PHOENIX, AZ (April 15, 2026) – This summer, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) presents Ecstatic Time: The Alchemy of Photography, an original exhibition exploring photography’s ability to influence perception. Featuring nearly 100 works from the collection of the University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography (CCP) in Tucson, Ecstatic Time presents photographs spanning nearly the entire history of the medium, including still lifes to time-lapse and astronomical imagery, that demonstrate the transformative, experimental, and whimsical nature of photography. The exhibition celebrates the 20-year anniversary of the landmark partnership between Phoenix Art Museum and CCP, established through funding by Mr. and Mrs. John R. Norton to bring vibrant photography exhibitions comprising works from the Center’s unparalleled collections to new and larger audiences. Ecstatic Time: The Alchemy of Photography will be on view at PhxArt from July 29, 2026, through January 3, 2027.

“Phoenix Art Museum is proud to present Ecstatic Time: The Alchemy of Photography in partnership with the Center for Creative Photography as we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Norton agreement that formalized our shared commitment to engaging our audiences with exemplary works spanning the history of photography,”said Jeremy Mikolajczak, the Museum’sSybil Harrington Director and CEO of Phoenix Art Museum and coordinating curator of the exhibition’s PhxArt presentation. “This enduring collaboration has allowed our institutions to bring extraordinary works from the CCP collection to our community while advancing a deeper understanding of photography as an evolving, experimental, and transformative medium. Ecstatic Time reflects the strength of that partnership, offering audiences the opportunity to reflect on the boundless creative possibilities of the photographic medium.”

Although often credited with capturing reality, photography also has the power to reveal, transform, and defamiliarize its subjects, augmenting reality rather than reproducing it exactly as it appears. Ecstatic Time takes its title from the film theorist Hollis Frampton, who proposed that photographs enable viewers to access what he called “ecstatic time,” an experience distinct from historical or clock time. Derived from the Ancient Greek ékstasis, meaning “to stand outside oneself,” the term reflects how photographs suspend their subjects from the continuous flow of lived experience. The photographs on view encourage viewers to attend more closely, opening access to deeper realities beneath the surface of everyday perception.

“The Center for Creative Photography’s partnership with Phoenix Art Museum is an innovative model for collection sharing, one that allows the CCP to fulfill its mission by engaging audiences beyond our location on the University of Arizona campus in Tucson,” said Todd Tubutis, the Director of the Center for Creative Photography. “We are delighted to celebrate 20 years of a wonderful institutional collaboration with the opening of Ecstatic Time, and look forward to many more engaging photography exhibitions in the Norton Gallery for years to come.”

Ecstatic Time features approximately 100 objects from the CCP’s collection, including unexpected treasures by canonical figures such as Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, exemplifying process experimentation and puzzling or playful subject matter and demonstrating the breadth and inventiveness of creative photography. Spanning the full history of the medium from the 19th century to the present, the exhibition places particular emphasis on early 20th-century works, examining photography’s complex relationship with time through examples of flash photography, still lifes, time-lapse imagery and astronomical photographs, including images that capture phenomena invisible to the naked eye. Collectively, the works evoke a cabinet of curiosities, underscoring photography’s capacity for visual alchemy and experimentation.

Ecstatic Time is arranged in four thematic sections.

• Awake and Dreaming brings together surreal and enigmatic 20^th-century images, orienting viewers to the transformative nature of camera vision and techniques like flash that freeze moments in time. Artists featured here include Ilse Bing, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Kozo Miyoshi, and Garry Winogrand.
• The Thing Itself presents a sprawling wall of still lifes that amplify the presence of their subjects, echoing a “cabinet of curiosities.” Visitors will spot pictures by figures from Harold Edgerton and Edward Weston to Masahisa Fukase and Abelardo Morell.
• Out of this World features astronomical imagery, including solar eclipses (including an image of an eclipse captured by Ansel Adams) and an image recorded by NASA’s Mars Pathfinder rover, highlighting how the medium has given us access to faraway or invisible subject matter.
• Incisions in History / Segments of Eternity presents works that forge reverberations between past and present, including conceptual works by artists like Hiroshi Sugimoto and Lew Thomas that examine photography’s relationship to time and a suite of 19^th-century images that look back at earlier eras.

“Ecstatic Time brings together works that remind us how endlessly surprising photography can be,” said Emilia Mickevicius, the Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography at Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography, who devised the exhibition for PhxArt. “My point of departure was a database group of unusual objects I’d been maintaining since starting my position three years ago. Every time I came across a particularly striking picture in the storage vault that startled or delighted me in some way, I’d add it to the group—and eventually it dawned on me: what if this was the basis for an entire show? Rather than offering a chronological survey of the medium, the resulting exhibition invites viewers to encounter an unusual group of photographs that delight, puzzle and disrupt our sense of time and perception. These pictures encourage us to slow down, look closely and experience photography not just as a transparent record of the world, but as a medium capable of wonder, imagination, and experimentation.”

High-resolution photography for Ecstatic Time: The Alchemy of Photography can be downloaded here. Torequest interviews, contact the Communications Office of Phoenix Art Museum at press@phxart.org and kaylee.weyrauch@phxart.org.  

About the Exhibition

Ecstatic Time: The Alchemy of Photography is co-organized by Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography. The exhibition is curated by Emilia Mickevicius, PhD, the Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography. All exhibitions at Phoenix Art Museum are underwritten by the Phoenix Art Museum Exhibition Excellence Fund, founded by The Opatrny Family Foundation with additional major support provided by Joan Cremin.

Admission is free for Museum Members and youth aged 5 and younger. Entrance into the exhibition is included in general admission for the public. Visitors may also enjoy reduced admission to the exhibition during voluntary-donation times on Wednesdays from 3 – 8 pm, made possible by SRP and City of Phoenix. For a full breakdown of general admission prices and hours, see phxart.org/visit/.

About Phoenix Art Museum

Since 1959, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) has engaged millions of visitors with the art of our region and world. Located in Phoenix’s Central Corridor, PhxArt creates spaces of exchange and belonging for all audiences through dynamic exhibitions, collections, and experiences with art. Each year, 300,000 guests on average engage with critically acclaimed national and international exhibitions and the Museum’s collection of more than 21,000 works of American and Western American, Asian, European, Latin American, modern, contemporary art, and fashion design, along with vibrant photography exhibitions made possible through the Museum’s landmark partnership with the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson. PhxArt also presents live performances, outstanding examples of global cinema, arts-education programs and workshops, a monthly live-music series, and more for the community. To learn more about Phoenix Art Museum, visit phxart.org, or call 602.257.1880.

About the Center for Creative Photography (CCP):

Founded in 1975, the Center for Creative Photography is the largest institution in North America devoted to the research and exhibition of photography. At the heart of CCP’s holdings are more than 300 archives of photographers, scholars, galleries, and organizations, complemented by an unparalleled collection of some 120,000 fine prints. In addition, CCP focuses on preserving and stewarding its holdings through a robust conservation program and digital imaging unit. The Center owns and manages copyrights for a selection of archive artists and supports licensing and image file delivery to publishers, authors, educators, and filmmakers worldwide. As a unit of Arizona Arts at the University of Arizona, the Center maintains a robust calendar of free exhibitions and programs for the public, serves students and faculty through curricular engagements, and awards several international research fellowships annually.

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Cara Romero, Alika No. 2, 2024, archival pigment print. © Cara Romero. Image courtesy of the artist.

PHOENIX, AZ (December 9, 2025) – In early 2026, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) will present the landmark exhibition Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Living Light), the first major museum exhibition dedicated solely to the artist’s evocative work. Romero blends fine art and editorial styles to challenge dominant narratives of Indigenous decline and erasure while disrupting preconceived notions about what it means to be a Native American. Organized by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, Panûpünüwügai (Living Light) features more than 60 iconic large-scale photographs spanning a decade of the artist’s career, including a new, never-before-exhibited work commissioned by PhxArt to be created by Cara Romero—a project based in regional, collaborative storytelling with Native peoples. Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Living Light) will be on view at PhxArt from February 28 through June 28, 2026.

“Phoenix Art Museum is profoundly honored to debut Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Living Light) during this historic moment for the institution, as we expand our commitment to presenting the most innovative voices shaping contemporary art today,” said Jeremy Mikolajczak, the Museum’s Sybil Harrington Director and CEO. “Romero stands at the forefront of contemporary photography, masterfully weaving materials, myths, and Indigenous practices with urgent contemporary realities. Though rooted in her personal story and Indigenous futurism, her work speaks universally to themes of women’s empowerment, environmental stewardship, and the role of landscape in shaping identity. This exhibition represents a milestone for our communities to experience the work of a groundbreaking artist with deep cultural and historical ties to the Desert Southwest.” 

