The Lens

As part of the 2018 Biennial, FotoFocus is featuring five Neighborhood Spotlight Days: Opportunities to visit multiple Participating Venues in certain geographic locations on a day when artists, curators, and more will likely be present, along with other neighborhood activities—a great chance to dive into the energy of the Biennial...and map out a plan to get to venues in a year with such a chock-full exhibition list. Each day, you’re invited on a journey through art and the communities hosting it. The Lens will tell you how to experience the stirring and sensational work spread across the region’s diverse and... Continue reading Camp Washington, Clifton, and Northside Get the FotoFocus Neighborhood Spotlight October 13

Two Participating Venues in this year’s FotoFocus Biennial feature exhibitions that explore the lives of refugees and immigrants, as seen through their own eyes. Prairie, Inc. in Northside will exhibit photographs made by clients of the local Refugee Resettlement Program in New American Stories, and the University of Cincinnati’s Clermont College Park National Bank Art Gallery will host an exhibition titled New World: Refugees and Immigrants Photograph the Experience of a New Life in America. For much of the past five years, photographer and Executive Director of Prairie, Inc. David Rosenthal has largely used his gallery as an office space and fabrication area related to ongoing... Continue reading Recent Arrivals: Two Upcoming FotoFocus Exhibitions Feature Artwork Created by Immigrants and Refugees

Steven Matijcio is the FotoFocus Guest Curator behind The Fold: Space, time and the image, featuring Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari, on view at the Contemporary Arts Center October 5, 2018 through February 10, 2019. Here, the CAC curator discusses curatorial instincts and society’s ever-expanding archive.

Akram Zaatari is a photographer, but he also considers himself an archivist, collector, curator, critical theorist, and filmmaker. What can you tell us about his work? Akram was one of a handful of artists to emerge out of the prolonged Civil War in Lebanon, and this short-lived era of experimentation in the television... Continue reading Meet the Curator: Steven Matijcio

Drew Klein is performance art at the Contemporary Arts Center. Bringing an international sensibility to the Cincinnati scene, Klein’s curations and commissions have been nothing shy of existential, provocative—and absolutely stunning. From Takahiro Yamamoto’s Direct Path to Detour to Jens Lekman’s Ghostwriting project, the Performing Arts Director has proven tireless in his quest for extraordinary art that asks us stretch our minds. While Klein continues to change the face of performance art in the Midwest, we’ll eagerly await the CAC Black Box performance of Blind Spot—an interdisciplinary collaboration between writer-photographer Teju Cole and composer Vijay Iyer. Blind Spot takes place Saturday, October 6 at 7 p.m.,... Continue reading Meet the Curator: Drew Klein

FotoFocus believes in the importance of photography and lens-based art to our modern world. That’s why we exist: to present it to the public. Everything we do—the Biennials, the Visiting Artist and Lecture Series, the Symposiums, the ongoing support to Presenting Partners, the Patron trips around the country, etc.—is dedicated to supporting lens-based art and those who make it. But there’s another side: a behind-the-scenes, a story that is not going to be immediately apparent when experiencing the art but will help you appreciate it all the more. Enter The Lens—FotoFocus’s (mostly) new, entirely updated blog. It will live past this fall, of course, but for... Continue reading Welcome to The Lens