Roswell Angier, Bill Burke, John Cohen, Burt Glinn, Emmet Gowin, Kikuji Kawada, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Gesshu Ogawa, J. D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere, Charlotte Rudolph, Osamu Shiihara, Malick Sidibé, Jacques Sonck, Shoji Ueda, Umbo, Weegee, Jan Yoors: Portraits

November 29, 2018 - February 16, 2019

An array of vintage, modern and contemporary portraits. Differences of time period, location, purpose, and technique are considered in the physical proximity of the works to one another.

Josephine Sacabo: TAGGED

October 4, 2018 - January 12, 2019

Walking the graffiti gauntlet from my house to my studio, I am confronted by a lexicon of rampant misogyny, violence and sexual insults. The messages may be verbal but their effects are visceral. We are being ‘tagged’- as hos, bitches, and worse. But I am not that woman.

Why have women become the targets of the rage and frustration expressed? Why are women bearing the consequences for injustices they have not committed? Where are the graffiti messages by women meant for men?

I do not have the answers to these questions, all I have are these images of what it feels like to be a woman walking these streets. And in this I know I am not alone.   – Josephine Sacabo

Contemplating the View: American Landscape Photographs

September 8, 2018 - March 3, 2019

This exhibition highlights one of the Addison collection’s great strengths–images of the American landscape, both natural and manmade. Whether historical or contemporary, fact or fiction, abstract or representative, celebratory or critical, private exploration or social document, all of the photographs assembled in this exhibition comment to one degree or another on the overlapping and often contesting powers of culture and nature. The complex dialogue these images foster prods us to consider the contrast between our myths and realities. Featuring works by photographers such as Carleton Watkins, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Robert Adams, Lois Conner, Marcia Resnick, and Katherine Wolkoff, these photographs present more than mere description. As vehicles for artistic, personal, and cultural expression they challenge us to examine and reflect upon who we are.​

Depth of Field: Acquisitions to UMBC’s Photography Collections, 2008-2018

August 29 - December 19

Depth of Field presents approximately one-hundred images acquired over the last ten years by UMBC’s Photography Collections through generous gifts from donors and artists. The photographs on view highlight the breadth and depth of the collection and illustrate the range of forms, technology, and artists that historically shaped the medium and are presently impacting its ongoing evolution. Featuring work by Albert Arthur Allen, Laurie Brown, Kristin Capp, Clarence Carvell, William Eggleston, Donna Ferrato, Robert Fichter, Todd Forsgren, Peggy Fox, Sally Gall, Ralph Gibson, Penny Harris, Sam Holden, Irina Ionesco, Walter Iooss, Lotte Jacobi, N. Jay Jaffee, Brian Jones, Nate Larson, David S. Lavine, Alen MacWeeney, Mary Ellen Mark, Fred McDarrah, Dorothy Norman, David Seltzer, David Seymour, Steve Szabo, Barbara Traub, Peter Turnley, and Robert VonSternberg.

Dmitri Baltermants, Mark Markov-Grinberg: The Soviet Lens

September 9, 2018 - January 6, 2019

Diane Arbus: Diane Arbus: A box of ten photographs

April 6, 2018 - January 27, 2019

In late 1969, Diane Arbus began to work on a portfolio. At the time of her death in 1971, she had completed the printing for eight known sets of A box of ten photographs, of a planned edition of fifty, only four of which she sold during her lifetime. Two were purchased by photographer Richard Avedon; another by artist Jasper Johns. A fourth was purchased by Bea Feitler, art director at Harper’s Bazaar, for whom Arbus added an eleventh photograph.

This exhibition traces the history of A box of ten photographs between 1969 and 1973, using the set that Arbus assembled for Feitler, which was acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) in 1986. The story is a crucial one because it was the portfolio that established the foundation for Arbus’s posthumous career, ushering in photography’s acceptance to the realm of “serious” art. After his encounter with Arbus and the portfolio, Philip Leider, then editor in chief of Artforum and a photography skeptic, admitted, “With Diane Arbus, one could find oneself interested in photography or not, but one could no longer. . . deny its status as art. . . . What changed everything was the portfolio itself.”

