Category: Past Exhibitions

January 29–May 24, 2024

In 2016, Anastasia Samoylova (American, b. Soviet Union, b. 1984) moved to Miami, Florida. As she familiarized herself with the city through photography, a larger story began to unfold. The resulting body of work, FloodZone, explores what it looks like to live in the southern United States at a time when rising sea levels and hurricanes threaten the most prized locations with storm surges and coastal erosion.

Samoylova’s lyrical photographs are deceptive, drawing us in with a seemingly documentary promise of a palm-treed paradise. Their alluring color palette—filled with lush greens, azure blues, and pastel pinks—gives way to minute details that reveal decaying infrastructure, encroaching flora, and displaced fauna.

Both seductive and eerie, Samoylova’s images show us what it is to live at the edge of a climate crisis, a space where palm trees topple over onto buildings, where the patina of constant moisture results in dank mold on a freeway overpass, where the sky fills with golden hues after the storm. Somewhere between the artifice and the sobering reality lies the melancholy of living with the constant burden of climate anxiety.

Header image: Anastasia Samoylova, Gator, 2017. From FloodZone © Anastasia Samoylova

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The presentation of this exhibition is supported by an arts program grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the State of Maryland and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support comes from the Libby Kuhn Endowment Fund, as well as individual contributors.

We wish to thank HistoryMiami Museum, the Chrysler Museum of Art, and the George Eastman Museum for their support of the production of prints and texts for this exhibition.

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Public Programs

Anastasia Samoylova in conversation with Mark Alice Durant

Thursday, February 8, 12 pm (noon, EST), online via Webex

Register here

Anastasia Samoylova and Mark Alice Durant, professor of visual arts at UMBC and publisher of Saint Lucy Books, will discuss Samoylova’s FloodZone and the art of the photobook.

Climate Change, Science Communication, and the Arts: An Earth Day Panel Discussion featuring Anastasia Samoylova

Monday, April 22, 5 pm, Library Gallery

Reception to follow; free and open to the public

How do climate scientists share their research and data with the wider public in a way that non-specialists can understand? How might art contribute to this urgent work? This panel discussion will feature artist Anastasia Samoylova in conversation with scientists and media historians specializing in science communication.

The panel is moderated by Sarah L. Hansen (M.S. ’15), STEM Communications Manager at UMBC, and features panelists Lavar Thomas of the Environmental Protection Agency, Tracy Tinga, Assistant Professor in the Media & Communication Studies Department, and Autumn Powell, graduate student in Geography and Environmental Systems.

This event is part of an Earth Month programming series organized in coordination with the Office of Sustainability.

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Anastasia Samoylova (b. 1984) is a Russian-born American artist who moves between observational photography and studio practice.
Her work explores notions of environmentalism, consumerism and the picturesque. Recent exhibition venues include The Metropolitan Museum of Art, C/O Berlin, Fundación MAPFRE, George Eastman Museum, Chrysler Museum of Art, The Photographers’ Gallery, London, and Kunst Haus Wien. In 2022 Samoylova was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize. Her work is in the collections of the Perez Art Museum, Miami; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago. Published monographs include FloodZone 2019, Floridas 2022, and Image Cities 2023.

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August 30–December 15, 2023

Lost Boys: Amos Badertscher’s Baltimore is the first career retrospective of artist Amos Badertscher (American, 1936–2023) in the United States. Between the 1960s and 2005, Badertscher documented hustlers, club kids, go-go dancers, drag queens, drug addicts, friends, and lovers who were part of LGBTQ+ life in Baltimore. A self-taught photographer, Badertscher worked on the fringes of the polite society into which he was born as an upper-middle class white Baltimorean. “Breaking all the rules of documentary photography,” as he has stated, he developed a signature style of spare portraits staged in his home studio. 

Taking his camera into the city’s clubs and gay bars, Badertscher recorded the shifting geographies and personalities of queer Baltimore pre-Stonewall and through the height of the AIDS epidemic. In the early 2000s, he captured the urban decay, economic devastation, and rampant drug use of sex workers in the city’s post-industrial landscape, in a body of work foregrounding aspects of Baltimore’s queer history that have rarely been acknowledged. Badertscher returns repeatedly to his personal photographic archive, inscribing his prints with handwritten notes on his subjects’ personal histories, filtered through his own recollections. This exhibition explores the power dynamics and desires embedded in his photographs, which memorialize people often marginalized by society.

