The phrase documentary photography was coined by one of its chief proponents: Walker Evans. “The term should be documentary style,” the master photographer reflected in 1971. “An example of a literal document would be a police photograph of a murder scene. You see, a document has use, whereas art is really useless. Therefore art is never a document, though it can certainly adopt that style.”

This interplay between documentary photography and art lies at the crux of PHotoEspaña 2022—as the photo festival celebrates its post-pandemic return and 25th anniversary, running through early September in more than 100 art venues throughout Madrid.

Whatever his rhetoric, Evans elevated the depiction of vernacular subjects to an aesthetic level that placed him in the photography pantheon among artful-minded peers like Alfred Steiglitz and Edward Weston. Evans inspired legions of documentary disciples—many of which appear in the PHE22 survey. While they reflect the unplanned, film vérité earmarks of documentary photography, these images now feature on museum and gallery walls.

The festival’s centerpiece is a vast survey, in two venues, called Sculpting Reality—a concept that sounds more manipulative than it is. “A photographer who adopts the documentary style aspires to reflect reality just as a sculptor does: by eliminating all superfluous pieces from the final work,” note guest curators Sandra Guimarães and Vicente Tolodi. “The show reviews the history of this genre through different times, circumstances, and geographic locations.”

The PHE22 offerings also cover lots of tangential ground—with a surprisingly strong tilt toward American photographers. Below are a few festival highlights.

Related: Photojournalist Susan Meiselas: How to be in the right place at the right time

Sculpting Reality

Circulo de Bellas Artes, Alcalá 42; Casa de America, Margués del Duero, 2; through September 3.

This exhibition has two parts: At Casa America is a historic survey of documentary pioneers—including Walker Evans, Helen Levitt, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, and Robert Frank—with subjects ranging from anonymous strangers to iconic celebrities (JFK, Marilyn Monroe) bound together by honest portrayal, free of artifice. 

Part two, at Circulo de Bellas Artes, surveys a wider range of contemporary projects expanding the genre, from Joel Meyerowitz’s early color work to Susan Meiselas’s forthright series on Carnival Strippers to the architectural studies of Bernd & Hilla Becher. Some of the lesser-known contemporary works, of prosaic scenes shot in a straight-on style, beg the question of whether they do belong on museum walls—but that’s all part of the debate. “Together they form a collection of images,” argue the curators, “that reflect on the narrative capacity of the documentary and its relationship with truth.”

The Sixties

CentroCentro, Plaza de Cibeles, 1; through October 2.

A massive show depicting a tumultuous and colorful decade, The Sixties is comprised of printed photography, scanned and reprinted on wallpaper-style sheets covering the walls of CentroCentro (which also hosts a grand tribute to pop art stars including Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein on a separate floor). The photographs are drawn from the dominant media of the era—books, posters, album covers, and most notably print magazines—at a time when television was just creeping in. 

There’re plenty of period hallmarks: hippies, biker gangs, space travel, rock & roll iconography. The show’s sections reflect hot topics that still resonate today: Our Bodies, Ourselves (women’s self-determination); Black and White (civil rights struggles); Paris, Prague (student unrest and Russian aggression); and News from a Changing World (civil wars and superpower tensions).

A large segment depicts the era’s most divisive conflict: “Vietnam, where photos make the citizenry witness atrocities happening thousands of miles from their newsstands,” note the curators. “In a way, the United States lost that war in the illustrated pages of magazines.” As an ode to printed photography, the survey salutes a stunning era as well as a vanishing art form.

Sebastião Salgado and the Royal Collections

Palacio Real de Madrid, Calle Bailén, s/n; through September 4.

One contemporary photographer who continues to thrive in the realm of print journalism as well as the art world is Sebastião Salgado, whose large-scale naturescapes anchor this survey. In Sebastião Salgado and the Royal Collections, they’re woven into a “dialog” with the works of some 20 landscape photographers from the 19th century—commissioned to document the world’s beauty spots by Queen Isabella II of Spain—including Charles Clifford, William Atkinson, and Jean Laurent. Together the image makers depict scenes from a world still unspoiled by humankind, ancient yet vulnerable, living reminders of creations in the balance.

PHotoEspaña 2022 runs through September 4 in more than 100 venues throughout Madrid.

The post Where art and documentary meet: PHotoEspaña 2022 preview appeared first on Popular Photography.

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If you ask this editor what’s better than summer in Europe, the only acceptable answer is summer in France, specifically. Throw in a legendary photography festival and that might just be la crème de la crème. This summer, Les Rencontres d’Arles, a historic photography festival, is back after weathering the pandemic, running from July 4 through September 25 in the southern French town of Arles.

Related: How to tell a story with your travel photography

What is Les Rencontres d’Arles?

Arles is known as “the capital of photography,” and art buffs may know it as one of the homes of Van Gogh. The annual festival has taken place since 1970, consisting of exhibitions and workshops on all things photographic. It’s credited with elevating photography to a fine art form, and here art and life are intertwined. Exhibitions take place in venues throughout the city, which are often historical spaces such as a 12th-century cloister.

Over the years, Les Rencontres d’Arles photography exhibition has drawn some of the medium’s biggest names, the roll call reading as a who’s who: Ansel Adams, Cecil Beaton, Richard Avedon, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Irving Penn, Annie Leibovitz, Gordon Parks…need we go on?

Though photography has historically been a male-dominated space, the festival has in recent years been working to spotlight women and minority artists. This year’s focus continues that commitment, with a variety of work by women, emerging talent, and historical figures on view.

Visiting Les Rencontres d’Arles

Les Rencontres d’Arles photography exhibition runs from July 4 to September 25 in Arles, France with a variety of artist exhibitions and workshops for practicing photographers. An exhibition day pass starts at 29 € online and 34 € at the box office; those under 18 are free. Workshops vary in price. Tickets are for sale at multiple locations throughout the city; see this link for more information.

The town of Arles has a train station, making it easily accessible from other cities such as Avigon, Aix-en-Provence, as well as Marseille for those flying in. Train tickets are available through SNCF. 

5 exhibitions worth viewing 

Cartographies du corps, Susan Meiselas & Marta Gentilucci, at Eglise Saint-Blaise

To be a woman is a complicated thing. Always too much, never enough, and between the prison bars of perfection, we must also stay eternal. In Cartographies du Corps, Susan Meiselas and Marta Gentilucci explore the concept of aging, presenting the idea that to do so is sacred—but not lacking in vivacity.

“Meiselas and Gentilucci partnered to capture in images and sound the vital force that inhabits these bodies, the intensity of their past lives and the enduring hope of the life that remains to be lived, against the representation of old age as the absence of opportunity, or even illness, loneliness, and deprivation.”

Songs of the sky: Photography and the cloud, Curator: Kathrin Schönegg, at Monoprix 

As a photographer, I have long held a fascination with the sky and clouds. Particularly at sunset, when the dying light splashes them with pastel hues. Curator Kathrin Schönegg pulls together a collection of cloud photographs with the intent of also furthering the conversation about the digital cloud and its effects on climate and politics. 

“The cloud is not a romantic place up there. It is a network that constantly relocates our data. It is a machine through which artificial intelligence learns. It is also a techno-capitalist system that is lent material form by hard drives, cables, and computers. Similar to the way that clouds resonated in the beginning of abstraction in photography one hundred years ago, the way artists today interact with the cloud reflects the twenty-first century’s visions of the future.”

