Exhibition

In Pictures for Charis, American photographer Kelli Connell reconsiders the relationship between writer Charis (pronounced CARE-iss) Wilson and photographer Edward Weston through a close examination of Wilson’s prose and Weston’s iconic photographs. Connell weaves together the stories of Wilson and Weston with her own and enriches our understanding of the couple from her contemporary Queer and feminist perspective.

This exhibition features recent portrait and landscape photographs by Connell along with classic figure studies and landscapes by Weston from 1934–1945 one of his most productive periods and the span of his relationship with Wilson. Using Weston and Wilson publications as a guide, Connell and her partner, Betsy Odom, traveled to locales where Wilson and Weston lived, made work, and spent time together creating new artworks in the process.

This exhibition is co-organized by the Center for Creative Photography; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and the Cleveland Museum of Art. The monograph Kelli Connell: Pictures for Charis (2024) is co-published by the Center for Creative Photography and Aperture Foundation  and brings together Connell’s text, portraits of Odom, new landscape views, and original materials by both Wilson and Weston.

In 1978, Life magazine photojournalist W. Eugene Smith died at age 59 in Tucson, Arizona where he had moved the year before. He left behind a vast and rich archive of correspondence, his own research material, negatives, proof prints, and audio recordings. The Center for Creative Photography is presenting 45 of Smith’s photographs as an opportunity to think about what conditions promote interdisciplinary engagement. Drawn from five series: World War II, Nurse Midwife, Jazz Loft, Hitachi Corporation, and Minamata, Smith’s work will be presented with archival material that helps expand consideration of his practice beyond an art historical lens, connecting his photographs to other fields and disciplines.

Born in 1947 in Douglas, Arizona, and based in Tucson, Louis Carlos Bernal was a pioneering Chicano photographer, among the very first to envision his work in the medium not as documentation, but as an art form. He began his career in the early 1970s in the wake of the Chicano civil rights movement, articulating a quietly political approach to photography with the aim of heralding the strength, spiritual and cultural values, and profound family ties that marked the lives of Mexican Americans who were marginalized and little seen. Initially focusing on the people of modest means he encountered in the barrios of Tucson, the city where he lived and taught, Bernal eventually traveled to small towns throughout the Southwest, where he portrayed individuals and families in outdoor settings or in their homes surrounded by belongings, tabletops filled with religious statuary and curios, and at times, rooms absent of people that nevertheless express the tenor of the lives lived within them. In a relatively short career that spanned the 1970s and 1980s, Bernal demonstrated his profound gift for magnifying the lives of his subjects and for capturing the essence of their character in a single image. In addition to the photographs made in Southwestern barrio communities, the exhibition will also include examples of Bernal’s early experimental work, photographs he made during his frequent trips to Mexico, and a selection of never-seen images he produced in Cuba. It is curated by Elizabeth Ferrer, a specialist in the history of Latinx photography, and will be accompanied by a catalog to be co-published by the Center for Creative Photography and Aperture.

Thank you to the Henry Luce Foundation for support of this exhibition.

This spring, CCP’s Alice Chaiten Baker Interdisciplinary Gallery will be transformed into an immersive installation where images and sounds converge. Mural-scale digital projections rotating photographs of the southwestern United States from CCP’s collection hypnotically tangle with a chance array of music and sound. The installation means to expand how photography can engage, illuminate, entrance, and influence our understanding of place, of sound, of our bodies.

8-Track will also be stage to a curated schedule of live, in-gallery performances by regional musicians, commissioned to perform work inspired by CCP’s collection of photography. See the performance calendar below for dates and times. 75- tickets for these unique image+sound experiences will be first-come, first-serve when doors open at 5:15pm. Performances begin at 5:30pm.

The spring performances are co-organized by Arizona Arts Live and the Center for Creative Photography. Read more about each of the musicians by following this link.

Spring 2023 In-Gallery Performance Schedule:

Track 1. Brian Lopez: Wednesday, March 01, 5:30pm

Track 2. Fred Huang: Wednesday, March 15, 5:30pm

Track 3. Karima Walker: Wednesday, March 29, 5:30pm

Track 4. New Misphoria: Wednesday, April 12, 5:30pm

Track 5. Ryan Green: Wednesday, April 26, 5:30pm

Track 6. Jillian Besset: Wednesday, May 10, 5:30pm

Track 7. Mo la Flo: Wednesday, May 24, 5:30pm

Track 8. Nicandro Guereque: Wednesday, June 07, 5:30pm

Fashioning Self: The Photography of Everyday Expression examines the role of photography in shaping, sharing, and shifting identity.

Whether for a selfie or formal portrait, we all craft our appearance and identity for a public audience.  We consider cultural and social norms, the emotions we wish to express or hide away, where we’re going and with whom, and the purpose of the photograph when choosing how we dress, adorn, and present ourselves. The resulting images serve as a window into a particular moment of our life, with intimate details that alert viewers to who we are, as filtered through the photographic medium.

Organized by Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography (CCP), Fashioning Self: The Photography of Everyday Expression features 54 works of street, documentary, and self-portrait photography from 1912 to 2015 that explore this long-intertwined relationship between fashion as a tool for self-expression and photography’s role in chronicling it. Iconic views by Dennis Feldman, Laura Volkerding, Linda Rich, John Simmons, David Hume Kennerly, Teenie Harris, and more illuminate the dialogue that occurs between photographer and subject—the give-and-take between self-performance and art making.

Alongside these works drawn from CCP’s outstanding collection, Fashioning Self also features a rotating display of social media images 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 our collective social media followings to take their own selfies and portraits in the galleries or in their 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 in a world where cameras are commonplace and everyone curates a feed.