Cara Romero (b. 1977; Chemehuevi/American) is a renowned photographer known for dramatic fine-art photography that examines Indigenous life in contemporary contexts. An enrolled citizen of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, Romero was raised between the contrasting settings of the rural Chemehuevi reservation in Mojave Desert, California, and the urban sprawl of Houston, Texas. Informed by her identity, Romero’s visual storytelling represents Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural memory, countering dominant narratives of Native American experiences and showcasing the diversity within Indigenous nations and communities. 

“Having a contemporary photography exhibit at Phoenix Art Museum marks a radical turn in my journey as a Native American female photographer,” said Cara Romeo. “I am excited for the work to be integrated into an American Art museum as an intercultural conversation– I’m especially excited that PhxArt is the closest major American Art institution to my homelands on the Chemehuevi Valley Indian Reservation. 

This is my first solo exhibition touring the United States, and Phoenix is the second of four venues. It feels like such an epic venue for this exhibition. My hope is that together, we open people’s minds to the many fascinating diversities of Native people and stories.”

The exhibition’s title, Panûpünüwügai, translates to “living light,” and has multiple meanings: the spirit of light, the way light interacts with human beings, and how both light and people are enlivened through these interactions. Featured works, including site-specific installations and large-scale photographs, are organized across five thematic sections: 

California Desert and Mythos draws inspiration from Romero’s experiences of growing up in the Chemehuevi Valley in Southeastern California along the Colorado River, which shaped her worldview and work. Throughout this section, visitors encounter four young boys who represent not only themselves, but also time-traveling spirit beings of the landscape, reminding audiences that neither time nor the rich ecological and social history of the Mojave Desert are linear. 

In (Re)Imagining Americana Drawing, Romero upends stereotypical images and stories from pop culture and mass media that often define Native-American experiences and opportunities. Working with various collaborators to produce the works featured in this section, Romero riffs on images of American Girl dolls and Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, among other mainstream imagery. 

Rematriation: Empowering Indigenous Women showcases images that position female subjects in spaces of power. Created from a maternal and biographical perspective, these works are informed by the women leaders Romero has encountered in her own life and community. 

Environmental Racism spotlights some of Romero’s most memorable images, speaking to historical and contemporary issues of resource extraction and its impacts on indigenous ecosystems. These photographic dreamscapes—many of which were created underwater—encourage reflection on the relationships among humanity, place, the landscape, and extractive economies.

Throughout Ancestral Futures, Romero’s otherworldly images speculate on playful contexts but assert the sacred role of ancestral knowledges and place-based intelligences in building healthy futures, not only for Indigenous peoples, but for everyone. These works are informed by the artist’s love of magical realism and center narratives such as the life-giving power of women, the intelligence of corn, and the importance of telling stories that are both complicated and hopeful. Within this section, viewers will encounter the introduction of a newly commissioned work that Romero will create by drawing on her relationships with Indigenous community members from the Phoenix region. They will be invited to collaborate on a monumental photographic work that interweaves elements and imagery of desert ecology with the notion of nonlinear time, yielding a piece that will honor ancestors and their deep knowledge of the land while asserting the vitality of Native-American communities now and into the future. Following its debut in the PhxArt presentation of Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Living Light), the work will become a part of the Museum’s permanent collection numbering more than 21,000 objects, building upon the institution’s existing strength in contemporary photographic portraiture. 

“Cara Romero is one of the leading image-makers of our time,” said Emilia Mickevicius, the Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography at Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography, who coordinated the exhibition’s presentation at PhxArt. “I’m eager for our audiences to connect with her practice and unique storytelling through this immersive, captivating installation.” 

The exhibition curated by Jami Powell, PhD, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Indigenous Art at the Hood Museum of Art and is accompanied by a catalogue co-published by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, and Radius Books. The publication features contributions by Jami Powell, notable scholars including Suzan Shown Harjo (Mvskoke), former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo (Mvskoke), and Jordan Poorman Cocker (Kiowa and Tongan), Curator of Indigenous Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, among others. The catalogue will be available at the Phoenix Art Museum Store.

For high-resolution photography for Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Living Light) or to request interviews, contact the Communications Office of Phoenix Art Museum kaylee.weyrauch@phxart.org or press@phxart.org.   

About the Exhibition

Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Living Light) is organized by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, and curated by Jami Powell, PhD, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Indigenous Art at the Hood Museum of Art. It is generously supported by leadership gifts from Claire Foerster and Daniel S. Bernstein, Thomas A. and Georgina T. Russo, and support from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Charles Gilman Family Endowment, and a gift from Karen Miller Nearburg and Charles Nearburg. The exhibition’s presentation at Phoenix Art Museum is coordinated by Emilia Mickevicius, PhD, the Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography. Its Phoenix premiere is made possible by the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Foundation, Every Page Foundation, and John and Lois Rogers. Additional support provided by Prime Steak Concepts. Contemporary art exhibitions and projects are made possible in part by the Rob Walton, Jordan Rose, and Rose Law Group Fund for Contemporary Art. All exhibitions at Phoenix Art Museum are underwritten by the Phoenix Art Museum Exhibition Excellence Fund, founded by The Opatrny Family Foundation with additional major support provided by Joan Cremin.

Admission is free for Museum Members and youth aged five and younger. Entrance into the exhibition is included in general admission for the public. Visitors may also enjoy reduced admission to the exhibition during voluntary-donation times on Wednesdays from 3 – 8 pm, made possible by SRP and City of Phoenix and First Fridays from 5 – 8 pm, made possible by APS and Lexus, with additional support from Arizona Community Foundation.  For a full breakdown of general admission prices and hours, see phxart.org/visit/.

About Phoenix Art Museum

Since 1959, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) has engaged millions of visitors with the art of our region and world. Located in Phoenix’s Central Corridor, PhxArt creates spaces of exchange and belonging for all audiences through dynamic exhibitions, collections, and experiences with art. Each year, 300,000 guests on average engage with critically acclaimed national and international exhibitions and the Museum’s collection of more than 21,000 works of American and Western American, Asian, European, Latin American, modern, and contemporary art and fashion design, along with vibrant photography exhibitions made possible through the Museum’s landmark partnership with the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson. PhxArt also presents live performances, outstanding examples of global cinema, arts-education programs and workshops, a monthly live-music series, and more for the community. To learn more about Phoenix Art Museum, visit phxart.org, or call 602.257.1880.

About Cara Romero 

Cara Romero, b. 1977, Inglewood, Calif. (American / Chemehuevi), is an artist known for dramatic fine art photography that examines Indigenous life in contemporary contexts. An enrolled citizen of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, Romero was raised between contrasting settings: the rural Chemehuevi reservation in Mojave Desert, California, and the urban sprawl of Houston, Texas. Informed by her identity, Romero’s visceral approach to representing Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural memory, collective history, and lived experiences results in a blending of fine art and editorial styles. Maintaining a studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Romero regularly participates in Native American art fairs and panel discussions and was featured on PBS’s Craft in America in 2019. Her award-winning work is included in numerous public and private collections, domestically and internationally, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Guggenheim Museum, Amon Carter Museum, Peabody Essex Museum, and Forge Project Collections, among others. Romero travels between Santa Fe and the Chemehuevi Valley Indian Reservation, where she maintains close ties to her tribal community and ancestral homelands.

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PHOENIX, AZ (March 26, 2025) – This summer, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) will explore the use of comedy throughout the history of photography in Funny Business: Photography and Humor. Drawn primarily from the collection of the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona in Tucson, the exhibition presents 70 photographs that showcase the mechanics of photographic humor, while examining the reasons for which artists throughout time have employed it as a strategy in their work. Funny Business: Photography and Humor will be on view at the Museum from June 14, 2025, through January 4, 2026.

