Featured Projects
Biennial Featured Projects showcase a wide range of original exhibitions and projects curated by FotoFocus and Biennial guest curators, as well as Call for Entry Selections, all centered around the theme of backstories. These 15 projects, featuring international, national, and regional artists and curators, focus on stories that are not evident at first glance—offering context for what happened previously or out of view, providing narratives not yet told or presented from a new perspective. Six selected projects highlight talent from the region’s artists and curators as part of the first large-scale regional Call for Entry in the Biennial’s history.
September 27, 2024–February 9, 2025
Probst’s unique photographic practice combines simultaneous, multiple views of a single scene, to convey a complex, playful, and darkly cinematic vision of people in time and space.
Contemporary Arts Center
Barbara Probst: Subjective Evidence
September 6, 2024–January 5, 2025
Thomas is a photographer, activist, and physician whose public murals in the desert landscape of Northern Arizona reflect the spirit and struggles of the Navajo people and other marginalized communities.
Contemporary Arts Center
Chip Thomas and the Painted Desert Project
September 27, 2024–January 19, 2025
Over 100 artworks and objects from the collection of the Center for Creative Photography offer unprecedented insight into how Adams developed from a 14-year-old tourist with a camera into America’s most celebrated photographer.
Cincinnati Art Museum
Discovering Ansel Adams
September 20, 2024–November 3, 2024
Explores the nuances of memory and its uncanny ability to transport culture, traditions, rituals, and feelings through space and time. Oscillating between place and placelessness, seven artists present a series of actions, systems, and moments influenced by regional, national, and transnational experiences.
Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery
Memory Fields
September 26, 2024–February 15, 2025
Meditative vignettes, each featuring a specific body of work by an artist actively examining the changing world, presented in dialogue with William Eggleston’s Election Eve.
The Carnegie
Southern Democratic
September 20, 2024–January 5, 2025
First comprehensive museum presentation of the late Nigerian-British photographer brings together large-scale color photographs, black-and-white prints, and never-before-seen archival works.
Wexner Center for the Arts
Rotimi Fani-Kayode: Tranquility of Communion
September 20, 2024–January 5, 2025
The Wexner Center for the Arts’ solo exhibition of Columbus-raised Ming Smith pairs the artist’s first photographic series with new work to illuminate her focus on spirituality, movement, and feminism.
Wexner Center for the Arts
Ming Smith: Wind Chime
September 19, 2024–January 26, 2025
Ming Smith: Transcendence encapsulates the artist’s visual journey through her hometown of Columbus, OH, drawing from her personal experiences. Through a carefully curated series of images, Smith orchestrates a poignant narrative of self-reconciliation with her roots, converting pain into expression.
Columbus Museum of Art
Ming Smith: Transcendence
September 19, 2024–January 26, 2025
Unveils the essence of Black life in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, echoing August Wilson’s iconic plays. Smith’s photos capture the resilience and humanity amidst struggles like Jim Crow and redlining, inviting viewers to explore the beauty and depth of ordinary Black existence.
Columbus Museum of Art
Ming Smith: August Moon
Call for Entry Selections
September 27, 2024–November 1, 2024
Exhibition and corresponding book, developed by artists Mark Albain and Joshua Berg through written correspondence and recorded conversations, weave through an unspecified space and unfold through experiences, relationships, and histories of growing up and living in the Midwest.
Art Academy of Cincinnati: SITE1212
Digressions
September 27, 2024–November 1, 2024
Combining archival video, large-scale projection, mixed media collages, and photography, Michael Coppage revives Humphrey, a character created nearly 20 years ago, to pay homage to the integral role he played during the artist’s formative years.
Art Academy of Cincinnati: SITE1212
Humphrey Gets His Flowers
September 27, 2024–November 1, 2024
Explores the nuance within communities of color across the Midwest by bringing together six artists from across the region to present a collection of original photographs, essays, and interviews that invite the viewer to embrace the complexity of the Midwest’s diverse tapestry.
