Featured Exhibitions
The 2026 Biennial presents six Featured Exhibitions that embody the theme of The Long View. This includes artists who examine the crossroads of technology and philosophy (Trevor Paglen at FotoFocus Center); consider concepts of time and challenge linear narratives (group exhibitions at Contemporary Arts Center and The Carnegie); reimagine portraiture through a Black, queer lens (Paul Mpagi Sepuya at Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery); explore Haitian identity and the Black diaspora (Widline Cadet at Contemporary Arts Center); and a major retrospective exploring the life, work, and archive of Nancy Rexroth (Cincinnati Art Museum).
October 1, 2026–January 23, 2027
Operating at the crossroads of art, technology, and philosophy, Paglen’s work explores image-making technologies as increasingly powerful animators of geopolitical exchange and arbiters of how we see our world.
FotoFocus Center
Trevor Paglen: the most merciful thing in the world
October 2, 2026–December 20, 2026
Challenges the history of photography and deconstructs traditional portraiture through layering, fragmentation, mirror imagery, and the perspective of the Black, queer gaze.
Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery
Paul Mpagi Sepuya: Compressed Tenses
September 30, 2026–March 6, 2027
Harnesses photography’s potential to imagine new relationships with the natural world, where speculative futures and unseen pasts coexist through surreal, poetic, and scientific inquiry.
The Carnegie
Natural Fictions
October 1, 2026–January 3, 2027
The artist’s first major solo exhibition, presenting a comprehensive account of her work in connection with the iconic 1977 photobook, IOWA.
Cincinnati Art Museum
Nancy Rexroth: Secrets of My Power
October 2, 2026–February 7, 2027
Brings together work by seven photographers with ties to Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana whose practices engage with the concept of time.
Contemporary Arts Center
In the Interest of Time
October 2, 2026–February 7, 2027
The second presentation of Cadet’s first solo museum exhibition in the U.S., which examines Black diasporic life through her family’s immigration from Haiti.
Contemporary Arts Center
Widline Cadet: Seremoni Disparisyon (Ritual [Dis]Appearance)
Venue Exhibitions
The FotoFocus Biennial saturates the region with photography and lens-based art, brings the community together, and celebrates the curatorial skill, artistic talent, and ideas fostered by our Biennial venues. These 74 exhibitions at 65 venues reflect upon the theme through a range of contemporary and historic perspectives, both in terms of geography, near and far, and in terms of time, past and future. Biennial venues present additional programming throughout the month of October, as part of the Biennial Program.
August 28, 2026–August 13, 2027
Group exhibition interrogating the power and evolution of belief systems—religious, political, economic—and how adherence to and rejection of these ideologies has influenced our current global culture of divisiveness and polarization.
21c Museum Hotel Cincinnati
This We Believe
October 2, 2026–December 20, 2026
Captures the “new normal” in an installation of over 200 paintings generated from cell phone photographs made before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery
George Rush: Assisted Living
October 2, 2026–December 20, 2026
Challenges the history of photography and deconstructs traditional portraiture through layering, fragmentation, mirror imagery, and the perspective of the Black, queer gaze.
Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery
Paul Mpagi Sepuya: Compressed Tenses
September 16, 2026–October 31, 2026
Explores the boundary between documentary and fiction, reinterpreting reality as metaphor and calling attention to shared physical, ideological, and psychological landscapes.
The Annex Gallery
Juan-Sí González: I.T.I.N.E.R.A.T.I.O.N.S
October 9, 2026–October 31, 2026
An open call highlighting student artists considering the present state of photography and its possible future directions.
Art Academy of Cincinnati: Chidlaw Gallery
Depth of Field
October 9, 2026–October 31, 2026
Examines how memory is shaped, altered, and reconstructed through the act of retrieval, initiating a dialogue between longing, connection, and memory.
Art Academy of Cincinnati: McClure Gallery
Noel Bassam Mohammad Maghathe: Over Everything
October 9, 2026–October 31, 2026
Reflects on concepts of place and time, examining the ephemeral, impermanent, and fragmented nature of photography.
