2018 Aperture Summer Open: The Way We Live Now

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How do photographs express a moment of rapid change in society, politics, beauty, and self-expression? Selected from more than one thousand submissions, the 2018 Aperture Summer Open, The Way We Live Now, features eighteen artists and photographers seeking to reckon with the currents and contradictions of life in the twenty-first century. Among the works are powerful chronicles of the crises of opioid addiction and mass incarceration; multilayered portrayals of Latinx, Native American, and queer communities; sweeping accounts of the built environment from Israel to China; and prismatic meditations on African American and diasporic culture, gender, and fashion. Together, the artists in the Summer Open are gathering evidence about how we define images and how images define our lives.

Curated by Siobhán Bohnacker, senior photo editor, the New Yorker; Brendan Embser, managing editor, Aperture magazine; Marvin Orellana, photo editor, New York magazine; and Antwaun Sargent, independent writer and critic

Featured Artists
Bubblegum Club / Diego Camposeco / Camila Falcão / Jillian Freyer / Jonathan Gardenhire / Lili Kobielski / Roei Greenberg / Vincent Hung / Luther Konadu / Gowun Lee / Tyler Mitchell / Davide Monteleone / Philip Montgomery / Christian Sanna / Matthew Shain / Abdo Shanan / Shikeith / Maria Sturm

About the Aperture Summer Open 

Aperture Summer Open is an annual open-submission exhibition at Aperture Foundation’s gallery that features a wide variety of work drawn from members of our photographic community. Selected annually by a prominent curator or editor, the exhibition seeks to reveal and report on critical themes and trends driving international contemporary photographic practice. The exhibition opens the doors of the Foundation to all photographers, both well- and lesser-known, as it fosters and promotes new ideas and talent.

Aperture Foundation’s public programs and exhibitions are supported, in part, by generous donations from our Board of Trustees, our Members and other individuals, and major support from private foundations including Ford Foundation, Grace Jones Richardson Trust, Henry Luce Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and The Reba Judith Sandler Foundation, and public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts with support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.