Art Academy of Cincinnati: SITE1212
Another First Impression
September 13, 2024–November 3, 2024
Collaborative exhibition and immersive experience that amplifies stories of resilience, peace, and hope by local immigrants and refugees through visual and auditory storytelling, accompanied by music.
Purple People Bridge
More than Meets the Eye: An Immersive Display of Narrative Power through Photos
October 1, 2024–October 31, 2024
An audiovisual history tour and photographic archive of underground art spaces in Cincinnati, developed by Britni Bicknaver and Calcagno Cullen, that celebrates Cincinnati as an incubator for experimental, outsider, and DIY arts activities.
Various Locations
Artist Run: The Continuing Legacy of Cincinnati's Artist-Run Spaces
September 20, 2024–November 3, 2024
Banks’ visual anthology of life and death within the central region of Kentucky. Photographs, surveillance footage, and archived media present intertwined storylines of a family and white-tailed deer with shared experiences of trauma, and the landscape understood as home.
Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery
Rachael Banks: The Trail of the Dead
Participating Venues
The FotoFocus Biennial saturates the region with photography and lens-based art, brings the community together, and celebrates the curatorial skill, artistic talent, and ideas brought by our Participating Venues. These projects reflect upon the theme of backstories through a range of contemporary and historic perspectives.
In these presentations, what is visible on the surface is enlarged and enriched through an understanding of broader histories, by seeing beyond what is evident, and by knowing the backstories. The 2024 FotoFocus Biennial boasts 107 projects at 86 venues, the largest Biennial to date.
September 13, 2024–August 31, 2025
Explores the use of historical sources in contemporary art, highlighting how looking at the past clarifies the present and reimagines the future.
21c Museum Hotel Cincinnati
Revival: Digging Into Yesterday, Planting Tomorrow
September 13, 2024–August 31, 2025
Martín’s practice fuses artistic representation with technology, exploring the existence of sexual diversity, while being critical of the notion that certain sexualities are inherently “deviant.”
21c Museum Hotel Cincinnati
Spotlight: Felipe Rivas San Martín
September 20, 2024–November 3, 2024
Explores the nuances of memory and its uncanny ability to transport culture, traditions, rituals, and feelings through space and time. Oscillating between place and placelessness, seven artists present a series of actions, systems, and moments influenced by regional, national, and transnational experiences.
Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery
Memory Fields
September 20, 2024–November 3, 2024
Banks’ visual anthology of life and death within the central region of Kentucky. Photographs, surveillance footage, and archived media present intertwined storylines of a family and white-tailed deer with shared experiences of trauma, and the landscape understood as home.
Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery
Rachael Banks: The Trail of the Dead
September 25, 2024–December 21, 2024
In 1994, Castellanos documented the departure of 35,000 Cubans who left the island on hand-built rafts in what became one of the most dramatic exoduses in contemporary history.
The Annex Gallery
Willy Castellanos: Exodus. Alternate Documents (1994–2024)
September 25, 2024–December 21, 2024
An extension of Bridges Not Walls, an arts and culture exchange program, Through A Stranger’s Eyes brings together two Cuban and two American artists who met in Havana, Cuba, in…
The Annex Gallery
Through A Stranger's Eyes
October 4, 2024–November 29, 2024
An absurd visual chronicle of the artist’s journey around the United States in pursuit of 16 towns that bear the name of his country of origin.
Antioch College: Herndon Gallery
Juan-Si González: Looking for Cuba Inside
October 11, 2024–October 13, 2024
Documents the architecture, history, and stories of the people who have lived at 2878, 2880, and 2930 Sidney Avenue in Camp Washington.
Archive of Creative Culture
Lacey Haslam: The Sidney Project
September 27, 2024–October 25, 2024
A juried, open call exhibition of current AAC students.
Art Academy of Cincinnati: Chidlaw Gallery
Student Reflections
September 27, 2024–October 25, 2024
Photographic series centered on the Amazon facilities in the Greater Cincinnati region and their geographical, social, and economic impact.
