Declan Haun: Between Fact and Feeling, on view at Joseph Bellows Gallery from September 19 to October 31, 2026, presents photographs by the gifted photojournalist and perceptive observer of American life who worked at a time when the boundaries between documentary photography, journalism, and personal expression were becoming increasingly fluid. His photographs have the immediacy of eyewitness accounts, but they are also distinguished by a remarkable sense of composition, timing, and an understanding of human emotion. Haun began his professional career at the Charlotte Observer at the age of twenty-one. In 1963, he moved to Chicago, where he worked for the next fifteen years as a freelance photographer represented by the influential Black Star photo agency.
The social and political upheavals of the 1960s provided Haun with some of his most consequential subjects. He photographed the Civil Rights Movement in the South and Midwest, the 1963 March on Washington, the Selma to Montgomery March, political campaigns and conventions, and the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Yet, Haun was rarely interested in spectacle alone. His attention was often drawn to the individual within the larger event, a gesture, an expression, or a moment at the edge of the crowd that revealed something more intimate about the history taking place around him. Haun described his approach simply: My pictures are not very complex. I try to make them simple statements of fact or feeling.
In 1964, John Szarkowski included Haun's photograph Justice, taken in 1963, for the Museum of Modern Art's landmark exhibition The Photographer's Eye. The image, showing a young civil rights worker demonstrating in Monroe, North Carolina, appeared in numerous exhibitions and publications urging support for the civil rights movement throughout the decade. Beyond his work for the printed page, Haun considered himself a fine-art photographer and printmaker. His carefully crafted prints reveal the importance he placed on the photograph as an object in its own right. From 1976 to 1982, Haun served as a picture editor at National Geographic, followed by a position at Smithsonian Magazine. He taught for eleven years at George Washington University and led workshops for younger photographers. Haun's photographs are held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, The High Museum of Art, the Chrysler Museum of Art, Smithsonian, and other institutions. His extensive archive is preserved by the Chicago History Museum. The exhibition opens with a reception on Saturday, September 19, from 5 to 8 pm at 7630 Girard Avenue in La Jolla, California. The show remains on view through October 31, offering visitors an opportunity to look again at Declan Haun, not simply as an accomplished photojournalist, but as an important photographer of postwar America.
Image: untitled, c. 1960. vintage gelatin silver print. 6 x 9 inches, 8 x 10 inch sheet © Declan Haun. Courtesy of the Joseph Bellows Gallery
Instagram 
Facebook 
Pinterest 
X / Twitter 