Best Photo Picks June 2025

By Elin Spring and Suzanne Révy

June is erupting in natural beauty and many area photographic exhibits have followed suit. This month, we feature a full range of environmental expressions – both natural and socioeconomic – throughout metro Boston and New England. As always, we list exhibits and events by locality, for your planning convenience, and invite you to check back often, as we continually update and add listings.

BOSTON PROPER

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA, Boston) – Renowned photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank was born 100 years ago. To celebrate, the museum is exhibiting Robert Frank: Mary’s Book, featuring seventy-five photographs and inscriptions he created in 1949 as part of a gift scrapbook to the woman who would become his first wife, Mary Lockspeiser. These original spreads from the MFA’s collection are accompanied by photographs Frank took in Paris, on loan from the artist’s foundation. On view through June 22nd, 2025.

To read our review, go to: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/robert-frank-marys-book-at-the-museum-of-fine-arts-boston/

NOTE: When visiting, don’t miss a selection of photographs from the MFA’s marvelous archives, on view in the museum’s Rotunda!

For more information, go to: https://www.mfa.org/exhibition/robert-frank-marys-book

 

Boston Athenaeum – Featuring the elegant, renowned platinum prints of Edwin Hale Lincoln (1848-1938), Wild Flowers of New England highlights his unique blend of scientific specificity and artistic expression. The exhibit also places Lincoln’s work in conversation with botanical printers and photographers of the past and present, who share his reverence for the ephemeral beauty of native plants and contextualize his practice within the larger effort to document and preserve New England’s wildflowers. On view from June 10th – September 5th, 2025.

NOTE: There will be an Opening Reception on Monday June 9th from 5:30 – 7:30pm. Registration is required: https://community.bostonathenaeum.org/s/events?event=a2KUm000004yh30

For more information, go to: https://bostonathenaeum.org/whats-on/exhibitions/edwin-hale-lincoln-wild-flowers/

 

Leica Gallery Boston – What comes to mind when you think of farmers? Probably not women. When photojournalist JuanCarlos González learned 41% of Vermont farmers are women, he traveled across Vermont to chronicle the daily routines of 45 female farmers and their agricultural practices, from saffron cultivation and goat farming to flower and produce growing. Inspired by his Puerto Rican grandmother’s unheralded labors, González sheds light on the lifestyle of these perseverant agricultural laborers. On view from June 6th – July 13th, 2025, there will be an Artist Talk on Friday, June 6th from 5:00-7:00pm followed by the Opening Reception from 7:00 – 9:00pm. 

For more information, go to: https://www.instagram.com/leicagalleryboston/

 

Krakow Witkin Gallery – Mixed-media artist Frank Poor literally re-frames our window on the world in a beguiling variety of scaled photographic constructions. Hand-crafted windows, doors and even a miniature model home host images encompassing views both through and reflected in photographed windows, along with shadows of these images and the actual wall behind them. Poor’s mellifluous combination of familiar scenes and clever distortions invite us to imagine alternate worlds. His sculptural works are accompanied by a series of photogravures that extend the view that “memory exists somewhere between artifact and invention.” LAST CHANCE! On view through June 7th, 2025.

For more information, go to: https://www.krakowwitkingallery.com/exhibitions/

 

Griffin Museum Gallery at Lafayette City Center (LCC), Downtown Crossing – Elemental Blues: Contemporary Cyanotypes explores the ways that six artists today utilize the ancient, archival method of “blue printing” to express creative new imagery. Featured artists are: Anna Leigh Clem, Brett Windham, Bryan Whitney, Julia Whitney Barnes (above), Sally Chapman and Cynthia Katz. On view through June 30th, 2025.

To read our review, go to: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/elemental-blues-contemporary-cyanotypes-by-julia-whitney-barnes-sally-chapman-anna-leigh-clem-cynthia-katz-bryan-whitney-and-brett-day-windham-at-griffin-museum-gallery-at-lafayette-city-center-passag/

For more information about this exhibit and associated programming, go to: https://griffinmuseum.org/show/elemental-blues-contemporary-cyanotypes/

 

SOWA – Boston’s South End Arts District

Abakus Projects – The incisive, affecting photographs in Judith Blacks’ solo show Tangible Memories are at once a family album and opportunities for reflection and invention. Images spanning over 40 years of her family’s domestic life “are actual physical memories, evoking stories, truths and lies, all of which are ever changing, depending on the reader’s perspective.” On view from June 6th – July 20th, 2025, there will be an Opening Reception with the artist on First Friday, June 6th from 6:00 – 8:30pm.