Art Academy of Cincinnati: McClure Gallery
Contested Ground
September 27, 2024–October 25, 2024
Multigenerational stories told through intimate spaces, objects, and portraiture that highlight artists Vikesh Kapoor, Tomiko Jones, and André Ramos-Woodard are curated by AAC students.
Art Academy of Cincinnati: Pearlman Gallery
Deeply Rooted
September 27, 2024–November 1, 2024
Explores the nuance within communities of color across the Midwest by bringing together six artists from across the region to present a collection of original photographs, essays, and interviews that invite the viewer to embrace the complexity of the Midwest’s diverse tapestry.
Art Academy of Cincinnati: SITE1212
Another First Impression
September 27, 2024–November 1, 2024
Exhibition and corresponding book, developed by artists Mark Albain and Joshua Berg through written correspondence and recorded conversations, weave through an unspecified space and unfold through experiences, relationships, and histories of growing up and living in the Midwest.
Art Academy of Cincinnati: SITE1212
Digressions
September 27, 2024–November 1, 2024
Combining archival video, large-scale projection, mixed media collages, and photography, Michael Coppage revives Humphrey, a character created nearly 20 years ago, to pay homage to the integral role he played during the artist’s formative years.
Art Academy of Cincinnati: SITE1212
Humphrey Gets His Flowers
September 21, 2024–November 16, 2024
Documentary, narrative, abstract, and conceptual lens-based imagery representing the artists’ perception of empathy.
Art Beyond Boundaries Gallery
In Pursuit of Empathy
September 26, 2024
Photo-based mural of archival and contemporary images that weaves narratives of people and place, capturing the essence of the building’s rich history.
ArtWorks
Inhabited: Stories of the Past
September 27, 2024–November 8, 2024
Guided by two Artists-in-Residence, gallery fellows explore the magic of contrast by transforming personal stories into visual narratives.
ArtWorks V² Gallery
Chiaroscuro
October 12, 2024–November 16, 2024
Probes technology’s influence on modern existence and offers a contemplative exploration of life’s impermanence in the digital era.
BasketShop
Silas Long: interior ruin
September 27, 2024–October 31, 2024
A “fauxtodocumentary” that shares the hidden stories of a one-of-a-kind, diverse community nestled in Indiana somewhere between El Dorado and Brigadoon.
Behringer-Crawford Museum
Mark Schlachter: Familiar Faces
Oct 12, Oct 18, and Oct 25, 2024
Photo-based works and local delicacies paired with conversation around history, memory, and food justice.
Blue House Gallery
Glenna Jennings: Sit Down!
September 26, 2024–February 15, 2025
Meditative vignettes, each featuring a specific body of work by an artist actively examining the changing world, presented in dialogue with William Eggleston’s Election Eve.
The Carnegie
Southern Democratic
September 23, 2024–November 1, 2024
Focused on hair as a cartography of memory, Ford documents deconstructed and revised protective hairstyles to remember what once was and now remains.
Century Design Workshop
Amber N. Ford: The Roads Most Traveled
September 24, 2024–November 1, 2024
Centered on Fontayne and Porter’s 1848 Cincinnati Riverfront Panorama, viewers witness the human stories it captures, as well as the chemical processes within the daguerreotype plates.
Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library: Main Branch
Depth of Field: The Universe of the Daguerreotype
October 12, 2024–November 30, 2024
Immigrants and refugees explore themes of resilience, peace, and hope through art and storytelling, providing a glimpse into the triumphs, struggles, and dreams of young people charting their own journeys in our region.
Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library: Walnut Hills Branch
More than Meets the Eye: Multimedia Narratives that Connect Generations and Cultures
September 24, 2024–November 2, 2024
Inspired by 19th-century photographers, rarely exhibited backmarks are analyzed, revealing clever marketing strategies and arguments for photography as fine art.