Spanning nearly the entire history of the medium, Funny Business offers a compelling view into the ways artists have utilized visual humor not only to provoke laughter and delight, but also as a means of resistance, an antidote to the heaviness of the world, and a way to interrogate and subvert norms and hierarchies. The exhibition features wide-ranging examples of photographic humor that invoke a variety of comedic modes, including slapstick, irony, absurdism, satire, self-deprecation, and parody. Featured works include vernacular snapshots, mid-century street photography, tongue-in-cheek 1970s conceptual imagery, and contemporary works by the following artists:

• John Baldessari
• Tom Barrow
• Jo Ann Callis
• Liz Cohen
• Robert Cumming
• Judy Dater
• Steffi Faircloth
• Jacques-Henri Lartigue
• Zig Jackson
• Kenneth Josephson
• Tommy Kha
• Tseng Kwong Chi
• Helen Levitt
• Jeff Mermelstein
• Bucky Miller
• Reynier Leyva Novo
• Mike Mandel and Larry Sultan
• Lisette Model
• Clare Strand
• William Wegman
• Garry Winogrand
• Guanyu Xu

“As the first original exhibition from Emilia Mickevicius, the Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography at Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography, Funny Business: Photography and Humor embodies a creative, clever, and innovative approach to viewing photography from a new perspective,” said Jeremy Mikolajczak, the Sybil Harrington Director and CEO of Phoenix Art Museum. “Funny Business personifies unique ways exhibitions can engage visitors and provoke delight, exemplifying that humor is oftentimes the best remedy for a challenging world.”

Funny Business is arranged in four thematic sections:

• All the World’s a Stage highlights slapstick and observational comedy through a constellation of early 20^th-century gelatin silver prints and snapshots displayed in conversation with examples of canonical mid-20th century street photography. Viewers consider photographs as a source of joy and discover how successful street photography—like observational comedy—is fundamentally rooted in the photographer being keenly attuned to the theater or “raw material” of their surroundings.
• Inside Jokes charts the medium’s evolution in the 1970s, when art institutions began accepting and exhibiting photography as a legitimate art form. Featured works highlight photographers’ adoption of a tongue-in-cheek attitude toward their predecessors and the conventions and aesthetics of the medium itself. This approach to photography resulted in visually mischievous works that use humor to poke fun at photographic meaning.
• Context is Everything explores how subjects and photographic images can become absurd, ironic, and nonsensical when shown outside of their original contexts or in unexpected juxtaposition with one another.
• Comic Relief features the work of contemporary artists who use humor in a critical or subversive manner to explore issues of identity and belonging, politics, and general dimensions of contemporary life. Humor operates in their work as a means of resistance, a coping mechanism, a refusal to become cynical, or a way to subvert power structures and challenge stereotypes. These artists use varying degrees of comedy to question the status quo and consider how we relate to the world and one another.

“In my practice, I am always looking for ways to make photography more accessible to wider audiences,” said Emilia Mickevicius, the Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography at Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography. “Humor is a fun and approachable lens for visitors to consider the history of photography and explore the sophisticated dimensions of how we perceive images. I hope people come away learning something new about the medium and the role it plays in our perceptions and everyday lives.”

High-resolution photography for Funny Business: Photography and Humor can be downloaded here. To request interviews, contact the Communications Office of Phoenix Art Museum at 602.257.2117 or samantha.santos@phxart.org.

About the Exhibition
Funny Business: Photography and Humor is co-organized by Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography. The exhibition is curated by Emilia Mickevicius, PhD, the Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography. 

All exhibitions at Phoenix Art Museum are underwritten by the Phoenix Art Museum Exhibition Excellence Fund, founded by The Opatrny Family Foundation with additional major support provided by Joan Cremin.

Admission is free for Museum Members; youth aged 5 and younger; and Maricopa County Community Colleges students. Entrance into the exhibition is included in general admission for the public. Visitors may also enjoy reduced admission to the exhibition during voluntary-donation times on Wednesdays from 3 – 8 pm, made possible by SRP and City of Phoenix. For a full breakdown of general admission prices and hours, see phxart.org/visit/.

About Phoenix Art Museum
Since 1959, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) has engaged millions of visitors with the art of our region and world. Located in Phoenix’s Central Corridor, PhxArt creates spaces of exchange and belonging for all audiences through dynamic exhibitions, collections, and experiences with art. Each year, 300,000 guests on average engage with critically acclaimed national and international exhibitions and the Museum’s collection of more than 21,000 works of American and Western American, Asian, European, Latin American, modern, and contemporary art and fashion design, along with vibrant photography exhibitions made possible through the Museum’s landmark partnership with the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson. PhxArt also presents live performances, outstanding examples of global cinema, arts-education programs and workshops, an art+music festival, and more for the community. To learn more about Phoenix Art Museum, visit phxart.org, or call 602.257.1880.

About the Center for Creative Photography (CCP)
Celebrating 50 years in 2025, the Center for Creative Photography is the largest institution in North America devoted to the research and exhibition of photography. At the heart of CCP’s holdings are more than 300 archives of photographers, scholars, galleries, and organizations, complemented by an unparalleled collection of some 120,000 fine prints. In addition, CCP focuses on preserving and stewarding its holdings through a robust conservation program and digital imaging unit. The Center owns and manages copyrights for a selection of archive artists and supports licensing and image file delivery to publishers, authors, educators, and filmmakers worldwide. As unit of Arizona Arts at the University of Arizona, the Center maintains a robust calendar of free exhibitions and programs for the public, serves students and faculty through curricular engagements, and awards several international research fellowships annually.

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PHOENIX (December 17, 2024) – In the spring, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) will present Widening the Lens: Photography, Ecology, and the Contemporary Landscape, an expansive photography exhibition that features the work of nearly 20 contemporary artists examining environmental history and degradation, particularly in the American landscape, as well as urgent concerns about climate change, through the camera lens. Organized by Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Widening the Lens invites viewers to reconsider their relationship to the environment and explore how photography can help envision new paths forward. Widening the Lens will be on view at Phoenix Art Museum from February 26 – June 15, 2025.

“We are excited to bring Widening the Lens to Phoenix in continuation of the Museum’s long history of presenting thought-provoking programming centered on the environment and American landscape to our audiences,” said Jeremy Mikolajczak, the Sybil Harrington Director and CEO of Phoenix Art Museum. “Widening the Lens is a particularly compelling opportunity to explore contemporary artists’ use of photography to expand our understanding of the natural world, its history, and the ways in which people impact it, both positively and negatively. The exhibition will provide an intriguing counterpoint to the landscape works on view in our American art galleries, offering insight into how perceptions and the reality of the American landscape have changed through time.”

Featuring nearly 65 works by 18 lens-based artists, including black-and-white images and sculptural installations, Widening the Lens defies traditional conceptions of photography to infuse the landscape with a greater awareness of histories, natural forces, and inhabitants going back thousands of years. The exhibition is arranged across four thematic sections. Archive challenges dominant narratives established in historical photographs. Remembering delves into nature as a memorial landscape, charged with the complexity of human identity and personal relationships. Pathfinding features works of art that illuminate human adaptability, complicity, and paralysis in the environment. Finally, Horizon looks toward the future and considers environmental anxiety, anticipation, possibility, and alternative paths forward.

“I am delighted to share this powerful and richly layered exhibition with our audiences here in Arizona,” said Emilia Mickevicius, the Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography at Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography. “Widening the Lens features a phenomenal and diverse roster of artists who are working at critical intersections of landscape with history, identity, and climate change. Together, they present a thrillingly expansive take on the potential of landscape photography. I hope that experiencing the exhibition in our setting of the Sonoran Desert will inspire visitors to look at our surrounding landscape with fresh eyes.”

Featured artists in the exhibition include:

• A.K. Burns
• Chanell Stone
• David O. Alekhuogie
• David Hartt
• Dionne Lee
• Edra Soto
• Erin Jane Nelson
• Fazal Sheikh
• Justine Kurland
• Lucy Raven
• Mark Armijo McKnight
• Melissa Catanese
• Raven Chacon
• Sam Contis
• Sky Hopinka
• Tomás Saraceno
• Victoria Sambunaris
• Xaviera Simmons

High-resolution photography for Widening the Lens: Photography, Ecology, and the Contemporary Landscape can be downloaded here. To request interviews, contact the Communications Office of Phoenix Art Museum at 602.257.2117 or samantha.santos@phxart.org.

About the Exhibition
Widening the Lens: Photography, Ecology, and the Contemporary Landscape is organized by Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh and curated by Dan Leers, Curator of Photography, with Keenan Saiz, Hillman Photography Initiative project curatorial assistant. The exhibition’s presentation at Phoenix Art Museum is coordinated by Emilia Mickevicius, the Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography at Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography.

