Few among us can count Michelle Obama as a personal booster, but all of us can now hear from one who does: In anticipation of her March 4 Lens Mix talk, FotoFocus caught up with celebrated director and cinematographer Nadia Hallgren.

An award-winning filmmaker from the Bronx, New York, Nadia Hallgren directed the Emmy Award–nominated documentary Becoming and the Academy Award–shortlisted short documentary After Maria—though those are just two recent titles on a CV packed with acclaimed work.

On March 4, Hallgren will join... Continue reading Documentary Filmmaker Nadia Hallgren Talks Storytelling, the Particular Power of Film, and Getting Beyond Self-Doubt

As FotoFocus celebrates its first decade, we get the behind-the-scenes scoop of how it started—and what the future holds—from eight people who have lived it.

I. Origin Story

TOM SCHIFF, Founder, FotoFocus and CEO, Lightborne: The idea started maybe 12 years ago or so with James Crump, who was the curator of photography at the Cincinnati Art Museum. I mentioned to him that I thought there were never enough photography exhibits in Cincinnati. I thought, If we could have a... Continue reading FotoFocus at 10: An Oral History

Political crises are often abstract, even invisible—and thus difficult to record, particularly in a single frame. So how do we, in a state of isolation, move beyond the isolated image to see what's happening?

A friend pointed out recently that the months of isolation have made us not only worried and frustrated but also socially awkward. As we venture out of our pods, we are rusty at communicating, made worse by masks and other safety protocols. You can’t read facial expressions, you don’t know where someone has been, you... Continue reading The Allure and Pitfalls of Seeing Photographs, and the World, in Isolation

Originally published on July 11, 2020 by The Art Newspaper, FotoFocus Artistic Director and Curator Kevin Moore asks which photographs will ascend to a more permanent station in today’s social imagination.

Monuments have taken a beating this past week—traditional monuments, that is, statues of what you might call failed white male conquerors, so prevalent in the lingering Confederate South. Shortly after the current occupant of the White House gave a speech at Mount Rushmore on 3 July, protestors in Baltimore pulled down a Christopher Columbus... Continue reading Photographs Are the Monuments of Our Online Visual Culture

Originally published on June 11, 2020 by Artnet, FotoFocus Artistic Director and Curator Kevin Moore discusses why certain images stemming from the unrest in the U.S. are sure to be remembered in years to come.

The best historic photographs don’t just document events but carry a residue of the mood. Some even become an emblem of a cause—they become iconic.

Elaine Mayes’s photographs of the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, for example, taken on assignment for... Continue reading Why Some Photographs Transcend the Moment in Which They Were Taken and Transform Movements Into Icons