Cincinnati Art Galleries
Verso: Backmarks of 19th-Century Photographic Card Mounts
September 27, 2024–January 19, 2025
Over 100 artworks and objects from the collection of the Center for Creative Photography offer unprecedented insight into how Adams developed from a 14-year-old tourist with a camera into America’s most celebrated photographer.
Cincinnati Art Museum
Discovering Ansel Adams
October 9, 2024
Premiere of documentary examining the social, economic, and cultural impact of photography in Cincinnati as it became a major commercial center in America’s heartland.
Cincinnati Museum Center: Reakirt Auditorium
"Capturing Life" (1839-1869)
July 11, 2024–October 14, 2024
Cincinnati’s Black history is explored through the lens of Black photographers and community photo collections from the 1800s to the 2000s.
Cincinnati Museum Center
Lens of History: Celebration of People, Spaces, and Emotion
September 24, 2024–October 15, 2024
Offers a glimpse into the joy and significance of everyday life within the Walnut Hills community.
Cincy Nice at Peebles Gallery
Prince Lang: Person, Place, Thing
September 27, 2024–October 25, 2024
Open call exhibition explores generations diversely, through families, ideas, technologies, and histories.
Clifton Cultural Arts Center
Generations
September 5, 2024–November 2, 2024
Group exhibition evoking Ming Smith’s perspective of “celebrating the struggle, the survival, and finding grace in it.”
Columbus College of Art & Design: Beeler Gallery
I Was Here
September 19, 2024–January 26, 2025
Blending historical and contemporary narratives, visitors encounter the Caribbean and its diaspora from the period following emancipation through today.
Columbus Museum of Art
Fragments of Epic Memory
September 19, 2024–January 26, 2025
Unveils the essence of Black life in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, echoing August Wilson’s iconic plays. Smith’s photos capture the resilience and humanity amidst struggles like Jim Crow and redlining, inviting viewers to explore the beauty and depth of ordinary Black existence.
Columbus Museum of Art
Ming Smith: August Moon
September 19, 2024–January 26, 2025
Ming Smith: Transcendence encapsulates the artist’s visual journey through her hometown of Columbus, OH, drawing from her personal experiences. Through a carefully curated series of images, Smith orchestrates a poignant narrative of self-reconciliation with her roots, converting pain into expression.
Columbus Museum of Art
Ming Smith: Transcendence
September 27, 2024–February 9, 2025
Probst’s unique photographic practice combines simultaneous, multiple views of a single scene, to convey a complex, playful, and darkly cinematic vision of people in time and space.
Contemporary Arts Center
Barbara Probst: Subjective Evidence
September 6, 2024–January 5, 2025
Thomas is a photographer, activist, and physician whose public murals in the desert landscape of Northern Arizona reflect the spirit and struggles of the Navajo people and other marginalized communities.
Contemporary Arts Center
Chip Thomas and the Painted Desert Project
September 6, 2024–December 22, 2024
Intentionally throwing the image out of focus, Wilkinson surrenders precision and clarity to emphasize the reference and suggest something else.
The Contemporary Dayton
Curtis Mann: Precious Blood
September 6, 2024–December 22, 2024
Intentionally throwing the image out of focus, Wilkinson surrenders precision and clarity to emphasize the reference and suggest something else.
The Contemporary Dayton
Sean Wilkinson: Flora
October 11, 2024–October 27, 2024
Exploring abandoned structures, Schutte captures the poignant beauty of decay with a play of light and shadow, immortalizing a silent narrative.
Crome Architecture
SHEM Schutte: Thinking Positive, Capturing Negatives
September 22, 2024–November 27, 2024
Documentation by Steve Plattner of roughly 1,000 surviving Native American Earthworks in the Ohio Valley, constructed between 500 BCE and 1750 CE by the Adena, Hopewell, and Fort Ancient cultures.
DAAP Galleries:: Meyers Gallery
Cultural Exchange:: What Remains: A Contemporary Interpretation of Native American Earthworks in The Ohio Valley
September 12, 2024–November 21, 2024
Highlights how immigrant backstories shape individuals into leaders who make an impact in Cincinnati and beyond.
