BAXTER ST at the Camera Club of NY

REMINDER: We're accepting applications for our Guest Curator program through May 18th, 2026! ⁠ ⁠ Open to emerging independent #curators, selected proposals will present an #exhibition at our #gallery space. Juried by a committee of distinguished art professionals this program serves as a platform to forward fresh ideas and new voices within the artistic mediums of lens-based practices.⁠ ⁠ A stipend will be awarded to both the curators and the exhibiting artist(s). The selected #curator and artist(s) will also have the opportunity to create up to two public programs. The exhibition will be presented in BAXTER ST's storefront gallery. ⁠ ⁠ The open call is free and we're accepting applications through 11:59PM ET on May 18, 2026. For guidelines and more info, visit the link in our bio! Share widely with your community!⁠

ALUMNA WORK ON VIEW: 'Keisha Scarville: Where Salt Meets Black Water,' a public art installation at the Brooklyn Museum’s (@brooklynmuseum ) Iris Cantor Plaza transforms individual remembrance and loss into communal memory and shared belonging while offering a meaningful tribute to the Caribbean diaspora. ⁠ ⁠ Scarville (@scarvillek ), recipient of the 2026 UOVO Prize and 2017 BAXTER ST Resident, ⁠was born in Brooklyn to Guyanese parents who immigrated to New York in the 1960s. Rooted in a practice that combines photography, collage, and archival materials, Scarville’s work explores themes of migration, memory, and absence through a deeply personal lens. She draws from her own family history to examine the emotional resonance of inherited objects and images. ⁠ ⁠ The installation will be on view through October 4, 2026. For more information, visit the link in our bio. ⁠ ⁠ Images: Keisha Scarville. Within/Between/Corpus (1), 2020. Courtesy of the artist.; Installation view of Keisha Scarville:​ Where Salt Meets Black Water, Brooklyn Museum, 2026. (Photo: Paula Abreu Pita)

We are thrilled to announce the recipients of this year's BAXTER ST Mid-Career Artist Initiative! Congratulations to artists Azikiwe Mohammed (@misterace12 ), Jiatong Lu (@jiatonglu_ ), Kara Springer (@karaaspringer ), and Sara Bennett (@sarabennettbrooklyn )! ⁠ ⁠ Each artist will present a solo exhibition at BAXTER ST at CCNY and will also be part of our robust programming, including a public conversation, a video interview, and one-on-one meetings with a BAXTER ST Art Advisory Board Member and BAXTER ST staff.⁠ ⁠ Support for the Mid-career Lens-based Artist Initiative is provided by the Mellon Foundation (@mellonfoundation ). Stay tuned for more announcements and learn more about the artists via the link in our bio!⁠

LENS-BASED EXHIBITION ON VIEW: 'Sophie Rivera: Double Exposures' at El Museo del Barrio (@elmuseo ), the first museum survey dedicated to groundbreaking photographer #SophieRivera (1938–2021). ⁠ ⁠ The exhibition offers a long-overdue reevaluation of Rivera’s contributions to photography and Nuyorican visual culture, while celebrating her deep, historic connection to El Museo.⁠ ⁠ The exhibition title references both the photographic technique of layering multiple images and Rivera’s exploration of multiplicity and identity. Her work reflects the complexity of her intersectional positionality as a woman, feminist artist of Puerto Rican descent in New York during the 1970s–1990s, contesting and expanding traditional histories of portraiture and representation.⁠ ⁠ Featuring portraits, documentary images, experimental self-portraits, and photographs of New York’s subway and graffiti scenes of the late 1970s, Double Exposures brings together vintage prints and never-before-seen materials from Rivera’s archive.⁠ ⁠ The exhibition is on view through August 2, 2026. For more info, visit the link in our bio. ⁠ ⁠ Image: Sophie Rivera, Self-portrait, c.1970s. Gelatin silver print. Estate of Martin Hurwitz.