For more information, go to: https://www.abakusprojects.com/

 

GREATER BOSTON – Cambridge and Somerville

Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology at Harvard University, Cambridge – Castaway: The Afterlife of Plastic presents work by Mexican artists Ilana Boltvinik and Rodrigo Viñas, who together form the collective TRES, awardees of the Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography. The bilingual photographic exhibition documents their 2016 journey along the beaches of Queensland, Western Australia, and Tasmania, where they collected and photographed varied debris that had washed up from places as far away as China. Their images, many presented in macro scale, evoke archaeology, marine biology, and cartography, inviting viewers to ponder the natural landscapes and the stark, unnatural objects scattered across them. Exhibit curator Ilisa Barbash emphasizes that “rather than producing a simple diatribe about the environment, TRES plays with the sizes, shapes, and colors of familiar castaway items, inviting us to see their beauty and attempt to make sense of them.” On view through April 6th, 2026.

For more information, go to: https://peabody.harvard.edu/castaway-afterlife-plastic

 

Cooper Gallery (Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art) at Harvard University, Cambridge – Free as they want to be: Artists Committed to Memory presents contemporary perspectives of photography and film that recall legacies of slavery and its aftermath. Examining the social lives of a diverse group of Americans on the land, at home, in photographic albums, at historic sites, and in public memory, the show also includes nineteenth-century photographs, offering views of a people who expressed their desire to be free. On view through June 30th, 2025.

NOTE: Curator Dell Hamilton will be leading tours at the Cooper Gallery at 3:00pm on Tuesday, June 3rd and Wednesday, June 18th. Tours are limited to 25 people. registration is first-come, first-serve. Email the gallery to reserve a spot: thecoopergallery@fas.harvard.edu

For more information about this exhibit, go to: https://www.coopergallery.fas.harvard.edu/free-as-they-want-to-be

 

Photographic Resource Center (PRC), Cambridge – Three Southeast Asian-American artists pay tribute to the strength and resilience of their Thai, Cambodian, and Vietnamese grandmothers, whose perseverance and wisdom paved the way for their families to survive hardship and immigration to the US. Curated by PRC Program Manager Catherine LeComte Lecce, My Grandmother is an Altar features photography, film, and altar work by Tarik Bartel, Kannetha Brown, and Anhkim Dang (who will also be presenting a special screening of her film, “Confessions of a Cool Girl”). On through July 5th, 2025, there will be an Opening Reception with the artists in the Vandernoot Gallery on Saturday May 31st from 5:00 – 7:00pm.

Special screening of Dang’s film will take place in the Lesley University Hall Screening Room from 4:30 – 5:00pm. The event is free but registration is required due to space limitations: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/film-screening-confessions-of-a-cool-girl-by-anhkim-dang-tickets-1374936896269?aff=oddtdtcreator

For more information about this exhibit, go to: https://www.prcboston.org/my-grandmother-is-an-altar/

NOTE: Photographic submissions are being accepted for EXPOSURE 2025: The 29th Annual PRC Juried Members Exhibition, juried by Conor Moynihan, Interim Department Head & Associate Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs at the RISD Museum, Providence, RI. Application deadline is June 15th. For information, go to: https://www.prcboston.org/exposure-2025-the-29th-annual-prc-juried-members-exhibition/

 

Bridge Gallery, Cambridge – “Reckonings: Reportage from Rwanda and Spain” features the winners of the 2025 ZEKE Awards. Carlos Folgoso Sueiro’s series Beyond the Lake (Galicia, Spain) won the Award for Documentary Photography and Jan Banning’s series Blood Bonds: Reconciliation in Post-Genocide Rwanda won the Award for Systemic Change. On view through Saturday, June 7th, 2025, there will be a Closing Reception with Jan Banning in person and Sueiro remote from Spain via Zoom, Wednesday, June 4th from 7:00 – 8:30pm.