DAAP Galleries:: Reed Gallery
Cultural Exchange:: Still Moving
September 12, 2024–November 21, 2024
Video work created by high school students from various schools across the country, exploring their relationship with being American.
DAAP Galleries:: Reed Gallery
Cultural Exchange:: Who is American Today?
September 24, 2024–November 2, 2024
Collection of works exemplifying a beguiling national fad from the late 1800s, where photographic sitters were able to capture images of their own backs for the first time in history.
DAAP Library
Posteriors: Sitters’ Backs in 19th-Century Photography
September 6, 2024–October 27, 2024
Centers on the life of an organic farmer and his connection to the Dayton-Centerville agricultural community.
Dana L. Wiley Gallery
Gary Beeber: Michael Malone: Portrait of An American Organic Farmer
September 6, 2024–October 27, 2024
Constructed digital photographs explore myth and narrative, inviting viewers to contemplate a fabricated reality delving into mysticism and creation.
Dana L. Wiley Gallery
Tracy Longley-Cook: Paths of the Ecliptic
October 5, 2024–January 5, 2025
Lara Shipley and Antone Dolezal combine folklore, local history, and present-day photographs of Ozark people, land, and interpretive images to engage the living mythology of the Spook Light.
Dayton Art Institute
Devil's Promenade
October 4, 2024–October 27, 2024
The multifaceted essence of the Midwest is explored through photography and storytelling that endeavors to unearth its forgotten history.
![[Midwest Americana graphic]. Courtesy of The Dayton Society of Artists](https://www.fotofocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/PV_Dayton-Society_Midwest-Americana_01_DSA_COLE_MIDWEST-600x478.jpg)
The Dayton Society of Artists
Midwest Americana
October 3, 2024–October 26, 2024
A mixture of unchoreographed and staged photographs of gatherings that reveal differing perspectives and relationships between photographer and subject.
Edward A. Dixon Gallery
Images from Storytellers
September 25, 2024–October 28, 2024
Underwater photographs in which dancers yield to the embrace of water instead of the forces of gravity.
Eisele Gallery
Tina Gutierrez: Illumination
September 27, 2024–November 24, 2024
Urban street photography, captured between dusk and dawn, from the forthcoming travel guide, Renderville, A Guide.
Esquire Theatre Gallery
Casey LeClair: Nightlife In Renderville
October 1, 2024–November 30, 2024
Outdoor exhibition challenges photographers to capture the untold stories that shape moments in time.
Evendale Cultural Arts Center
Behind the Lens: Unveiling the Unseen Narratives
October 1, 2024–December 31, 2024
Focused on resilience, Hatch reveals the silent narratives of abandoned factories and forgotten landscapes while celebrating human spirit amidst adversity.
Evendale Cultural Arts Center
Eric Hatch: Hard Times for These Times
October 18, 2024–December 24, 2024
Fitton Center and 17STRONG match regional artists with Hamilton’s 17 diverse neighborhoods to find visual narratives that define the community.
Fitton Center for Creative Arts
We > Me: 17 Artists Explore Hamilton Neighborhoods
September 27, 2024–November 1, 2024
Features video works first recorded over 20 years ago in an attempt to preserve the translation of ideas into new forms.
FLAG Studio
Got it on Tape
September 26, 2024–October 12, 2024
Eight artists elevate local skate culture in which rinks are incubators for solidarity and roller skating is both sport and art.
Gallery at 1435 Main
Rollin' in Rhythm
October 1, 2024–November 22, 2024
Spanning a body of work compiled since the mid-1980s, Mendoza couples photographs with short autobiographical stories to encapsulate his life experiences.
German Village Society
Tony Mendoza: Short Stories
June 27, 2024–December 15, 2024
Captures the intricacies and poetry of the Black experience, while exploring “place and identity formation” within the artist’s practice.