I have done nothing wrong, Mika Sperling, at Église des Frères Prêcheurs

How does one discuss family trauma? Germany-based Mika Sperling addresses the tumult of her childhood in this series, I have done nothing wrong. It’s a journey of seeking answers, reconciliation, and healing.

“Armed through vulnerability and braced by resilience, maintaining a keen awareness of the facts in order to reject violence, the artist expresses the crimes of her grandfather.”

I can’t stand to see you cry, Rahim Fortune, at Église des Frères Prêcheurs 

Amidst a father’s death, a global pandemic, and racial reckoning, an artist grapples with personal turmoil in the face of increasingly fraught political and moral tensions on a national scale. 

“It is an autobiography informed by history, where the healing of the author’s wounds and the reduction of the country’s fractures are at stake. If the work is inscribed in documentary tradition, it’s with a desire to redefine and update what is an image. The young photographer draws strength from vulnerability to create an intimate work in permanent dialogue with those around him.”

Water protectors, Bruno Serralongue, at Le Jardin d’Été

In this series, Bruno Serralongue documents the fight of the Sioux Indians to protect their sacred land at the Standing Rock reservation from the Dakota Access Pipeline. From the 2016 standoff between the Sioux, activists, and fellow nations against law enforcement, to today, Water protectors explores this ongoing conflict. 

Related: An intimate study of the female portrait

Workshops for the practicing photographer

Down by the river: between imagination and reality

August 8-12 

This workshop, led by Claudine Doury, will bring photographers to the Rhône, Camargue, and neighboring villages. You will work to prepare a series of images and spend the days shooting, editing, and discussing ideas with fellow participants, while learning how to convey sensibility, meaning, pace, and progression in a body of work. 

According to the workshop description, “Participants will consider the industrial ruins, residential area, riverbanks reshaped by human activity, and preserved natural spaces they visit as full-fledged subjects, the backdrop of a personal, intimate narrative or just a pretext to meet people.”

A shooting with Ambroise Tézenas

July 11-15

Led by Ambroise Tézenas, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Libération, Paris Match, and more, participants will explore the principal themes of distance and time. After a consultation with Tézenas, photographers will get to work creating by exploring natural spaces, urban places, and abandoned buildings before heading back to edit and cull a series. 

A shooting with Charlotte Abramow 

July 4-5

In this workshop, attendees will be challenged to create a shocking series inspired by daily life. Photographers will explore the ways the mundane is made intriguing, surprising, and unexpected.

A shooting with Ludovic Carème

July 6-7

Dive into the world of portraiture and learn how to create a compelling one. The workshop begins with a portfolio review by Ludovic Carème, and follows with a supervised portrait session focusing on lighting to create effects highlighting detail, shadow, and expression.

Laying the groundwork for a book

July 4-5, Fabienne Pavia

Do you dream about publishing a photobook? This workshop will show you the ropes. Participants will learn about developing the photographic narrative and the tensions, relationships, and interactions that must exist between images. The course will also delve into the practicalities and workflow of book design.

Exploring Arles

After you’ve enjoyed the festival and are feeling inspired, take yourself for a spin around town with your camera. Arles, a former Roman provincial capital, is rife with historical sites. Neither is it too far from the Camargue, where wildlife photographers will enjoy the iconic pink flamingos, black bulls, and white horses. Whatever inspires you, be sure to save your best shots—who knows, you may need one to enter in our Photos of the Day challenge.

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The natural reaction for many of us upon spotting an ant, termite, or other unseemly creature wandering around our homes is to run for a tissue—or the exterminator. However, despite their sometimes (literally) hairy appearance, insects are crucial to life on earth as we know it, and we are often oblivious to the magnitude of their impact. In a stunning new exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History, Extinct and Endangered: Insects in Peril, renowned British macro photographer Levon Biss aims to illuminate the underestimated impact and importance of the humble bug.

Related: An introduction to macro photography

Zooming in on a critical catastrophe

According to the museum, insects are the most varied group of animals, making up 80% of animal life. Scientists have already identified over a million different species, with still more to uncover. Unfortunately, due to human activity, including climate change, many invertebrates now find their survival threatened. With excruciating detail, the images hope to change the way visitors perceive insects—not as pests but as vital members of the community that make life as we know it possible.

“Take away the world’s mammals and the planet would not look much different; take away just the bees and other insect pollinators, the ants and termites, and life on land could collapse,” says David Grimaldi, curator of the exhibition and the Museum’s Division of Invertebrate Zoology.

Related: Best macro lenses for Canon

The photographs

The exhibition showcases a collection of 40 macro photographs—some of which are up to 4.5 by 8 feet—that put in stark contrast the insects’ lilliputian proportions with their outsized impact on the planet. Each image on display is a composite of up to 10,000 highly-detailed individual photographs, and the result of three weeks’ work with a special camera and microscopic lenses. Biss worked with bugs from the Museum’s research collection and hopes viewers’ takeaway is twofold.  

“There are two sides to this exhibition,” Biss says. “There’s the beauty and the celebration of these creatures. But there’s also a somberness, when you marvel at these insects and start to understand that they are already extinct, or close to being gone, and the reason for that is us, primarily. I hope people will walk away from this exhibition with a realization that these animals are too beautiful to be lost. They are too important to be lost.”

Visiting the exhibition

The pictures all feature endangered or extinct species, from the monarch butterfly to the nine-spotted ladybug. They are on display in the Akeley Gallery and East Galleria, and visitors have access through their general admission ticket to the museum.

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Peter van Agtmael has been obsessed with military conflict since childhood. A member of Magnum Photo, his career kicked into high gear at the age of 24 when he began covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as an embedded journalist. To this day he continues to document these conflicts and their impact, both in the Middle East and at home. His images are often accompanied by lengthy captions that occasionally take on a personal or narrative tone.

We caught up with Peter, whose recent show at the Bronx Documentary Center, “Look at the US,” spans two decades, and seeks to shine a light on the complexities of the post-9/11 era, which is certainly no easy task.

Here we talk about his initial attraction to war and what keeps bringing him back to conflict zones. We also touch on the current war in Ukraine, the importance of “fixers,” why captioning images is a must, how and when to involve yourself in the coverage or narrative, and why his next project will be (a little bit) on the lighter side.

Peter van Agtmael’s show, “Look at the USA” is up through June 26 at the Bronx Documentary Center in New York City. You can also pick up one of his recent photo books, including 2021’s aptly titled “Sorry for the War,” here.

Tell me about your most recent exhibition, “Look At The USA.”

It’s essentially a culmination of the last 16 years of work I’ve been doing, looking at fault lines in the post-9/11 American world order. And it’s a show that’s divided partly chronologically, partly thematically. It’s a tough, big subject to wrestle down. I think there were a few premises when I started making the show; one was how do I tell this history as I understand it? How do I tell the history as I saw it? Where does my personal history serve as a storytelling tool that’s useful and when is it more important to lean on how I perceive the era unfolding?

