James Nachtwey: Memoria

Bruce Silverstein Gallery proudly presents Sound & Sight: Pete Turner’s Jazz Album Covers, an exhibition celebrating Turner’s profound impact on the visual culture of Jazz. Pete Turner’s vibrant colors and dreamlike compositions have graced the pages of magazines, including Esquire, Look, and Sports Illustrated; however, his work may be most recognizable to a different audience—those with a passion for jazz. Spanning five decades and over seventy covers, Turner’s pioneering approach infused jazz album covers with conceptual depth and dynamic energy. By mirroring the improvisational and emotive nature of jazz, Turner bridged sound and vision. His Surrealist predilection and unparalleled ability to translate the essence of music into striking visual compositions redefined the role of the album cover in the art world and reshaped how music is experienced. Sound & Sight: Pete Turner’s Jazz Album Covers invites audiences to immerse themselves in the fusion of sound and sight that characterized his work. As you explore his work, ask yourself: can you see the sound? Can you feel the color of jazz? Before the late 1940s and early 1950s, there was a lack of visual identity in record covers, which reflected how the music industry operated. Vinyl covers were formulaic, with record labels taking precedence over artistic expression; most covers merely showcased the label’s name, logo, or insignia. Regardless of genre— jazz, classical, or pop- this uniformity across record covers was a direct consequence of mass production techniques and an industry-wide disregard for the potential synergy between visuals and music. The album covers would look nearly identical from release to release. Simply put, people did not yet see album covers as a medium for artistic or creative expression. Pete Turner’s approach broke this mold. By translating the essence of sound into striking visual narratives, Turner made album covers an integral part of the listening experience. Pete Turner’s photography transcended simple portraiture or landscape photography, moving into the realm of conceptual art. His vibrant use of color and abstract forms pushed the boundaries of color to create otherworldly scenes and introduced new dimensions to the visual representation of music. He approached his work with a meticulous yet experimental eye, often manipulating color and light using filters, solarization, and multiple exposures alongside postproduction. When working on the cover for Studio Trieste by Chet Baker, Jim Hall, and Hubert Laws, Turner experimented with Plexiglas, creating a spectrometric, colored lightbox to photograph a bubble. The result is as fleeting and evocative as Chet Baker’s tone could be: the bubble becomes a Surrealist object, resembling the vinyl enclosed, and its marbling, polychromatic colors become a symbol for the mixing of creative energy. His work on albums like A Day in the Life by Wes Montgomery and Night Train by the Oscar Peterson Trio did more than simply capture attention—it shaped the mood and narrative of the records themselves. For example, in his iconic image Blue Horse, 1961, a silhouetted horse stands against a vast cobalt desertscape, embodying serenity and solitude. In perfect harmony with the syncopated rhythms of Hubert Laws’ Crying Song, the photograph evokes a profound sense of grandeur and adventure, enriching the listener’s journey and introducing a new visual identity to the music. Similarly, Turner’s collaboration with legendary record producer Creed Taylor on Antonio Carlos Jobim’s Wave marked a shift in album art. Instead of opting for a literal interpretation, like a traditional depiction of waves (one immediately recalls Hokusai’s Great Wave, 1831), Turner’s surreal image of a giraffe running across a desert created an unexpected but fitting metaphor for the music’s undulating, fluid rhythms. With Pete Turner, each album cover became a statement, a collaboration between artist and musician.. Pete Turner’s unparalleled ability to translate the essence of music into striking visual compositions redefined the role of the album cover in the art world. Turner’s legacy lives on through his countless iconic images that helped shape the visual identity of jazz music, making him not only a key figure in photography but also an essential collaborator in the history of modern jazz.. Image: Eye to Eye 1968 © Pete Turner / Courtesy Bruce Silverstein Gallery

