Photo by Jacob Drabik

The Lens

The Lens is the FotoFocus editorial platform, highlighting our programming and featuring in-depth conversations on photography and the moving image drawn from perspectives and insights in our community, throughout our region, and around the globe.


Witnessing History

Posted on May 22, 2023

Before the nightly news brought current events into our homes, people used newsreels—or short films shown in movie theaters—to record the world around them and stay up to date on the news of the day. In Cincinnati, Union Terminal's historic Newsreel Theater provided a way for passengers to catch up on world events between trains—particularly during the Terminals' heyday in the 1930s and 1940s. During the month of October, Cincinnati Museum Center will share a selection of historic newsreels and media from the collections of the Cincinnati History Library & Archives. Clips include footage from the 1930s onwards and cover a variety... Continue reading Witnessing History


Acknowledge Reveal Disclose

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Acknowledge Reveal Disclose is an exhibition of portrait photographs made by individuals from across the region who are active and passionate in their pursuit of photography. Many are not photographers by training or profession, and many have chosen to work in analog film processes. These individuals are part of an organically growing and highly energized community of picture-makers. The exhibition draws attention to and encourages the growth of that community.

Acknowledge Reveal Disclose aligns with the organization’s mission to encourage creative community. In its Community Gallery, the Fitton Center collaborates with area universities, schools, social service organizations, retirement communities,... Continue reading Acknowledge Reveal Disclose


On the Line: Documents of Risk and Faith

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The works in this exhibition address a range of topics, spanning performance and the body, climate change, power, colonialism and identity, heritage, and territory. Collectively, they portray complex and contested relationships humans have with notions of environment, wilderness, nature, and place. The "line" metaphor is an organizing principle as well as reference to the precarity of this moment: at serious risk; caught, captured; following the path of a line. The exhibition emphasizes photography, in all its forms, as delivering a special charge to document while also grappling with historical expectations, enlarged geographies, and contemporary urgencies. The photographic documentation of various artistic interventions... Continue reading On the Line: Documents of Risk and Faith


Ian Strange: Disturbed Home

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Ian Strange: Disturbed Home is a survey of the artist’s architectural interventions, including photographic and filmic interpretations of those structural works. Highlighting projects of the past twelve years and spanning geographies from Strange’s native Australia, to New Zealand, Japan, Poland, and the United States, including Cincinnati, Ohio, Strange’s provocative transformations of damaged or abandoned homes unlock themes of social upheaval and geographic displacement caused by a variety of factors—economic blight, environmental disaster, and social migrations. 

In response to the 2022 FotoFocus Biennial: World Record, Strange is creating a new body of work in Cincinnati, highlighting the effects of environmental... Continue reading Ian Strange: Disturbed Home


Ian Strange: Annex

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As part of Ian Strange’s artist residency at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, Strange developed a site-specific installation that offers further dimension to the artist’s longstanding engagement with ideas of home and domestic disturbance. This intervention at the Art Academy Annex complements his SITE 1212 survey exhibition, Ian Strange: Disturbed Home, presenting projects of the past twelve years and includes a new body of work produced in Cincinnati, highlighting the effects of environmental and economic conditions on homes in the region.

Download the Ian... Continue reading Ian Strange: Annex