Obscura Gallery announces our third annual Winter Holiday exhibition, One-of-a-Kind III, a group show of unique photo-based artworks priced under $1,500, and found exclusively at our gallery. This year’s exhibit features ten artists:  Michael Berman, Susan Burnstine, Gordon Coons, Lou Peralta, Sara Silks, Aline Smithson, Eddie Soloway, Lynn Stern, Robert Stivers, and Bryan Whitney.  In addition, we are debuting local Santa Fe jewelry artist, Karin Worden who also creates one-of-a-kind jewelry pieces. The open house takes place on Saturday, November 29, from 1-4pm with many of the artists present.

 In the 21^st Century we are most familiar with photography as a medium enabling multiple prints of the same image.  Yet many of the photographic processes that were used in the 19^th and 20^th Century yielded one-of-a-kind prints.  In some cases, the processes made a singular print for each exposure; in other cases, the treatment of prints during production led to singular images.   Included in this exhibition are gelatin silver prints with contemporary mixed media, photo collage, cyanotypes, hand-applied surface texture to gelatin silver prints, gold leaf and digital prints and other mediums that lend themselves to unique artworks including cedar smoked relief prints and one-of-a-kind jewelry.

VIEW ALL THE WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION HERE.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL PRESS RELEASE HERE.

 

 

The photo-based work of Louviere+Vanessa draws on Southern Gothic traditions. They have developed a style innovatively using mixed media and photography. Their latest work, ‘Dust of the Stars’, delves into the delicate interplay between earthly life and the cosmos. Each piece is finished with a gilt varnish and homemade bioplastics, infusing the work with a subtle luminosity that is a reminder of the divine spark within all matter, connecting the mundane with the transcendent.

“Our latest series “Dust of the Stars” explores the intrinsic connection between the celestial and the earthly. We have created a unique medium by combining bone and water to form handmade bio plastics, symbolizing the organic and the intangible.”

“These images represent what the natural world is made of: bone, water, cartilage, the essence of life and a symbol of fluidity and change. Bone and water then come together again to fuse these images into a state of permanence, something the living world is not afforded.” L+V 2025

Louviere + Vanessa (Jeff Louviere and Vanessa Brown) make their home and art in New Orleans. Their work combines the mediums and nuances of film, photography, painting and printmaking. They use Holgas, scanners, 8mm film, destroyed negatives, wax and blood. Since they began showing professionally in 2004, they have been in over 50 exhibits and film festivals in America and abroad. They are included in the collections of the Museum of Art | Houston, the Photomedia Center, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, as well as the film archive for Globians International Film in Potsdam Germany, Microcinema in San Francisco, and the George Eastman House.

In addition to producing their innovative still images, Louviere + Vanessa experiment in moving pictures. They have created the first movie, consisting of 1,900 frames, shot with a plastic Holga camera. Based on that film, they shot the animation sequence for Rosanne Cash’s short film, “Mariners & Musicians”, which had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. They were included in the Australian Photography Biennale.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL PRESS RELEASE HERE. 

VIEW ALL THE WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION HERE.

 

Lynn Stern, the convention-defying, New York-based, American photographer, has pushed the boundaries of photography during her 47-year career.  Her work is intimately tied to the history of the photographic medium through her innovative use of natural light, still life, and large-format cameras and film. Stern’s works in the Obscura Gallery exhibition, Echoes of Light, are luminous examples of her innovation. Using natural light and a scrim between the camera and her still life subjects, she veils her subject matter to create a translucence that fills her images with soft light. As a result, in both the Quickening and Force Field series, Stern highlights only the edges of her objects with a stroke of a shadow on a white background. With this innovative use of light, her images resemble charcoal drawings.  Indeed, a viewer who doesn’t understand that a camera made these images might assume Stern creates her work with pencil and paper.

