Louis Faurer / Helen Levitt: New York City, 1938-1988

Blurring distinctions between body, sculpture, and landscape, Jeanne K. Simmons: Rooted transforms the galleries of Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art into an immersive environment shaped by living materials and quiet intention. Opening October 11, 2025 and on view through February 22, 2026, the exhibition presents Simmons’ organic, wearable sculptures alongside photographs that document their relationship to the land. Together, these works propose a vision of humanity not as separate from nature, but as physically and spiritually entangled with it. At the heart of the exhibition is a site-specific installation composed of foraged moss, branches, grasses, and other natural elements gathered from the Pacific Northwest. For the first time, Simmons translates her outdoor practice into an interior gallery, carrying the moisture, scent, and texture of Washington State’s temperate rainforests into the Arizona desert. The resulting environment evokes a liminal terrain—part ancient, part speculative—where sculptural forms appear as remnants of human presence embedded within a living ecosystem. Simmons’ work is guided by a deep ecological awareness and a growing urgency around climate change. While her sculptures often convey tenderness and care, they also function as subtle disruptions, questioning dominant ideas of progress and consumption. Her accompanying photographs are central to this inquiry, depicting bodies that merge with grasses, soil, and foliage, dissolving the boundary between figure and ground. These images affirm her belief that humans belong to the natural world, rather than stand apart from it. Curated by Keshia Turley, Rooted offers space for contemplation and slow observation, inviting viewers to linger rather than pass through. The exhibition balances melancholy with hope, acknowledging environmental loss while gesturing toward alternative ways of relating to the Earth—through humility, reciprocity, and attentiveness. Simmons hopes visitors leave with a renewed awareness of their surroundings, inspired to pause, breathe, and recognize their place within a fragile and interconnected web of life. In doing so, Rooted becomes both an invitation and a quiet call to action. Image: “Jeanne K. Simmons: Rooted” at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA). ”Grass Cocoon” is among the featured artworks. Courtesy of the Artist. © Jeanne K. Simmons

Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind is one of the most extensive retrospectives ever devoted to Yoko Ono—an artist, musician, and activist whose influence has reshaped the boundaries of art and thought for over seven decades. Presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the exhibition offers a singular opportunity for American audiences to experience Ono’s creative universe, where poetry, humor, and philosophy intertwine with a lifelong call for peace. Tracing her extraordinary journey from the 1950s to today, the exhibition brings together more than 200 works across performance, film, photography, sound, installation, and archival materials. Central to Ono’s practice are her participatory pieces—artworks that invite the viewer to complete the work through imagination or direct engagement. Visitors are encouraged to take part in these interactive experiences, reflecting the artist’s belief that art can be both a private meditation and a collective act. From her early years in New York’s avant-garde scene, where she became a leading figure in conceptual art and the Fluxus movement, Ono developed an innovative artistic language grounded in instructions and actions. Music of the Mind revisits landmark works such as Cut Piece (1964), her provocative performance exploring vulnerability and trust; Film No. 4 (Bottoms) (1966–67), conceived as a “petition for peace”; and her lyrical films Fly (1970–71). Collaborations with John Cage, Ornette Coleman, and John Lennon reveal her role as a bridge between art and music. The exhibition also highlights ongoing works such as Wish Tree (1996–present), inviting visitors to share hopes for peace, and installations like My Mommy is Beautiful (2004), which encourages reflections on memory and love. Together, these works reveal Ono’s enduring commitment to the transformative power of participation. Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind is a celebration of imagination as an act of resistance and a timeless invitation to envision a more peaceful world. Image: Yoko Ono with Glass Hammer, 1967, from Half-A-Wind Show, Lisson Gallery, London. © Yoko Ono. Photo by and © Clay Perry.