The exhibition’s presentation at Phoenix Art Museum is made possible through the generosity of The William Talbott Hillman Foundation, The Henry L. Hillman Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Henry Luce Foundation, The Teiger Foundation, and The National Endowment for the Arts. 

All exhibitions at Phoenix Art Museum are underwritten by the Phoenix Art Museum Exhibition Excellence Fund, founded by The Opatrny Family Foundation with additional major support provided by Joan Cremin.

Admission is free for Museum Members; youth aged 5 and younger; and Maricopa County Community Colleges students. Entrance into the exhibition is included in general admission for the public. Visitors may also enjoy reduced admission to the exhibition during voluntary-donation times on Wednesdays from 3 – 8 pm, made possible by SRP and City of Phoenix. For a full breakdown of general admission prices and hours, see phxart.org/visit/.

About Phoenix Art Museum
Since 1959, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) has engaged millions of visitors with the art of our region and world. Located in Phoenix’s Central Corridor, PhxArt creates spaces of exchange and belonging for all audiences through dynamic exhibitions, collections, and experiences with art. Each year, 300,000 guests on average engage with critically acclaimed national and international exhibitions and the Museum’s collection of more than 21,000 works of American and Western American, Asian, European, Latin American, modern, and contemporary art and fashion design, along with vibrant photography exhibitions made possible through the Museum’s landmark partnership with the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson. PhxArt also presents live performances, outstanding examples of global cinema, arts-education programs and workshops, an art+music festival, and more for the community. To learn more about Phoenix Art Museum, visit phxart.org, or call 602.257.1880.

The post Phoenix Art Museum presents major photography exhibition examining urgent environmental concerns through the camera lens appeared first on Phoenix Art Museum.

PHOENIX, AZ (November 19, 2024) – This December, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) will present the work of one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century in Richard Avedon: Among Creatives. Drawn from the collection of the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) in Tucson, the exhibition presents more than 50 photographs by Richard Avedon (1923-2004), highlighting his distinctive large-scale portraits of fellow artists, actors, writers, and more, in addition to his contributions to fashion photography. Richard Avedon: Among Creatives will be on view at the Museum from December 6 – May 25, 2025.

“We are excited to share this intimate perspective of Richard Avedon’s work with our audiences,” said Jeremy Mikolajczak, the Sybil Harrington Director and CEO of Phoenix Art Museum. “Avedon is one of the most prominent portrait photographers of the 20^th century, and due to his work in fashion, Hollywood and the art world, he is an artist that many people are familiar with. Among Creatives, however, is a fascinating study on the ways artists weave intricate webs of influence and inspiration among themselves, and how Avedon was able to capture such complex relationships and identities in a single, still image.”

Born in New York and with an early interest in photography, Avedon first gained prominence as a fashion photographer by working for Harper’s Bazaar magazine. As the scope of his career broadened, he trained his lens on many of the most influential figures of his time, among them fellow creatives from the fields of art, music, literature, film, and design. Through Avedon’s unflinching eye and technical prowess, the appearances and expressions of these celebrity subjects became amplified for public scrutiny, encouraging viewers to consider the gaps between their private lives and the public personas that had come to define them.

Distilled from the exhibition Richard Avedon: Relationships, previously presented at the Palazzo Reale in Milan and Kunsthal Rotterdam, Among Creatives examines how Avedon portrayed fellow artists. The exhibition of more than 50 works spans his career, showcasing portraits as well as examples of Avedon’s fashion photography in conversation with archival magazine materials that demonstrate how these images were used commercially. The exhibition begins with Avedon’s self-portrait before moving into a series of portraits featuring celebrities that Avedon photographed across multiple stages in their lives, including Marilyn Monroe and Carson McCullers. Other portraits include those of Andy Warhol, John Ford, Allen Ginsberg, Brigitte Bardot, Marlene Dietrich, and Paul McCartney, and models such as Dovima, Veruschka, and Penelope Tree, among others.

“By pairing Avedon’s fashion work with his portraits of fellow creative people, Among Creatives explores how a leading artist of his generation portrayed the concept, meaning, and perception of artistry,” said Emilia Mickevicius, the Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography at Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography. “The exhibition’s work encourages viewers to see Avedon’s subjects, alongside the ways Avedon himself is grappling with his own fame, morality, and legacy. I hope viewers will leave the show with a new appreciation of his work—how he was deeply skilled at directing the people he photographed, and how he was a true master of his tools and materials.”

High-resolution photography for Richard Avedon: Among Creatives can be downloaded here. To request interviews, contact the Communications Office of Phoenix Art Museum at 602.257.2117 or samantha.santos@phxart.org.

About the Exhibition
Richard Avedon: Among Creatives is co-organized by Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography. Its presentation at Phoenix Art Museum is curated by Emilia Mickevicius, PhD, the Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography, and is drawn from the larger traveling exhibition, Richard Avedon: Relationships, curated by Rebecca Senf, PhD, Chief Curator at the Center for Creative Photography.

All exhibitions at Phoenix Art Museum are underwritten by the Phoenix Art Museum Exhibition Excellence Fund, founded by The Opatrny Family Foundation with additional major support provided by Joan Cremin.

Admission is free for Museum Members; youth aged 5 and younger; and Maricopa County Community Colleges students. Entrance into the exhibition is included in general admission for the public. Visitors may also enjoy reduced admission to the exhibition during voluntary-donation times on Wednesdays from 3 – 8 pm, made possible by SRP and City of Phoenix. For a full breakdown of general admission prices and hours, see phxart.org/visit/.

About Phoenix Art Museum
Since 1959, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) has engaged millions of visitors with the art of our region and world. Located in Phoenix’s Central Corridor, PhxArt creates spaces of exchange and belonging for all audiences through dynamic exhibitions, collections, and experiences with art. Each year, 300,000 guests on average engage with critically acclaimed national and international exhibitions and the Museum’s collection of more than 21,000 works of American and Western American, Asian, European, Latin American, modern, and contemporary art and fashion design, along with vibrant photography exhibitions made possible through the Museum’s landmark partnership with the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson. PhxArt also presents live performances, outstanding examples of global cinema, arts-education programs and workshops, an art+music festival, and more for the community. To learn more about Phoenix Art Museum, visit phxart.org, or call 602.257.1880.

About the Center for Creative Photography The Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson is recognized as one of the world’s finest academic art museums and study centers for the history of photography. The Center opened in 1975, following a meeting between then University President Dr. John Schaefer and world-renowned photographer Ansel Adams. Beginning with the archives of five living master photographers—Ansel Adams, Wynn Bullock, Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, and Frederick Sommer—the collection has grown to include nearly 300 archival collections. Among these are some of the most recognizable names in 20th-century North American photography: Lola Álvarez Bravo, W. Eugene Smith, Edward Weston, and Garry Winogrand. Altogether, there are over eight million archival objects in the Center’s collection, including negatives, work prints, contact sheets, albums, scrapbooks, correspondence, writings, audiovisual materials, and memorabilia. In addition to whole archival collections, the Center also actively acquires individual photographs by modern and contemporary photographers. There are currently more than 120,000 works by over 2,200 photographers. A library of books, journals, and exhibition and auction catalogues, including many rare publications, plus an extensive oral history collection, complements the archival and fine print collections. The combined art, archival, and research collections at the Center provide an unparalleled resource for research, exhibitions, loans, and traveling exhibitions. The Center has a full schedule of exhibitions, programs, and events designed to deepen an understanding of how the medium impacts society. For more details, as well as information on Center membership and ways to get involved, visit https://ccp.arizona.edu/.  

The post New Richard Avedon Exhibition to Debut at Phoenix Art Museum in December 2024 appeared first on Phoenix Art Museum.

PHOENIX (September 12, 2023) – This winter, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) presents Laura Aguilar: Nudes in Nature, the first exhibition to bring together nearly 60 photographic works from five series of nude self-portraits by the groundbreaking photographer Laura Aguilar. Co-organized by the Center for Creative Photography, the exhibition considers how Aguilar used the photographic medium and her body to subvert Western beauty standards and upend the relationship between the female form and the landscape. Nudes in Nature is co-curated by Sybil Venegas, an independent curator and art historian, and Christopher Velasco, photographer, professor, and Aguilar’s longtime studio manager. The exhibition will be on view from December 16, 2023, through November 17, 2024 in the Doris and John Norton Gallery for the Center for Creative Photography at Phoenix Art Museum.