Marian Goodman Gallery is delighted to present the United States premiere of Animitas (Chili), 2014, a video installation by the late French artist Christian Boltanski, who the gallery began working with in 1987. The video notably documents the first incarnation of Boltanski’s Animitas series, which began as a conceptual monument installed in the Atacama Desert in 2014. This original installation featured 800 small bronze bells on individual stems that were arranged to represent the position of the stars on the night of the artist’s birth. The location of Chile was chosen by Boltanski as he originally drew inspiration from the local animitas or “little souls”—small, makeshift altars created to worship the departed along roadsides throughout the country; Boltanski also uses the form to commemorate those killed under the Pinochet regime. As the bells chime with the desert winds, Boltanski envisioned that we could hear “the music of the stars and the voices of the floating souls,” a moving, ancestral soundtrack of lost spirits, which continues to play on in the remote location of Talabre, Chile today. The video Animitas (Chili) was filmed on-site in a single shot from sunrise to sunset and is presented along a large bed of living hay, petals, and flowers that will naturally decay throughout the exhibition. Viewers are invited to meditate on the ghostly “voices” heard in the original work that contemplate the universal themes of the brevity of human life, the passage of time, and the intimate experience of loss. Widely considered to be one of France’s most influential contemporary artists, Boltanski endeavored to create borderless works of art that could be understood by individuals of every global context. In line with this, Boltanski, who considered himself a “sentimental minimalist,” created for Animitas a landscape of delicate bells destined to succumb to their natural surroundings, which will eventually be memorialized in the video alone, further allowing them to live on as a symbol of the precarious nature of human existence. Christian Boltanski (1944-2021) was born in Paris during World War II to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother. He spent his childhood hearing stories of the Holocaust, which deeply influenced him. A self-taught artist, he began modeling clay and painting before developing his more conceptual work in the late 1960s. Since his first solo exhibition in Paris in 1968, his oeuvre has been widely shown internationally. In 2011 he represented France at the 54th Venice Biennale. This exhibition of Animitas (Chili) was organized with the Christian Boltanski Endowment Fund, founded in September 2023 with the aim of conserving, promoting and presenting the artist's work. Recent solo shows have been held at Busan Museum of Art, Korea (2021); Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2019); Espace Louis Vuitton, Tokyo, Japan (2019); The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan and the National Art Center, Tokyo, Japan (2019); The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2018); The Power Station of Art, Shanghai, China (2018); Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2017); Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, Italy (2017); The Museum of Contemporary Art of Monterrey, Mexico (2016); Instituto Valenciano Arte Moderno (IVAM), Spain (2016); Mac's Grand Hornu, Belgium (2015); and Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile (2014). Boltanski was honored with several awards over his lifetime, including the Praemium Imperiale Award (2006) and the Kaiser Ring Award (2001). He participated in Documenta (1977 and 1972) and numerous Venice Biennales (2015, 1995, 1993, 1980 and 1975). In October 2021, a few months after he passed away, three prestigious French institutions in Paris; the Palace of Versailles, the Musée du Louvre; the Centre Pompidou, with the Opéra Comique, organized a joint homage to the artist.

Drawn from the Allen’s collection, this exhibition spans more than 150 years. Although far from comprehensive, the loosely chronological presentation encompasses key practitioners and decisive moments in the history of photography. From the mid-19th century to the first decades of the 20th, there was widespread debate as to whether photography should be considered a fine art rather than a mechanical trade. The exhibition opens with practitioners who took advantage of this ambiguity to enter the field and make crucial discoveries, largely through portraiture. Works on view from the 1920s to the 1950s show how photographers used the unique characteristics of the medium to document the quintessentially modernist processes of urbanization, infrastructure, and scientific discovery. The second half of the exhibition focuses on strategies of appropriation and collage from the post-World War II period to the present, foregrounding the effects of mass media. Alongside these concerns, photographers developed conceptual modes of portraiture to address identity-based issues. This is the second installment of the multi-year series Femme ’n isms, which highlights women-identified artists in the Allen’s collection and expands art-historical notions of the feminine through the intersections of gender, race, and class. The exhibition includes works by Berenice Abbott, Laura Aguilar, Margaret Bourke-White, Claude Cahun, Julia Margaret Cameron, Nan Goldin, Dorothea Lange, Barbara Norfleet, Cindy Sherman, Iiu Susiraja, Carrie Mae Weems, and others.