French photographer and visual artist Nicolas Floc’h’s Fleuves-Océan project traces the movement of water across our planet, exploring its flow through varied habitats and representing the ways we are all connected by water cycles and systems. This exhibition pairs vibrant monochromatic photographs of the color of water made under the surface with dramatic black-and-white landscape photographs made along the banks of the Mississippi and its tributaries—from Louisiana and across the country. Nicolas Floc’h documented the entire span of the Mississippi during a 2022 artist residency in the United States with Villa Albertine in collaboration with the Camargo Foundation and Artconnexion. This exhibition, organized by the New Orleans Museum of Art, is a clarion call illustrating illustrating the importance of a network of water that links people across the entire continent. Floc’h’s photography translates important scientific concerns—like climate change and the looming water crisis—into an overwhelming aesthetic experience, without sacrificing any urgency or insistence. A monumental arrangement of Floc’h’s “water color” photographs constitutes a central element of the exhibition. Floc’h made each image by lowering the camera underwater to the same prescribed depths, repeating the process at different locations in the Mississippi and its source waters. Light passing through the water appears as an unbelievable range of colors and shades, influenced by factors like plant and animal life, mineral run-off, and other determinants of the river’s chemical content. NOMA’s presentation combines nearly 300 individual photographs into a monumental grid of vibrant color, a new kind of polychromatic map plotting the health of the Mississippi between New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. In tandem with this wall of color, the exhibition includes compelling landscape photographs that illustrate the full span of the watershed, from Minnesota and the Dakotas, through Illinois, West Virginia, Missouri, Texas, and more. Floc’h traces the movement of water through the many tributaries that combine to make the Mississippi, chronicles human efforts to harness and direct the power of the river, and the alarming absence from dry reservoirs and creek beds. Floch’s striking landscapes are presented in tandem with water color photographs specific to that place, making a visual connection between what we can see happening on the land and the quality of the water that surrounds us. Image: The Color of Water, Mississippi River, Ohio River Confluence 2022

Pao Houa Her’s photographic practice delves into the intertwined histories and possibilities of landscape and portrait traditions, exploring how desire, memory, and displacement shape the idea of homeland. Her work draws deeply from the Hmong community’s lived experiences and oral histories, positioning women as the primary transmitters of cultural knowledge and continuity. Through her carefully composed images, Her examines how belonging and identity are constructed, using photography to navigate the layered relationship between place, imagination, and inherited memory. Pao Houa Her: The Imaginative Landscape spans more than two decades of the artist’s career, offering a fluid and unconventional survey of her evolving vision. Seen through the lens of the titular series, the exhibition weaves together connections between earlier projects, recent works, and pieces still in progress. Her photographs move seamlessly between geographies—California’s agricultural valleys, the dense jungles of Laos, and the poppy fields of Minnesota—each location transformed into a symbolic terrain that reflects both personal and collective narratives of migration and resilience. In San José, Her’s images extend beyond the museum walls, appearing throughout the downtown area in both outdoor and indoor settings, on walls and digital screens. This spatial dispersion echoes the resilience and adaptability of diasporic communities, suggesting that cultural identity is not confined to one place but continually reimagined across shifting landscapes. Her’s approach to photography—both grounded and poetic—invites viewers to reconsider how homeland can be simultaneously real and imagined, distant yet intimate. Co-organized by Lauren Schell Dickens of the San José Museum of Art and Jodi Throckmorton of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, this dual presentation embodies the spirit of collaboration and continuity that defines Her’s practice and the enduring vitality of the stories she brings to light. Image: Pao Houa Her, untitled (Erik laying outside with ziplock bags) from “The Imaginative Landscape” series, 2018. Archival pigment print, 32 x 40 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Bockley Gallery.

Art therapy has long offered a meaningful bridge between inner life and outward expression, inviting individuals to explore emotions through the steady, reassuring structure of creative work. Rather than emphasizing technical skill, its practice centers on the experience itself—shaping images that gently reveal memories, fears, hopes, or unspoken thoughts. In this setting, the act of making becomes a form of dialogue, one that supports insight and healing for people of all ages and backgrounds. Within this tradition, photo art therapy holds a special place. Using photographs taken, gathered, or reimagined, participants engage with personal narratives in a tangible way. An image can steady difficult feelings or open paths to stories that resist verbal expression. Through this process, photography becomes both mirror and guide, helping individuals observe their own journeys with clarity and compassion. This exhibition brings together the collective efforts of students, faculty, and alumni from the Nazareth University Graduate Art Therapy Program. Their works reflect the program’s long-standing dedication to thoughtful practice and careful study. To protect privacy, no client work is presented; instead, each piece on display includes a note from its maker, offering insight into how such imagery might function within a therapeutic session. The intention is to help visitors understand not only the artwork, but also the deeper emotional landscapes art therapy seeks to illuminate. Established in the early 1990s, the Nazareth University Graduate Art Therapy Program has remained committed to preparing future therapists through rigorous academic training and hands-on experience. Its Creative Art Therapy Clinic, housed within the York Wellness and Rehabilitation Institute, serves thousands each year and provides graduate students with a vital setting to apply their learning. Under the guidance of licensed and board-certified professionals, students practice with care, patience, and respect, honoring each client’s story as they move through their own healing process. Image: Emma Annable, Untitled, from the exhibition Photo Art Therapy: A Convergence of Creativity and the Healing Process. Photo transfer on wood. Courtesy of the artist. © Emma Annable

