Presence: The Photography Collection of Judy Glickman Lauder arrives at Southampton Arts Center as a dense, lucid argument for photography’s power to hold life in place. On view from July 25 through September 27, 2026, the exhibition draws from Judy Glickman Lauder’s singular collection and brings together roughly 100 photographs by about 70 artists, spanning portraiture, landscapes, reportage and street photography.
Rather than following a strict chronology, the show organizes images around the idea of presence itself: the sense that a photograph can certify that someone stood there, that a place existed, that a moment mattered. That premise gives the exhibition its emotional range. A tender portrait by James Van Der Zee speaks differently from a Dorothea Lange roadside scene or a Gordon Parks image shaped by the pressures of race, labor and justice, yet all of them insist on the reality of human experience.
The collection reaches across major 20th-century traditions, from Pictorialism and social documentary to Surrealism and street photography. Works by artists including Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Imogen Cunningham, Danny Lyon, Susan Meiselas, Inge Morath, Edward Steichen and Todd Webb create an exhibition that feels less like a survey than a conversation across time. The effect is cumulative: joy, grief, faith, endurance and wonder appear not as abstract themes but as conditions of being seen.
Judy Glickman Lauder’s role as collector and humanitarian shapes the project’s tone. Her holdings, now promised to the Portland Museum of Art, reflect a long commitment to images that register the human condition without sentimentality. The exhibition, co-organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Portland Museum of Art and curated by Anjuli Lebowitz, also connects to an Aperture book and free educational brochure, extending its reach beyond the gallery walls.
At Southampton Arts Center, Presence reads as both anthology and reminder: photography remains most powerful when it makes absence feel briefly, insistently visible.
Image: Mario Giacomelli (Italian, 1925–2000) Io non ho mani che mi accarezzino il volto (There Are No Hands to Caress My Face), 1961–63 Gelatin silver print, 11 7/8 x 15 7/8 in. Portland Museum of Art, Maine. Promised Gift from the Judy Glickman Lauder Collection, 6.2018.17 Courtesy Archivio Mario Giacomelli © Simone Giacomelli
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