Premiering at the Cincinnati Art Museum, Discovering Ansel Adams provides an unprecedented exploration of the early career of Ansel Adams (1902–1984), demonstrating how, between 1916 and the 1940s, Adams developed from a 14-year-old tourist with a camera into America’s most celebrated photographer. Drawn from the definitive Adams collection at the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, the exhibition brings together approximately 80 virtuosic photographs with unique ephemera including the artist’s handwritten correspondence, snapshots, personal possessions, and photographic working materials. Featured works range from small, one-of-a-kind photographs from Adams’s teenage years to jaw-dropping mural-sized prints of his most iconic mature views. Join the artist on his journey from teenage musician to young mountaineer, as he makes his first pictures at Yosemite, experiences the American Southwest, learns how to communicate with a broad national audience, and undertakes an epic quest to photograph America’s national parks. Along the way, discover how Ansel Adams became Ansel Adams. Image: The Tetons and the Snake River, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, 1942 © The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Contact Photo is pleased to announce “A Call from the Void,” a two-person exhibition that weaves together the works of Joseph Rovegno and Alexandria Barcenas. This exhibition will showcase their new collaborative landscape pieces that blur the line between image and object, exploring the possibilities of alternative photographic forms. “A Call from the Void” opens on Friday, December 6th, 2024, from 7 - 9 pm at Contact Photo, 51 Porter Ave., Brooklyn. Rovegno and Barcenas have been working side by side since 2020 when they co-founded LOOK, an independent art and photography book publisher. It specializes in detail-oriented, analog, and labor-intensive handmade books, often in small editions. Rovegno and Barcenas work closely with the authors from the inception and throughout the entire process of bookmaking, which involves concept development, editing, sequencing, layout and graphic designing, printing, paper selecting, and binding. Their craftsmanship stems from their shared history running LOOK Publishing. Over the years, their extensive research into the physical manifestation of images has allowed them to expand their understanding of photographs beyond flat prints. Owing heavily to the transformation of the photographs into sculptures, Rovegno and Barcenas’s new body of work imbues an intimate character into the serene and delicate landscapes captured by their cameras. Minimal and pristine, their works nonetheless possess a lively energy. They have found the perfect physical format for each image, making it feel as though it was meant to be. Whether it is experimenting with the scanning and printing process, deconstructing and layering, playing with the scale and the grid, or inscribing and sewing on the prints with their hands, the installation effortlessly flows together. Rovegno and Barcenas’s ‘making’ of photographs reveals how tactile images can be, and how poetic and sensitive a landscape can become in the physical realm.

Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm is an unprecedented exhibition, revealing extraordinary photographs taken by the beloved musical icon. Organized by the National Portrait Gallery in London, the exhibition will open at the Portland Art Museum on September 14, 2024, and run through January 19, 2025. Comprising recently rediscovered photographs from Paul McCartney’s personal archive, more than 250 pictures invite visitors to intimately experience The Beatles’ meteoric rise from British sensation to international stardom. At a time when so many camera lenses were turned toward them, McCartney’s perspective from the inside out brings fresh insight into the band, their experiences, the fans, and the Beatlemania phenomenon. Through these photographs, along with video clips and archival material, visitors can witness the dawn of the “British Invasion” that fundamentally transformed rock and roll music and global culture. Captured by McCartney during a pivotal three-month period for The Beatles in late 1963 and early 1964, the photographs evoke an affectionate family album, picturing his fellow band members, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, at a time when their lives were changing irrevocably. The exhibition gives visitors a highly personal glimpse into an extraordinary time with one of music’s enduring legends. The exhibition also captures McCartney’s interest in the visual arts, with his photos reflecting the aesthetics and popular culture of the period. The range of work, from portraiture and landscape photos to documentary images, reveals McCartney’s familiarity with the formal styles of early 1960s photography. References to New Wave, documentary filmmaking, and photojournalism can be found across the exhibition. Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm is curated by Paul McCartney with Sarah Brown on behalf of MPL Communications Limited and Rosie Broadley for the National Portrait Gallery, London, and organized for the Portland Art Museum by Julia Dolan, Ph.D., the Minor White Senior Curator of Photography. Image: Paul McCartney, Self-portrait. London, 1963. © 1963 Paul McCartney under exclusive license to MPL Archive LLP.