“We are excited to bring the profound and intimate work of Laura Aguilar to our audiences in Arizona,” said Jeremy Mikolajczak, the Sybil Harrington Director and CEO of Phoenix Art Museum. “Aguilar was overlooked in her lifetime but played a pivotal role in elevating Chicanx and queer art within the history of photography, all while using the medium to interrogate important issues of mental health, gender, race, sexuality, and beauty. This exhibition builds on the Museum’s efforts to present diverse forms of artistic expression that enable visitors to see themselves represented in the galleries. Its presentation and the concurrent exhibition of Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory also reaffirm our commitment to elevating the work of Latinx women artists during our upcoming exhibition season.”

Born and raised in California’s San Gabriel Valley, Laura Aguilar (1959-2018) created black-and-white portraits that visualize intersections of her queer, Latinx identity. Although underrecognized by the mainstream art world during her career, Aguilar expanded representations of historically excluded and marginalized groups of people from various communities across Los Angeles. The self-taught photographer eventually turned the camera on herself to consider the many factors that defined her identity as a Chicana and a lesbian who dealt with economic hardships, depression, and learning disabilities. Later in her career, she began to produce intimate self-portrait nudes in natural settings, creating various series within this framework that explore the inherent connections between nature and the female form.

Laura Aguilar: Nudes in Nature brings together for the first time nearly 60 photographic works from her series Nature Self-Portrait (1996), Stillness (1999), Motion (1999), Center (2000–2001), and Grounded (2006–2007). Across the exhibition’s featured images, Aguilar centers her nude body and those of other female subjects. They appear in repose or in contorted forms that mimic surrounding rock formations, plant life, and terrains. In contrast to the eroticized images of nude white women throughout Western art history, Aguilar positions her large, brown body as an object of desire in harmony with the natural world. How Aguilar’s body is perceived within these landscapes stands at odds with how female figures are viewed in cultural and social spaces.

“Select images from these series have been seen in numerous exhibitions over the past 25 years, however never before in a comprehensive exhibition that features the majority of works in these series together,” explains Sybil Venegas, who also organized the acclaimed retrospective Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell in 2017. “We are so excited to have participated in this project and are grateful to Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography for organizing what may be the most significant exhibition of Laura’s work since Show and Tell.”

High-resolution photography can be downloaded here. To request interviews, contact the Communications Office of Phoenix Art Museum at 602.257.2117 or samantha.santos@phxart.org.

About the Exhibition
Laura Aguilar: Nudes in Nature is organized by Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography. It is co-curated by Sybil Venegas and Christopher Velasco, trustees of the Laura Aguilar Estate. The exhibition’s presentation at Phoenix Art Museum is coordinated by Emilia Mickevicius, the Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography at Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography. All exhibitions at Phoenix Art Museum are underwritten by the Phoenix Art Museum Exhibition Excellence Fund, founded by The Opatrny Family Foundation, with additional significant support provided by Joan Cremin.

Admission is free for Museum Members; youth aged five and younger; and Maricopa County Community Colleges students. Entrance into the exhibition is included in general admission for the public, including during voluntary donation times on Wednesdays from 3 – 9 pm, made possible by SRP and the City of Phoenix. For a full breakdown of general-admission prices and hours, see phxart.org/visit/.

About Phoenix Art Museum
Since 1959, Phoenix Art Museum has provided millions of guests with access to world-class art and experiences in an effort to ignite imaginations, create meaningful connections, and serve as a brave space for all people who wish to experience the transformative power of art. Located in Phoenix’s Central Corridor, the Museum is a vibrant destination for the visual arts and the largest art museum in the southwestern United States. Each year, more than 300,000 guests engage with critically acclaimed national and international exhibitions and the Museum’s collection of more than 20,000 works of American and Western American, Asian, European, Latin American, modern and contemporary art, and fashion design. The Museum also presents a comprehensive film program, live performances, and educational programs designed for visitors of all ages, along with vibrant photography exhibitions made possible through the Museum’s landmark partnership with the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. To learn more about Phoenix Art Museum, visit phxart.org, or call 602.257.1880.

About the Center for Creative Photography
The Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson is recognized as one of the world’s finest academic art museums and study centers for the history of photography. The Center opened in 1975, following a meeting between then University President Dr. John Schaefer and world-renowned photographer Ansel Adams. Beginning with the archives of five living master photographers—Ansel Adams, Wynn Bullock, Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, and Frederick Sommer—the collection has grown to include 270 archival collections. Among these are some of the most recognizable names in 20th-century North American photography: Lola Álvarez Bravo, W. Eugene Smith, Edward Weston, and Garry Winogrand. Altogether, there are over eight million archival objects in the Center’s collection, including negatives, work prints, contact sheets, albums, scrapbooks, correspondence, writings, audiovisual materials, and memorabilia. In addition to whole archival collections, the Center also actively acquires individual photographs by modern and contemporary photographers. There are currently more than 110,000 works by over 2,200 photographers. A library of books, journals, and exhibition and auction catalogues, including many rare publications, plus an extensive oral history collection, complements the archival and fine print collections. The combined art, archival, and research collections at the Center provide an unparalleled resource for research, exhibitions, loans, and traveling exhibitions. The Center has a full schedule of exhibitions, programs, and events designed to deepen an understanding of how the medium impacts society. For more details, as well as information on Center membership and ways to get involved, visit https://ccp.arizona.edu/.

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PHOENIX (January 25, 2023) – This spring, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) presents Fashioning Self: The Photography of Everyday Expression, a new major photography exhibition organized by PhxArt and the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) in Tucson. Spanning the 1910s through the present, Fashioning Self explores the long-intertwined relationship between self-expression, fashion, and the photographic medium, with more than 50 works by Dennis Feldman, Laura Volkerding, Louis Carlos Bernal, Tseng Kwong Chi, David Hume Kennerly, Helen Levitt, Teenie Harris, and others drawn from the CCP collection. These fine-art photographs are displayed alongside a social-media feed of community photos and selfies to spark reflection on the dynamic between photographer and subject, particularly as new technologies, self-styling, and the photographic medium continue to shape visual culture and personal and collective identities around the globe. Fashioning Self: The Photography of Everyday Expression will be on view from March 8 through November 12, 2023 in the Doris and John Norton Gallery for the Center for Creative Photography at Phoenix Art Museum.

“Since the mid-1800s, photographers have captured our world and the captivating cast of characters who inhabit it, documenting all the varied and nuanced presentations of style and expression,” said Jeremy Mikolajczak, the Sybil Harrington Director and CEO of Phoenix Art Museum. “Fashioning Self: The Photography of Everyday Expression sparks fascinating conversations around historical photography genres, including street photography, and how they inform contemporary evolutions, such as selfies and carefully crafted social-media platforms, while also exploring the give-and-take between self-performance and art making.”

Fashioning Self showcases 54 works of street, documentary, and self-portrait photography that present slices of everyday, public life in the United States from 1912 through 2015. Highlighted works in the exhibition include:

Other featured works include those by Garry Winograd, Marion Post Wolcott, Kozo Miyoshi, Laura Volkerding, Tseng Kwong Chi, Joan Liftin, and Rosalind Solomon, among others.

The exhibition’s fine-art images are complemented by a rotating display of social-media photos reflecting community members and individuals from across the United States. Throughout the duration of the exhibition, the Museum and CCP will invite visitors, Arizona residents, and the institutions’ collective social-media followings to snap their own selfies and portraits in the galleries or other environments and share them via the hashtag #FashioningSelf for display in Norton Gallery. By placing these contemporary, real-time images in conversation with works by renowned photographers of the Americas, the exhibition interrogates what it means to be an artist or maker when cameras are commonplace and everyone curates a feed.

“I am excited for visitors to contribute their own photos to Fashioning Self and engage with works from CCP’s collection in a fun and unique way,” said Rebecca A. Senf, chief curator at CCP and curator of Fashioning Self. “By participating in the gallery’s regularly updated social-media feed, they will be included in a century-long history of photographers who have fashioned, captured, and distributed visual representations of identity, while considering how technology, digital platforms, and the ubiquity of the camera continue to shape our understandings of self and each other.”

About the Exhibition
Fashioning Self: The Photography of Everyday Expression is organized by Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography. It is made possible through the generosity of the Museum’s Circles of Support and Museum Members. For more details about the exhibition, please click here.