MoMA PS1 presents the first solo exhibition in the United States by photographer Inuuteq Storch, titled Soon Will Summer Be Over, on view from October 9, 2025, through February 23, 2026. The exhibition traces more than a decade of Storch’s work, capturing the emotional and physical landscapes of Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland). Centered on his hometown of Sisimiut, a small Arctic community north of the polar circle, his photographs explore moments of tenderness, daily routine, and quiet grandeur. Using analog cameras passed down by friends and family, Storch creates a deeply personal visual language that reflects the complexities of Greenlandic life—where ancient Inuit traditions intersect with colonial histories and the effects of a rapidly changing climate. The natural world, ever-present in its extremes, shapes Storch’s vision. His early series Keepers of the Ocean (2019) captures the essence of life in Sisimiut over four years, juxtaposing the intimacy of domestic scenes with the immensity of the surrounding sea and sky. Later works, including Soon Will Summer Be Over (2023), evoke the fragile rhythms of life in Qaanaaq, one of the northernmost towns on Earth, while What If You Were My Sabine? (2025) reveals the emotional resonance of a personal relationship. Through each project, Storch’s camera becomes both a witness and participant, preserving the fleeting interplay between people, memory, and landscape. A deep engagement with Greenland’s photographic past runs through Storch’s practice. In Porcelain Souls, he revisits family photographs from the 1960s to 1980s, uncovering tender records of everyday life. His video installation Anachronism (2015–2020) layers archival footage of Inuit modernization, questioning how identity is constructed and remembered. By merging historical fragments with contemporary imagery, Storch restores agency to his community’s self-representation, crafting a vision of Greenland that is as poetic as it is political. Image: Inuuteq Storch. Keepers of the Ocean. 2019. Photograph. Courtesy the artist and Wilson Saplana Gallery, Copenhagen © Inuuteq Storch

The 7th Chelsea International Photography Competition returns to New York from February 19 to February 25, 2026, transforming Agora Gallery into a meeting point for contemporary photographic voices from around the world. Set in the historic Chelsea art district, the exhibition reflects both the neighborhood’s long-standing relationship with photography and the medium’s continued evolution in a rapidly shifting visual culture. This seventh edition brings together a diverse selection of photographers whose practices span documentary, conceptual, fine art, and socially engaged approaches. Chosen from an international pool of submissions, the featured works speak to the vitality of photography as a medium that remains deeply connected to lived experience while constantly reinventing its formal language. From intimate personal narratives to broader reflections on community, identity, and place, the exhibition reveals how photography continues to function as both witness and interpretation. The jury for the 2026 competition underscores this balance between tradition and forward momentum. With backgrounds that range from education and copyright law to newsroom leadership and grassroots photojournalism, the jurors bring distinct yet complementary perspectives to the selection process. Their combined expertise ensures an exhibition that values technical excellence, ethical awareness, and emotional resonance, while remaining open to experimentation and new modes of storytelling. What unites the participating artists is a shared commitment to photography as a meaningful form of expression rather than mere image-making. Each body of work operates as a visual statement, shaped by personal history, cultural context, or social engagement. Together, these individual visions form a cohesive presentation that highlights the medium’s capacity to connect disparate experiences across borders and disciplines. Presented within Agora Gallery’s dynamic exhibition space, The 7th Chelsea International Photography Competition invites viewers to slow down and engage closely with the images on display. It offers a snapshot of contemporary photographic practice at a moment when images are everywhere, yet thoughtful, intentional photography remains essential. Rooted in craft and open to the future, the exhibition affirms photography’s enduring role as a powerful and relevant art form. Image: Baby© Michele Zousmer