Header image: Amos Badertscher, Voice Wafers in Time #1, 1975. Gelatin silver print. Courtesy Amos Badertscher Estate.

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Selected works

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In Memoriam

Amos Badertscher | “Who Documented the Sexual Underground,” The New York Times August 9, 2023

Amos Badertscher | “Baltimore photographer who chronicled queer scene . . .,” The Baltimore Sun August 1, 2023

Amos Badertscher | “Remembering Amos Badertscher,” artnet News July 28, 2023

Amos Badertscher | “Amos Badertscher, photographer of Baltimore street life, 1936–2023,” ArtReview July 28, 2023

In Memoriam: Amos Badertscher (1936-2023) | CLAMP Art July 26, 2023

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March 27—June 30, 2023

With a voice born in the mountains and shaped by the hard times she lived and saw, Ola Belle Reed (1916-2002) established herself as a significant and influential banjo picker, singer, and songwriter of old-time mountain music.

An estimated two million migrants, including Reed and her family, left Appalachia during the Great Depression in search of work in industrial centers of the northern United States. They brought with them ways of life, including musical traditions, that maintained a connection to their southern home and transformed the cultures of their adopted cities. 

In 1936, Reed started her career as a professional musician when she joined the North Carolina Ridge Runners, and refined her talent as a member of the New River Boys. With a powerful voice, lyrics that spoke authentically of her rural roots, and her straightforward musical approach, Reed became a groundbreaking solo artist whose passionate songs resonated in the folk-revival movement of the 1960s. As the co-host of a radio program and both a proprietor of and performer at local concert venues, Reed played a critical role in establishing and maintaining a vital bluegrass community along the Mason-Dixon Line. She was a culture bearer who created and helped conserve the unique musical traditions of Appalachia. Reed left an enduring legacy: her 1973 album Ola Belle Reed was added in 2019 to the National Recording Registry, her songs have become anthems of Appalachian life, and she is widely recognized as one of the most influential female bluegrass and folk musicians of all-time.

Co-curated by the Library Gallery’s Curator of Exhibitions Emily Cullen and Media and Communications Studies Professor Bill Shewbridge with Tim Newby, author of Baltimore: The Hard Drivin’ Sound & its Legacy (McFarland and Company, Inc. 2015).

Public Programming

Film Screening: “I’ve Endured”: The music and legacy of Ola Belle Reed

Thursday May 11, 2023 5pm

AOK Library Gallery – UMBC

I’ve Endured”: The music and legacy of Ola Belle Reed is a new 45 minute documentary exploring the life and work of nationally recognized bluegrass and old-time musician Ola Belle Campbell Reed (1916-2002), directed by Bill Shewbridge.

Free and open to the public, reception to follow

October 31, 2022–March 12, 2023

Aaron Siskind (American, 1903–1991) was one of the most influential figures in the development of photography as an art form during the twentieth century. This exhibition, drawn from UMBC’s Photography Collections, traces the formation of this artist’s unique photographic vision from early documentary works made in Harlem as a member of the New York Film and Photo League in the 1930s to his breakthrough explorations of abstraction in the 1940s and 1950s, which led to a sustained investigation of the camera’s capacity to frame new visual forms. The 55 works on display represent every period of the artist’s career, including architectural studies made on Martha’s Vineyard, the exuberant series, Terrors and Pleasures of Levitation, featuring images of divers’ bodies suspended in air, and impressions from his travels throughout Europe and Latin America. Through his photographs and his role as an educator, first at the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and later at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Siskind made an indelible mark on the field, uncovering expressive possibilities from the raw material of reality

Cover Image: Aaron Siskind, Terrors and Pleasures of Levitation: No. 37, 1953. Gelatin silver print, 10 x 9 1/2 in. Library Purchase, The Photography Collections, UMBC (P78-26-001) © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

October 31, 2022–March 12, 2023

Sonya Clark (b. 1967) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores issues of identity, race, cultural heritage, and collective memory. This exhibition presents five works in which Clark applies fiber-art techniques to the medium of hair, a material laden with cultural and metaphorical significance. In these works, strands of hair represent ancestral bonds, hairstyles connote intimacy and convey Black visibility and identity, and combs bare teeth to show how hair has been an instrument of political resistance across the African diaspora. Clark interweaves her material with historical, literary, and musical allusions ranging from the biography of Madam C. J. Walker, the first female self-made millionaire, whose wealth derived from her business selling hair care products to Black women, to the hymn “Life Every Voice and Sing,” known as the unofficial Black National Anthem. Engaging craft traditions, Clark unravels the narrative threads that bind issues of contemporary importance to the past and refashions potent cultural symbols from everyday objects.

