Chain Reaction: The Photography of Patrick Nagatani

The exhibition features the entire Nuclear Enchantment series, a powerful body of work made between 1988 and 1993, which deals with the history of nuclear weapons development in New Mexico, as well as the effects of this industry on the people and places there. As a Japanese-American whose parents were both put in internment camps during WWII, Nagatani was deeply affected by the American nuclear program.

Consisting of 40 photographs, the series presents a politicized intervention as Nagatani constructs multilayered and wildly imaginative images that unsettle our understanding of this complex time and place in U.S. history. The jarring juxtaposition of ancient symbols and figures from Japanese and Native American culture alongside uranium mining facilities and contaminated deposit sites creates a visual discord that speaks to this complexity.

Chain Reaction: The Photography of Patrick Nagatani continues through October 10 at the Bruce Museum, 1 Museum Drive, Greenwich, CT Info

Thursday, July 8, 6-8 pm | Closing reception

Allen Frame | Fever. Fever is a book of 50 color photographs by Allen Frame made in 1981 soon after he moved to New York City. Photographs from the book are accompanied by an exhibition curated by Frame that includes work by some of the artists he portrayed  including Charles Boone, Darrel Ellis, Nan Goldin, Jody Guralnick, Dan Mahoney, Kevin Teare, Ken Tisa, Coco Ugaz, Jane Warrick, David Wilson and Zamba, together with other works from Frame's photo collection by Sheyla Baykal, Frank Franca, Robert Penner, Laurie Sagalyn, and Perry Walker. The exhibition is produced in collaboration with Gitterman Gallery which has a concurrent online exhibition of work from Fever. Above: Allen Frame, Kenny Scharf and Patti Astor, Fun Gallery, NYC , 1981.

Allen Frame | Fever, Matte Editions HQ, 1899 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, NY Info

Closing Sunday, July 11: Modern Look | Photography and the American Magazine

In the after-currents of World War II, avant-garde techniques in photography and design reached the United States via European émigrés, including Bauhaus artists forced out of Nazi Germany. The exhibition explores how popular magazines transformed mid-century American visual culture through the work of these innovative image-makers. The unmistakable aesthetic made popular by such magazines as Harper's Bazaar and Vogue—whose art directors, Alexey Brodovitch and Alexander Liberman were both immigrants and accomplished photographers—emerged from a distinctly American combination of innovation and pragmatism.

Featuring over 150 works including vintage photographs, art book layouts, and magazine cover designs, the exhibition considers the connections and influences of designers and photographers such as Richard Avedon, Lillian Bassman, Lester Beall, Margaret Bourke-White, Louis Faurer, Robert Frank, William Klein, Lisette Model, Gordon Parks, Irving Penn, Cipe Pineles, and Paul Rand.

Modern Look | Photography and the American Magazine closes Sunday, July 11. The Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Avenue, NY, NY, Info Audio Guide Above: Alexey Brodovitch, Choreartium (Three Men Jumping), c. 1935

Thursday, July 8, Haines Gallery reopens with Chromo Therapy
The exhibition features works in various media by Ai Weiwei, John Chiara, Kota Ezawa, Angelo Filomeno, Andy Goldsworthy, Mike Henderson, Won Ju Lim, Meghann Riepenhoff, and David Simpson. Above: Angelo Filomeno, Islands, 2021 

Angelo Filomeno combines classical painting with the traditional craft of embroidery to create tableaux that incorporate luxurious materials such as shantung silk, crystals, and onyx within intricate designs. In contrast to the immediate allure of the surface, Filomeno’s embroidered paintings are filled with an array of macabre characters: skeletons, beasts, insects, limbs, and body parts. In recent years, the artist’s technical and aesthetic skill in merging painting, embroidery, and craft has introduced an expanded use of color and materials including muslin and denim as well as a variety of figural elements that have never before been incorporated into his canvases.

Chromo Therapy, Thursday, July 8, Haines Gallery, 49 Geary Street, San Francisco, CA. Info

The New Women Behind the Camera, through October 3

With more than 120 photographers from over 20 countries, this exhibition explores the work of the diverse “new” women who embraced photography as a mode of professional and artistic expression between 1920 and 1950. During this tumultuous period shaped by two world wars, women stood at the forefront of experimentation with the camera and produced invaluable visual testimony that reflects both their personal experiences and the extraordinary social and political transformations of the era. The show highlights innovative work in street photography, social documentary, portraiture, fashion, and artistic experimentation. Photographers on view include Berenice Abbott, Ilse Bing, Imogen Cunningham, Elizaveta Ignatovich, Consuelo Kanaga, Tsuneko Sasamoto, and Gerda Taro, among others. Above: Annemarie Heinrich (Argentine, born Germany, 1912–2005), Self-Portrait with Ursula, 1938

The New Women Behind the Camera continues through October 3 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, NY, NY Info

The Woman Who Broke Boundaries: Photographer Lee Miller, through January 2, 2022

Pioneering photographer Lee Miller (1907-1977) was the trusted confidante of many influential artists and an eyewitness to some of the most extraordinary moments of the 20th century. Sweeping in scope and intimate in focus, The Woman Who Broke Boundaries: Photographer Lee Miller surveys her trailblazing portraiture and photojournalism, which defined an era.

From The Independent: "Women With Fire Masks is one of Miller’s later, war works. The photograph, intended to be a documentation of WWII, shows what London life was like for women. As well as being documentation, the photograph shows Miller’s roots of being a surrealist artist. The high contrast black and white photograph looks as though it could have been in a studio, rather than of daily life in war. The masks create a sort of unsettling feeling, and look almost theatrical. Whilst it’s actually candid, the photograph looks particularly dramatic and intriguing. This style of her documentation-based photography is what would give Miller her name as a photographer.

The exhibition features more than 130 images from Miller’s prolific career and concentrates on her portraits of important writers and artists, the majority associated with the Surrealist movement in Paris, and with whom she had sustained personal relationships. Also featured is a small selection of striking self-portraits, images captured during the liberation of Paris and Germany at the end of the Second World War.

Dali Museum, 1 Dali Blvd, St. Petersburg, FL Info Above: Fire Masks, Downshire Hill, Leeds, England, 1941

Opening reception and book signing: Thursday, July 15, 4-8 pm

Brea Souders: Vistas is a series of hand-colored photographs that present disembodied shadows of human beings found in national parks throughout the American West. While researching Google Photo Sphere images of the parks, the artist observed that the algorithm removed people from its shared photos, seemingly for privacy reasons, but left behind their distorted and artifacted shadows. The shadows are shown just as the artist found them: the result of the West’s radiant sun and algorithmic interventions. The original photographs were made by individuals who trekked to areas where roads or trails don’t exist.

Today, most armchair travel is filtered through the internet. We regularly see shadow selfies in landscapes in our social media feeds, echoing previous moments through photographic history. Vistas was made at a time when climate change has already altered the national parks…. Commenting in Lensculture, Gregory Eddi Jones said, “Our growing dependence and assimilation into virtual space brings us further from the natural world, turning Vistas into a tug-of-war between what we once were as humans, and what we are now. Photography has changed us, the Internet is changing us. And Souders’ work helps to illustrate just how so.”

Brea Souders: Vistas, July 8-August 20 at Bruce Silverstein Gallery, 529 West 20^th Street, NY, NY Info