Mary Ellen Mark, one of the great American photojournalists, frequently turned her lens to those who had been pushed to the margins of society. This fall, the Gardner Museum brings the story of Mark and one of her long-time personal and artistic partnerships to the Fenway Gallery from October 10, 2024 – January 20, 2025. In 1983, Erin Blackwell, known as “Tiny,” was a 13-year-old girl escaping a difficult home life and living on the streets of Seattle, Washington. At the time, Mark was working on a story for LIFE about unhoused runaway teenagers in what was considered America’s “most livable city.” Mary Ellen Mark’s chance meeting with Erin in a discotheque parking lot would be the catalyst for a remarkable, deeply personal relationship. Over the next 30 years, Erin let Mark document her life. Through pregnancies and addictions, hardships and love, Mark chronicled Erin’s growing, changing family with unflinching empathy, making visible the tangled nature of human connections and the reality of poverty in the United States. The exhibition Mary Ellen Mark: A Seattle Family, 1983–2014 invites visitors to empathize with the struggles and triumphs of a multi-racial American family, and to feel the trust and inspiration that blossomed between Erin Blackwell and Mary Ellen Mark—a relationship that transcended that of artist and collaborator.

Casemore Gallery is pleased to present "Mercy, Give and Take", a group exhibition that explores the idea of opposition in the photographic works of John Gossage, Raymond Meeks, Awoiska van der Molen, Sean McFarland, and Aspen Mays. The show pairs works from each of the included artists, with each pairing sharing common visual elements—buildings, landscapes, photographic tools—but in markedly juxtaposed states, whether life or death, turmoil or serenity, idyll or menace, pushing up or giving way, or even transposal of space. In doing so, the viewer has the opportunity to look beyond the idea of opposition as having two parts, and ponder all that lies between. John Gossage (b. 1946) Staten Island, New York is an artist who has, more than most contemporary photographers, become noted for his intellectually engaging, subversive and well-crafted artist books and other publications. In them, the artist utilizes under-recognized elements of the urban environment—unused and abandoned patches of land, refuse and detritus, barbed wire, graffiti, and other disruptions—to explore themes as disparate as surveillance, memory and the relationship between architecture and power. Gossage was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012. His photographs have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions over the past 45 years. His many one-person exhibitions have included The Better Neighborhoods of Greater Washington, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (1976); Photographs of Berlin, Cleveland Museum of Art, (1989); LAMF, Sprengel Museum, Hannover (1990); One Work in 39 Parts, The Saint Louis Museum of Art, (1994); There and Gone, Sprengel Museum, Hannover, (1998); The Romance Industry, Comune di Venezia, Venice (2003); Berlin in the Time of the Wall, Gallerie Zulauf, Freinsheim (2005); The Pond, National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC (2001); and Three Routines, Art Institute of Chicago (2014). Aspen Mays (b. 1980) received her MFA in photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009. Solo exhibitions of her work have been mounted by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; Light Work, Syracuse; and the Center for Ongoing Projects and Research, Columbus. Mays was recently included in the exhibition Anna Atkins Refracted: Contemporary Works at the New York Public Library (2019). Mays was the recipient of a 2006 Rotary Fellowship and was a 2009 Fulbright Fellow. She lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, where she is Assistant Professor at California College of the Arts. Raymond Meeks (Ohio, 1963) has been recognized for his books and pictures centered on memory and place, the way in which a landscape can shape an individual and, in the abstract, how a place possesses you in its absence. Raymond Meeks lives and works in the Hudson Valley (New York). He is the sixth laureate of Immersion, a French-American photography commission sponsored by Fondation d’entreprise Hermès. Exhibitions from this commission were presented in New York (ICP September, 2023) and currently in Paris (Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson September, 2024). The Inhabitants, a book made in collaboration with writer George Weld, was published in August 2023 by MACK Awoiska van der Molen (1972) is a Dutch photographer known for her monumental black-and-white analogue images that represent her experience of the primordial and psychological space in the world she photographs. In 2019 van der Molen was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet, the global award in photography and sustainability. In 2017 she was both shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize and the recipient of the Larry Sultan Photography Award. Van der Molens' work has been shown at Foam Fotografiemuseum, Amsterdam; Huis Marseille, Amsterdam; Kousei-Inn, Kyoto; Les Rencontres d’Arles, France; Pier 24 Photography, San Francisco; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; The Photographers’ Gallery, London; FoMu, Antwerp; and Fotomuseum, Den Haag. Sean McFarland (b. California, 1976) creates work that explores the relationship between photography and the history and representation of landscape, particularly western landscapes and the skies above. With a focus on experimentation, the artist joins aspects of other mediums with photography to uncover the experience of seeing, the passing of time, and the knowledge that we and what we know cannot live forever. McFarland received a MFA from California College of the Arts, Oakland (2004) and a BS from Humboldt State University, Arcata, California (2002). His solo exhibitions include the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA (2017); Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, New York (2015); San Francisco Camerawork, San Francisco (2009), and White Columns, New York (2004). His work has been included in group exhibitions at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA (2018); George Eastman Museum, Rochester (2016); Aperture, New York (2014-15); and Bay Area Now 6, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2011). His work is in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; George Eastman Museum; and the Milwaukee Art Museum. Francisco, and teaches at San Francisco State University. Image: Raymond Meeks, Halfstory #955 Canajaharie NY 2016, 2019