The Gund at Kenyon College
Ming Smith: Jazz Requiem—Notations in Blue
September 28, 2024–November 1, 2024
Teen photographers, Triple Crown jockey Steve Cauthen, and photojournalist Madeleine Hordinski explore visual stories behind the scenes of Kentucky horse racing.
i.imagine at Roebling Point Books and Coffee
Off Track
September 25, 2024–February 28, 2025
Photographs and texts reflect upon and illuminate Minkkinen’s oeuvre across more than 50 years.
Iris BookCafé and Gallery
Afterwords: 53 Years in Words and Images by Arno Rafael Minkkinen
September 7, 2024–November 2, 2024
Explores themes of individual and collective healing journeys through photography, collage, and mixed media.
Kennedy Heights Arts Center
Gee Horton: Chapter 2, A Subtle Farewell to the Inner Child
September 27, 2024–November 22, 2024
Illustrates how Ohio’s state fruit is valued, celebrated, and revered within local culture through images of its natural beauty.
Lloyd Library & Museum
Madeleine Hordinski: The Lore of the Pawpaw
October 18, 2024–October 20, 2024
Photographs taken by Matthew Shelton on Hunting Island, South Carolina, are abstracted through animation to create a film accompanied by a live, improvised music score.
The Lodge KY
Hunting Island
September 27, 2024–October 25, 2024
Photography and in-depth conversations with the residents and regulars of Over-the-Rhine shed light on the backstories that make Main Street everything it is today.
Main Street Shop & Studio
Elisa Fay: I Hate You I Love You
October 5, 2024–November 2, 2024
Rethinks the importance of the photographic substrate and the importance of a photograph’s physical presence.
Manifest Drawing Center
Pick It Up, Turn It Over: Exploring the Power of the Physical Photograph
September 27, 2024–October 25, 2024
Celebrates the physicality of photographs that engage with the body, acknowledges their place within the physical world, and explores the impact of presentation methods on the image-viewing experience.
Manifest Gallery
CORPUS: Exploring the Power of the Physical Photograph
October 3, 2024–October 5, 2024
A site-specific, projection-based public artwork by artist Diane Fellows that explores the intersecting histories and experiences of place through collaging video and sound.
Miami University: Performing Arts Quad
Convening Stories at the Crossroads
August 27, 2024–December 14, 2024
Approaches the story of Freedom Summer in a new way by focusing on those behind the lens and their backstories as documentarians.
Miami University: Richard and Carole Cocks Art Museum
Through Their Lens: Photographing Freedom Summer
September 26, 2024–November 2, 2024
Visual journey into the cultural frisson of the 1970s and 80s in New York City and the dynamic new ideas in music, film, art, graffiti, fashion, queer culture, and performance it spawned.
Michael Lowe Gallery with Alternate Projects
Blank Generation: Downtown New York 1970s–80s
September 19, 2024–October 26, 2024
50-year survey of Derrick, whose highly skilled and imaginative work has not been exhibited in 40 years.
Miller Gallery
Kimball Derrick: My Book of Life—The Preface
September 16, 2024–October 28, 2024
Using self-portraiture, four artists reflect and address ancestral stories, cultural traditions, and modern realities that shape their identity.
Mount St. Joseph University: Studio San Giuseppe Art Gallery
as it was meant to be told: AAPI Artists on Selfhood and Belonging
October 11, 2024–October 13, 2024
Traces the journey of the sun as it rises and falls over Maysville, Kentucky, where an 1800s slave pen was excavated in 2002.
National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
Alphonzo Wesson: Excavated: From Soil to Stars
September 26, 2024–October 25, 2024
Explores relationships in a matriarchal family and place-making practices.
Northern Kentucky University School of the Arts Galleries
Marissa Nicole Stewart: Call Me When You Get Home
September 28, 2024–October 19, 2024
A composed and precise moment of movement is captured, inspired by the relationship of dancers, musicians, and activists to nature.