This exhibition was made possible in collaboration with Goya Contemporary Gallery and Sonya Clark

Cover Image: Sonya Clark, Hair Craft Project with Dionne, 2014. Pigment print on archival paper, 29 x 29 inches. Courtesy Goya Contemporary Gallery and Sonya Clark.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9Blmrlj928

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August 22–October 14

Most prisons and jails across the United States do not allow prisoners to have access to cameras. At a moment when an estimated 2.2 million people are incarcerated in the U.S., 3.8 million people are on probation, and 870,000 former prisoners are on parole, how can images tell the story of mass incarceration when the imprisoned don’t have control over their own representation? How can photographs visualize a reality that disproportionately affects people of color, and, for many, remains outside of view? Coinciding with Aperture Magazine’s issue, “Prison Nation,” this exhibition addresses the unique role photography plays in creating a visual record of this national crisis, despite the increasing difficulty of gaining access inside prisons.

Since its early years, photography has been used to create and reinforce typologies of criminality, often singling out specific groups of people. Today, it is essential for photographers to provide urgent counterpoints and move beyond simplistic descriptions of the “criminal” or the imprisoned. Much of the work gathered here—from a recently discovered archive at San Quentin in California to portraits of prisoners participating in a garden program at Rikers Island in New York City or performing a passion play at Louisiana’s Angola prison, a facility located on the site of a former slave plantation—underscores the humanity and individuality of those incarcerated. Some projects explore the prison as an omnipresent feature of the American landscape, often serving as a local economic engine, or delve into the living conditions and social systems of prisons, while others address the difficult process of reentering society after incarceration. One series was produced in prison: Jesse Krimes made hundreds of image transfers with prison-issued soap while he served a five-year sentence.

Incarceration impacts all of us. Americans, even those who have never been to a prison or had a relative incarcerated, are all implicated in a form of governance that uses prison as a solution to many social, economic, and political problems. Empathy and political awareness are essential to creating systemic change—and through this exhibition, and the accompanying series of public programs, “Prison Nation” may provoke us to see parts of ourselves in the lives of those on the inside.

Prison Nation is organized by Aperture Foundation, New York. Nicole R. Fleetwood and Michael Famighetti, curators.

This exhibition was made possible with lead support from the Ford Foundation. Additional generous support was provided by the Reba Judith Sandler Foundation.

Cover Image: Stephen Tourlentes, Wyoming State Death House Prison, Rawlins, Wyoming, 2000, from the series Of Length andMeasures: Prison and the American Landscape, 1996–ongoing. Courtesy the artist andCarroll and Sons, Boston

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Captured between 1891-1909, these photographs document landscapes and geological forms, Arctic flora and fauna, Peary’s expedition team and equipment, as well as candid scenes and ethnographic studies of Inuit people. Used to illustrate published accounts of Peary’s journey, the photographs bearing his editing marks reveal how the explorer, his publishers, and ghostwriters shaped the narrative of Peary’s achievement. Like many subjects they depict, the photographs were pressed into serving a singular purpose- fulfilling a colonialist fantasy of discovery and conquest of the North Pole in which Peary was the triumphant hero.

The success of Peary’s mission was due to his adoption of Inuit technologies, methods, and equipment, and to the Inughuit (Polar Inuit of Greenland) who traveled with his team to the North Pole. 

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A note on the captions:

The presentation of this exhibition is supported by a project grant from the Baltimore County Commission on the Arts & Sciences and an arts program grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the State of Maryland and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support comes from the Libby Kuhn Endowment Fund, as well as individual contributions.