The Columbus Museum of Art (CMA) is proud to present Ming Smith: August Moon, an exhibition where the essence of everyday Black life unfolds with breathtaking honesty and reverence. Smith embarks on a poignant journey through the streets of Pittsburgh’s Hill District, intimately familiarizing herself with the landscape that inspired playwright August Wilson’s iconic “Century Cycle” plays. Smith captures the essence of Wilson’s characters, immortalizing their struggles, triumphs, and the quiet resilience that defines their existence. Smith’s upbringing in a literary family fostered an immediate affinity for Wilson’s subtle metaphors and characters, many of whom mirrored the people she knew from her own childhood. With her deliberate use of blurred imagery and obscured details, Smith creates a visual language that reflects the complexities of Black life in America, inviting viewers to see beyond the surface. Through her photographs, Smith documents the fortitude and fragility of Black communities, built amidst the challenges of Jim Crow laws, redlining, and everyday racism. As Smith traverses the streets of the Hill District, she captures moments of daily life that resonate with the themes of Wilson’s plays. From the camaraderie of pool players to the solitude of Aunt Ester in her fur and knitted hats, Smith’s photographs speak volumes about the resilience and humanity of Black community. August Moon is a visual journey that celebrates the richness of Black life and the enduring legacy of August Wilson’s storytelling. Through Smith’s lens, viewers are invited to immerse themselves in the beauty, complexity, and resilience of ordinary Black existence. Image: Ming Smith, Greyhound Bus, from the series August Moon, 1991 © Ming Smith

Marvel at the poetic street scenes, Hollywood portraits, fashion photos, and images of war produced by more than 30 Hungarian-born artists who transformed photography in the 20th-century. Curated by Alex Nyerges, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Director and CEO, with Károly Kincses, founding director of the Hungarian Museum of Photography, American, born Hungary: Kertész, Capa, and the Hungarian American Photographic Legacy examines the pioneering artistry that often emerged out of backdrops of persecution and perseverance. American, born Hungary follows a remarkable number of émigrés and exiles from Hungary to Berlin and Paris and then on to New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, where they reinvented themselves and American photography. This exhibition is the first full examination of their circuitous journeys to the United States—in the aftermaths of two world wars and Hungary’s student-led revolt in 1956—and the wondrous artistic legacy that developed along the way. More than 170 stunning, mesmerizing, and surreal photographs capture the unexpected beauty of fleeting shadows, gritty urban life, glamorous celebrities, and the broken promises of America. Included are works by notables such as André Kertész, László Moholy-Nagy, Martin Munkácsi, and György Kepes, along with less familiar names whose photos are instantly recognizable. One example is Robert Capa, a pioneer of modern photojournalism whose photos of Omaha Beach on D-Day are among the most famous of World War II. Providing a missing chapter in art history, the exhibition’s focus is the astounding impact of Hungarian-born artists on photography in the United States, especially in urban centers. Highlights include photos by Moholy-Nagy, whose avant-garde beginnings in Dessau, Germany, inspired a “New Bauhaus” that sought to establish the Windy City as a design incubator; work by tailor and photographer John Albok, whose photographs were praised by the New York Times; and André de Dienes, whose portraits of cinema’s icons, including Marilyn Monroe, helped fuel Hollywood’s Golden Age. Before opening at VMFA on October 5, American, born Hungary opened at the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, on April 5, 2024, marking the grand opening of a newly renovated exhibition space at the museum. After its run at VMFA, the exhibition will travel to the George Eastman Museum, the International Museum of Photography and Film and the George Eastman House, in Rochester, New York, where it will open September 26, 2025. Image: Virginia Bruce, ca. 1938–39, László Josef Willinger, (American, born Hungary 1909–1989) © Estate of Laszlo Willinger, courtesy The John Kobal Foundation

