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The Printed Record of Tokyo’s Vanished Underground

In the late 1960s and early ’70s, a postwar momentum for breaking societal norms profoundly influenced Japanese cultural expression.

Is a British Exhibition About Resistance Stuck in the Past?

A nostalgic show curated by Steve McQueen about photography and protest misses the creative energy that drives social movements today.

Essex Hemphill’s Love Knew No Bounds

A crucial voice for Black queer desire and liberation, the late poet—finally back in print—has ignited a fire in American artists across generations.

Eileen Perrier’s Alluring Portraits Show How Love and Fear Are Intertwined

Whether in the UK or Ghana, the British photographer immerses herself in communities, and her images are infused with a spirit of collaboration.

Photography in a World Where the Center No Longer Holds

German artists have often used typologies to help us understand the world. But an exhibition in Milan parades photography’s failures: to document, to mourn, to bend experience into arcs of narrative.

Consuelo Kanaga’s Restless Eye

A retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum introduces the photographer to a new generation—and reestablishes her place in the canon of modern American art.
M'hammed Kilito, Zagora Oasis, Morocco, 2022

A Biennial Carries the Weight of a World in Crisis

In the Emirates, the Sharjah Biennial convenes artists who speak about survival and solidarity at a time of dispossession.

How Photography Memorializes Dance

The choreographer Alvin Ailey created some of the most important dances of the twentieth century. But what is the connection between his distinct art and the ephemeral image?
Fred McDarrah, Untitled (Youths at Stonewall Uprising), New York, New York, June 28, 1969

The Photographer Who Documented the Struggle for Gay Liberation

Fred McDarrah made singular portraits of Bob Dylan, Susan Sontag, and other luminaries of the 1960s. But his photojournalism also cemented the era’s visual style—and defined a political movement.
Bruce Conner, Bombhead, 2002

A Chilling Exhibition about the Nuclear Threat

For decades, artists have responded to the possibilities of extinction-level destruction. But advances in nuclear science have also led to innovations in art.

The Unsung Queen of French Pictorialism

In Paris, an exhibition presents Céline Laguarde as one of France’s most significant pre–World War I photographers.
Xaviera Simmons, Sundown (Number Two), 2018

How Can Photography Shape our Relationship to the Environment?

An exhibition in Pittsburgh highlights the ways images can reveal the long-forgotten and unseen histories of ecology.

Hervé Guibert’s Seductive Photo-Novel About Two Sisters in Reclusion

The influential French writer’s book “Suzanne and Louise” is an intricate choreography of privacy, revelation, and performance, keenly testing the possibilities of its hybrid medium.

In the Mythic Mediterranean, a Labyrinth of Female Creativity

A recent exhibition at the Fondation Carmignac celebrates the infinite possibilities of womanhood.

Stephen Shore’s American Beauty

Across six decades, Shore has redefined photography—not by picturing life’s deep mysteries, but by capturing something true in the surfaces of the everyday.
John McConnico

Confronting the Legacy of Photography’s Anti-Blackness

Kimberly Juanita Brown reveals how the photographic enterprise is haunted by racial violence, finding new ways of looking at the dead and the living.

In Kyoto, a Family Portrait by Two Japanese Photographers

Tokuko Ushioda and Rinko Kawauchi make photographs to slow the passage of time, venerating the subtle textures of day-to-day living.
George Platt Lynes, Demus, 1937

One of Photography’s Most Enigmatic Love Triangles Finally Gets Its Due

In their book “Body Language,” Nick Mauss and Angela Miller show how a group of artists shaped a network of queer image culture decades before Stonewall.
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