Art Academy of Cincinnati: Pearlman Gallery
Untwined/Interwoven
October 9, 2026–October 31, 2026
Presents three bodies of work—Occupying Wall Street, The Covid Journals, and The Islands of New York—that delve into subjects often overlooked or intentionally misconstrued.
Art Academy of Cincinnati: SITE1212
Accra Shepp: Bearing Witness
September 26, 2026–November 6, 2026
Group exhibition interpreting the idea of “the chase” from documentary, narrative, and conceptual photography perspectives.
Art Beyond Boundaries Gallery
Art of the Chase
October 1, 2026–November 21, 2026
Intimate portraits of Springfield Township residents revealing generational memories and the intangible sense of belonging that makes a place “home.”
ArtsConnect
Romain Mayambi: 100 Years From Here
October 2, 2026–November 4, 2026
Possible futures envisioned by young artists, led by Japanese-American artist HATSUE, to consider how emerging generations see themselves, their communities, and the world they will inherit and shape.
ArtWorks/1001Colors Gallery
Sense of Tomorrow
October 1, 2026–October 31, 2026
Photo-based outdoor installation by Romain Mayambi situating athletic bodies beyond traditional arenas, questioning belonging, endurance, and the boundaries of physical and visual performance.
ArtWorks/1001 Colors
Athletes in Unconventional Spaces
October 10, 2026–November 14, 2026
Recontextualizes the intersection of women’s rights and cannabis culture, inviting viewers to consider photography as an active site of women’s pleasure, rebellion, and transformation.
BasketShop
Marzena Abrahamik: GirlPlay
September 25, 2026–November 29, 2026
Collection of landscape and family photographs from Red River Gorge spanning more than 50 years, weaving together personal narrative and geological beauty.
Behringer-Crawford Museum
J. Miles Wolf: Red River Gorge, a 50-year Journey
September 30, 2026–March 6, 2027
Harnesses photography’s potential to imagine new relationships with the natural world, where speculative futures and unseen pasts coexist through surreal, poetic, and scientific inquiry.
The Carnegie
Natural Fictions
October 1, 2026–January 4, 2027
Images from a Navy weatherman’s Antarctic expedition: a year of discovery in a frozen, forbidding, and beautiful landscape.
Century Design Workshop
Ron Tisue: Operation Deep Freeze IV, Antarctica 1958–59
October 10, 2026–November 1, 2026
Tintype portraits by Ricky Willis Tintypes and Blue Creek Tinworks celebrating the local photographic community alongside altered historic images from the Cincinnati Art Club archives.
Cincinnati Art Club
Contemporary Tintype Portraits and Altered Historic Images
October 1, 2026–January 3, 2027
The artist’s first major solo exhibition, presenting a comprehensive account of her work in connection with the iconic 1977 photobook, IOWA.
Cincinnati Art Museum
Nancy Rexroth: Secrets of My Power
July 3, 2026–October 14, 2026
Reveals the pioneering work of photographers Ball and Thomas, highlighting how photography functioned as both an artistic and social medium in the mid-19th century.
Cincinnati Museum Center
"Equal to Any in the City:" Ball & Thomas Photographs, 1840s–1870s
September 25, 2026–October 23, 2026
A poignant study of aging, care, and the fragile dignity of human life at its end, questioning how societies see—and often overlook—the elderly across cultures and generations.
Clifton Cultural Arts Center
The Long Lives We Carry
September 3, 2026–November 11, 2026
Examines time as a haunting force, reaching across burial grounds, pandemics, atomic history, gun violence, and ecological loss to reveal what the visible image cannot hold.
Columbus College of Art & Design: Beeler Gallery
Haunting
October 16, 2026–March 21, 2027
Traces artistic lineage and identity through photographs by and about queer artists, illustrating how photographers across generations shape histories and create visibility.
Columbus Museum of Art
Queer Constellations: Photographs from the Aronowitz Family Collection
October 2, 2026–February 7, 2027
Brings together work by seven photographers with ties to Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana whose practices engage with the concept of time.