RECOMMENDED READ: "Why Contemporary Photographers Are Rejecting the Camera" by Alina Cohen (@alinacohen ) for Artsy (@Artsy ). Cohen traces the history and contemporary revival of camera-less photography.⁠ ⁠• From Cohen: "It’s easy to forget about the medium’s scientific origins and challenges, especially in the digital age. Yet a number of modern and contemporary photographers keep these historical experiments alive as they try their own hands at aesthetic alchemy. As the public’s trust in photography as a replica of reality erodes due to AI and digital editing, these photographers emphasize the value of photography as a creative tool, rather than a record. Following last fall’s “Man Ray: When Objects Dream” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a slew of new exhibitions are popping up focusing on the enduring popularity of camera-less photography."⁠ ⁠• Read the full essay via the link in our bio!⁠ ⁠•⁠ Image: Fabiola Menchelli (@fabiolamenchelli ), 'Triangle', 2025. Courtesy of Marshall Gallery.

Join us next Saturday, May 16 from 3–6PM for our Alumni Photobook Share! ⁠ ⁠ For the third installment of our Open House Series, alumni from across our programming will be showcasing their publications in the gallery throughout the afternoon. Stop by to browse, shop, and celebrate the incredible work happening within our community.⁠ ⁠ ⁠ Visit the link in our bio for more information!

LENS-BASED EXHIBITION ON VIEW: 'Maï Lucas: New York Days' at Dashwood Projects (@dashwood_projects ). ⁠ ⁠ The #photographs in the exhibition span nearly two decades: late eighties, nineties, into the early 2000s. From #Harlem to #EastNewYork, Jamaica #Queens, and later in the Heights with her husband and his family. Mostly outside. The block, the stoop, the corner, the car hood. Recording the birth of hip-hop, and composing her own life in the footsteps of jazz and the blues, Lucas’ archive stands as a score for taking part in the act of remembrance.⁠ ⁠ Summer after summer, Lucas’ days are spent documenting a tension that is specific to #NewYorkCity: exhaustive joy as a lasting flame of its own conditions. Lucas photographs groups coming together, time bound in love and tenderness, presence, the hustle and the heat.⁠ ⁠ Lucas returned to the same blocks for years, the same light, the same gatherings. The act of returning to is the one of adoption. She adopts the city in symphony with the city adopting her. These photographs are a cartography of her presence. Where she was, who she was with, what they let her see, and how they let her in. ⁠ ⁠ The exhibition is on view through May 23, 2026. For more information visit the link in our bio. ⁠ ⁠ Image: Maï Lucas (@mailucas_photo ), Marilyn, Puerto Rican Day Parade, 1996.

LENS-BASED EXHIBITION ON VIEW: 'Sabiha Çimen and Mary Ellen Mark: The Girls' at Howard Greenberg Gallery (@howardgreenberggallery ).⁠ ⁠ Featuring portraits by Mary Ellen Mark (@maryellenmarkfoundation ) and Sabiha Çimen (@sabakhayr ), the exhibition celebrates the timeless activities and universal nature of girlhood. On view are images from some of Mark's most iconic series, including selections from Streetwise, the 1983 project focusing on the lives of homeless kids in Seattle and Prom, a sweeping look at American prom culture photographed between 2006 and 2009. Mark captured her images in black and white while Çimen’s work is flooded with pastel color. Blending documentary precision with poetic surrealism, Çimen’s images of girls’ Qur’an schools explore a world that marked by strict routine yet is unexpectedly playful. Çimen noted: "While our photographs were made in different worlds, Mary Ellen and l meet in a shared attention to the emotional terrain of growing up, the inner worlds of girls where vulnerability, imagination, and resilience quietly unfold.” ⁠ ⁠ The exhibition is on view through May 9, 2026. For more info, visit the link in our bio. ⁠ ⁠ Image: Sabiha Çimen, Girls singing Kurdish love songs together at noon break, after prayers, in the backyard of the Quran school, Kars, 2018.

LENS-BASED EXHIBITION ON VIEW: 'A Language We Share: Beverly Price and Gordon Parks' at at The Center for Art and Advocacy ⁠(@centerforartandadvocacy ).⁠ ⁠ Featuring an intergenerational dialogue between Beverly Price (@filmgoddess_ ) and #GordonParks, the #exhibition considers how #photographs function simultaneously as historical documents and symbolic forms, transmitting meaning across time. Rather than positioning the #artists as past and present, 'A Language We Share' understands their #images as occupying a shared continuum, speaking both forward and backward through enduring ethical commitments to dignity, truth and social responsibility.⁠ ⁠ The exhibition is on view through June 19, 2026. For more info, visit the link in our bio. ⁠ ⁠ Image: Gordon Parks, “Boys Looking in a Car Window, Harlem, New York, August 1943”, 1943.