Beyond that, as I worked throughout these last almost two decades, there came up a lot of questions about not only what this country was becoming in the post-9/11 era, both at home and abroad, but what had led us to this point? What was the character of us as Americans that could allow us to go into these wars, both so recklessly and so ignorantly, and then ultimately still kind of specifically? What impact did that have on the culture, on the society, and what was it about the culture in society that led us to this point? 

How did this project start?

When I started this work in 2006, I was 24 and there was no plan, really. I didn’t anticipate what this would become. I started with the simple idea of wanting to go to cover the war in Iraq, which I saw as one of the formative moments of my generation. It followed in the wake of 9/11, which had a deep effect on me personally, just witnessing the world change and the world get shattered, or at least the world as I knew it. I just started with the simplest of plans; I thought it was going to be the formative war in my generation the way the Vietnam War was the formative war of my parent’s generation. [I was] not quite connecting the dots that when you are in a society that has an all-volunteer army, [one] that generally draws from the margins of society, actually, most people were just going to move on [from the war] very quickly. And so in some ways, it became that.

Related: Antigone Kourakou’s surreal exploration of nature & humanity, plus other photo books for summer

And the process essentially became that. What started with this simple idea, I want to cover this war, became [more about] who are we fighting and what’s the character of the Iraqi and Afghan people? What are these cultures? Where are these societies? Who are the people fighting these wars from the American perspective? Where do they come from? Then that raises questions about geography, which raises questions about class, which raises questions about race, and then all that intertwines with nationalism and militarism and politics and myth-making, and also this idea of manifest destiny and our history as an empire, both domestically and abroad. Long story short, I guess it’s a very simple question that led to a lot of very, very complicated questions. Questions that are difficult under the best of circumstances to reconcile—and maybe particularly difficult to visually reconcile.

So simultaneous to the taking of the pictures, writing and words became important, both to offer a context for what was happening and a personal context of why I was doing this thing. This became an exercise in questioning myself and laying out my own vulnerabilities and uncertainties, partly because I don’t believe in the authoritativeness of either photography or journalism. In talking about one’s own experiences and the flaws of moving through that experience, I guess I could trust myself better to try and tell the story [that way].

That being said, I tried to tell the story carefully. So, by using myself as a storytelling vehicle, I could go deeper into the history of these events as I saw them. Also, right around the events, [I could add context to] the things that can’t be photographed. What comes before? What comes after? What sometimes is happening can’t get condensed properly down to, one or two split seconds. In the end, it’s a show of hundreds of odd pictures. The books are a few hundred pictures in total, but what those amount to is really only a few seconds of time.

I know you’ve spent time embedded, were you with only the U.S. military or the Iraqi and Afgan militaries too?

I’ve spent more time embedded with the U.S. military for sure, but I’ve done small embeds with the Iraqi army and the Afghan army as well. But by the time [I was able to embed with them], I was turning my attention more towards the Iraqi and Afghan [citizens]—I was more interested in the civilian perspective than the military perspective. So I didn’t spend as much time with those militaries directly. I spent a lot of time with them when they were with the Americans because those militaries were very tied to one another. The American military was training the Iraqi and Afghan militaries throughout these wars. So I’d be with Iraq or Afghanistan military, but with the American army alongside them.

How did those embed experiences compare? What was it like being with the U.S. military?

The experience differs in so far as the American military, in general, is pretty bureaucratic and there was a system connected to embedding where you fill out certain forms and you email the right people on the chain of command, and you could get access to units on the battlefield for a certain amount of time.

From the early days of the war until about 2009, 2010 or so, the military was very open about their access. You could kind of get dropped off at a unit somewhere for a month or six weeks and they pick you up at the end. Until then, you’d have access to everything that unit was doing, as long as their commanding officer was on board with having an embedded journalist. Usually, they would put you with a company commander or platoon commander who was cool with the media.

But that access to the U.S. military didn’t last?

At some point, then those embed rules changed. They basically shut off all access to the battlefield, and especially to pictures of injured or wounded soldiers. That was a pretty dramatic choice and it really affected coverage. It would’ve, in theory, caused a controversy. But at that point, no one cared about the wars anymore. So while it was a big deal in the journalism community to some degree, because the war coverage had largely ended and people had moved on, it just kind of happened and that was that. Access was more or less cut off. Or if you got access, you’d get one or two days of access and you’d be escorted everywhere.

You couldn’t see the things one would necessarily want to see. Then when I did those embeds still, those pictures became to some degree about trying to find the cracks and the holes in the way the message was being controlled. 

What was it like being embedded with the Iraqi and Afghan militaries?

With the Iraqis and Afghans, it was much less formal, in a way. It was a question of who you knew and if you had a good fixer who knew some colonel who was willing to take journalists on. You could just kind of post up with them and they’d take you along. In those cases, you could kind of go as deep as you had the stomach for. But tactically, the U.S. military relies much more on force protection. They’re trying to fight, but they’re also trying not to die. So, the tactics are based around creating, in many ways, as low a risk situation as possible. Iraqis and Afghans are pretty different in that regard, tactically sometimes. It was a little bit more precarious, by and large. So I wasn’t doing tons of time [with those militaries] probably for that reason, because the risk level was high. By the time that option was open to me, I was also less interested in covering the front lines of the wars.

You’ve made many trips to the Middle East to cover the conflicts there. Tell me about what keeps bringing you back?

The Middle East? I mean, it’s a hard question. Partly, I’ve always been drawn to war since I was a child. I think a lot of young men, young boys, have an attraction to the military and the notion of war, but few pursue that path. Most people grow out of it in one way or another, or other priorities take form. For me, it was something that just…it always persisted. I really felt strongly, from an early age, and then with increasing intensity. It was something that, for whatever kind of dark and naive reasons, I needed to see for myself. Once I did see and experience it, I wanted more of it in a way, and that was, partly for ideological and political reasons, why I was good at this work. I believed in the task and the power of journalism and believed that it had something to contribute and something to say. Also, because I was a good fit, it made me feel like the person I thought I was supposed to be.

I was good at it. I’d never received that kind of, in a weird way, positive feedback; positive for something so troubling, and that was seductive. But over time, it took its toll emotionally and spiritually, and intellectually to some degree too, in the sense that I also started to get a little bored of it at some point. I was taking these enormous risks, but not getting this kind of… it wasn’t moving me forward in the photography or storytelling anymore. 

So, over time, I started easing out of it. Some bad experiences, near-death experiences, helped usher that along the way. I think it’s always going to be part of my life. I still cover conflicts to some degree, but not as aggressively on the front lines as I used to.

It’s always one of the unanswerable questions. What draws one again and again? I’ve never been able to sufficiently answer that for myself. It was something that was deep in me and now luckily is not nearly as deep in me as it was.

So, at a certain point, you transitioned from covering war to covering its impact. Can you tell me more about that transition?

Well, it was a transition, but it was always back and forth in a way, too. What I became interested in just kept expanding. As covering things at home became more and more interesting to me, the war part got slowly squeezed out. Then I would go back. At times it felt necessary to the work I was doing. 

I tried desperately to get in during the withdrawal from Afghanistan last summer. I’ll go back to Afghanistan finally in a month or so to finish the work I wanted to do then. During the withdrawal itself, that was a very, very dangerous time to go. I wasn’t particularly keen to be taking those sorts of risks but it was such an important, historical moment. The trajectory of these wars and my coverage of them, it seemed like a risk that I could justify taking for myself and my loved ones. Going to a place like Ukraine right now does not fit into that for me, because I have no history of covering that conflict.