Contemporary Arts Center
In the Interest of Time
October 2, 2026–February 7, 2027
The second presentation of Cadet’s first solo museum exhibition in the U.S., which examines Black diasporic life through her family’s immigration from Haiti.
Contemporary Arts Center
Widline Cadet: Seremoni Disparisyon (Ritual [Dis]Appearance)
September 25, 2026–January 9, 2027
Large-scale photographic self-portraits examining identity, performance, and consumption in a digital culture shaped by spectacle and self-surveillance.
The Contemporary Dayton
Ella Kraimer: Appearances
September 25, 2026–January 9, 2027
Documents how images and archives have shaped and distorted public understanding of Appalachia across generations.
The Contemporary Dayton
Stacy Kranitz: Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down
September 13, 2026–November 29, 2026
Image-based work by DAAP’s photography alumni highlighting the continued relevance of a program grounded in critical inquiry and expanded photographic practice.
DAAP Galleries:: Reed Gallery
Long Exposure: Recent Work by Alumni
September 28, 2026–November 10, 2026
A historical exhibition examining 19th-century circus and sideshow portraits and how cartes-de-visites and cabinet cards in private homes entertained, educated, and served as memory aids.
DAAP Library
Dare to Stare: 19th-Century Circus and Sideshow Portraits
October 4, 2026–November 1, 2026
A curated selection of expired film, eroded tintypes, and forgotten slides illuminating how the deterioration of lens-based media can take on new aesthetic qualities.
DAAP Library
Image Destabilization
July 18, 2026–October 25, 2026
A group exhibition spanning 175 years, embracing photography’s founding spirit of experimentation through uncommon techniques and adaptations.
Dayton Art Institute
Getting Technical: Alternative Photographic Processes
September 5, 2026–November 29, 2026
Captures Japan’s Meiji period through postcards, albums, albumen travel photographs, and hanging scroll collotypes, reflecting on social transformation and Western influences.
Dayton Art Institute
Looking for Japan: Early Japanese Photography
October 2, 2026–October 30, 2026
An open call positing long-exposure photography as a way to reveal motion, energy, and the passage of time through landscapes, cityscapes, and experimental processes.
The Dayton Society of Artists
Luminous Flow: Time Made Visible
October 4, 2026–November 6, 2026
The visual explorations of a teacher and his current and former students capturing life’s key moments and future longings.
Delhi Event Center
Wayfarers
October 1, 2026–November 1, 2026
Invites artists to consider how photography can be used to document not just what is, but also speculate on what could be.
Edward A. Dixon Gallery
Picturing Tomorrow: Speculative Futures in Lens-Based Art
October 1, 2026–October 31, 2026
A selection of street photography and photojournalism paying tribute to the diversity of urban life and to the lens-based artists who witness and capture it.
Eisele Gallery
Waiting to Be Seen
September 13, 2026–December 31, 2026
A large-scale juried outdoor exhibition where artists contemplate memory, history, and the passage of time.
Evendale Cultural Arts Center
Reflections Through Time
October 10, 2026–January 8, 2027
A diverse group of regional lens-based artists documenting personal, cultural, and environmental landmarks through a range of time-laden approaches to photography.
Fitton Center for Creative Arts
Milestones: Finding Our Way
October 1, 2026–January 23, 2027
Operating at the crossroads of art, technology, and philosophy, Paglen’s work explores image-making technologies as increasingly powerful animators of geopolitical exchange and arbiters of how we see our world.
FotoFocus Center
Trevor Paglen: the most merciful thing in the world
September 26, 2026–November 8, 2026
Unaltered photographs that shift between expansive views and intimate detail, using scale and sustained attention to demonstrate how perception shapes meaning.
Here and Now
Rhys Watkins: A Life Worth Living
September 23, 2026–January 25, 2027
Whimsical photographic compositions of subjects taken from a significant height, enacting fantastic parables reminiscent of animation or photoshopped collage.