Lynn Stern, the convention-defying, New York-based, American photographer, has pushed the boundaries of photography during her 47-year career.  Her work is intimately tied to the history of the photographic medium through her innovative use of natural light, still life, and large-format cameras and film. Stern’s works in the Obscura Gallery exhibition, Echoes of Light, are luminous examples of her innovation. Using natural light and a scrim between the camera and her still life subjects, she veils her subject matter to create a translucence that fills her images with soft light. As a result, in both the Quickening and Force Field series, Stern highlights only the edges of her objects with a stroke of a shadow on a white background. With this innovative use of light, her images resemble charcoal drawings.  Indeed, a viewer who doesn’t understand that a camera made these images might assume Stern creates her work with pencil and paper.

Influenced by abstract expressionist painting but working as a lens-based photographer, Stern defies the expectations central to photography by pulling away from the sharp focus, instead blurring, veiling, cropping, partially obscuring, and otherwise de-literalizing what is in front of her lens.

 

Purchase the exhibition catalogue here.

 

“My photographs are not about what they are of…. I believe that photography is a medium of light, not representation. Light is to photography as paint is to painting. I think like a painter in that my concerns are largely formal: my aim is to create tension, plasticity, texture, and, especially, spatial ambiguity in which figure (or abstract form) and ground seem to merge with or emerge from one another. Above all, I want the image to feel alive and filled with energy.” – LS

DOWNLOAD THE FULL PRESS RELEASE HERE

VIEW ALL OF LYNN STERN’S WORKS ON OUR WEBSITE HERE.

 

We’re excited to welcome back Obscura Gallery artist Danny Lyon for a book signing of his latest release, JUNK: America in Ruins (Damiani, 2025), on Saturday, June 28, 12:30-2:30pm.

JUNK is a spectacular visual journey through the great forgotten junkyards of the West, where the historic gas-guzzling monsters of the 1950s and ’60s lie wrecked and rusting in the relentless western sun. At first with his Rolleiflex loaded with color negative film, then working with a Fujifilm medium format digital camera, Lyon pictures the cars as if they were remnants of a civilization in ruins. Junk: America in Ruins (Damiani Books, 2025) features images of more than 80 American cars that Lyon discovered in forgotten junkyards on travels through Nebraska, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Oklahoma.

Lyon is one of the most influential photographers of the last six decades and a key figure of New Journalism, whose immersive and groundbreaking works include The Bikeriders (1968), The Destruction of Lower Manhattan (1969), The Southwestern Portfolio: New Mexico and Mexico (1967-1983) and the memoir This Is My Life I’m Talking About (Damiani Books, 2024). Lyon’s Civil Rights archive was acquired by the Duke University in 2024, and his photographic documentary Conversations with the Dead remains “as powerful and relevant as ever” in light of America’s ever expanding system of mass incarceration.

 

April 23 – 27, 2025
Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Ave, New York, NY 10065
Booth B04

Opening April 23, 2025 is the 45th edition of The Photography Show presented by the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. The Photography Show is the longest running and foremost commercial exhibition dedicated to the photographic medium.

In our booth, we will are excited to share new work by Rashod Taylor, Douglas Miles (above photo), Lynn Stern, Louviere+Vanessa, as well as hand-painted gelatin silver prints by Brigitte Carnochan and vintage platinum prints by Laura Gilpin.

View the email with our booth preview here.

Luis Gonzalez Palma is among the most recognizable Latin American photographers. The early work he is canonized for address the difficult past of his birth country of Guatemala and its people. This history of engagement spans topics from the colonial plight of the Mayan people to the legacy of the civil war and “the disappeared.” González Palma employs the intimacy of portraiture, weight of the gaze, and qualities of chosen materials to drive meaning in his work. But this is only the beginning.

Möbius is a diverse and open-ended series, which began in 2013. The artist embraces, destroys and rebuilds upon structures he built up for himself over 40 years, beginning with his own iconic work. Luis González Palma has been celebrated for symbolism, portraiture, and photography. To reduce him to these realms is to underestimate his profound dialectic. To break away from the confines of his own past, through Möbius González Palma seeks to reinvent and renew his vision and its perception by others.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW ALL THE WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FULL PRESS RELEASE.