Gilman Contemporary presents a striking introduction to the work of Dutch photographer Bastiaan Woudt, whose refined visual language has quickly earned him international recognition. Born in 1987 and entirely self-taught, Woudt has shaped a distinctive monochromatic style that echoes classic photographic traditions while embracing the clarity and precision of a modern eye. His images, spanning portraiture, fashion, and landscape, reduce the world to its most essential elements—light, shadow, and line—creating compositions that feel both disciplined and dreamlike. Woudt’s photographs move naturally between the realms of haute couture and fine art. His work has appeared in publications such as Harper’s Bazaar, British Vogue, Numéro, and L’Officiel, and he has lent his elegant sensibility to major campaigns, including those for Chanel. Whether printed for the page or exhibited on the wall, his images share a commitment to form, balance, and an almost architectural sense of rhythm. Among Woudt’s long-form projects, Rhythm remains especially resonant. Here, he explores how texture, posture, and fabric influence the way identity is constructed and perceived. The tension between concealment and expression becomes central, as fashion functions simultaneously as shield and symbol. This nuanced reading of the human figure continues throughout the works selected for the exhibition, where models are framed in sculptural poses, their silhouettes sharpened by precisely controlled light. Over more than thirteen years, Woudt has developed a signature that is instantly recognizable: stark tonal contrasts, flowing contours, and a minimalist sensibility that allows emotion to surface through subtle gestures. His photographs have been shown at Paris Photo, Photo London, and AIPAD, and his museum exhibitions—including Twist (2022) and Essence (2024)—have further cemented his place in contemporary photography. Woudt’s practice is also guided by purpose. Through his involvement with organizations such as the Marie-Stella-Maris Foundation and Orange Babies, he supports vital humanitarian and health initiatives. His work, both artistic and philanthropic, reflects a belief in clarity—of image, intention, and impact. Image: Bastiaan Woudt, Poise. Archival pigment print © Bastiaan Woudt

Dora Somosi’s exhibition Alchemy of Memory invites viewers into a world where nature, history, and personal reflection are woven together through the luminous medium of cyanotype. Known for her striking blue-toned prints, Somosi works with sunlight, time, and instinct to create images that feel both ephemeral and deeply rooted. In this presentation, two ongoing series — By Her Side and Mending — unfold as parallel meditations on legacy, renewal, and the quiet strength found in the act of making. In By Her Side, Somosi photographs tree branches as abstract portraits of women whose creative voices have shaped her own journey. These branches, twisting, reaching, and bearing the weight of years, stand beside the former homes and studios of artists, writers, and thinkers such as Emily Dickinson, Georgia O’Keeffe, Toni Morrison, Ruth Asawa, Agnes Martin, and Imogen Cunningham. What emerges is a poetic visual dialogue between landscape and lineage. Each image becomes a tribute to women whose ideas continue to resonate, their presence lingering in the natural forms that marked their daily lives. Somosi first explored this approach at Steepletop, the home of Edna St. Vincent Millay, where the grounds provided the spark for an ongoing quest to honor creative foremothers through the quiet language of trees. With Mending, Somosi turns to a more intimate form of reconstruction. Using test prints and discarded cyanotypes as her base, she repairs and reimagines them through meticulous hand embroidery. Drawing from Hungarian folk traditions and the philosophy of Japanese kintsugi, she transforms imperfections into sites of beauty and resilience. Threads become pathways of memory, stitching together fragments that might otherwise be lost. These works highlight the power of restoration — not as an erasure of the past, but as a recognition of its value. Through both series, Somosi reveals herself as a visual wanderer, searching for the sublime in the overlooked. Her images, layered with cultural heritage and personal insight, celebrate endurance, creativity, and the ever-present conversation between the natural world and the human spirit. Image: Wilma Dykeman, White Oak Tree, Asheville, NC Hand printed cyanotype on watercolor paper © Dora Somosi

Timeless Beauty, Unseen Realities, presented at Benrubi Gallery from November 26, 2025 to February 26, 2026, offers a rare opportunity to engage with the photographic vision of Vincent Vallarino, an artist whose life has been deeply shaped by the worlds of fine art, collecting, and image-making. Drawing from more than five decades of practice, the exhibition brings together photographs created over a 55-year period, revealing a coherent and quietly powerful body of work rooted in intuition, discipline, and a lifelong pursuit of beauty. Vallarino’s artistic foundations were formed in the late 1960s and early 1970s through his studies with Minor White, whose teachings emphasized perception beyond appearances. That philosophy continues to resonate throughout this series. Working primarily with an 8 x 10 view camera, Vallarino approaches photography as both a meditative act and a craft refined through patience and precision. His mastery of large-format techniques allows for extraordinary detail, transforming familiar subjects into images that feel both hyper-real and strangely abstract. The photographs on view resist narrative in a traditional sense. Instead, they operate as visual meditations on form, texture, and light. By isolating fragments of reality and allowing them to speak through scale and clarity, Vallarino blurs the line between representation and abstraction. What emerges is a sequence of images that feel intuitive rather than descriptive, inviting viewers to slow down and engage with their own internal responses. Beyond his work behind the camera, Vallarino’s long career as a gallerist and collector informs the exhibition’s depth. His experience co-leading The Greenwich Gallery and his contributions to major institutional collections underscore a lifetime devoted to art in all its forms. Timeless Beauty, Unseen Realities stands as both a personal reflection and a distilled vision of how photography can transform observation into fantasy, and reality into something quietly transcendent. Image: Luxembourg Woods #3, Fishbach, Luxembourg, 1974 © Vincent Vallarino