Off Ludlow Gallery
Tina Gutierrez: Kindred Spirits
October 8, 2024–December 31, 2024
Stories of Over-the-Rhine from the 1970s, 80s, and 90s told through personal photographs curated by past and present neighborhood residents.
Over-the-Rhine Museum
Snapshots of Over-the-Rhine
September 13, 2024–March 22, 2025
Multimedia retrospective of James “Omar” Childress in collaboration with artist Mike James.
PAR-Projects: Gallery at Studeō PAR-
Don't Just Talk About It, Be About It
September 13, 2024–November 3, 2024
Collaborative exhibition and immersive experience that amplifies stories of resilience, peace, and hope by local immigrants and refugees through visual and auditory storytelling, accompanied by music.
Purple People Bridge
More than Meets the Eye: An Immersive Display of Narrative Power through Photos
August 16, 2024–November 22, 2024
Considers untold stories the land holds through a selection of photographs from local and national contemporary artists.
Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park & Museum
Stories of the Land
August 16, 2024–November 22, 2024
Presents personas and landscapes significant to the McMaster’s nêhiyaw (Plains Cree), Métis, Dutch, and Scottish ancestors.
Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park & Museum
Meryl McMaster: Stories of the Infinite Sky
August 16, 2024–November 22, 2024
Photographs and insect ephemera urge viewers to look closer at nature in the hopes of understanding what unites us all.
Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park & Museum
Jo Whaley: The Theater of Nature
September 30, 2024–November 9, 2024
Documentation of the interplay between plants, place, and light created through lumen prints with photosensitive paper.
Rosewood Arts Center
Cara Lee Wade: Fossil Poetry
September 30, 2024–November 9, 2024
Mixed-media cyanotypes explore the celestial mapping, symbols, and codes utilized by enslaved people in the American South.
Rosewood Arts Center
Michael Reese: Decoding Polaris
October 4, 2024–November 1, 2024
Juried exhibition of lens-based art including photography, new media, film, and video.
![[ImageOHIO graphic]. Courtesy of ROY G BIV Gallery](https://www.fotofocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/PV_ROY-G-BIV_Image-Ohio-Undercurrents_01_Screenshot_2024-02-10_at_5_06_53_PM-600x478.jpg)
ROY G BIV Gallery
ImageOhio: Undercurrents
September 9, 2024–October 30, 2024
Questions whether opposing elements can overlap and exist adjacently, and how each part shapes the story of the other.
Ruth’s Parkside Café
Duality
September 17, 2024–October 26, 2024
Explores Wade’s relationship with her grandmothers, their battles with Alzheimers, and her subsequent obsession with absorbing their pasts and collecting their memories and identities.
Sinclair Community College Art Galleries
Cara Lee Wade: Alzheimer's Stories
September 17, 2024–October 26, 2024
Captures the tenuous nature of memory through personal archives and family photos.
Sinclair Community College Art Galleries
Deborah Orloff: Elusive Memory
September 19, 2024–December 13, 2024
Series about Dowell’s spiritual revelations, illustrating his ancestral visions of freedom through the symbolic history of the cotton field.
Solway Gallery
John E. Dowell: Pathways to Freedom
October 1, 2024–November 3, 2024
Kraus’ artistic contribution is acknowledged in a retrospective of diverse and imaginative work created over the course of her life.
Stivers School for the Arts: Fifth Street Gallery
Labyrinth: A Paula Kraus Retrospective
October 12, 2024–November 2, 2024
An adventure into the nomadic life of a Chilean circus family reveals parallels between tent construction and live performances through photography and observation.
Studio Kroner
Casey LeClair: Moving Parts
October 5, 2024–January 12, 2025
African American beauty and visual culture from the 1890s is traced to the present through documentary, commercial, and fine art photography.
Taft Museum of Art
Posing Beauty in African American Culture
October 1, 2024–December 13, 2024
A journey into the relationship between a daughter and her mother as they navigate the challenges of mental illness.
