The Lens

On Devil’s Promenade, a road located in southwest Missouri near Oklahoma and Arkansas, there is a stretch where people are likely to encounter the Spook Light, a scientifically inexplicable floating orb that moves, disappears, reappears, and sometimes splits in two or three. Community members know it well. Some search for it, while others keep their distance.

In Devil’s Promenade, photographers and Ozark natives Lara Shipley and Antone Dolezal blend the folklore and local history of their home region with present-day photographs of Ozark people, land, and interpretive images engaging the living mythology of... Continue reading Devil’s Promenade

In 2023, UNESCO designated World Heritage Site status to a group of four Hopewell sites in Ohio, adding them to the ranks of the Taj Mahal, Stonehenge, and Machu Picchu as places of “outstanding value to humanity.” This extraordinary group of Hopewell earthworks represents a tiny portion of the approximately 10,000 Adena, Hopewell, and Fort Ancient Earthworks that dotted the Ohio Valley at the end of the 18th century. Today, fewer than 1,000 earthworks remain. In the 250 years since European-American settlers made their unrelenting push into the Ohio Valley woodlands, many of the tall conical mounds, long ridges, and geometric... Continue reading Cultural Exchange:: What Remains: A Contemporary Interpretation of Native American Earthworks in The Ohio Valley

Immigrants and refugees make vast contributions and have a broad impact across the Greater Cincinnati region. Still Moving showcases the unique stories of community leaders who are drivers of innovation, growth, and creativity. Specifically, this work is a platform for immigrant and refugee communities to explore how their own complex histories have driven them to lead others. Individuals provide counter-narratives to harmful myths of the model minority and forever foreigner, balancing the intimacy of one’s migratory story as a core driver of action but refusing to be limited by that story.

Led by the Cincinnati Compass Community Council, immigrant... Continue reading Cultural Exchange:: Still Moving

The variety of posterior imagery in the late Victorian era is astonishing. Women showcase luxurious long locks and fashionable dresses, while men in briefs flaunt extensive tattoos and muscles. Pairs and trios of homosocial friends, as well as heterosexual couples, link elbows or wrap arms around each other’s waists. Toddlers hug draped studio chairs, get weighed, and wear matching gingham clothing. Double exposures reveal babies’ faces and backs of heads in the same image. Paired prints and double-sided cabinet cards present frontal portraits with matching back portraits. Pictures within pictures depict sitters gazing at photos or in mirrors. A woman bent over... Continue reading Posteriors: Sitters’ Backs in 19th-Century Photography

Seventeen emerging and underrepresented lens-based artists working in the mediums of photography, video, performance, collage, and mixed media explore the concept of proclaiming one's existence through image-making and storytelling. In our social landscape, the phrase "____ was here" is a familiar declaration found on walls and public surfaces, symbolizing an act of marking one's time and presence in a place. In the current social and political climate in which the complicated histories of Black people face the threat of erasure, sharing stories through the lens of Black creators and cultural producers is critical. Delving  into the myriad ways of being and existing... Continue reading I Was Here