, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, museum purchase funded by Dan and Mary Solomon. © Estate Alberto Korda

The Hood Museum of Art will present the first major solo museum exhibition of photographs by Chemehuevi artist Cara Romero, titled Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Living Light). The exhibition will be on view at the Hood Museum from January 18 through August 10, 2025, and will feature over 50 works, including several never-before-seen photographs, and site-specific installations that will invite the viewer behind the scenes to experience the sets of Romero's most iconic photographs. An exhibition catalogue co-published by the Hood Museum of Art and Radius Books will be released in June 2025. The exhibition is curated by Jami Powell, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Indigenous Art at the Hood Museum of Art. Says Romero, "The Hood Museum of Art under the leadership of curator Jami Powell and director John Stomberg is an excellent example of how an American museum can create meaningful and positive impacts on Native community, representation, and living artists. When offered my first major solo show to commence at the Hood, I cried because I never imagined this was possible for a Native woman photographer in her 40s. I am so honored to collaborate with this institution and the people making it a major force in sidelining preconceived notions about Native American art." Adds Powell, "Cara Romero is an immensely generous storyteller, and her images invite people into complex and transformative dialogues about the histories and lives of Indigenous peoples. Romero's photographs provide opportunities for audiences to recognize the humanity of Native Americans and Indigenous peoples and ask questions they might otherwise be afraid to ask." Image: Cara Romero, Zenith, 2022 © Cara Romero

Guest curated by Wendy Ewald, Susan Meiselas, and Laura Wexler, along with Kristin Taylor, MoCP Curator of Academic Programs and Collections This exhibition will feature works in the MoCP permanent collection that are included in the recent and groundbreaking publication titled Collaboration: A Potential History of Photography. The book was created by a group of artists, art historians, activists, and scholars—Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Wendy Ewald, Susan Meiselas, Leigh Raiford, and Laura Wexler—and published by Thames and Hudson in 2024. It is an extension of a project that these five authors have collaborated on for over ten years, in which they reassess a range of photographs and projects that portray stories of humanity and social movements to decenter the photographer as the only author of the image, and to emphasize the act of photographing as an inherently collaborative process in which many parties are involved. By sharing both artists’ statements and excerpts from interviews with people depicted in photographs, they question whether memories align: Did both sides remember the moment in the same way? How did the photographed feel about the photograph’s life after it circulated through art markets, print media, and online? And what role might the photograph have played in perpetuating harmful or liberatory narratives about specific histories, places, or individuals? The works—both historical and contemporary—are presented in clusters focused on topics, to highlight and propose questions about photographed moments of coercion, friendship, exploitation, community, and violence. The exhibition will also feature a reflection space for the audience engagement, as part of the project’s ongoing effort to consider the history of photography as a living and evolving entity that is unfixed and expanding as we learn more about the people, communities, and histories that images depict. MoCP is supported by Columbia College Chicago, MoCP Advisory Board, Museum Council, individuals, private and corporate foundations, and government grants. The 2024–2025 exhibition season is sponsored in part by the Efroymson Family Fund, Henry Nias Foundation, The Rowan Foundation, Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation, Pritzker Traubert Foundation, Comer Family Foundation, and Venable Foundation. This project is partially supported by a CityArts grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. MoCP acknowledges support from the Illinois Arts Council. Image: Wendy Ewald, Self-portrait reaching for the Red Star sky –Denise Dixon, from the “Portraits and Dreams” series, 1975-1982