Iris BookCafé and Gallery
Miro Švolík: Môj život človeka (My Life as a Man)
August 29, 2026–October 31, 2026
Celebrates Latin American culture through photography, mixed media, and short films, offering a multi-sensory exploration of place, history, and identity.
Kennedy Heights Arts Center
Cultural Ties
September 25, 2026–November 25, 2026
Multi-exposure images of trees over time that connect the past, present, and future.
Lloyd Library & Museum
Kent Krugh: Beyond the Gate
October 10, 2026–October 30, 2026
Investigates the symbiotic relationship between women and nature, drawing intimate, reverent connections between body, spirit, and land.
The Lodge KY
Return To The Mother
October 5, 2026–October 30, 2026
Images by Manifest students documenting their unique relationships with the places they hold most dear through film photography and darkroom printing.
Manifest Drawing Center
The Places We Keep: Holding Place, Holding Time
September 25, 2026–October 23, 2026
A juried exhibition emphasizing photography’s unique ability to hold two things at once: the instant and what endures beyond it.
Manifest Gallery
The Sweep of Time, Beyond the Horizon
October 15, 2026–November 17, 2026
Multimedia exhibitions and projection mappings based on the Richard and Carole Cocks Art Museum’s permanent collection, constructed by artists, art historians, dancers, and architects.
Miami University: Hiestand Galleries
Unfolding Stories 2026: Stories from the RCCAM Collection
October 1, 2026–November 22, 2026
Photographs depicting legendary R&B, blues, and country musicians, all of whom once recorded for the Cincinnati label King Records.
MOTR Pub
Paul Natkin: King in Chicago
September 23, 2026–October 28, 2026
Regional artists considering images as vessels in which people, relationships, and everyday moments become reflections on identity, time, and remembrance.
Mount St. Joseph University: Studio San Giuseppe Art Gallery
AfterImage: Portraiture as Memory
September 4, 2026–November 8, 2026
A compelling selection of works documenting the March for Voting Rights, which led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
Witness to the Journey: Matt Herron and the Deep South, 1965
October 1, 2026–October 31, 2026
Presents stories of Indigenous, immigrant, and local community and family farmers to raise awareness of Ohioans, the food they produce, and the land they cultivate.
Northern Kentucky University School of the Arts Galleries
Culture Crops: Ohio’s Secret Gardens and Hidden Food Histories
October 3, 2026–March 31, 2027
Highlights contemporary photographers in the United States who engage with time and land as both subject and material.
Northern Kentucky University School of the Arts Galleries
This Land, Here We Dwell
September 26, 2026–November 28, 2026
Historic cityscapes by Ransohoff alongside present-day documentation of the same sites by public history students from the University of Cincinnati.
Over-the-Rhine Museum
Second Look: Danny Ransohoff's Cityscapes Through New Eyes
October 9, 2026–November 7, 2026
Black-and-white photographs of former incarceration camp sites exploring landscape, memory, race, and identity while confronting a difficult chapter of American history.
Oxford Community Arts Center
Jon Yamashiro: WWII Japanese Incarceration Camp Photographs
August 22, 2026–November 30, 2026
Photographs featuring some of the 20th century’s most famous artists in their studios, offering intimate glimpses of the creative process and the personalities shaping modern art.
Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park & Museum
Alexander Liberman: The Artist in His Studio
September 28, 2026–November 7, 2026
Images exploring diasporic notions of home across geographies and time, using the camera as a tool for note-taking and relationship building.
Rosewood Arts Center
Amanda Bradley: Notations from Home
September 28, 2026–November 7, 2026
Childhood memories intertwined with images and moments from family farms on Colorado’s Western Slope.
Rosewood Arts Center
Trent Davis Bailey: The North Fork
October 9, 2026–November 6, 2026
A living archive examining the history of one of Columbus’ oldest neighborhoods through contemporary lens-based work, archival materials, interviews, and site-responsive installations, reflecting on collective memory and urban change.
ROY G BIV Gallery
Franklinton Across Time: The Floodplain Imagination
October 8, 2026–December 10, 2026
Alumni exhibition highlighting the impact of the Photography Career Program at Fort Hayes, an incubator for emerging image-makers to explore photography as a form of artistic expression and storytelling.