If I had been covering it for the last eight years, it’d be one thing. I’d want to probably continue the work I’d already been doing. But I haven’t been. I didn’t feel it was appropriate to go and take those kinds of risks if I didn’t have a story I really deeply needed to tell. But the temptation is always there. Not to oversimplify it but I think it’s like the way someone who’s an alcoholic or a drug addict feels, a little bit like you can quit the thing but there’s always going to be a little devil whispering on your shoulder.

You mentioned Ukraine. Can you provide some insight, as much as you feel comfortable, about what it’s like to be a working photographer in an active war zone?

Every war has its own character to it. Embedding with the U.S. Military, for example, was very different than, say, embedding with Iraqi soldiers or doing stories about Iraqi or Afghan civilians, right? And sometimes, some places are, despite it being war, quite safe. Others are extremely dangerous. Sometimes that difference is just some invisible barrier you can’t even see. But the thing that holds true in all of them is that you have to know exactly what you’re getting into, where you’re going and who you’re going there with, essentially.

This is where fixers become the critical part of any journalist’s work. You really have to partner with someone on the ground who’s knowledgeable and not risk-averse, but also not a sort of reckless risk-taker, and who deeply knows the lay of the land. Hopefully, [with a fixer’s help] the powers that be can grant you more access because so much of photography is really about access.

Your photos tend to have an almost absurdly disorienting visual quality to them. And I mean that in the coolest way possible. Can you tell me a little bit about what you’re looking for when making pictures?

Yeah. I mean, it’s a good question. I don’t know if I’m looking for anything specific in a way. I’m definitely attracted to the absurd. I’m attracted to resolving chaos within a frame. The more the years go by, the more I’m attracted to complex images that say several things at once, sometimes things that seem to be in opposition to one another. I think I’m attracted to the challenge of resolving a complicated event into a coherent frame. It’s just difficult to do visually. It also offers a certain kind of spontaneity.

If there’s a lot going on in a picture, you could never be ahead of the action in a way. You just have to get yourself to that place and keep clicking and hope for the best. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t, but I like the moments in photography that force me to let go of my control of visualizing the scene. Those types of images that you mentioned are the kinds that really do that, where I’m never fully in control of what I’m photographing. But that being said, I think I like simple images as much as complex ones. I think that as one evolves as a photographer, as I’ve evolved as a photographer, I’ve gone from not being able to take complicated pictures to developing the skillset to do so.

But the thing that drew me to photography—the singular moment, the singular detail—it still attracts me equally to this day. There are many ways to tell a story in pictures and sometimes that relies on complicated images and sometimes [it’s] simple images. Pictures are very emotional. Sometimes they’re a little detached. Sometimes they’re absurd. Sometimes they’re for tasks. Sometimes you’re showing a big scene. Sometimes you’re just showing the details of somebody’s lips or hands. The more I dive into photography, the more I want to expand my visual language because ultimately, it’s all in the service of storytelling. I think complicated storytelling that nonetheless has a clear through-line, that’s the kind of storyteller I want to be doing and keep pushing forward.

You mentioned you’re headed back to Afghanistan in a month or so. Can you just give us a little peek into what you’re working on next? Do you have any other projects coming up?

I’ve been working on a book throughout the year with my partner that really looks at a lighter subject on the surface. It’s about the relationship in the U.S. between food and culture, and history and society. And so we’ve been finding a lot of little stories related to American food that speak to the larger questions of American identity. It’s a way of looking at a big picture question that always interested me, who and what are we as a nation, but coming at it from an angle that’s a little more accessible. 

I think part of the frustration with the more serious work—I mean, I think this work is serious too—is it has less appeal to someone who might not be a photographer. Ultimately, I’m chipping away at these dark stories over the last 16 years. I fear that when I try and pull them all together on my own terms, through the books and shows like this, they’re inevitably only reaching a very narrow audience. And so [this new project] is partly a storytelling tool to try and bring a broader audience into the things that I think are worth communicating. 

And then the Afghanistan trip is sort of the logical end in a way to this post-9/11 work that I’ve been doing, on some level. The post-9/11 era, it’s here to stay. It was an inflection point in history that everything kind of emanates out of. But with the end of the war in Afghanistan, I think a certain phase of this era did end, and a new one is now beginning to unfold. But with the Taliban back in control of the country and the ruins of what was left behind, it kind of seems to be a symbolic end of the work.

That’s why I want to go back.

The post Peter van Agtmael grapples with chronicling the post-9/11 era appeared first on Popular Photography.

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We’re back with a fresh batch of excellent photo shows to check out in the United States as the summer temperatures heat up. This month’s column features a mixture of historical and contemporary, including intimate images of jazz singer Billie Holiday, a career-spanning retrospective of photographer William Klein, a group exhibition that highlights emerging Black talent, a celebration of some of photography’s most influential female shooters, and a two-person show that documents New York City during the early days of the pandemic from two perspectives. 

Billie Holiday at Sugar Hill: Photographs by Jerry Dantzic

In 1957, during Billie Holiday’s week-long residency at the Sugar Hill Nightclub in Newark, New Jersey, photojournalist Jerry Dantzic was given special access to document the performer. Captured just two years before her death, the images on view showcase an expansive view of the private and public life of the iconic performer. The exhibition includes rarely seen images of Holiday with her son, her godchild, and her pet chihuahua, Pepi. The pictures are accompanied by commentary from author Zadie Smith, along with objects including Dantzic’s Leica M3, a 1957 copy of SEE Magazine that featured the photos, and other ephemera. The collection of images highlights Holiday’s passion and originality. 

Where: Newark Museum of Art in Newark, New Jersey 

When: Through August 22

For more info on the exhibition, go to the museum’s website at newarkmuseumart.org.

William Klein: YES; Photographs, Paintings, Films 1948-2013

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This summer the International Center of Photography hosts the first U.S. exhibition dedicated to William Klein’s work in over a generation. Throughout his career, Klein’s work straddled the worlds of street photography, fashion photography, graphic design, painting, filmmaking, and more. This expansive show will fill the museum space and feature over 200 pieces that are inclusive of the various mediums he has worked in. The career-spanning exhibition covers Klein’s time as a studio assistant in Paris to his career photographing in Brooklyn. Get inspired this summer by diving into the mind of one of photography’s most versatile creators. 

Where: ICP in New York City 

When: Through September 12 

For more info on the exhibition, go to the museum’s website at ICP.org.

The New Black Vanguard: Photography Between Art and Fashion 

This group exhibition presents the work of Black photographers working in the worlds of portraiture and conceptual art, who fuse the genres of art and fashion photography—changing the contemporary visual vocabulary regarding beauty. The show includes work from Campbell Addy, Arielle Bobb-Willis, Micaiah Carter, Awol Erizku, Nadine Ijewere, Quil Lemons, Namsa Leuba, Renell Medrano, Tyler Mitchell, Jamal Nxedlana, Daniel Obsai, Ruth Ossai, Adrienne Raquel, Dana Scruggs, and Stephen Tayo. The included photographers are regularly featured in lifestyle magazines and ad campaigns, and run widely-consumed social media channels—they are also artists who are actively expanding conversations regarding the representation of Black bodies and Black lives, and celebrating Black creativity.

