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.


When the World Ends, I Want to Be in Cincinnati

Posted on March 14, 2022

It is rumored that Mark Twain once said, “When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it’s always 20 years behind the times.” Inspired by this sentiment, the exhibition explores the regional evolution of both climate and culture from a Midwestern perspective.

Surrounded by fertile land, rivers, and valleys, the greater-Cincinnati area is experiencing climate change at a slower rate than other regions of the United States. The alarm bells are ringing out west, but we can't hear them in Cincinnati.

Caroline Bell and Elisa Fay's photographic work wrestles with the following questions: If... Continue reading When the World Ends, I Want to Be in Cincinnati


Faces of the Deep

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For over 15 years and a thousand hours of dive time, aquatic adventurers, John and Martha Lange, have been documenting the Faces of the Deep around the world. They have recorded marine life from Borneo to Bon Aire and many places in between. The duo takes care to document not only the faces of the water's residents, but the environments in which they reside, offering a glimpse into worlds often overlooked by surface dwellers. Continue reading Faces of the Deep

Maslov & Maslov: To Be Determined

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Ukrainian-born, father and son photographers, Guennadi (Cincinnati) and Sasha (NYC) Maslov began a collaboration in response to the 2020 FotoFocus Biennial to depict the juxtapositions of their internal dreams against the external realities of their immigration from Ukraine to the United States. The intended project was unexpectedly besieged by a virus. Now a brutal existential crisis ensues and their intention has changed: it is to be determined. Human history manifests a state of constant flux and photography manifests that circumstance: just as history simultaneously makes and takes away its significance through a record that dissociates it from... Continue reading Maslov & Maslov: To Be Determined

Natural Encounters

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Eisele Gallery presents an exhibition of photography by renowned photographers Cristina Mittermeier and Paul Nicklen. The two conservationists use their talents to start a conversation about ecosystems and connections between humans and nature. Personal encounters with the natural world are documented through their captivating imagery as they travel around the globe. Mittermeier and Nicklen’s conservation efforts and background in marine biology give them unique insight in the natural world above and below the surface. Through their photography they have captured a comprehensive collection of natural landscapes, animals, marine life, and people native to their habitat. This exhibition is a record of the... Continue reading Natural Encounters

Phantasmagoria: The Fictitious Truth of 1666 Bruce Street

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Phantasmagoria: The Fictitious Truth of 1666 Bruce Avenue presents a visual metaphor of fiction and truth within records. Digital extrapolations, presented through unconventional media with accompanying narration, make an intimate statement about the surreal concept of a shared reality. Human experience, once recorded, begins its own swirling existence through time and interpretation, dissolving and reconstituting until the original truth becomes a fiction of the past and the fictional past becomes a truth of the moment. Perspectives turn on time and place, revealing only what falls within a limited sightline at a particular moment. Tina Gutierrez... Continue reading Phantasmagoria: The Fictitious Truth of 1666 Bruce Street