Shot Tower Gallery
One Shot
September 26, 2026–October 26, 2026
Photographic series examining memory, suffering, and the life-altering effects of trauma.
Sinclair Community College Art Galleries
Emily Wiethorn: The Death of You and Me
September 26, 2026–October 26, 2026
Highlights physical and mental aspects of the female perspective, ruminating on themes of control, manipulation, and unquestioned social constructs.
Sinclair Community College Art Galleries
Katria Foster: Domestic Affair
October 1, 2026–November 6, 2026
Interrogates the role humans have on the environment, ecosystems, and food production through historic photographic processes, paper making, book arts, and sculptural materials.
Stivers School for the Arts: Fifth Street Gallery
Heather F. Wetzel: Considering the Cultivated
October 7, 2026–November 1, 2026
Investigates deep time, material memory, and humanity’s relationship to landscapes shaped by endurance and change through analog photography and ceramics.
Studio Kroner
Erika NJ Allen: Beneath All Distance
September 12, 2026–November 21, 2026
Work by four artists exploring transformations both slow and sudden, unexpected but also predestined. Presented in conjunction with Wave Pool.
Swell Art Cafe
Forgetting is Everywhere
October 17, 2026–January 24, 2027
Over 100 works across a variety of media demonstrating the artist’s distinctive modernist vision, highlighting her minimalist and often playful style.
Taft Museum of Art
Edie McKee Harper: Modernist at Play
October 1, 2026–November 13, 2026
An iterative exhibition of photographs and sculpture imagining homeostasis as the primary desire of modern life.
University of Dayton: Index Gallery
Peter Happel Christian: Work Life Balance
August 24, 2026–October 26, 2026
Collaborative documentary work of India exploring the Hindu philosophy and phenomenon of darshan (“to see”).
University of Dayton: Roger Glass Center for the Arts Gallery
Darshan
October 2, 2026–November 13, 2026
Work by multimedia artists demonstrating how people of all disciplines and abilities often rely upon photography as a way to strengthen and deepen their creative processes.
Visionaries and Voices
Picture Perfect
October 8, 2026–November 21, 2026
Reflects on the artist’s career in photography and documentary research, manifesting the paradox between past and present in a long view of our timeless humanity.
Wash Park Art Gallery
Corson Hirschfeld: Afterlife
September 12, 2026–November 21, 2026
Work by four artists exploring transformations both slow and sudden, unexpected but also predestined. Presented in conjunction with Swell Art Cafe.
Wave Pool
Forgetting is Everywhere
October 1, 2026–October 31, 2026
A multi-channel film illustrating the nature of time, memory, and identity created by six youth artists in collaboration with filmmaker Andrea Sisson.
The Well
True Body Project: Time is a Circle
September 18, 2026–January 31, 2027
Uncovers how colonial extraction shaped the flow of people, materials, forms, and culture across Africa, Europe, and the Atlantic world through photography, film, and sculpture.
Wexner Center for the Arts
Sammy Baloji: In Borrowed Tongues: On Extraction, Architecture, and Ornament
October 22, 2026–October 26, 2026
An annual film program presenting bold new voices in documentary film, nonfiction shorts, and Q&As with filmmakers redefining contemporary nonfiction cinema.
Wexner Center for the Arts
Unorthodocs
October 5, 2026–October 26, 2026
A silent film series that reframes the cinematic landscape of the early 20th century, curated by Cindependent Film Festival.
Woodward Theater
Reverse Shot
August 25, 2026–October 31, 2026
Sculptural objects and images paired together to magnify the significance of seemingly small things and fleeting experiences.
Wright State University: The Robert and Elaine Stein Galleries
Elizabeth Mead: Incident(als): objects+things, sculpture+photographs
August 25, 2026–October 31, 2026
Hauntingly layered visual narratives experimenting with hybridity and transformation, where image and imagination converge.
Wright State University: The Robert and Elaine Stein Galleries
Holly Roberts: Confluence
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