FotoFocus Announces 74 Exhibitions and 65 Venues for the 2026 Biennial: The Long View

Cincinnati, OH (June 16, 2026) — FotoFocus is pleased to announce its list of featured exhibitions and venues for the 2026 Biennial: The Long View, taking place during the month of October with the Opening Program scheduled for September 30–October 3. The largest of its kind in America, extending across museums, galleries, universities, and public spaces in Greater Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, and Northern Kentucky, the Biennial celebrates photography and lens-based art while uniting artists, curators, and educators from around the world. The Biennial returns with 74 exhibitions presented at 65 venues including the newly opened FotoFocus Center.

Ambitious and critically engaging exhibitions will be presented at museums, galleries, schools and universities, theaters, nonprofit cultural centers, parks, hotels, and libraries, among other venues, including major new artist commissions and site-specific installations, solo exhibitions, group exhibitions, public art projects, performances, and film screenings. In addition to its returning venues, the 2026 Biennial includes 9 new venues: ArtsConnect, Cincinnati Art Club, Delhi Event Center, FotoFocus Center, Miami University: Hiestand Galleries, Here and Now, MOTR Pub, Oxford Community Arts Center, and Swell Art Cafe.

All programming for the 2026 Biennial has been developed with, and overseen by, the FotoFocus creative team, comprising: Katherine Ryckman Siegwarth, Executive Director; Kevin Moore, Artistic Director and Curator; and Carissa Barnard, Director of Curatorial Strategy.

The theme of the biennial is ‘the long view,’ a phrase used to invoke a broader perspective, one defined by distance and duration. As an attitude toward history, it suggests a wise and measured perspective, one that takes into consideration both the distant past while also considering the distant future. ‘The long view’ also describes, in literal terms, two primary capacities of photography and photographic lenses: long-distance vision and long-duration viewing. Considering photography as a metaphor for the attempt to grasp one’s place within the durational sweep of history, The Long View acknowledges the semiquincentennial of the United States and encourages a posture of reflection in regards to the country’s history, its past, present, and future. While photography has the capacity to depict moments from the United States’ long and contested history, it also functions as a powerful tool for understanding that history and, in turn, informs how we shape the future. The 2026 Biennial will be anchored by six featured exhibitions that embody the critically reflective theme of The Long View in different yet complementary ways.

“The exhibitions featured in this year’s biennial consider ‘the long view’ through a unique range of perspectives,” said Katherine Ryckman Siegwarth, FotoFocus Executive Director. “Some exhibitions have historical roots while others embrace futurism, using the lens as a tool to speculate what is on the horizon, while still others remain rooted in the present, addressing ideology, politics, and culture in America and around the world.”

“Responses to The Long View have been exceptionally philosophical, speculative, and ambitious, demonstrating the theme’s resonance in the current socio-political moment,” said Kevin Moore, FotoFocus Artistic Director and Curator. “As we collectively take stock of our country’s direction in this semiquincentennial year, the exhibitions and programming featured in this edition of the Biennial remind us not only of photography’s role in shaping our understanding of history, they also propose ways for us to envision the future.”

FotoFocus programming is financially assisted in part by Ohio Arts Council and H.B., E.W. & F.R. Luther Foundation, Fifth Third Bank, N.A., Trustee.

The Long View Featured Exhibitions

Trevor Paglen: the most merciful thing in the world
FotoFocus Center | October 1, 2026–January 23, 2027

Trevor Paglen: the most merciful thing in the world features photography, video, and sculpture spanning a twenty-year period, presenting works that activate new ways of seeing the world while revealing what is designed to remain unseen within systems of surveillance or military power. Across multiple distinct series, this exhibition examines how human interactions with technology— from telescopic views of military sites and the cosmos, to interactive facial-recognition technologies, to the darker prospects of AI-generated imagery and alternate-reality games—test the capacities of human perception and cognition. The exhibition marks Trevor Paglen’s return to Cincinnati. In 2019, he was the keynote speaker for the FotoFocus symposium AutoUpdate. Curated by Kevin Moore, FotoFocus Artistic Director and Curator.

Paul Mpagi Sepuya: Compressed Tenses
Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery | September 25, 2026–January 3, 2027

Compressed Tenses explores an ancillary and ongoing practice of physical collage in Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s oeuvre. Starting with a Rauschenberg Residency in 2018, Sepuya deploys constructs previously employed in his studio practice, exploring the history of the homoerotic photograph, complicated by current conversations around queerness and Blackness. His collages are in direct conversation with his studio work. Using a small laser printer, the images are torn and their fragments directly re-arranged on sheets of paper. Together, they create analog compositions reminiscent of his larger digital works and encapsulate the multi-layered investigation of various histories: the gaze, otherness, queerness and the Black body, and, of course, the history of photography itself. Curated by Michael Goodson, Director, Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery.