In May 1971, Arbus was the first photographer to be featured in Artforum, which also showcased her work on its cover. In June 1972, the portfolio was sent to Venice, where Arbus was the first photographer included in a Biennale, at that time the premiere international showcase for contemporary artists. SAAM organized the American contribution to the Biennale that year, thereby playing an important early role in Arbus’s legacy.

Trevor Paglen: Trevor Paglen: Sites Unseen

June 21, 2018 - January 6, 2019

Trevor Paglen blurs the lines between art, science, and investigative journalism to construct unfamiliar and at times unsettling ways to see and interpret the world around us. Inspired by the landscape tradition, he captures the same horizon seen by American photographers Timothy O’Sullivan in the nineteenth century and Ansel Adams in the twentieth. Only in Paglen’s photographs is the infrastructure of surveillance also apparent—a classified military installation, a spy satellite, a tapped communications cable, a drone, an artificial intelligence (AI).

Trevor Paglen: Sites Unseen is a mid-career survey, the first exhibition to present Paglen’s early photographic series alongside his recent sculptural objects and new work with AI. It carries on the long history of programs by the Smithsonian American Art Museum examining America’s changing relationship to the landscape. With this presentation, SAAM is contributing to the important and ongoing conversation about privacy and surveillance in contemporary society.

Paglen’s photographs show something we are not meant to see, whose concealment he regards as symptomatic of the historical moment we inhabit. His objects act in opposition to what his images have exposed, imagining another and potentially different world. Paglen is a conceptual artist with activist intentions. Helping to better see the particular moment we live in and producing spaces in which to envision alternative futures are among his chief concerns.

Trevor Paglen: Sites Unseen is organized by John Jacob, SAAM’s McEvoy Family Curator for Photography, and is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.

Ka-Man Tse: narrow distances

December 8, 2018 - February 2, 2019

Reception: Wed December 12, 7-8:30pm

Join Aperture for the opening receptions of both the 2018 Portfolio Prize Winner Ka-Man Tse’s exhibition, narrow distances, and the 2018 Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards Shortlist. Ka-Man Tse’s project explores the intersection of Asian and Pacific Islander and LGBTQ communities in Hong Kong and New York City. The PhotoBook Awards Shortlist comprises thirty-six volumes, celebrating the book’s contribution to the evolving narrative of photography.

Ka-Man Tse is a photographer, video artist, and educator. She received an MFA from Yale University and a BA from Bard College, and has exhibited her work both internationally and across the United States. Tse was a SPARC artist in residence through the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and completed the Artist in the Marketplace Program through the Bronx Museum of the Arts. She is the recipient of the 2014–15 Robert Giard Fellowship, and a 2017–18 Yale University Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies Research Award. In spring 2018, her photographs were featured in Queering Space at Alfred University, Alfred, New York, and at the WMA Masters exhibition, Transition, in Hong Kong, and she cocurated Daybreak: New Affirmations in Queer Photography at the Leslie-Lohman Museum, New York. Tse’s first monograph, narrow distances, was published by Candor Arts in July 2018. She teaches at Yale University and Parsons.

Roberto Huarcaya: Amazogramas

November 15, 2018 - January 27, 2019

Japan Modern: Photography from the Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck Collection

September 29, 2018 - January 21, 2019

Celebrating the Freer|Sackler’s recent acquisition of a major Japanese photography collection, this exhibition features a selection of works by groundbreaking twentieth-century photographers. Whether capturing evocative landscapes or the gritty realities of postwar Japan, this presentation focuses on Japanese artists’ search for a sense of place in a rapidly changing country. The images highlight destinations both rural and urban, in styles ranging from powerful social documentary to intensely personal. A selection of photobooks and experimental films adds to this multifaceted exploration. Complemented by Japan Modern: Prints in the Age of Photography

Tuan Andrew Nguyen: Letters from Saigon to Saigon

September 7, 2018 - January 6, 2019

La Raza

March 30, 2018 - February 10, 2019