Family Diary 2026, presented by the Atlanta Photography Group, reconsiders the idea of the family album through a contemporary yet deeply rooted photographic lens. Rather than focusing on casual snapshots or overt confessions, the exhibition highlights bodies of work grounded in duration, attentiveness, and lived experience. These are projects shaped by time—photographs made slowly, deliberately, and with an understanding that meaning often emerges through repetition and return. At the heart of Family Diary 2026 is a belief long central to photographic tradition: that sustained observation can reveal truths unavailable to the fleeting image. Long-term portraiture, documentary series, and studies of domestic or communal spaces function as visual journals, even when executed with formal restraint or classical technique. Here, the diary is not a single moment, but an accumulation—of gestures, routines, absences, and subtle shifts that define everyday life. The exhibition embraces an expansive definition of family. Biological ties sit alongside chosen families, inherited communities, and relationships forged through place and shared experience. Family may be anchored in a household, a neighborhood, or a generational landscape shaped by memory and change. In this context, typologies and archival approaches take on new resonance, transforming structured methodologies into intimate records of connection and continuity. What unites the works on view is a quiet rigor. These photographs resist spectacle, instead honoring the modest scale of daily life and the emotional weight carried by familiar spaces. Kitchens, bedrooms, front yards, and streets become sites where personal histories intersect with broader social narratives. Over time, the camera becomes both witness and companion, attentive to what endures and what slips away. Juried by Jamie M. Allen, Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Curator and Head of the Department of Photography at the George Eastman Museum, Family Diary 2026 situates contemporary practice within a lineage of photographic storytelling. The exhibition affirms that the diary form remains vital—not as a record of isolated moments, but as a sustained act of looking that honors tradition while remaining open to evolving definitions of family and belonging. Image: © Debra Barnhart

Strangers in the Park 2, on view at Soho Photo Gallery from February 4 to 28, 2026, continues an evolving series of large-format black-and-white portraits begun in the summer of 2024. Predominantly photographed in Washington Square Park and across locations in the UK, the project centers on encounters with people previously unknown to the artist—moments of connection shaped by chance, curiosity, and time. Using a 4x5 camera, the work embraces slowness as both method and meaning. Large format portraiture demands attention, patience, and presence. Each photograph begins not with an image, but with a conversation—an exchange that unfolds before the shutter is released. In these deliberate encounters, the act of photographing becomes a way of listening. The resulting portraits aim to reflect something essential about each sitter, but equally important is the process itself: a quiet, humanistic practice rooted in respect, empathy, and mutual recognition. The park functions as a democratic stage, a shared public space where lives briefly intersect. Here, strangers agree to pause, to be seen, and to participate in an unfamiliar ritual. The camera’s imposing physicality slows the pace, encouraging sitters to settle into themselves. Expressions are unguarded yet dignified, shaped not by performance but by presence. The portraits resist spectacle, favoring subtlety, texture, and psychological depth over easy narratives. The New York presentation carries a particular resonance. The opening offers the rare and meaningful opportunity to invite many of the photographed individuals back into the frame—this time as viewers, encountering their own likenesses on the gallery walls. This gesture completes a circle, transforming the exhibition into a shared experience between artist, subject, and audience. Conceived as an ongoing project, Strangers in the Park 2 will continue to expand into other cities around the world, mapping human diversity through sustained observation. With plans to eventually bring the work together as a book, the series stands as a quiet affirmation of photography’s enduring ability to foster connection, understanding, and appreciation across difference. Image: Carly, courtesy of Soho Photo Gallery © Michael Schenker