Natural Fictions
The Carnegie | September 30, 2026–March 6, 2027

Natural Fictions considers how photography can resist linearity and certainty. What new narratives emerge when nature is approached as something invented as much as it is observed? What futures might become imaginable when science meets spirit or when perspective is shaped by play instead of conquest? Featuring work by Joshua Berg, Heesoo Kwon, Phillip Maisel, Sean McFarland, Mareiwa Miller, Ruby Que, and Lydia Smith, Natural Fictions invites viewers to look sideways—and forward—at the environments we inhabit, inherit, and imagine. The artists in this exhibition use the lens not merely to capture the world as it is, but to destabilize it. They fold time, alter perspective, and merge disciplines, constructing images that evoke geological duration, cosmic scale, and embodied mythologies. Some simulate environments that never existed, while others render familiar terrain uncanny through shifts in material, scale, or cultural reference. Their practices explore the camera as both a tool and collaborator in seeing beyond the visible and the known. Curated by Lindsay Albert, Program Manager at KADIST, and Sso-Rha Kang, Curator at The Carnegie.

Nancy Rexroth: Secrets of My Power
Cincinnati Art Museum | October 1, 2026–January 3, 2027

Secrets of My Power is the first major exhibition to explore the life and work of American photographer Nancy Rexroth. Born in 1946, Rexroth is known for a unique and powerful body of work made with a simple plastic camera published in 1977 under the title IOWA. A book unlike anything that came before it, IOWA remains a touchstone for many photographers nearly fifty years later. This exhibition tells a richly detailed story of Rexroth’s original, often defiant artistic vision amid the changing social, institutional, and creative landscapes of the 1960s, 70s, and early 80s. Drawing on extraordinary access to the artist’s archive, it sheds new light on her most beloved photographs and enables a previously unavailable perspective on her work across five decades. Along with documents, snapshots, and personal possessions, the exhibition features nearly 150 artworks. Nancy Rexroth: Secrets of My Power represents the public debut of the Nancy Rexroth Collection, an unparalleled archive of her life and work stewarded by the Cincinnati Art Museum. Curated by Nathaniel M. Stein, Ph.D., Curator of Photography at the Cincinnati Art Museum.

In the Interest of Time
Contemporary Arts Center | October 2, 2026–February 7, 2027

Bringing together seven regional artists whose practices engage with the concept of time, In the Interest of Time was developed through a FotoFocus juried open call, led by independent curator Theresa Bembnister. Featuring work by Elijah Howe, Julie Renée Jones, Robyn Moore, Osamu James Nakagawa, Jordanne Renner, Joseph Vitone, and Lynn Whitney.

Widline Cadet: Seremoni Disparisyon (Ritual [Dis]Appearance)
Contemporary Arts Center | October 2, 2026–February 7, 2027

Widline Cadet: Seremoni Disparisyon (Ritual [Dis]Appearance), the second presentation of the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States, presents her acclaimed series exploring Black diasporic life through her family’s immigration from Haiti. After leaving Haiti as a child, Cadet originally photographed her extended family to supplement the small number of images of her ancestors that had been passed down, counteracting both the physical separation from her home country and the loss of these relatives. But increasingly limited access to her family abroad inspired the artist to turn the camera on herself, as well as other Black women around her, creating a stand-in archive that explores absence through presence. This exhibition includes work from across the entire series, bringing together photographs, installation and video to encompass the breadth of Cadet’s imagemaking practice and capacious approach to photography, including vinyl application, photo-sculpture hybrids, and multimedia presentations. Curated by Kristen Gaylord, Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts at the Milwaukee Art Museum. 

The Long View Venues

• 21c Museum Hotel Cincinnati
• Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery
• Annex Gallery
• Art Academy of Cincinnati: Chidlaw Gallery
• Art Academy of Cincinnati: McClure Gallery
• Art Academy of Cincinnati: Pearlman Gallery
• Art Academy of Cincinnati: SITE1212
• Art Beyond Boundaries Gallery
• ArtsConnect
• ArtWorks/1001 Colors 
• ArtWorks/1001 Colors Gallery
• BasketShop
• Behringer-Crawford Museum
• The Carnegie
• Century Design Workshop
• Cincinnati Art Club
• Cincinnati Art Museum
• Cincinnati Museum Center
• Clifton Cultural Arts Center
• Columbus College of Art & Design: Beeler Gallery
• Columbus Museum of Art
• Contemporary Arts Center
• The Contemporary Dayton
• DAAP Galleries: Reed Gallery
• DAAP Library
• Dayton Art Institute
• Dayton Society of Artists
• Delhi Event Center
• Edward A. Dixon Gallery
• Eisele Gallery
• Evendale Cultural Arts Center
• Fitton Center for Creative Arts
• FotoFocus Center
• Here and Now
• Iris BookCafé and Gallery
• Kennedy Heights Arts Center
• Lloyd Library & Museum
• The Lodge KY
• Manifest Drawing Center
• Manifest Gallery
• Miami University: Hiestand Galleries
• MOTR Pub
• Mount St. Joseph: Studio San Giuseppe Art Gallery
• National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
• Northern Kentucky University School of the Arts Galleries
• Over-the-Rhine Museum
• Oxford Community Arts Center 
• Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park & Museum
• Rosewood Arts Center
• ROY G BIV Gallery
• Shot Tower Gallery
• Sinclair Community College Art Galleries
• Stivers School for the Arts: Fifth Street Gallery
• Studio Kroner
• Swell Art Cafe
• Taft Museum of Art
• University of Dayton: Index Gallery
• University of Dayton: Roger Glass Center for the Arts Gallery
• Visionaries and Voices
• Wash Park Art
• Wave Pool
• The Well
• Wexner Center for the Arts
• Woodward Theater
• Wright State University: Robert and Elaine Stein Galleries

Press Release originally published on June 16, 2026.