Admission is free for Museum Members; veterans, active-duty military, and their immediate families; youth aged 5 and younger; and Maricopa County Community Colleges students with an active ID. Entrance into the exhibition is included in general admission for the public. During voluntary-donation times, the exhibition is offered to the public included with voluntary “pay-what-you-wish” admission. Voluntary-donation times include Wednesdays from 3 – 9 pm. For a full breakdown of general-admission prices and hours, see phxart.org/visit/.

High-resolution photography can be downloaded here. To request interviews, contact the Communications Office of Phoenix Art Museum at 602.257.2117 or samantha.santos@phxart.org.

About Phoenix Art Museum
Since 1959, Phoenix Art Museum has provided millions of guests with access to world-class art and experiences in an effort to ignite imaginations, create meaningful connections, and serve as a brave space for all people who wish to experience the transformative power of art. Located in Phoenix’s Central Corridor, the Museum is a vibrant destination for the visual arts and the largest art museum in the southwestern United States. Each year, more than 300,000 guests engage with critically acclaimed national and international exhibitions and the Museum’s collection of more than 20,000 works of American and Western American, Asian, European, Latin American, modern and contemporary art, and fashion design. The Museum also presents a comprehensive film program, live performances, and educational programs designed for visitors of all ages, along with vibrant photography exhibitions made possible through the Museum’s landmark partnership with the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. To learn more about Phoenix Art Museum, visit phxart.org, or call 602.257.1880.

About the Center for Creative Photography
The Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, is recognized as one of the world’s finest academic art museums and study centers for the history of photography. The Center opened in 1975, following a meeting between then University President Dr. John Schaefer and world-renowned photographer Ansel Adams. Beginning with the archives of five living master photographers—Ansel Adams, Wynn Bullock, Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, and Frederick Sommer—the collection has grown to include 270 archival collections. Among these are some of the most recognizable names in 20th-century North American photography: Lola Álvarez Bravo, W. Eugene Smith, Edward Weston, and Garry Winogrand. Altogether, there are over eight million archival objects in the Center’s collection including negatives, work prints, contact sheets, albums, scrapbooks, correspondence, writings, audiovisual materials and memorabilia. In addition to whole archival collections, the Center also actively acquires individual photographs by modern and contemporary photographers. There are currently more than 110,000 works by over 2,200 photographers. A library of books, journals, and exhibition and auction catalogues, including many rare publications, plus an extensive oral history collection complements the archival and fine print collections. The combined art, archival, and research collections at the Center provide an unparalleled resource for research, exhibitions, loans, and traveling exhibitions. The Center has a full schedule of exhibitions, programs, and events designed to deepen an understanding of how the medium impacts society. For more details, as well as information on Center membership and ways to get involved, visit ccp.arizona.edu.

Image credit: Kozo Miyoshi, Tucson, Arizona, 1992. Gelatin silver print. Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: Gift of the artist, DEP’T CO.,LTD., Tokyo, Nippon Polaroid, Tsudani Oil Co. Ltd.© Kozo Miyosh

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PHOENIX (June 27, 2022) – This summer, Phoenix Art Museum will present And Let It Remain So: Women of the African Diaspora, a major photography exhibition showcasing the work of five photographers, all of whom explore the ways in which their experiences of the African Diaspora influence their understandings of identity, place, and belonging. Organized by Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) in Tucson, the exhibition features more than 70 photographic works, including portraits, family archival images, and landscapes, by Widline Cadet, Jasmine Clarke, Hellen Gaudence, Nadiya I. Nacorda, and Sasha Phyars-Burgess. Curated by Aaron Turner, a regular collaborator with CCP and an African-American photographer and educator based in Arkansas, And Let It Remain So illustrates the distinct yet shared realities of the diasporic experience that define complex notions of home, citizenship, nationality, and self. The exhibition will be on view from July 20, 2022 through February 12, 2023 in the Doris and John Norton Gallery for the Center for Creative Photography at Phoenix Art Museum.

“We are excited to bring this outstanding selection of photographic works to our audiences in Phoenix, in collaboration with the Center for Creative Photography and curator Aaron Turner, who is a rising voice in the field of contemporary photography,” said Jeremy Mikolajczak, the Sybil Harrington Director and CEO of Phoenix Art Museum. “From the perspectives of five emerging women photographers, And Let It Remain So offers unique insight into the various ways the African Diaspora informs individual, collective, and familial identities. Many of the themes explored throughout the exhibition will resonate with visitors from across our region who themselves have migrated and are members of diasporic communities.”

And Let It Remain So: Women of the African Diaspora presents the nuanced perspectives of five early career photographers who are exploring their experiences of the African Diaspora, defined by the voluntary and coerced movement of Africans and their descendants through various waves of migration and enslavement over centuries. The exhibition represents the first time works by Jasmine Clarke, Nadiya I. Nacorda, Widline Cadet, Hellen Gaudence, and Sasha Phyars-Burgess are presented in conversation.

Jasmine Clarke who was born and raised in Brooklyn, creates dreamlike and otherworldly images inspired by familial stories, shared memories, and visions that draw from the experiences of her Jamaican father. Born in Detroit and with Philippine and Xhosa (South Africa) familial roots, Nadiya I. Nacorda combines and layers photographic images—including family photographs—to reference shared stories and lived experiences that are both unique to her family and common to other diasporic communities with histories of colonization and displacement. Born in Pétion-Ville, Haiti, and now based in New York City, Widline Cadet explores ideas of belonging, migration, and selfhood through self-portraiture, family-album photographs, repetition, and observed detail. A project by Hellen Gaudence, who is based in New York City but splits her work between the United States and her home country, Tanzania, juxtaposes black-and-white portraits of African migrants residing in Tucson (where Gaudence completed her graduate studies) with color landscapes of roadside native plants engulfed in red dust that reference an absent and generalized African continent. Born in Brooklyn to Trinidadian parents, Sasha Phyars-Burgess creates intimate and observational black-and-white photographs of family and community in Trinidad and Tobago to explore the intersections where her expectations of the Caribbean overlap and diverge from observed reality.

“Although each artist featured in And Let It Remain So is sharing her unique and personal narrative, these photographers are united in their exploration of universal themes of home, place, and identity,” said Aaron Turner, the exhibition’s curator who serves as an assistant professor of art at the University of Arkansas’s School of Art and as director at the Center for Art as Lived Experience. “They are also pointing the cameras at their own families and grappling with the complexities and layers that come with turning the lens inward in this way. My hope is that the images and topics presented throughout the exhibition resonate with visitors from all backgrounds, particularly those who have immigrated or migrated, so we can start to build a sense of connection and belonging across diasporic communities.”

In addition to exploring how experiences of the African Diaspora influence understandings of identity and history, place and displacement, citizenship and nationality, and belonging and community, And Let It Remain So provides space to consider the larger role of photography in shaping personal understanding and imagined futures that combine elements of the past and present.

“By offering intimate views into their own distinct perspectives,” said Rebecca A. Senf, chief curator at CCP and organizing curator of And Let It Remain So at Phoenix Art Museum, “these talented and dynamic early career photographers are expanding the dialogue about the strengths and limitations of contemporary photography as a tool to convey diasporic identities.”

And Let It Remain So: Women of the African Diaspora is the most recent collaboration between Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography. Over the past 13 years, the two institutions have co-organized nearly 40 exhibitions that bring outstanding works spanning the history of photography to wider audiences in Arizona.

About the Exhibition

And Let It Remain So: Women of the African Diaspora is organized by Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography. It is made possible through the generosity of the Museum’s Circles of Support and Museum Members. The exhibition is curated by Aaron Turner, a regular collaborator with the Center for Creative Photography and an African-American photographer and educator based in Arkansas. Turner’s own photography focuses on the Arkansas and Mississippi deltas and his reflections on the place of the Civil Rights movement within his and his family’s experience. He is an assistant professor of art at University of Arkansas, School of Art, and the director of the Center for Art as Lived Experience. For more details about the exhibition, please click here. 

Admission is free for Museum Members; veterans, active-duty military, and their immediate families; and youth aged 5 and younger. Entrance into the exhibition is included in general admission for the public. During voluntary-donation times, the exhibition is offered to the public included with voluntary “pay-what-you-wish” admission. Voluntary-donation times include Wednesdays from 3 – 9 pm and the first Friday of each month from 3 – 9 pm. For a full breakdown of general-admission prices and hours, see phxart.org/visit/.

High-resolution photography can be downloaded here. To request interviews, contact the Communications Office of Phoenix Art Museum at 602.257.2117 or samantha.santos@phxart.org.