“Life without photographs is no longer imaginable. They pass before our eyes and awaken our interest; they pass through the atmosphere, unseen and unheard, over distances of thousands of miles. They are in our lives, as our lives are in them.” – Lucia Moholy, A Hundred Years of Photography, 1839–1939 After opening its doors to the public in 1949, the George Eastman Museum quickly became known as one of the most important venues dedicated to the collection and care of photographs. At the time of its opening, it was one of only two American museums to establish a photography department, and this early commitment to the medium has inextricably bound the institution to the history of photography itself. Life with Photographs: 75 Years of the Eastman Museum explores the many ways in which photographic objects have come to shape our everyday lives. The exhibition encompasses broad cultural histories and image-making practices, from pre- photographic experimentation to critical advances that challenge our conceptions of the medium. While the objects on view highlight certain strengths in the museum’s holdings, lesser-known works are included to illuminate unexpected pathways into this rich and diverse collection. The museum’s holdings have been formulated through decades of gifts and purchases, and its distinguished exhibition history reflects the varied interests of its curators over the past seventy-five years. This presentation nods to this history while offering distinct perspectives on the medium from the vantage point of the twenty-first century. Curated by Jamie M. Allen, Phil Taylor, Daniel Peacock, and Louis Chavez, Department of Photography. Major support for 75th Anniversary exhibitions provided by the Rubens Family Foundation. Image: Acid Rain © Ming Smith

This exhibition is the first US survey of the work of Kunié Sugiura, an artist whose boundary-defying engagement with the photographic medium spans over sixty years. Born in Nagoya, Japan, in 1942, Sugiura came to the United States in 1963 to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she majored in photography. After graduation, she relocated to New York and has lived there ever since. Sugiura’s practice embraces a hybrid approach, blending various mediums and expressing her bicultural identity. The balancing of dualisms —Japanese/American, organic/human-made, and painting/photography — defines her work. Sugiura has stated that her cross-fertilization of photography with painting and sculpture partly stems from her desire that photography be taken seriously as an art form. The exhibition charts the arc of Sugiura’s long career, beginning with undergraduate work from her Cko series that reflects her sense of isolation as a foreign student in Chicago. Prints made after her move to New York in 1967 demonstrate her use of canvas as a support and new process of working on a large scale. Her Photopaintings from the 1970s take on multidimensional, sculptural qualities, pairing painted and photographic panels with wooden elements. Photograms — images made without a camera on light-sensitive material — that she first created in 1980, capture a wide range of subjects, including flowers and portraits of other artists. Sugiura’s compositions made from X-ray negatives in the 1990s and 2000s combine unrelated pieces from various sources that were cut and pasted together to create unique configurations. Throughout her career, Sugiura has willfully made artworks that “break with conventions and traditions of both painting and photography.” Despite this inherent rebelliousness, such gestures do not overwhelm Sugiura’s vision to create dynamic and original hybrid forms in which the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Image: Kunié Sugiura, Azalea, 1970

LACP is thrilled to announce a solo exhibition by Matthew Finley, whose work imagines the world as it should have been: A world where no queer person feels ashamed for who they love, who they are and how they want to present themselves. In this moment, when people in power insist on marginalizing, isolating and denouncing queer communities, LACP insists on elevating love and acceptance. Matthew Finley’s work imagines the world as it should have been: A world where no queer person feels ashamed for who they love, who they are and how they want to present themselves. In this universe, family support of one’s love is a given, rather than a possibility, or, we could say, an impossibility. In his poetic photographic projects, Finley provides coordinates for how life in this world would be. This solo exhibition, which depicts several series from the past decade, chronicles how Finley reimagines found images and objects, encouraging his staged subjects to discover the joy of nature, as well as a self-consciousness that never seeks to conceal or mask itself, visualizing how we package ourselves for others and the emotional states that result. Whether in fictive family albums or expansive analog projects, his photographic perspective remains intimate and vulnerable. Finley positions male bodies in compositions that echo photographic histories, in which the male subjects become a focal point of the viewing eye, a source of fascination and desire–and that desire quietly comes to the fore to insist on its rightful place. The emotional burden at the core of these works informs their shapes, perspectives, light and configurations. They are both haunting and haunted, charting a path from rejection to liberation by way of friendship and love. Desire, in these works, becomes a core element of vision; whether it is the desire to be close to another body or the desire to be fully accepted. In that sense, Finley’s work negotiates lived experiences and offers them as an invitation for the viewer, to become an active participant; re-imagine relationships and their histories alongside those captured in the frame, and insist on joy and love as an antidote for judgment, exclusion and isolation in our current world. Image: hoto by Matthew Finley, We couldn’t stop kissing on our wedding day. 2024, glitter and varnish on archival pigment print from vintage found photograph.