Take an epic journey through the American South from 1845 to today. In A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845, presented at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, encounter the everyday lives and ordinary places captured in evocative photos that contemplate the region’s central role in shaping American history and identity and its critical impact on the development of photography. This is the first major exhibition in more than 25 years to explore the full history of photography in and about the South. A Long Arc explores the American South’s distinct, evolving, and contradictory character through an examination of photography and how photographers working in the region have reckoned with the South’s fraught history and posed urgent questions about American identity. Organized chronologically, the exhibition traces the South’s shifting identity in more than two hundred photographs made over more than 175 years. The exhibition’s individual sections delve into the themes of photography before, during, and after the Civil War; documentary photography of the 1930s and ’40s; images of a post–World War II South in economic, racial, and psychic dissonance with the nation; photography as catalyst for change during the civil rights movement; reflective narrative photography of the late 20th century; and contemporary photography examining social, environmental, and economic issues. A Long Arc presents a richly layered archive that captures the region’s beauty and complexity. Offering a full visual accounting of the South’s role in shaping American history, identity and culture, the exhibition includes photographs by Alexander Gardner, George Barnard, P.H. Polk, Lewis Hine, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Marion Post Wolcott, Robert Frank, Clarence John Laughlin, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Bruce Davidson, Danny Lyon, Doris Derby, Ernest Withers, William Eggleston, William Christenberry, Baldwin Lee, Sally Mann, Carrie Mae Weems, Susan Worsham, Carolyn Drake, Sheila Pree-Bright, RaMell Ross, and others. Image: The March from Selma, 1965, Matt Herron © Matt Herron

The Columbus Museum of Art (CMA) is proud to present Ming Smith: Transcendence, featuring the entirety of this remarkable series for the first time. Through this exhibition, CMA offers a rare opportunity to delve into Ming Smith’s identity as an artist deeply rooted in the diverse fabric of Columbus, Ohio. Smith’s lens intricately threads together the cultural tapestry of Columbus, showcasing the influences of luminaries such as Nancy Wilson, Aminah Robinson, Toyce Anderson, Toni Morrison, and Linda Goode Bryant. Ming’s narrative unfolds against familiar backdrops, from Carl Brown’s IGA on Mt Vernon Avenue to Dr. Tyler’s drugstore on the east side, resonating with personal memories of her father’s pharmacy. The halls of The Ohio State University reflect familial achievements, while S. Wheatland Avenue bears witness to pivotal moments in the Hilltop’s history. Transcendence surpasses the confines of traditional photography; it is a deeply intimate exploration of Ming’s reconciliation with her hometown. Inspired by Alice Coltrane’s transformative music, Ming’s series confronts the injustices of her racially divided upbringing in Columbus with compassion and insight. Ming’s narrative invites viewers to engage with the images as a public discourse, with much of Transcendence remaining unseen and unprinted, offering endless opportunities for exploration and interpretation. Join us in celebrating Ming Smith’s artistic legacy and reconnecting with her profound vision as we welcome the artist back to the city that shaped her. Through Transcendence, Ming invites us on a journey of rediscovery, where the past merges with the present, and the potential for understanding knows no bounds. Image: Ming Smith, Black Girl Dreaming (detail), from the series Transcendence, 1990 © Ming Smith