Photo by Jacob Drabik

The Lens

The Lens is the FotoFocus editorial platform that brings together a wide range of perspectives and insights to reflect on the ever-changing role that photography and lens-based media play in our world. Featuring news updates and programming highlights, alongside critical essays and in-depth conversations with artists, curators, scholars, and more, The Lens provides a vital space for discussion between members of our local and regional communities with those across the world.

The Places We Keep: Holding Place, Holding Time

Posted on June 15, 2026

In The Places We Keep, students reflect on their most cherished spaces—familiar domestic settings, shared public forums, secret hiding spots, culturally significant locations—during a 12-week course. Guided by instructors Shannon… Continue

Heather F. Wetzel: Considering the Cultivated

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Considering the Cultivated consists of two bodies of work by Heather F. Wetzel: Salvage and Creeping, Climbing, both exploring the role humans have on the environment, ecosystems, and food production.… Continue

Milestones: Finding Our Way

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A milestone is a wayfinding device, a roadside stone that marks distances between destinations. Figuratively, the word milestone signifies a noteworthy step or stage in the course of history or… Continue

One Shot

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The inaugural Fort Hayes Photography Program Alumni Exhibition, One Shot, brings together generations of lens-based artists whose creative foundations were shaped by the Photography Career Program at Fort Hayes Metropolitan… Continue

Miro Švolík: Môj život človeka (My Life as a Man)

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The celebrated Slovak photographer Miro Švolík (b. 1960) created this body of work as a graduate student. Collaborating with his fellow students, he arranged them on the ground and photographed… Continue