Flash: Heather Cleary at the California Museum of Photography centers on Thresholds (2025), a single photograph that turns a familiar documentary image into something stranger and more personal. On view from October 3, 2026, through February 21, 2027, the work reimagines the aerial “migration of the herd” sequence often used in nature films, replacing animals with small clay figures of early humans moving across an expansive landscape.
The idea emerged during a period of insomnia, when Cleary watched nature documentaries for comfort. Their sweeping views, measured narration and recurring images of animals moving together offered a kind of visual reassurance. Cleary borrowed that cinematic language but shifted its subject, creating a scene that feels at once prehistoric, staged and oddly familiar. The figures appear to belong to an ancient world, yet their arrangement carries the unmistakable logic of a film set.
Cleary’s work is shaped by an interest in cinema, model-making and the way materials change when they pass through a camera. She often builds clay figures specifically for the image, placing them within constructed or found environments and allowing scale, distance and perspective to do much of the storytelling. In Thresholds, the figures are small enough to seem vulnerable, but the surrounding space gives them a sense of collective purpose. It is unclear whether they are migrating, escaping or simply moving toward an unseen destination.
That uncertainty is part of the photograph’s appeal. Cleary offers just enough narrative information to activate the imagination, then leaves the larger event unresolved. The empty space around the figures becomes as important as their bodies, while the elevated viewpoint recalls both scientific observation and the detached gaze of cinema. The result is humorous without being dismissive, tender without becoming sentimental.
Presented as part of the revived Flash! contemporary art series, the exhibition gives focused attention to a single recent work. Curated by Kathryn Poindexter-Akers, it marks the sixteenth presentation in a program devoted to images that reward close looking and resist easy explanation.
Image: Heather Cleary, Thresholds (2025). Archival inkjet print, 45.5 x 57 inches. Edition of 3, 2 AP. Courtesy of the artist.
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