The exhibition also features a salon-style wall of photographs that features images from additional emerging Black artists, including Lawrence Agyei, Daveed Baptiste, Faith Couch, Yannis Davy Guibinga, Delphine Diallo, Rhea Dillon, Justin French, Erica Génécé, Denzel Golatt, Travis Gumbs, Texas Isaiah, Seye Isikalu, Adama Jalloh, Manny Jefferson, Joshua Kissi, Myles Loftin, Ronan Mckenzie, Tyra Mitchell, Travys Owen, Lucie Rox, Makeda Sandford, Cécile Smetana Baudier, Isaac West, and Joshua Woods.

Where: Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio 

When: Through September 11

For more info on the exhibition, go to the museum’s website at clevelandart.org.

Anonymous Architectures: Lauren Silberman and Alexa Hoyer

Captured during the early days of New York City’s COVID-19 lockdown, these two bodies of work from Alexa Hoyer and Lauren Silberman document the strange era when the city that never sleeps, seemed to be frozen in time and completely devoid of people. Window Dressing by Alexa Hoyer focuses on the luxury storefronts that boarded up their windows during the COVID-19 lockdown and the city-wide BLM protests. The Lost Happy Hours by Lauren Silberman captures the interiors of the shuttered bars and nightclubs in her neighborhood—which ultimately became symbols of the loneliness inherent with sheltering at home during the early days of the pandemic. 

Where: Mana Contemporary in Jersey City, New Jersey 

When: Through August 31 

For more info on the exhibition, go to the museum’s website at manacontemporary.com.

Modern Women Modern Vision

This traveling group exhibition, currently on view in Denver, features over 100 images by female photographers such as Diane Arbus, Imogen Cunningham, Dorothea Lange, and contemporary artists like Neeta Madahar, and Carrie Mae Weems. The expansive show celebrates the contributions of women to photography in the 20th century and how they’ve shaped the medium. Modern Women Moden Vision is organized into six thematic sections including Modernist Innovators, Documentary Photography and the New Deal, the Photo League, Modern Masters, Exploring the Environment, and The Global Contemporary Lens.

Ultimately this exhibition is a great overview of the influence women photographers have had on the medium and an excellent place to discover the work of a diverse group of creators in one place. 

Where: Denver Art Museum in Denver, Colorado

When:  Through August 28

For more info on the exhibition, go to the museum’s website at denverartmuseum.org.

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We’re back with our monthly installment of the best photography exhibitions to see around the United States for the months of May and June 2022. Highlights include the return of Brooklyn’s Photoville festival; Elle Pérez: Devotions on view at the Baltimore Museum of Art; and a group show in Chicago that connects global artists of color and Black diasporic artists in one exhibition. Read on to see what else we are looking forward to seeing in May and June. 

William Eggleston: Photographs from the Laura and Jay Crouse Collection

William Eggleston was one of the first fine-art photographers to use color film, which was still considered a novelty at the time. His vivid images of mundane everyday life—old tires, faded signs, dusty condiments in diners past their prime—have influenced countless photographers and have been prominently featured as cover artwork for a number of albums. The thirty images on view at The Gibbes in Charleston are part of Laura and Jay Crouse’s private collection and represent some of the photographer’s most iconic shots. 

Where: The Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, South Carolina 

When: On view through October 9, 2022 

For more info on the exhibition, go to the museum’s website at gibbesmuseum.org.

Elle Pérez: Devotions

Organized by the Carnegie Museum of Art, this exhibition features 13 images captured between 2019 and 2021 that explore love, sex, and friendship through the lens of grief and care, pain and pleasure, and desire and self-exploration. Pérez tends to center themselves and their relationships within the images—rather than documenting them as an outsider looking in, and the work included in Devotions is no different. The work is an intimate and tangled look at how gender identity, kink, sexuality, pleasure, and pain often coexist. 

Where: Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, Maryland

When: On view through March 19, 2023 

For more info on the exhibition, go to the museum’s website at artbma.org.

James Nachtwey, Memoria

War is hell and James Nachtwey has spent his career photographing it. His professional life has documented the atrocities of war across the globe, making him one of the most well-respected photojournalists working today. His images have also helped shape the way in which Americans understand the human toll of conflict abroad. This exhibition, on view at Fotografiska in New York City, serves as a career overview. It also includes fragments of memories documenting the fallout of international conflicts and human rights violations. His hope is that as the audience bears witness to the atrocities that he has captured with his camera, we can collectively honor the individuals depicted in each moment and not forget how these conditions came to be. 

Where: Fotografiska in New York City

When: On view through August 14, 2022 

For more info on the exhibition, go to the museum’s website at fotografiska.com.

Janette Beckman, Rebels

Spanning nearly four decades, Rebels offers just a snapshot of the larger-than-life creative icons photographed by British music photographer Janette Beckman during her career. Featuring a mixture of black and white and vibrant color photographs, the images on view are authentic and raw, capturing the rebellious spirits of her subjects. The show features images of LL Cool J, Debbie Harry, Joe Strummer, Keith Haring, Tribe Called Quest, and more. As the name suggests, it’s an effortlessly cool show that is sure to inspire creatives of all types. 

Where: Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles, California 

When: On view through June 18, 2022 

For more info on the exhibition, go to the gallery’s website at faheykleingallery.com.

Photoville 

New York’s free outdoor photo festival returns in a big way this summer, with in-person workshops and walking tours of its exhibitions. Although Photoville will host outdoor exhibitions in twenty locations throughout the five boroughs, Brooklyn Bridge Park will serve as the main hub for events during the month of June. Community Day on June 4 will include a day’s worth of interactive programming at Brooklyn Bridge Park, over thirty exhibitions, and food and beverages from Smorgasborg. 

Where: Brooklyn Bridge Park in Brooklyn

When: June 4-26 2022

For more info on Photoville, go to the festival’s website at photoville.com.

Beautiful Diaspora / You Are Not the Lesser Part

This group exhibition combines two exhibition concepts and features the work of 15 photographers in dialogue over the parallel experiences of global artists of color and Black diasporic artists. This expansive show brings together works that might not typically be presented alongside one another and urges viewers to question how the work fits together and why it’s commonly assumed that the work shouldn’t fit together—both in museum exhibitions and in the outside world. It’s a chance to consider the legacy of colonialism as it exists in the modern era.

The exhibition includes photographic work from Xyza Cruz Bacani, Widline Cadet, Jessica Chou, Cog•nate Collective (Amy Sanchez Arteaga and Misael Diaz), Işıl Eğrikavuk, Citlali Fabián, Sunil Gupta, Kelvin Haizel, David Heo, Damon Locks, Johny Pitts, Farah Salem, Ngadi Smart, Tintin Wulia, and the debut of Abena Appiah. 

Where: Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago 

When: On view through June 26 

For more info on the exhibition, go to the museum’s website at mocp.org.

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Before the age of 60, Sandra Cattaneo Adorno had never been a photographer. But when her daughter gifted her a photography course to mark her birthday, Cattaneo Adorno found herself fascinated with the medium. And now, this Saturday a collection of her photographs will go on display at Personal Structures – Reflections, a contemporary art exhibition that runs parallel to the Venice Biennale. 

