A History of Photography: Selections from the Museum's Collection

A Strange Vibration highlights the work of three photojournalists who documented the lives of women and queer individuals on the margins of the Bay Area from the 1970s to the 1990s. Lenn Keller, a self-taught photographer, captured the Queer Liberation Movement through the perspective of a radical Black lesbian. Her impactful work now serves as the foundation of the Bay Area Lesbian Archives in Oakland. Darcy Padilla’s photography focused on life within the Tenderloin’s Ambassador Hotel during the 1990s, offering an intimate portrayal of how individuals living with AIDS and HIV supported each other amid the height of the AIDS crisis in the United States. Elizabeth Sunflower’s rediscovered archive, particularly her Naked Seduction series, documents the lives of sex workers in San Francisco’s North Beach, showcasing their activism and vibrant lives. The exhibition brings together works from all three photographers, exploring their deep connections with the communities they captured from both inside and outside. Image: Elizabeth Sunflower; Retro Photo Archive © Elizabeth Sunflower

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.

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).

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

In Out My Window, Gail Albert Halaban offers a striking meditation on urban life, capturing fleeting glimpses into the intimate worlds of neighbors across the globe. From New York to Paris, Rome, Buenos Aires, and Venice, her carefully orchestrated images juxtapose the public facades of architecture with the private lives unfolding within. Unlike traditional voyeuristic photography, Albert Halaban's work is built on collaboration and consent. She engages with residents, explaining her vision and working closely with them to stage each composition. This process transforms what might seem like intrusion into connection, as neighbors become active participants in shaping their own narratives. The resulting images blur the boundaries between solitude and community, anonymity and familiarity. They reflect the paradox of city living—how we exist as individuals within a shared space, contributing, knowingly or unknowingly, to the fabric of collective identity. Whether a New Yorker gazing across an alleyway or a Parisian resident framed in the soft glow of an apartment window, each subject embodies the unspoken dialogue between strangers in the urban landscape. Image: © Gail Albert Halaban

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.

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.

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.”

Flor Garduño: Paths of Life takes viewers on an evocative exploration of the photographer's 45-year career, showcasing a rich selection of her work. This exhibition brings together previously unpublished images from Garduño's personal archive alongside her more recent pieces, offering an intimate glimpse into her creative evolution. The exhibition is divided into six thematic sections: The Path of Yesterday, Ritualities, Construction of the Moment, Constructed Landscapes, Suspended Time, and Body and Magic. Each section highlights recurring themes that resonate throughout her body of work, bridging the past and present. Garduño’s photographs delve into powerful subjects such as ritual, mythology, legacy, symbolic archetypes, and the deep bond between humanity and nature. Flor Garduño: Paths of Life/Senderos de vida is organized by El Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City and the artist’s studio, in collaboration with FotoFest, Houston. Originally curated by Ery Camara for El Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, this exhibition celebrates Garduño's contribution to contemporary photography while exploring the timeless beauty of her visual storytelling. Image: © Flor Garduño

Stephen Daiter Gallery proudly presents Chicago: Mark Steinmetz, on view from February 7 to April 27, 2025. This marks Steinmetz’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, showcasing selections from his newly released book, Chicago. Nearly thirty-five years ago, Steinmetz lived in a modest apartment in Wrigleyville, where he transformed his bedroom into a makeshift darkroom. It was during this time that he developed some of his most well-known series—The Players, Summertime, and Carnival—alongside a lesser-known body of work made in Chicago, now coming to light for the first time. “The gestures of these men and the expressions on their faces are observed with delicate precision,” writes Peter Galassi in the book’s introduction (Chicago: Nazraeli Press, 2025). “Elsewhere, with the same gentle eye, Steinmetz is alert to people in the act of adjusting a sandal or a sneaker, reading, giving the thumbs-up, lifting weights, flying a kite, lighting a cigarette, focusing a long lens, leaning against a rickety bus stop, fishing, counting change, talking on a pay phone—and a woman scratching her back.” Steinmetz’s photography is defined by its compassion, curiosity, and quiet respect. His images do not impose meaning but allow subjects to simply exist—capturing them with a sensitivity that is both rare and deeply human. His lens reveals Chicagoans in their element, embracing everyday moments that, in his hands, become profound reflections of the city’s unique rhythm and soul. Image: © Mark Steinmetz

All About Photo presents An Impossibly Normal Life by Matthew Finley, on view throughout April 2025—an evocative exploration of a world where love knows no boundaries, only acceptance. An Impossibly Normal Life: 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. Two 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.