About Phoenix Art Museum

Since 1959, Phoenix Art Museum has provided millions of guests with access to world-class art and experiences in an effort to ignite imaginations, create meaningful connections, and serve as a brave space for all people who wish to experience the transformative power of art. Located in Phoenix’s Central Corridor, the Museum is a vibrant destination for the visual arts and the leading art museum in the southwestern United States. Each year, more than 300,000 guests engage with critically acclaimed national and international exhibitions and the Museum’s collection of more than 20,000 works of American and Western American, Asian, European, Latin American, modern and contemporary art, and fashion design. The Museum also presents a comprehensive film program, live performances, and educational programs designed for visitors of all ages, along with vibrant photography exhibitions made possible through the Museum’s landmark partnership with the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. To learn more about Phoenix Art Museum, visit phxart.org, or call 602.257.1880.

About the Center for Creative Photography

The Center for Creative Photography is recognized as one of the world’s finest academic art museums and study centers for the history of photography. The Center opened in 1975, following a meeting between then University President Dr. John Schaefer and world-renowned photographer Ansel Adams. Beginning with the archives of five living master photographers—Ansel Adams, Wynn Bullock, Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, and Frederick Sommer—the collection has grown to include 270 archival collections. Among these are some of the most recognizable names in 20th-century North American photography: Lola Álvarez Bravo, W. Eugene Smith, Edward Weston, and Garry Winogrand. Altogether, there are over eight million archival objects in the Center’s collection including negatives, work prints, contact sheets, albums, scrapbooks, correspondence, writings, audiovisual materials and memorabilia. In addition to whole archival collections, the Center also actively acquires individual photographs by modern and contemporary photographers. There are currently more than 110,000 works by over 2,200 photographers. A library of books, journals, and exhibition and auction catalogues, including many rare publications, plus an extensive oral history collection complements the archival and fine print collections. The combined art, archival, and research collections at the Center provide an unparalleled resource for research, exhibitions, loans, and traveling exhibitions. The Center has a full schedule of exhibitions, programs, and events designed to deepen an understanding of how the medium impacts society. For more details, as well as information on Center membership and ways to get involved, visit ccp.arizona.edu.

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PHOENIX (January 28, 2022) – Phoenix Art Museum announces the recent opening of a new exhibition that explores the radical evolution of photography in post-World War II Japan. Featuring works from 1961 through 1989 by 19 contemporary Japanese photographers who played integral roles in shaping Japanese photography of the postwar period. Farewell Photography: The Hitatchi Collection of Postwar Japanese Photographs, 1961-1989 displays 87 of these prints gifted by the Hitachi Corporation to the Center for Creative Photography together for the first time. The exhibition, curated by Audrey Sands, the Norton Family Curator of Photography, and Adam Monohon, former Curatorial Assistant at the Center for Creative Photography, will be on view through June 26, 2022 in the Norton Family Photography Gallery in the Museum’s Katz (South) Wing.

“We are excited to collaborate with the Center of Creative Photography once again to bring this unique aspect of their collection to our audiences in Phoenix and beyond,” said Mark Koenig, the Interim Sybil Harrington Director and CEO of Phoenix Art Museum. “Farewell Photography provides a unique opportunity for Museum visitors to experience a category of photography that helped shaped the photographic medium for Japan and across the globe, a glimpse into the evolution of the medium as it was shaped by experience of war and the beginning of the nuclear age.”

In the decades following World War II, as Japan recovered from the devastation wrought by the global conflict and U.S military occupation (1945-1952), numerous Japanese photographers undertook an aggressive reassessment of the photographic medium. New non-conformists broke from photojournalism’s norms of objective depiction and emerged adopting new ideals of a radically expressive, subjective, and critical approach that became known as are-bure-boke (literally translated to “rough, blurred, and out-of-focus”). This new aesthetic responded to the realities of a rapidly changing, modernizing, and westernizing Japan, struggling to recover not only from the war but from the horrors of nuclear destruction, and questioned traditional associations of photography with truth, patriotism, and complacency.

In 1988 and 1990, through grants from the Hitachi Corporation, the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) acquired 87 works by 19 contemporary Japanese photographers who promoted are-bure-boke and played integral roles in shaping Japanese photography of the postwar period. Farewell Photography: The Hitachi Collection of Postwar Japanese Photographs, 1961-1989 displays all 87 of these prints from CCP’s collection together for the first time since they were acquired more than 30 years ago. Featured works include gritty, starkly contrasted, black-and-white photographs from Daidō Moriyama’s seminal 1972 photobook, Farewell Photography, from which the exhibition takes its name, which heralded photography’s departure from the medium’s previous commitments to propriety, stillness, and objective rendering of facts. Additional artists showcased throughout the exhibition include Masahisa Fukase, Shōmei Tōmatsu, Miyako Ishiuchi, Eikoh Hosoe, and others. Miyako Ishiuchi is a pivotal figure in Japanese photography as a woman practicing in a male-dominated field. Her groundbreaking works have been influential for a younger generation of women photographers, most notable for merging political messages with a highly personal and subjective approach.

“This collection brings an opportunity to dig into some previously unexplored strengths of CCP’s collection. Not very many institutions, aside from the leading institutions of photography, have as concentrated a collection in this particular area,” said Audrey Sands, the Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography, who curated the exhibition. “I hope this exhibition introduces viewers to this special group of photographers who represented this radical new vision. I want to highlight how provocative this style was during a loaded and controversial political moment in Japan. When I think about our audience in Phoenix, I want to broaden the view beyond the North American-centric story of the history of modern photography and look at this extraordinary rich and edgy cultural output, and the way that photography was used as protest. To have a more global understanding of this period of social unrest and of a generation that was challenging governments and norms is, I think, a critical vocabulary for us to better understand our own time.”

About the Exhibition
Farewell Photography: The Hitachi Collection of Postwar Japanese Photographs, 1961-1989 will be on view through June 26, 2022 in the Norton Photography Gallery. It is organized by Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography. It is made possible through the generosity of the John R. and Doris Norton Center for Creative Photography Endowment Fund, with additional support from the Museum’s Circles of Support and Museum Members. For more details about the exhibition, please click here. 

Admission is free for Museum Members; veterans, active-duty military, and their immediate families; and youth aged 5 and younger. Entrance into the exhibition is included in general admission for the public. During voluntary-donation times, the exhibition is offered to the public included with voluntary “pay-what-you-wish” admission. Voluntary-donation times include Wednesdays from 3 – 9 pm and the first Friday of each month from 5 – 9 pm. For a full breakdown of general-admission prices and hours, see phxart.org/visit/.

High-resolution photography can be downloaded here. To request interviews, contact the Communications Office of Phoenix Art Museum at 602.257.2117 or samantha.santos@phxart.org.

About Phoenix Art Museum
Since 1959, Phoenix Art Museum has provided millions of guests with access to world-class art and experiences in an effort to ignite imaginations, create meaningful connections, and serve as a brave space for all people who wish to experience the transformative power of art. Located in Phoenix’s Central Corridor, the Museum is a vibrant destination for the visual arts and the largest art museum in the southwestern United States. Each year, more than 300,000 guests engage with critically acclaimed national and international exhibitions and the Museum’s collection of more than 20,000 works of American and Western American, Asian, European, Latin American, modern and contemporary art, and fashion design. The Museum also presents a comprehensive film program, live performances, and educational programs designed for visitors of all ages, along with vibrant photography exhibitions made possible through the Museum’s landmark partnership with the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. To learn more about Phoenix Art Museum, visit phxart.org, or call 602.257.1880.

About the Center for Creative Photography
The Center for Creative Photography is recognized as one of the world’s finest academic art museums and study centers for the history of photography. The Center opened in 1975, following a meeting between then University President Dr. John Schaefer and world-renowned photographer Ansel Adams. Beginning with the archives of five living master photographers—Ansel Adams, Wynn Bullock, Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, and Frederick Sommer—the collection has grown to include 270 archival collections. Among these are some of the most recognizable names in 20^th-century North American photography: Lola Álvarez Bravo, W. Eugene Smith, Edward Weston, and Garry Winogrand. Altogether, there are over eight million archival objects in the Center’s collection including negatives, work prints, contact sheets, albums, scrapbooks, correspondence, writings, audiovisual materials and memorabilia. In addition to whole archival collections, the Center also actively acquires individual photographs by modern and contemporary photographers. There are currently more than 110,000 works by over 2,200 photographers. A library of books, journals, and exhibition and auction catalogues, including many rare publications, plus an extensive oral history collection complements the archival and fine print collections. The combined art, archival, and research collections at the Center provide an unparalleled resource for research, exhibitions, loans, and traveling exhibitions. The Center has a full schedule of exhibitions, programs, and events designed to deepen an understanding of how the medium impacts society. For more details, as well as information on Center membership and ways to get involved, visit ccp.arizona.edu.