While visiting Paris Photo this past November, we were thrilled to be able to meet with Coco and gather some new inventory for our gallery! We won’t be holding a formal reception for this exhibition so please visit us anytime during gallery hours 11-5pm Tuesday – Saturday to view the exhibition! Today, March 14, we are open 11-4pm!

French artist Coco Fronsac paints non-European masks onto Western vernacular photographs from the early 20^th Century. A dichotomy is developed between the early forms from the continents of Africa, Oceania, America, and Asia, and the standardized nature of photographic portraits as they occurred a century ago. These surreal images plunge us into a dreamlike, comical world, contrasting ritual and tradition, to  exploit the unexpected juxtapositions with startling effect.  For the artist, the portraits seek to bring a commonality to the human experience by representing the family relationship and different stages of development for a Western person like herself (moving from birth, to communion, military service, marriage, etc.) in context with non-Western rituals she respects.’

Coco Fronsac plays with the viewers’ vision of time, to better project themselves into a new, fluctuating, living, subjective reality. The vernacular photographs on which Fronsac works themselves go back in time.  The paintings she mixes over the photographs typically go back to indigenous cultures she admires.  With the combination, she imbues a contemporary approach to both subjects, bringing a new portrayal of humanity’s present position.

 

VIEW ALL OF COCO FRONSAC’S WORK HERE.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL PRESS RELEASE HERE.

Obscura Gallery presents IAN MARKUS: Fragments of the Frontier, a photographic exploration of the fading culture of ranching in Montana. With imagery created from a 4 x 5†film camera, Ian composites two or more negatives in the darkroom to create ethereal, large-format gelatin silver prints. The resulting ghostly images give a visceral interpretation of the fading cowboy culture that Ian has encountered in the contemporary ranches of Montana.

Santa Fean Ian Markus is the son of the late Obscura Gallery photographer Kurt Markus, who had a long storied career including photographing cowboy culture, and publishing three cowboy monographs since the 1980s. Ian has witnessed this subject matter since he was a young boy accompanying his father on photographic expeditions in the West and assisting Kurt for many long hours in the darkroom. This work provides an insightful perspective into the current state of ranching, showing the juxtaposition of a practice that is facing numerous challenges in our contemporary climate.

VIEW ALL THE WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION HERE.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL PRESS RELEASE HERE.

 

Obscura Gallery presents our 2024 Holiday exhibition of small, photo-based works by gallery and guest artists including

Angie Brockey, Tulsa, OK
Brigitte Carnochan,Palo Alto, CA
Sam Elkind, Santa Fe, NM
Nicola Hackl-Haslinger,Austria
Max Kellenberger,San Francisco, CA
Louviere+Vanessa, New Orleans, LA
Jennifer Schlesinger, Santa Fe, NM
Caitlyn Soldan, Santa Fe, NM
Eddie Soloway,Santa Fe, NM
and more!

We will host a Holiday open house reception on Saturday, November 30, 2024 from 1-5pm with many of the artists present.

VIEW ALL THE WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION HERE.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL PRESS RELEASE HERE.

Obscura Gallery presents Norman Mauskopf: Descendants, a photographic exhibition of rare and vintage, black and white gelatin silver prints that were made by the photographer for the publication by the same name, published by Twin Palms in 2010. The prints in the exhibition include both published and unpublished images made for the book, which focuses on the Hispanic peoples and cultures of Northern New Mexico. Many of the prints were included in the application for the very first W. Eugene Smith Fellowship, which Mauskopf was then awarded in 2002. The book is out of print and Norman will be signing and selling his remaining copies at 4pm on Friday September 13; followed by the reception with the artist from 5-7pm.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FULL PRESS RELEASE.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW ALL THE WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION.