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Installation views by Research Graphics at UMBC

Distant Early Warning, a multi-year project (2015-2018) by Canadian/American photojournalist Louie Palu, provides a look at the evolving militarization in the North American Arctic driven by invented narratives and imagined threats. Now, decades after the end of the Cold War, debates have emerged over more efficient shipping routes, opportunities for resource extraction and the future of the Arctic related to climate change. Along with the six other Arctic nations (Finland, Greenland (Denmark), Iceland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden), the United States and Canada are maneuvering to assert and defend their claims over the territory. Consequently, some Indigenous communities in the region are slowly coming face to face with increased geo-political activity and tourism. This exhibition examines operations of power and bears witness to a culture of fear and hyper-preparedness as we brace for an unknown future.

Palu’s work was supported by funding from the John Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, National Geographic Magazine, and Pulitzer Center. The presentation of this exhibition is supported by a project grant from the Baltimore County Commission on the Arts & Sciences and an arts program grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the State of Maryland and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support comes from the Libby Kuhn Endowment Fund, as well as individual contributions.

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Once considered nearly impenetrable, the Arctic is losing roughly 21,000 square miles of ice each year and warming faster than any other place on the planet. As climate change melts its icy armor, the region is taking on strategic importance. This panel discussion explores contemporary geopolitics and geology in the Arctic from a variety of artistic, scholarly, and scientific perspectives. Topics include: new scientific methods for measuring and analyzing the influence of sea ice thickness on the climate, the future of national competition and claims over the Arctic, and impact of climate change on the indigenous communities in the region.

Join us before the panel discussion for a participatory installation of photographs from Distant Early Warning encased in blocks of ice in the plaza outside the Albin O. Kuhn Library and in a hands-on display in the Library Gallery.

Panelists:

Louie Palu (bio below)

Dr. Nathan Kurtz is the Chief of NASA’s Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory, Deputy Project Scientist for NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite mission, and UMBC alum (PhD Atmospheric Physics, 2009). His research involves remote sensing of the polar regions with an emphasis on the use laser and radar altimetry data to study the impact of sea ice on the climate. He has traveled to both the Arctic and Antarctic numerous times as part of ship-based and airborne field campaigns.

Dr. Brian Grodsky is a Professor of Comparative Politics and Chair of the Political Science Department at UMBC. His research interests include various aspects of democratization and human rights, as well as the politics of disaster response and climate change. His books include, The Costs of Justice (University of Notre Dame Press 2010); Social Movements and the New State: The Fate of Pro-Democracy Organizations When Democracy is Won (Stanford University Press 2012); and The Democratization Disconnect (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016).

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Virtual Artist’s Talk: Louie Palu
5:00 pm (EST)
February 22, 2022

Register here (via Webex)

Peggy Fox’s career as a photographer spans assignment-based work and her own fine art practice. For clients, she produced picture stories aimed at conveying a narrative within a single image. Meanwhile, her photographs recording street life in Baltimore, documenting the vanishing towns of Maryland’s Patapsco Valley, and chronicling her extensive travels across the globe provided opportunities to tell stories shaped by personal encounters and characterized by a strong sense of place. Fox’s experiments in collage expand the existing imagery of those photographs. Combined with transparencies, layered upon aluminum ground, and embellished with hand-worked details or digital manipulation, the resulting images engage the surrealist tendencies of collage to render reality into fantasy and to juxtapose subjects in new, unexpected ways. Certain motifs recur across the body of work, including enshrouded, falling, or diving figures; architectural features of arches, portals, and stairways; and references to religious iconography, mythology, and physics. This virtual presentation is structured around three groupings, intended as three possible unfolding paths that emphasize the inherent narrativity of the artist’s constructions. These sets of collages are not prescriptive, but are rather evocative of emotions, impressions, and symbols. Viewed as “morality tales,” the images conjure stories but remain ambiguous, their lessons open to multiple interpretations. 

* The images below will scroll automatically. They can also be advanced using the arrows at right and left. To pause the slideshow and to view titles, hold the cursor over the image.

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The work begins with my black and white photographs. It grows out of a desire to personalize and elaborate on these initial images by joining them, collaging them, and painting on them to enlarge the story. The particular quality of the photographs is integral to, and is the dominant feature of, the images.

As an independent contract photographer I was part of a genre of “what makes a one shot, picture story?” There were parameters, there was an approach. There were stories to be told, in schools and hospitals. It was very traditional storytelling taken to the highest level. This work, while honoring that, is storytelling of a different nature.

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