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PHOENIX (April 15, 2021) – This summer, Phoenix Art Museum will present Freedom Must Be Lived: Marion Palfi’s America,the first major solo exhibition of the photographer’s incisive work since her death in 1978. A self-described “social-research photographer,” Marion Palfi observed and documented victims of discrimination over three decades, exposing the links between racism and poverty in the United States. Organized by Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography (CCP), University of Arizona, and drawing exclusively from CCP’s vast Marion Palfi Archive, Freedom Must Be Lived features more than 80 prints and extensive archival materials, many of which have never before been exhibited or published. Shedding light on Palfi’s career-long focus on themes of inequity, solitude, and racial victimization, the exhibition provides unprecedented insight into the work of a photographer who created one of the most powerful visual documentations of 20th-century American injustice. Freedom Must Be Lived will be on view July 21, 2021 through January 2, 2022.

“We are delighted to present this timely exhibition of Marion Palfi’s socially conscious photography with Freedom Must Be Lived: Marion Palfi’s America,” said Gilbert Vicario, Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs and the Selig Family Chief Curator of Phoenix Art Museum. “This powerful and poignant retrospective highlights an extraordinary photographer whose work has been under-recognized for more than four decades, furthering the Museum’s commitment to showcasing works by diverse artists whose legacies have not yet been fully acknowledged in the canon of art history.”

A German immigrant to the United States who fled during World War II, Palfi arrived in New York to a reality that stood in stark contrast with the myth of the American Dream. Outraged at the economic, racial, and social inequalities she encountered, Palfi spent the next three and a half decades traveling the nation to document various subjects, including the elderly, families of hate-crime victims, abandoned children, residents of the Jim Crow South, Los Angeles-prison inmates, Puerto Rican immigrants in New York, white supremacist groups, and Navajo families who were the victims of government-enforced relocation and “acculturation.” Her work was featured in numerous U.S. periodicals throughout her career, including Ebony and The New York Times, and she received sponsorships from the Council Against Intolerance in America, the NAACP, and the New York State Committee on Discrimination in Housing. Palfi also passed on her political and aesthetic philosophies through her role as an educator, teaching classes on the “social uses of photography” at the Photo League School (1948), The New School for Social Research (1959–1962), UCLA (1965–1966), and other institutions.

“Palfi’s vision and commitment to social justice allowed her to build a visual archive of otherwise ‘invisible’ Americans, reminding us of photography’s ability to influence social change,” said Audrey Sands, PhD, the Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography at Phoenix Art Museum, a joint appointment with the Center for Creative Photography. “Her trenchant, poetic, and piercing work reflects her compassion behind the lens. She actively confronted the political, racial, and economic injustices that overshadowed her lifetime, so many of which still plague our country today. Given the continued resonance of these topics, now is the perfect moment to rediscover Palfi’s important work.”

Organized to showcase the four major projects of her career, the exhibition presents photographs from Palfi’s piercing nationwide study of disadvantaged children living in poverty, her documentation of systemic racism against Black Americans, her research into the abject living conditions of New York’s aging population, as well as her revelatory photographs, funded by a 1967 Guggenheim Fellowship, of the forced relocation of Hopi, Navajo, and Papago peoples in the Southwest. The exhibition’s numerous archival materials, including photobooks, magazine spreads, project proposals, and field research notes, provide audiences with additional context about the scope of Palfi’s photographic practice.

Freedom Must Be Lived: Marion Palfi’s America is the most recent collaboration between Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography. Over the past 13 years, the two institutions have organized nearly 40 exhibitions that bring outstanding works spanning the history of photography to wider audiences in Arizona and beyond.

About the Exhibition

Freedom Must Be Lived: Marion Palfi’s America will be on view from July 21, 2021 through January 2, 2022 in the Doris and John Norton Gallery for the Center for Creative Photography. The exhibition is organized by Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography. It is made possible through the generosity of the John R. and Doris Norton Center for Creative Photography Endowment Fund and The Opatrny Family Foundation, with additional support from the Museum’s Circles of Support and Museum Members. For more details about the exhibition, please visit phxart.org/exhibition/marion-palfi/.

Admission is free for Museum Members; veterans and active-duty military and their families; and youth 5 and younger. Entrance into the exhibition is included in general admission for the general public. During voluntary-donation times, the exhibition is offered to the general public with pay-what-you-wish admission. Voluntary-donation times include Wednesdays from 3 – 7 pm and the first Friday of every month from 3 – 7 pm. For a full breakdown of general admission prices and hours, please see phxart.org/visit/.

High-resolution images and required captions can be downloaded here. To request interviews, contact the Communications Office of Phoenix Art Museum at 602.257.2105 or samantha.andreacchi@phxart.org.

About Phoenix Art Museum

Since 1959, Phoenix Art Museum has provided millions of guests with access to world-class art and experiences in an effort to ignite imaginations, create meaningful connections, and serve as a brave space for all people who wish to experience the transformative power of art. Located in Phoenix’s Central Corridor, the Museum is a vibrant destination for the visual arts and the largest art museum in the southwestern United States. Each year, more than 350,000 guests engage with critically acclaimed national and international exhibitions and the Museum’s collection of more than 20,000 works of American and Western American, Asian, European, Latin American, modern, and contemporary art, and fashion design. The Museum also presents a comprehensive film program, live performances, and educational programs designed for visitors of all ages, along with vibrant photography exhibitions made possible through the Museum’s landmark partnership with the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. To learn more about Phoenix Art Museum, visit phxart.org, or call 602.257.1880.

About Marion Palfi

A German immigrant to the United States during World War II, Marion Palfi trained as a studio portrait photographer and was mentored by Hungarian artist Martin Munkácsi before opening her own studios in Berlin and Amsterdam. After fleeing Germany during Hitler’s rise to power and arriving in the United States, Palfi began her work as a “social-research photographer,” spending months at a time following the lives of individuals or families and thoroughly investigating and immersing herself in various communities. In the early 1940s, she joined the Photo League, the progressive New York collective aimed at effecting social change through photography, where she befriended photographers Berenice Abbott and Lisette Model, as well as other likeminded activists. Among her earliest, most ardent supporters were Langston Hughes, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the photographer and curator Edward Steichen, who included her work in the landmark Family of Man exhibition in 1955 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1967, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship, which she used to document the treatment of Indigenous peoples in U.S. cities, and in 1974, she was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant to document the American prison system. Throughout her almost-40-year career, Palfi worked with magazines, published books, exhibited her work in libraries, and took on government-sponsored projects across the country. Organized into long photo essays and book proposals, her photographs are renowned for being visually arresting and inciting viewers to action. In 1983, the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona acquired Marion Palfi’s archive, which remains the definitive collection of her work.

About the Center for Creative Photography

The Center for Creative Photography is recognized as one of the world’s finest academic art museums and study centers for the history of photography. The Center opened in 1975, following a meeting between then University President Dr. John Schaefer and world-renowned photographer Ansel Adams. Beginning with the archives of five living master photographers—Ansel Adams, Wynn Bullock, Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, and Frederick Sommer—the collection has grown to include 270 archival collections. Among these are some of the most recognizable names in 20^th-century North American photography: Lola Álvarez Bravo, W. Eugene Smith, Edward Weston, and Garry Winogrand. Altogether, there are over eight million archival objects in the Center’s collection including negatives, work prints, contact sheets, albums, scrapbooks, correspondence, writings, audiovisual materials and memorabilia. In addition to whole archival collections, the Center also actively acquires individual photographs by modern and contemporary photographers. There are currently more than 110,000 works by over 2,200 photographers. A library of books, journals, and exhibition and auction catalogues, including many rare publications, plus an extensive oral history collection complements the archival and fine print collections. The combined art, archival, and research collections at the Center provide an unparalleled resource for research, exhibitions, loans, and traveling exhibitions. The Center has a full schedule of exhibitions, programs, and events designed to deepen an understanding of how the medium impacts society. For more details, as well as information on Center membership and ways to get involved, visit ccp.arizona.edu.

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