“Sandra’s photographs are a dreamy, poetic reverie,” says Gulnara Samoilova, founder of the Women Street Photographers community and gallery show. “Her work is calming and restorative, the perfect balm for life in today’s chaotic world.”

Cattaneo Adorno will display selected works from her two books, Águas de Ouro (waters of gold) and Scarti di Tempo (scraps of time), a pair of compendiums of her best street photography. 

“I think street photography appealed to me because I am mostly drawn to people,” she says. “Having a camera is for me a great justification to approach people from different walks of life and take part in their experiences. I feel that with street photography, I am always learning; it always surprises me and, most of all, it is a lot of fun.”

Don’t miss this photo

Attendees of Personal Structures will have the opportunity to view the photograph on the cover of Águas de Ouro, which is the only image in the exhibition printed larger than the original. It holds a special place in Cattaneo Adorno’s personal photographic history. When she took the shot in 2016, she was just beginning to familiarize herself with her camera, a Nikon D750, and hadn’t shot much in Rio. However, the image ended up taking off, and titles such as National Geographic, The New York Times, and the Washington Post all published it.

“The success…gave me confidence about my work and made me realize that my photography had value,” she says. “That day the weather was very misty and the sea had a very strong undertow, so the bathers were hesitating to get in the water. Having photographed at sunset, the scene is bathed in a warm light that accentuates the haze. The people are small silhouettes on the beachfront looking at the sea and only occasionally venturing on the surf.”

Growing up in Rio de Janeiro when bossa nova was capturing the world’s imagination and painting pictures of the Brazilian idyll, Cattaneo Adorno reached for that feeling in Águas de Ouro.

“Saudade is a deep feeling of nostalgia that is very present in Brazilian culture,” she explains of her mid-century inspiration. “I felt that it was fitting for that project, which relied on my childhood memories of Rio de Janeiro and Ipanema Beach.”

A focus on the silhouette

Looking through her work, one easily comes to appreciate Cattaneo Adorno’s focus on the silhouette. The lack of faces lends a mysterious quality to her photographs, and, she hopes, depth.

“I am fascinated by silhouettes because of the sense of mystery they evoke in the photographs,” she explains. “Not being able to see somebody’s features, I believe, allows the person looking at the photos to participate more in the scene, as their imagination is called upon to try and make their own personal sense of the image.”

She prefers images that leave the viewer guessing. Straightforward is not in the parlance of her portfolio, which can be, at times, ethereal—inviting the viewer to actively participate in the creation of the world.  

“I prefer to create images that don’t reveal themselves easily at first sight,” she says. “I believe that representing a scene in this way allows the viewers to give their own meaning to the images, based on their own personal experiences and on other images they might have stored in their memory.”

Though she picked up photography later in life, Cattaneo Adorno proves that it’s never too late to try something new. She enjoys the challenge of putting some order to the chaos of the street, and sharing the beauty she finds along the way.

“I get a real buzz from the moment when everything comes together in a photo and I feel that I could frame some of the beauty and poetry of the scene and share it with other people.”

Art lovers are invited to convene at Personal Structures to view striking bodies of work, of which Cattaneo Adorno’s is among them. The show runs from April 23 through November 27, 2022. An exhibition preview is available here.

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Spring has finally arrived and with it comes an array of excellent photographic exhibitions opening across the country, including the first museum survey of Deana Lawson’s work, a group show that explores the relationship between writing and photography, and early photographs created by André Kertész during his time in Paris in the 1920s. Read on to see what else we’re excited to see this season. 

Deana Lawson 

The first museum survey of Deana Lawson’s work will be on view this summer at MoMA PS1. Lawson has spent the last 15 years exploring and challenging how Black life is represented in mainstream media, through a mixture of documentary photography, staged tableaux, portraiture, and appropriated images. The work is often focused on themes of love, family, and desire. Deana Lawson features over 50 images shot from 2004 to the present day—it explores a wide variety of Lawson’s photographic styles, creating a narrative arc of her expansive artistic vision. 

Where: MoMA PS1 in New York 

When: Through September 5, 2022

For more info on the exhibition, go to the museum’s website at MOMA.org.

In Focus: Writing for the Camera 

Ten photographers explore the relationship between writing and photography in this group exhibition currently on view at The Getty in Los Angeles. Drawn largely from The Getty’s permanent collection, the show features works from the 1970s to the present day from photographers like Sophie Calle, Marcia Resnick, Carrie Mae Weems, Laura Aguilar, Allan Sekula, and Shirin Neshat. Many of the photographs on view showcase text or include subjects in the act of writing. Combined, the show explores how these two mediums often influence one another.

Where: The Getty in Los Angeles

When: Through May 29, 2022

For more info on the exhibition, go to the museum’s website at Getty.edu.

André Kertész: Postcards from Paris 

Postcards from Paris is the first exhibition that brings together André Kertész’s carte postale prints, which were made in the earliest days of his career while living in Paris. The photos in this exhibition were made between 1925 and 1928 and are printed on an inexpensive, but high-quality postcard paper. When viewed together they offer insight into Kertész’s early experimental years as a photographer and show how Paris proved to be a vibrant community for artists of the era. Ultimately it’s a rare look into the mind of one of the pioneers of photography. 

Where: The High Museum in Atlanta 

When: Through May 29, 2022 

For more info on the exhibition, go to the museum’s website at High.org.

Look at the USA: Peter van Agtmael 

Documentary photographer Peter van Agtmael focuses on the post-9/11 United States both at home and abroad through 128 photographs taken between 2006 and 2021 in Look at the USA.  The exhibition examines the domestic consequences of the wars in the Middle East, the rise of nationalism and militarism, as well as social issues related to race and class. The images are accompanied by text that explains van Agtmael’s motivations and thoughts as he made these pictures. 

Where: Bronx Documentary Center in New York 

When: Through June 26, 2022

For more info on the exhibition, go to the center’s website at Bronxdoc.org.

Curious Visions: Towards Abstract Photography

This group exhibition features approximately 60 images from the last 100 years and dives into the more abstract side of photography. The show includes historical images from photographers such as Man Ray, Aaron Siskind, and Berenice Abbott. It also showcases contemporary pieces from artists like Gary Emrich, Laura Letinsky, and Alison Rossiter. In addition to surveying experimental techniques from the past century, the show also offers interactive elements for viewers to learn more about the mechanics of photography.

Where: Denver Art Museum 

When: Through June 19, 2022

For more info on the exhibition, go to the museum’s website at Denverartmuseum.org.

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Humans have created artistic renderings of their natural surroundings for thousands of years. And as a photographic genre, “the landscape” goes back to the earliest days of the medium. Today, there are many individuals working in the landscape tradition, like Michael Kenna, a photographer celebrated for his stunning black-and-white images. He currently has a show at Robert Mann Gallery featuring photographs made in the 1980s during a series of visits to his childhood home in Northern England.

Of course, the notion of the landscape doesn’t always have to be taken literally. A current exhibit in New York City titled, “Storming of the Capitol,” captures the political landscape of the United States on January 6, 2021.

Check out these as well as other must-see fine-art photography exhibitions below:

Michael Kenna: Northern England, 1983-1986

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Michael Kenna shot the photos for this exhibit more than forty years ago, during a series of trips made to locations significant to his childhood. But he only recently rediscovered the negatives, which had been lost in his archive for decades. The Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown provided him the downtime needed to revisit these shots and make prints for this show.