In Pictures for Charis, American photographer Kelli Connell reconsiders the relationship between writer Charis (pronounced CARE-iss) Wilson and photographer Edward Weston through a close examination of Wilson’s prose and Weston’s iconic photographs. Connell weaves together the stories of Wilson and Weston with her own and enriches our understanding of the couple from her contemporary Queer and feminist perspective. This exhibition features recent portrait and landscape photographs by Connell along with classic figure studies and landscapes by Weston from 1934–1945 one of his most productive periods and the span of his relationship with Wilson. Using Weston and Wilson publications as a guide, Connell and her partner at the time, Betsy Odom, traveled to locales where Wilson and Weston lived, made work, and spent time together creating new artworks in the process. Image: ​Betsy, Lake Ediza, ​2015, ​© Kelli Connell

When Langston Hughes Came to Town explores the history and legacy of Langston Hughes through the lens of his largely unknown travels to Nevada and highlights the vital role Hughes played in the Harlem Renaissance and beyond. James Mercer Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was born in Joplin, Missouri. Hughes studied at Columbia University in 1921 for one year and would eventually become one of leading writers of the Harlem Renaissance. A writer with a distinctive style inspired by jazz rhythms, Hughes documented all facets of Black culture but became renowned for his incisive poetry. The exhibition begins by examining the relationship of this literary giant to the state of Nevada through a unique presentation of archival photographs, ephemera, and short stories he wrote that were informed by his visit to the area. The writer’s first trip to Nevada took place in 1932, when he investigated the working conditions at the Hoover Dam Project. He returned to the state in 1934, at the height of his career, making an unexpected trip to Reno, and found solace and a great night life in the city. The presentation continues with work created by leading artists of the Harlem Renaissance who had close ties to Hughes, including sculptures by Augusta Savage and Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, and paintings by Beauford Delaney, Aaron Douglas, Norman Lewis, and Archibald Motley, Jr., among others. The range of work on display foregrounds the rich expressions of dance, music, and fashion prevalent during the influential movement. The final section of the exhibition features contemporary artists who were inspired by Hughes and made work about his life. Excerpts from Hughes’s poems and short stories are juxtaposed with related works of art, demonstrating how his legacy endures in the twenty-first century. Isaac Julien, Kwame Brathwaite, Glenn Ligon, and Deborah Willis are among the artists whose works are included. Julien, for example, in his renowned series Looking for Langston Hughes reimagines scenarios of Hughes’s life in Harlem during the 1920s. His black-and-white pictures are paired with Hughes poem No Regrets. Similarly, Brathwaite’s impactful photographs highlight the continuation of the Harlem Renaissance through the Black pride movement of the 1960s and are coupled with the poem My People. Finally, Glenn Ligon’s black neon sculpture relates to Hughes’s poignant poem Let America Be America Again, which both leave viewers to ponder the question of belonging in America.

Can a photographic portrait inspire political imagination? Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination examines how photographers and their sitters contributed to the proliferation of Pan-African solidarity during the mid-20th century. Embracing the international spirit of the time, the exhibition gathers striking pictures by photographers working in Central and West African cities. They created images of everyday citizens, dazzling music scenes, and potent manifestations of youth culture that reflected emerging political realities. Photographs by Jean Depara, Seydou Keïta, Malick Sidibé, and Sanlé Sory portray residents across Bamako, Bobo-Dioulasso, and Kinshasa at a time when the winds of decolonial change swept the African continent in tandem with the burgeoning US Civil Rights movement. The exhibition also spotlights James Barnor and Kwame Brathwaite—photographers living in Europe and North America who contributed to the construction of Africa as a political idea. Contemporary works by artists such as Samuel Fosso, Silvia Rosi, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby show the enduring relevance of these themes. Brimming with possibility, Ideas of Africa: Portraits and Political Imagination embraces the creative potential of the photographic portrait and its political resonance across the globe. Image: Sanlé Sory. Traveller (Le Voyageur). 1970–85.