University of Cincinnati Clermont College Art Gallery
Judi Bommarito: Reclaiming Your Outside Voice
September 26, 2024–November 15, 2024
Features Emmaline Carter and Stephanie Cuyubamba Kong, whose works navigate space, identity, and how they intertwine.
University of Dayton: Index Gallery
On Location & Care
August 19, 2024–November 1, 2024
Zora J Murff’s work demonstrates how a global conspiracy of anti-Black genocide continues to persist through systemic oppression.
University of Dayton: Roger Glass Center for the Arts Gallery
The Devil Hiding in Plain Sight
October 1, 2024–October 31, 2024
An audiovisual history tour and photographic archive of underground art spaces in Cincinnati, developed by Britni Bicknaver and Calcagno Cullen, that celebrates Cincinnati as an incubator for experimental, outsider, and DIY arts activities.
Various Locations
Artist Run: The Continuing Legacy of Cincinnati's Artist-Run Spaces
September 27, 2024–November 15, 2024
Celebrates individuals who have persevered through unique circumstances and recognizes those who have lost their agency within the confines of larger societal systems.
Visionaries and Voices
Flowers in the Sidewalk
September 20, 2024–October 26, 2024
Emerging artist Masset conceptualizes for the extrinsic viewer, while established artist Hoffman reinterprets his own photography through a coda of poetry.
Wash Park Art Gallery
CONCEPT and CODA: Lydia Masset and Ron Hoffman
September 27, 2024–November 16, 2024
Social practice artists dedicated to relationship and community building foster a sense of trust and belonging using lens-based practices and long-term witnessing.
Wave Pool
A Thousand Words
October 2, 2024–November 9, 2024
BIPOC artists honor their spiritual heritage through the use of photography as a form of resistance, resilience, and cultural preservation to transmit sacred values to future generations.
The Welcome Project
Defend the Sacred
September 26, 2024–October 27, 2024
In partnership with Artworks, young apprentices explore mindfulness, movement, and performing identity via sonas—masks or avatars—and the internalized experience of having a soma, or body.
The Well
Sona and Soma
September 20, 2024–January 5, 2025
The Wexner Center for the Arts’ solo exhibition of Columbus-raised Ming Smith pairs the artist’s first photographic series with new work to illuminate her focus on spirituality, movement, and feminism.
Wexner Center for the Arts
Ming Smith: Wind Chime
September 20, 2024–January 5, 2025
First comprehensive museum presentation of the late Nigerian-British photographer brings together large-scale color photographs, black-and-white prints, and never-before-seen archival works.
Wexner Center for the Arts
Rotimi Fani-Kayode: Tranquility of Communion
October 17, 2024–October 21, 2024
Film festival examines creative nonfiction filmmaking and spotlights adventurous contemporary and historical films.
Wexner Center for the Arts
Unorthodocs
October 6, 2024–October 18, 2024
Black men and boys donned with crowns signify hope, perseverance, and achievement.
Woman’s Art Club of Cincinnati: The Barn
King Me: "MADE OF"
Oct 15, Oct 21, Oct 22, and Oct 28, 2024
Four films by acclaimed, contemporary filmmakers from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.
Woodward Theater
Caribbean Eye: Auteur Cinema from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic
August 27, 2024–November 2, 2024
A photographic survey of teachers, staff, and administrators in Toledo-area elementary schools.
Wright State University: The Robert and Elaine Stein Galleries
Daniel McInnis: Elementary
August 27, 2024–November 2, 2024
Photographers reshape the narrative capacities of their medium by conjuring visual relationships and critique with disruptive beauty and deeper perspectives.
Wright State University: The Robert and Elaine Stein Galleries
ReWritten: Photographers Reshaping the Narrative
September 27, 2024–October 25, 2024
Open call exhibition documenting the touring music scene.
Xavier University Art Galleries
Behind the Curtain
September 27, 2024–October 25, 2024
Nascent artists in the Cincinnati area present photographs of their origin stories.
Xavier University Art Galleries
What Came Before
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