According to the curators, Kenna was influenced by many photographers of the past to create this work, particularly Bill Brandt and Eugene Atget. Kenna relied on long exposure photography for a number of the shots and experimented with different printing techniques to “capture the mystery and atmosphere” of each desolate monochrome scene.

Where: Robert Mann Gallery in New York

When: February 3 to March 25, 2022

For more info on the exhibition, go to the gallery’s website at Robertmann.com/upcoming

Storming of the Capitol

“Storming of the Capitol,” on display as the Bronx Documentary Center in New York, includes photos, videos, and multimedia captured on January 6, 2021, by a range of photographers and journalists present that day. In fact, the work of more than 25 artists is represented in this show, including photographs by photojournalism heavy-hitters like Ashley Gilbertson and Ron Haviv. The images in this show may be difficult to look at, but they tell the important story of a political landscape divided.

Where: Bronx Documentary Center in New York

When: Jan. 29 – March 20, 2022

For more info on the exhibition, go to the center’s website at Bronxdoc.org

Our Selves: Photographs by Women Artists from Helen Kornblum

This exhibition presents 90 photographic works by female artists from the last 100 years and begins with the acknowledgment that the history of feminism and photography are intertwined.

There are many parts of the show that sound intriguing: For instance, the exhibit will include a small but powerful monochromatic series, Details (1996), by Lorna Simpson. This portfolio of 21 photographs explores the African American female experience, focusing on topics including identity, representation, and history. What’s also fascinating about this series is it includes a mix of found, original, and archival images.

Another must-see part of the show is the opening section, which has a wall of portraits/self-portraits depicting female artists, including historically-significant photographers like Lola Álvarez Bravo, Gertrud Arndt, Lotte Jacobi, and Lucia Moholy, as well as contemporary up-and-comers.

Where: Museum of Modern Art, New York

When: April 16 — October 2, 2022

For more info on the exhibition, go to the museum’s website at Moma.org

What the Eyes Can’t See: Astrophotography by Eugene Cambre

Astrophotographer Eugene Cambre has been capturing photographs of the night sky for more than 50 years. And his first exhibition—at the Besser Museum, in Michigan—is a showcase of some of his most stunning work. These images beautifully juxtapose worldly structures against dramatic star-filled skies, creating colorful scenes ordinarily invisible to the naked eye.

Where: Besser Museum for Northeast Michigan, Alpena, Michigan

When: January 29 – April 19

For more info on the exhibition, go to the museum’s website at bessermuseum.org

Alan Karchmer: The Architects’ Photographer

This show focuses on the work of architecture photographer Alan Karchmer. Celebrated for his ability to convey “the architect’s ideas and intention” in his images, Karchmer made a career photographing some of the world’s most famous buildings. He earned a master’s in the field of architecture before becoming a photographer, which might explain why he’s so darn good at capturing “the essence of a building.”

The show includes a mix of professional shots, personal images, and artifacts, all to help tell the story of his career. It also explores how advancements in camera technology, specifically the development of digital cameras, influenced the field of architecture photography.

Where: National Building Museum in Washington DC

When: April 9, 2021–June 5, 2022

For more info on the exhibition, go to the museum’s website at nbm.org.

Art of Illusion: Photography and Perceptual Play

“Art of Illusion: Photography and Perceptual Play” presents the question: Is seeing really believing? Featuring the work of 25 artists, this show includes images that challenge the viewer’s sense of reality and perception. Notably, the majority of these images were made without darkroom or digital manipulation. The photographers instead rely on in-camera techniques and conceptual approaches to warp reality.

The show pulls from the museum’s private collection and includes quite a few recent acquisitions, on view for the first time.

Where: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City

When: October 22, 2021– April 25, 2022

For more info on the exhibition, go to the museum’s website at nelson-atkins.org  

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When studying a great photograph, I tend to forget most were captured only in a fraction of a second. 

I was reminded of this after reading the introduction to “Tete a Tete,” a book focused on Henri Cartier-Bresson’s iconic portraits, which was written by the renowned art historian E. H. Gombrich. In it, Gombrich writes that when looking at most portraits or pictures of people, we can only be absolutely sure of one thing: “It is that these men and women cannot have presented precisely the aspect in their portraits for more than a passing instant. The very next moment they may have shifted their gaze, turned or tilted their head…. and each of these movements would radically affect their expression.”

In a way, Gombrich reworks Cartier-Bresson’s concept of the “decisive moment,” which refers to that “split second that reveals the larger truth of a situation.” But what struck me was something more practical: Almost any photo we capture is made in an instant—and we don’t really see it as we shoot it. It happens too quickly.

Some of the photos I mention in the exhibitions below illustrate this point: For instance, David Katzenstein’s group shots in his project “Outside The Lorraine: A Photographic Journey To A Sacred Place,” are almost exclusively candids and undoubtedly shot with fast shutter speeds. After the camera froze these subjects in time, all of them continued on moving.  But when you study photos of great photographers, like Katzenstein, their iconic images generally do not have a fleeting quality. They look far more substantial.

How is this possible? I believe there are a least three ways photographers are able to achieve this:

• Connect to a community: Photographers like James Van Der Zee, who immerse themselves in a community, can continually study their subjects. The brilliance of Van Der Zee’s body of work is, in part, due to his decades’ long connection to his community, based in Harlem, in New York City.

• Connect by making a journey or joining a movement: David Katzenstein formed a connection by making a journey to The Lorraine Motel, in Memphis—the site of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination—to photograph people who had made their own sorts of pilgrimage there. What’s more, his show is currently being exhibited there.

• Connect to an idea or concept: Photographers and artists have also used ideas and concepts to give their work a more profound meaning. Such is the case with the fine-art exhibition “Gillian Wearing: Wearing Masks,” currently at the Guggenheim.

Check out my suggestions for must-see fine-art photography exhibitions other shows:

James Van Der Zee’s Photographs: A Portrait of Harlem

What makes the fine-art photography exhibition, “James Van Der Zee’s Photographs: A Portrait of Harlem,” interesting is that not only did Van Der Zee capture both formal portraits and documentary-style work, but he did so for decades in one location: Harlem. The show may include just 40 photos, but the images are powerful in the story they collectively tell.

According to the show’s curator, Diane Waggoner, Van Der Zee catered to a largely middle-class Black clientele and created studio portraits over a span of several decades. Many of his photos are portraits for confirmations, engagements, weddings, and more. But Van Der Zee also captured many group portraits of religious organizations, social clubs, literary societies as well as military and sports teams. Additionally, the exhibition includes Van Der Zee’s documentary photos of Harlem storefronts and nightclubs.

No matter what the subject, his photographs “served as a source of pride” in this community, according to the curator. But Van Der Zee’s most important contribution may be cumulative: creating an accurate, nuanced portrait and narrative of Harlem in the early 20th century.

Where: National Gallery of Art, in Washington DC

When: November 28, 2021 – May 30, 2022

For more info on the exhibition, go to the museum’s website at nga.gov

Outside the Lorraine: A Photographic Journey to a Sacred Place

Certain sites throughout the world, like the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C. and the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York, allow visitors to pay homage to those lost to tragedy. Such sites can also be rich environments for photographers, though such projects should always be done with care.