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 John R. and Doris Norton Center for Creative Photography Endowment Fund, with additional support from the Museum’s Circles of Support and Museum Members.

Sessions on Creative Photography is one comprehensive look at the boundary-breaking career of Hazel Larsen Archer, from her instrumental work in photography within mid century avant-garde art circles to her transformative approach to photo education. Archer embraced experimentation; challenged expectations and encouraged a radical depth of seeing; and was concerned both with photography and the experience of life itself. Linda McCartney, a prominent student of Archer’s in Tucson in the early 1960s, reflected, “She inspired me to become a photographer.” 

This exhibition is intent on generating meaningful conversation between creative practices today and the history that shapes those practices. Particularly crucial is to reshape the parameters of photography’s histories by introducing largely overlooked or marginalized perspectives like that of Archer, who was influential to Tucson’s vibrant arts community. Over the course of the spring, Sessions on Creative Photography will evolve to include the interdisciplinary projects of students in the undergraduate course, “Introduction to Applied Humanities,” taught by Dr. Jacqueline Barrios. The students’ projects will be exhibited in two parts: within CCP’s Heritage Gallery and in a to-be-announced community space in Tucson.

Sessions on Creative Photography is generously supported by the Marshall Foundation.

** Last Chance to Experience "The Linda McCartney Retrospective"! Don't miss this unique opportunity to explore Linda McCartney's photography in the place where her love for photography first began! This Friday & Saturday, August 4-5, we are extending our gallery hours from 10am to 7 pm.**

Curated by members of the photographer’s family, this exhibition has its North American debut at the Center for Creative Photography and covers Linda McCartney’s whole career, from 1965 to 1997.

Featuring 176 photographs and additional archival materials that offer insight into her working methods, the exhibition is presented in three sections: Family, Photographic Experimentation, and Artists. Family features poignant and direct accounts of her life as mother, wife, and animal activist. Having moved to London with her new husband Paul in 1969, Linda documented her extraordinary version of domestic life, and these self-portraits, slices from life, and portraits of her husband, children, and beloved animal companions provide powerful access to her particular perspective. Throughout her photographic career, McCartney "sketched" by taking Polaroid images, experimented with various photographic processes, explored color and black-and-white film, and partnered with artistic collaborators. The Photographic Experimentation section includes several artworks that are unique to the CCP version of the exhibition. In the third section, Artists, we see McCartney's early portraits of the dynamic 1960s music scene which capture the vulnerability of future world-conquering rock stars.

McCartney was the first woman photographer to have an image featured on the cover of Rolling Stone; her unparalleled access to The Beatles – the biggest band in the world at that time – allowed her to chronicle the members and their behind-the-scenes; and her own role as a founding member of Wings gave her yet another point of view on musical stardom. The range of works in the exhibition, including never-before-seen Tucson views, reflect the spontaneity and ease of her photographic style. 

Richard Avedon: Relationships, envisioned by Chief Curator Rebecca Senf for the Tucson galleries of the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in 2018, has been expanded and traveled from the Royal Palace in Milan, Italy, to a second venue at the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Palermo, Italy.

The exhibition, which features both Avedon's portraiture and fashion photography, will present the Center's exhibition of over 100 prints in a series of galleries featuring Avedon's early and late fashion, portraits of performers, artists, and politicians. Each section is introduced by a portrait of Avedon and a quote by the artist bringing a sense of Avedon and his personal outlook into the galleries. The exhibition boasts a new publication--printed in both Italian and in English--to accompany and amplify the installation of prints, and the exhibition includes a special "Vogue" room with a reading area to allow visitors to peruse the exhibition catalogue.

Why Color? is the first class residency piloted by the Center for Creative Photography + Art & Visual Culture Education in the School of Art. Simultaneously a classroom and installation, the project launches in early September, inviting University of Arizona graduate students in the course “Participatory Practices and Edu-Curation in Exhibitions” to design an exhibition from CCP’s collection of color photography. The goal? To create an art-influenced community experience that can be both educational and meaningful, as well as collaborative.

In Why Color?, the exhibition is accomplished in two stages. The first is a review of color processes, showing how experimentation and evolution is at the foundation of color photography. There is also a collection of books, games, and archival reproductions to explore, topics ranging from the effects of color on emotion to Polaroid pictures, from cultural histories of color to photographers’ work prints.

The second stage, set to be completed in early November 2022, realizes the semester-long work of participating students. Themes are ultimately up to the graduate students, their specific interests and concerns, and will also be securely rooted in ideas of community, collaboration, and interdisciplinary engagement by way of color photography.

Highlights include photographs by Lalla Essaydi, Mark Klett, Reagan Louie, Joyce Neimanas, Catherine Opie, and Edward Weston.

Showcasing more than 70 portraits, landscapes, self-portraits, and family archival images, And Let It Remain So: Women of the African Diaspora presents the nuanced perspectives of five photographers who are exploring their experiences of the African Diaspora, defined by the voluntary and forced movement of Africans and their descendants over centuries through waves of migration and enslavement.

Featured works by Widline Cadet, Jasmine Clarke, Hellen Gaudence, Nadiya I. Nacordia, and Sasha Phyars-Burgess reflect specific locales, general memories, and multilayered family experiences, drawing on elements from the past and present to consider an imagined future. Experienced collectively, these dynamic photographs illuminate shared and separate understandings of family and history, place and displacement, migration and mobility, and belonging and community, all informed by individual diasporic realities.

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.

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.