2024: Our Year in Review
Posted on December 13, 2024
From watching construction progress on the FotoFocus Center, to hosting the Visiting Lecture and Artist Series, fostering new community partnerships, implementing the 2024 Biennial, and installing a mural, this year has been nothing short of exciting. We’re excited to share a photo gallery from the Biennial. Stay tuned for 2025 as we look forward to welcoming visitors to the FotoFocus Center.
Below we recap 5 things that shaped our 2024.
Construction progress continues on the FotoFocus Center in preparation for a 2025 opening.
FotoFocus anticipates the opening of the FotoFocus Center, a 14,700 square foot structure designed to house photographic exhibitions and year-round programs, in 2025. Included in the FotoFocus Center will be nearly 4,500 square feet of gallery space. The new arts center in the Mount Auburn neighborhood, located at the northwest corner of Liberty and Sycamore Streets, is designed by local architecture studio JOSE GARCIA DESIGN + CONSTRUCTION.
In January 2024, progress on the FotoFocus Center continued with exterior wall framing and utility connections. In February, brick masonry began on the North facade of the building while other exterior framing continued. Interior framing and mechanical work began in March. In April, masonry work on the corbelled brick facade was completed and the steel structure for the monumental staircase was installed. Interior framing and trades work (plumbing, HVAC installation, electrical work, audiovisual, etc.) have been in progress for the latter half of the year. FotoFocus held their first tours of the FotoFocus Center for press in August, followed by more tours throughout the rest of the year. In early 2025, you’ll notice white stone installed on the exterior of the building around the monumental staircase, also referred to as the “viewfinder” of the building. Continue following us for details related to a 2025 Opening.
To learn more about the future home of FotoFocus, read this press release announcement of the FotoFocus Center.
We welcomed Roger Ross Williams as part of the Visiting Artist and Lecture Series.
Roger Ross Williams is an Oscar, Emmy, NAACP Image Awards, Webby, and Peabody award-winning director, producer, and writer, and was the first African American director to win an Academy Award® with his film Music By Prudence. Williams directed Life, Animated, which was nominated for an Academy Award® and won the Sundance Directing Award and three Emmys. He is the recipient of the Career Achievement Award from the International Documentary Association, The Woodstock Film Festival Maverick Award, The NYU Alumni Achievement Award, and an honorary doctorate from Lafayette College.
FotoFocus welcomed Williams on March 22, 2024 at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. We encourage you to watch the conversation FotoFocus Presents: Roger Ross Williams if you were unable to join us.
We worked with various community partners to kick off the 2024 Biennial at our Passport Launch event in August.
In August 2024, we hosted our first Biennial Preview and Passport Launch event at the OTR Stillhouse. At this event, we collaborated with a number of local businesses and organizations to kick off the Biennial. DIY Printing was on-site to screen print shirts and Cindependent brought their Wheels on Reels mobile cinema to premiere our 2024 Biennial Artist and Curator Interview Series. Additionally, we worked with Revel OTR for a signature Biennial wine.
We are thankful for all of our partnerships throughout the year. Collaborations with local businesses, partner venues, artists, and curators are a vital part of what makes FotoFocus such an impactful contributor to the community. Check out a full list of our Biennial Partners here.
We hosted the seventh FotoFocus Biennial, which featured 107 projects at 86 venues.
The 2024 FotoFocus Biennial: backstories included 107 projects at 86 Participating Venues across Greater Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, and Northern Kentucky—the largest of its kind in America. These projects featured international, national, and regional artists and curators, focusing on stories that are not evident at first glance—offering context for what happened previously or out of view, providing narratives not yet told or presented from a new perspective.
The Biennial Opening Weekend Program featured a keynote lecture by Kathy Ryan, talks and panel discussions with artists, curators, and collaborators, designed to inspire conversations about the world through photography, film, and lens-based art while establishing the backstories theme.
Read our Call for Entry Highlights featured below, watch any conversations you may have missed from the Opening Program, and browse our Biennial Photo Gallery.
2024 Biennial Video Gallery
2024 Biennial Artist and Curator Interview Series
Call for Entry Highlight: Artist Run
Call for Entry Highlight: Another First Impression
Call for Entry Highlight: More than Meets the Eye
Call for Entry Highlight: The Trail of the Dead
Call for Entry Highlight: Humphrey Gets His Flowers
Biennial Featured Artist Chip Thomas installed a mural in Cincinnati’s West End neighborhood.
FotoFocus unveiled a commissioned portrait mural of artist William Rankins, Jr., by activist, physician, and artist Chip Thomas at the locally beloved restaurant Ollie’s Trolley in the West End near Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati. Presented as part of the 2024 FotoFocus Biennial: backstories, the mural is an extension of Thomas’ exhibition, Chip Thomas and the Painted Desert Project, which opened September 6, 2024 and runs through January 5, 2025, at the Contemporary Arts Center.
The new mural of William Rankins, Jr., honors the Cincinnati artist in the same location where Rankins painted a mural of Barack Obama in 2008, which was lost when the wall had to be repaired in 2019. Rankins is a well-known artist in Cincinnati, creating dozens of murals across the city between the 1980s and early 2000s that showcased prominent local and national figures and often promoted businesses. Many of his murals are no longer visible due to weather, removal, or redevelopment.
The title for Thomas’ work, Sight ≠ Vision (read sight doesn’t equal vision), was inspired by a phrase Mr. Rankins has repeated since losing his sight in 2014: “I walk by faith now, not by sight.” Encompassing the forty-foot wall behind Ollie’s Trolley, Thomas intentionally placed Rankins’ eyes where the windows of the building are, expressing that, “If the eyes are the windows to the soul, then the windows on this building, with remnants of Mr. Williams Rankins, Jr.’s artwork inside and outside, give us insight into his soul.” Rankins seems to gaze to the left toward his remaining artwork on the walls of the building, a look toward the past and what has survived over the years.
The new portrait is based on a photograph Thomas took of Rankins and is adhered to the building in a wheatpaste style with gel medium, a format Thomas typically uses for his public murals. Wheatpaste murals are susceptible to weather conditions and have a limited life span of 2 to 3 years, making this mural an apt reflection of the uncertain fate of Rankins’ remaining works and Ollie’s Trolley, which in recent years has fended off pressure from developers to sell.
Read the full press release: FotoFocus Unveils Public Mural by Chip Thomas as part of the 2024 Biennial