The Lens

When Carissa Barnard was completing her fine arts degree at the University of Arizona, she felt a kinship with photographers as fellow artists. For the 2018 Biennial, Barnard, FotoFocus's Deputy Director of Exhibitions and Programming, curates two contrasting shows: Wide Angle: Photography Out of Bounds and Chris Engman: Prospect and Refuge, each exploring a different account of photography’s “realness” and what it means to create a visual document with such a tenuous connection to truth. Chris Engman is known for his photographs of constructed sets. What can we expect from Prospect and Refuge? His practice is to saturate a man-made structure (e.g., a garage) and cover the... Continue reading Meet The Curator: Carissa Barnard

As part of the 2018 Biennial, FotoFocus is featuring five Neighborhood Spotlight Days: Opportunities to visit multiple Participating Venues in certain geographic locations on a day when artists, curators, and more will likely be present, along with other neighborhood activities—a great chance to dive into the energy of the Biennial...and map out a plan to get to venues in a year with such a chock-full exhibition list. Each day, you’re invited on a journey through art and the communities hosting it. The Lens will tell you how to experience the stirring and sensational work spread across the region’s diverse and... Continue reading Camp Washington, Clifton, and Northside Get the FotoFocus Neighborhood Spotlight October 13

Two Participating Venues in this year’s FotoFocus Biennial feature exhibitions that explore the lives of refugees and immigrants, as seen through their own eyes. Prairie, Inc. in Northside will exhibit photographs made by clients of the local Refugee Resettlement Program in New American Stories, and the University of Cincinnati’s Clermont College Park National Bank Art Gallery will host an exhibition titled New World: Refugees and Immigrants Photograph the Experience of a New Life in America. For much of the past five years, photographer and Executive Director of Prairie, Inc. David Rosenthal has largely used his gallery as an office space and fabrication area related to ongoing... Continue reading Recent Arrivals: Two Upcoming FotoFocus Exhibitions Feature Artwork Created by Immigrants and Refugees

In No Two Alike: Karl Blossfeldt, Francis Bruguière, Thomas Ruff, FotoFocus Guest Curator Ulrike Meyer Stump re-stages an iconic 20th-century photo exhibition with a modern twist. Here, the independent curator and Zurich University of the Arts lecturer discusses abstraction, Paris, and curatorial problem solving. No Two Alike re-conceives a 1929 London exhibition featuring photographs by German sculptor Karl Blossfeldt and American photographer Francis Bruguière. What is most memorable about this pairing, and why is the exhibition worth revisiting? The combination of Blossfeldt’s plant photographs and Bruguière’s experimental photographic designs is surprising. They were initially created in entirely different contexts: Blossfeldt’s as teaching materials for Jugendstil designers... Continue reading Meet the Curator: Ulrike Meyer Stump

Steven Matijcio is the FotoFocus Guest Curator behind The Fold: Space, time and the image, featuring Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari, on view at the Contemporary Arts Center October 5, 2018 through February 10, 2019. Here, the CAC curator discusses curatorial instincts and society’s ever-expanding archive.

Akram Zaatari is a photographer, but he also considers himself an archivist, collector, curator, critical theorist, and filmmaker. What can you tell us about his work? Akram was one of a handful of artists to emerge out of the prolonged Civil War in Lebanon, and this short-lived era of experimentation in the television... Continue reading Meet the Curator: Steven Matijcio