OPEN CALL: We're now accepting applications for our Guest Curator program through May 18th, 2026! ⁠ •⁠ Open to emerging independent #curators, selected proposals will present an #exhibition at our #gallery space. Juried by a committee of distinguished art professionals this program serves as a platform to forward fresh ideas and new voices within the artistic mediums of lens-based practices.⁠ •⁠ A stipend will be awarded to both the curators and the exhibiting artist(s). The selected #curator and artist(s) will also have the opportunity to create up to two public programs. The exhibition will be presented in BAXTER ST's storefront gallery. ⁠ •⁠ The open call is free and we're accepting applications through 11:59PM ET on May 18, 2026. For guidelines and more info, visit the link in our bio! Share widely with your community!⁠

JOIN US TONIGHT at 6–8 PM for the opening of our exhibitions: 'On Broken Ground' by 2025 BAXTER ST Mid-Career Artist Hannah Smith Allen (@hannahsmithallen ), and 'Glue Traps' by 2026 YoungArts BAXTER ST Artist Spencer Vazquez (@spencevaz ). Come celebrate with us at 154 Ludlow Street! ⁠ •⁠ In 'Glue Traps,' Vazquez attempts to reckon with his own archive. Prompted by the discovery of a long-lost hard drive and the death of his father, a housepainter, Vazquez began asking how he might engage again with the sprawling photo diary he had assembled over the last decade. Faced with thousands of files—ranging from recent portraits of his father post-chemo to old family polaroids to rolls he shot as a teenager—Vazquez started contemplating the material future of these images. He sought a printing method that was at once ephemeral and tangible: a process that could get around the aesthetic and economic limitations of traditional fine art printing; and one that nodded to classic photographic conventions while also embracing the medium’s inherent contradictions. ⁠ •⁠ ⁠Hannah Smith Allen's exhibition includes a selection of still photographs, unique screen prints, collage, and a video installation shown alongside 'Borderlands', an accordion book published by Visual Studies Workshop Press in 2021. Spanning recent works along with those made during Donald Trump’s first presidency, the exhibition explores the American landscape as a site of both possibility and imposed limitations.⁠ •⁠ The exhibitions will be on view at 154 Ludlow Street through June 12, 2026. Learn more via the link in our bio! ⁠

JOIN US NEXT WEEK next Thursday, April 16, at 6–8 PM for the opening of our two exhibitions: 'On Broken Ground' by 2025 BAXTER ST Mid-Career Artist Hannah Smith Allen (@hannahsmithallen ), and 'Glue Traps' by 2026 YoungArts BAXTER ST Artist Spencer Vazquez (@spencevaz ). Come celebrate with us at 154 Ludlow Street! ⁠ •⁠ ⁠While making work about his late father, a housepainter, Spencer Vazquez began to reckon with the vastness of his collection of personal images, which included printed #photographs, digitized negatives, and countless digital files. Contemplating the future of these images, Vazquez sought a printing method that was at once #ephemeral and tangible, and one that nodded to the conventions of “classic” photography, such as gelatin silver prints behind museum glass, while also embracing the medium’s inherent contradictions. The artist began to approach photographic prints not only as images brimming with visual complexity, but as fragile, mutable objects capable of succumbing to time, wear, or the incidental debris of everyday life.⁠ •⁠ ⁠Hannah Smith Allen's exhibition includes a selection of still photographs, unique screen prints, #collage, and a video installation shown alongside 'Borderlands', an accordion book published by Visual Studies Workshop Press in 2021. Spanning recent works along with those made during Donald Trump’s first presidency, the exhibition explores the American landscape as a site of both possibility and imposed limitations.⁠ •⁠ The exhibitions will be on view at 154 Ludlow Street through June 12, 2026. Learn more via the link in our bio! ⁠