 

Join us this Friday from 5-7pm during the annual nationally acclaimed Santa Fe Indian Market weekend, for the opening reception of Parallel Playground, a collaborative photo-based exhibition with Obscura Gallery Apache artist Douglas Miles and New York City guest artist Al Díaz. Artist Douglas Miles (San Carlos Apache-Akimel O’odham) creates artistic work rooted in Apache history and deeply engaged with the world of contemporary pop culture. Al Díaz is an American urban artist best known for being among the first generation of graffiti writers in New York City and for co-creating the graffiti campaign SAMO© with Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1978. Each of these artists combines words, photographs, and mixed media in their art work, and their unique styles intersect with their deep passion for social justice within their own communities.

Both artists will be in attendance at the reception on Friday, August 16 from 5-7pm

DOWNLOAD THE FULL PRESS RELEASE HERE.

VIEW ALL THE WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION HERE.

BOOK SIGNING
This Is My Life I’m Talking About
By Danny Lyon

June 8, 2024
1pm at Obscura Gallery

PURCHASE BOOK HERE.

This Is My Life I’m Talking About (Damiani Books, 2024) by Danny Lyon is a picaresque memoir by the legendary photographer and filmmaker, whose work has left an indelible mark on the world of photography. The book recounts Lyon’s life of adventures and tragedies, from his groundbreaking documentation of the Civil Rights Movement, to his role in pioneering the New Journalism Movement and his intimate portrayals of subcultures.

This Is My Life I’m Talking About shares stories about Lyon’s family roots in Russia and his youth in New York City, his beautiful lifelong friendship with the American civil rights hero John Lewis, and his immersion into the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club, upon which his famous photojournalist work The Bikeriders (1968) is based. Throughout, Lyon writes with tremendous feeling and humor, and the book features a selection of unpublished and unseen pictures from his extraordinary life.

“Cal, born in Canada as Arthur Dion, riding with Little Barbara. Cal, a former Hells Angel from San Bernadino, is my best friend in the Outlaws. In my Hyde Park apartment, he narrated many of the stories that became the text of the book. In the film Cal is played by Boyd Holbrook. A housepainter, Cal fell off a ladder and died in the 1980s.†© Photograph Danny Lyon.

“SNCC Chairman John Lewis speaking in Mississippi, 1963. At that time I shared an apartment in Atlanta with John and Sam Shirah.†© Photograph Danny Lyon.

In addition to new memoir Danny Lyon will also be signing books for his book, The Bikeriders (Aperture 2014), first published in 1968 and inspired the feature-length film by Jeff Nichols of the same name debuting this June. The Bikeriders explores firsthand the stories and personalities of the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club. This journal-size volume features original black-and-white photographs and transcribed interviews by Lyon, made from 1963 to 1967, when he was a member of the Outlaws gang. Authentic, personal, and uncompromising, Lyon’s depiction of individuals on the outskirts of society offers a gritty yet humane perspective that subverts more commercialized treatments of Americana. Akin to the documentary style of 1960s-era New Journalism made famous by writers such as Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe, Lyon’s photography is saturation reporting at its finest. The Bikeriders is a touchstone publication of 1960s counterculture, crucially defining the vision of the outlaw biker as found in Easy Rider and countless other movies and photobooks.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE.

About the Author
Danny Lyon was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1942 and raised in Queens. As a student at the University of Chicago he joined the civil rights movement, becoming the first staff photographer for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. He is a photojournalist, writer, and filmmaker. His non-fiction books include The Bikeriders, The Destruction of Lower Manhattan, Conversations with the Dead, Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, Like a Thief’s Dream and American Blood. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in photography and later in filmmaking. In 1990 he received a Rockefeller Fellowship in filmmaking and in 2011 the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism. In 2016 he had a major retrospective (Message to the Future) at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. In 2023 his exhibition Danny Lyon: Journey West was at the Albuquerque Museum. A feature film of The Bikeriders, directed by acclaimed filmmaker Jeff Nichols and starring Austin Butler, Jody Comer, and Tom Hardy, is due for U.S, release in June 2024.

VIEW DANNY LYON’S PHOTOGRAPHS HERE.