A current photography exhibition, “Outside The Lorraine Motel: A Contemporary Pilgrimage,” comprises more than 90 photos that David Katzenstein captured in 2017 at the site of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. And it’s a very good example of how to successfully shoot photos at such an important place. For starters, Katzenstein was careful not to interfere with the experiences of museum visitors. Gay Feldman, who curated the exhibition, writes that when the photographer was getting ready to shoot the project, he positioned himself, “in a discreet and unobtrusive manner outside the museum.” 

It’s intriguing that the most captivating images are those that depict figures photographed from behind, so that their faces aren’t shown. In doing so, Katzenstein gives the body language of his subjects an almost sculptural quality. You get the sense that you can feel the emotions they are feeling, as they look towards the site where one of the most important figures of the Civil Rights movement was assassinated.

“Pilgrimage is a central theme in David Katzenstein’s work,” writes Feldman. The project is part of Katzenstein’s larger body of work, “The Human Experience,” which is a collection of his visual explorations that span over the past 30 years.

Where: The Lorraine Civil Rights Museum Foundation, DBA National Civil Rights Museum, located at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

When: Open through April 4, 2022

For more info on the exhibition, go to the gallery’s website at civilrightsmuseum.org/outside-the-lorraine

William Eggleston: Black and White to Color

William Eggleston (born 1939), whose work is currently showing at Jackson Fine Art gallery, is often cited as one of the key artists who made color photography a legitimate artistic medium, recognized by the fine-art world. But as the B&W photo “Untitled (girl walking)” reveals in this show, Eggleston could also capture exquisite monochrome images and did so often, especially at the start of his career. And this new exhibit seeks to elevate his B&W work alongside his color photography.

But what got him hooked on color in the first place? I always find it fascinating to hear from photographers the reasons they chose to try something new. And on the Jackson Fine Art gallery website, there’s a link to an interview that answers this very question.

Eggleston says, “I had seen a bunch of Technicolor movies and I had these dreams about fantastic color schemes that I was working out in my mind. And I just knew it was going to work. I went out and took a few rolls — I think the first roll was at the old Montesi’s [a Memphis grocery store] in the late afternoon sun.”

In the interview, Eggleston goes on to say that he got those images developed at a local drugstore. “I got all those drugstore snapshots back, and about a year later I got together what I thought were the best ones and had some so-called professional prints made in Chicago….” He also points out the reaction on a trip to New York not long after his breakthrough into using color: “When I finally got enough prints printed, I showed John Szarkowski [director of photography at MoMA] what I was doing. They were real surprised anyone from the South was doing something sophisticated in photography.”

The entire William Eggleston interview appears on the Bitter Southerner website.

Where: Jackson Fine Art, in Atlanta

When: January 28 – February 19, 2022 

For more info on the exhibition, go to the gallery’s website at jacksonfineart.com

Time and Face: Daguerreotypes to Digital Prints

The more than 100 photos in this group exhibition—curated by Roberto C. Ferrari, dating from the 1840s to today—are from Columbia University’s collection, and include photographs produced using most photomechanical processes, from the early years of analog photography until our current digital age. But there’s also a mixture of genres, including portraiture, photojournalism, and documentary images. The exhibition includes one particular group portrait that was of special interest to the curator. “Class of 1860, Department of Chemistry, Columbia College, Ca. 1857–60,” depicts an image of the first chemistry class at Columbia, with Professor Charles Joy and his laboratory assistant. 

Ferrari refers to the photo in an interview he gave about this exhibition, in the Columbia News, in which he says, “One of the more exciting discoveries… is a rare salted paper print from around 1857-60, which depicts the first five students who studied chemistry at Columbia with their professor, Charles Arad Joy, and a young Black lab technician…. The chemical properties of photomechanical reproduction were important to Chandler, and the result of his interest makes Columbia one of the earliest institutions to begin collecting photography, long before places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art ever did. From a portraiture and history perspective, however, one of the tragedies of this same photograph is that while all five students and their professor are known, we cannot, despite ongoing, extensive research, identify the Black youth, who presumably was a University employee. His loss of identity is an act of erasure that can be seen as part of institutional systemic racism.”

You can learn more about the photos in this show’s companion online exhibition, “People and Props in Photography, 1840s-1940s,”.

Where: Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University, in New York

When: December 4, 2021 – March 12, 2022

For more info on the exhibition, go to the gallery’s website at wallach.columbia.edu

Gillian Wearing: Wearing Masks

In contemporary art, I believe a bit of humor lets fine artists more effectively grab the attention of both the cultural elites and the general public. And in the exhibition, “Gillian Wearing: Wearing Masks,” the artist (Gillian Wearing) does just that with a rather odd, slightly twisted sense of humor. But I think she’s effective in that it allows her to make some intriguing points about self-portraiture and its place in society.

The exhibition comprises lots of different media, but much of the work in the show is photo-based. The recurring theme is that each piece shows the artist’s eyes peering out through another’s face or mask. There are masks of herself at various ages, as well as masks depicting others, including family members and more famous individuals, like the Mona Lisa. Of course, it’s hard not to see another rather odd irony: The show is about an artist wearing masks, during a time when we’re all wearing masks, due to Covid-19.

To understand the show a bit more, there’s an informative video on the museum’s YouTube channel, in which Nat Trotman, the curator, defines Weaing’s methodology: “Masks are a central theme in Wearing’s work. They appear throughout her photographs, videos, paintings, and sculptures, both as literal props and as metaphors. For Wearing, the mask is a way of talking about the little performances that each of us put on every day in our roles in society and families in all interpersonal relationships.”

Where: The Guggenheim Museum, in New York

When: November 5, 2021 – June 13, 2022

For more info on the exhibition, go to the museum’s website at guggenheim.org/exhibition/gillian-wearing-wearing-masks

Left Side Right Side

The curators of this group show—which encompasses works in a variety of media, including video, photography, prints, painting, and sculpture—have focused on the genre of portraiture and “its articulation in contemporary art.” 

The provocative name of the show actually comes from the title of a video, “Left Side Right Side” from the artist Joan Jonas’ early exploration of creating a self-portrait through video. (You can see a virtual representation of the exhibition on the website, including a video clip of Joan Jonas.)

In the show, there’s a rather stunning, large triptych photograph, titled “Boys Tethered,” by David Hilliard, an artist who often creates large-scale, multi-paneled images based on his life or the lives of people around him. When he created this photo, in 2011, Hilliard had been working on a series of photographs, which examine the often-conflicted nature of masculinity and the environments in which it develops and unfolds. 

According to a statement for one of his shows at Yancey Richardson Gallery, “In this body of work, boys of various ages experience a series of physical and emotional tests that serve as life markets or milestones, of sorts. They hunt, love, compete, bleed, fail…but ultimately persevere.”

Where: The Museum of Contemporary Art of Jacksonville, in Jacksonville, Florida

When: June 25, 2021 – March 6, 2022

For more info on the exhibition, go to the museum’s website at mocajacksonville.unf.edu

The post A Portrait of Harlem, Eggleston’s B&W work, and four other photo exhibits worth seeing right now appeared first on Popular Photography.

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