For more information, go to: https://mailchi.mp/socialdocumentary/visual-storytelling-festival-17356831

 

The Multicultural Arts Center, East Cambridge – Over the past two decades, photojournalist Bill Chapman has traveled to Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama to photograph surviving players of the Negro Leagues, those venerable organizations that garnered the talents of would-be Major League baseball players before racial integration in 1947. On view from June 16th – August 1st, 2025, there will be an Opening Reception with the artist on Thursday, June 19th from 6:00 – 8:00pm.

For more information, go to: https://multiculturalartscenter.org/nlp/

SomArt Space at the Somerville Armory – Developed by Neuroscientist and photographer Joshua Sariñana, Mental Mapping is an experimental, collaborative project that draws on the connections between between art, science, technology, and community engagement. Large Language Models such as ChatGPT are utilized to chart a participant’s cognitive networks and investigate connections between them and their environments, both physical and virtual. On view to explore and/or participate through June 22nd, 2025.

NOTE! There will be an Artist Talk and Q&A on Tuesday, June 10th from 6:00 – 8:00pm. For details and free registration, go to: https://somervilleartscouncil.org/events/mentalmapping/

For more information, go to: https://www.joshuasarinana.com/mental-mapping

 

THE BURBS

Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester – New Horizons: Contemporary Korean Photography introduces New England audiences to seven contemporary Korean photographers who document and interpret their dynamic and changing society, broadly exploring themes of longing and loss. Curated by Joanne Junga Yang, the exhibition features Ok Hyun Ahn, Seongyoun Koo, Anna Lim, Soosik Lim, Hyundoo Park, Jiyeon Sung (above) and Sun Hi Zo. On view through June 29th, 2025.

To read our review: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/new-horizons-contemporary-korean-photography-at-griffin-museum-in-winchester-ma/

For more information: https://griffinmuseum.org/show/koreancontemporary25/

 

Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover – Drawing on its extensive photographic archive, museum Director Allison Kemmerer has curated Dynamic Duo, an exhibit that considers the relationships and interactions of two beings sharing space, whether they be romantic partners, family members, close friends, rivals, strangers, or interspecies companions. On view through July 31st, 2025.

To read our review, go to: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/dynamic-duos-group-photo-show-at-addison-gallery-of-american-art-in-andover-ma/

For more information, go to: https://addison.andover.edu/exhibition/dynamic-duos/

 

Peabody Esssex Museum (PEM), Salem – As part of their summer Korean art bonanza, PEM presents Building Dreams, South Korean artist Jung Yeondoo’s photographic and video examinations of his people’s dreams and aspirations. In his series Bewitched, subjects pose identically in side-by-side scenes picturing what they do versus what they want to do. In the series Evergreen Towers, Yeondoo observes the individuality and personalities of families living in identical units of generic high rise buildings. On view through January 25th, 2026.

For more information, go to: https://www.pem.org/exhibitions/jung-yeondoo-building-dreams

 

Heftler Visiting Artist Gallery, Endicott College, Beverly – Photographer & professor Larry Volk and former student, photographer Sean Sullivan share their passion in a two-person exhibit, DRIVEN: The Art and Culture of Classic Cars. Sullivan’s Classic Style showcases cars made between the 1930’s and 1960’s, “stunning sculptural artifacts of American culture,” in his signature bright and bold graphic compositions. Volk’s Autorama: Car Culture in America highlights people and their passion for machines that are “vessels of identity, legacy and connection.” On view from June 7th – August 1st, 2025.

NOTE: There will be a “Cars and Coffee” Opening Reception with the artists on Saturday, June 7th from 8:00 – 10:00 am. Attendance is free. For tickets and information about this exhibition, go to: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/driven-the-art-culture-of-classic-cars-coffee-reception-june-7th-8-10-tickets-1207048136469?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=cp&aff=ebdsshcopyurl

 

Kniznick Gallery at Brandeis University, Waltham – Hannah Altman’s solo show, As It Were, Suspended in Midair explores how myths and legends are shared, woven and reconsidered through generations within the Jewish diaspora. Employing Yiddish literature and mystical texts, Altman places her female sitters either in the landscape or within interiors that are fraught with tension, as she interprets and retells traditional stories based in a patriarchal culture. On view through June 12th, 2025. 

To read our review: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/as-it-were-suspended-in-midair-by-hannah-altman-kniznick-gallery-brandeis-university-waltham-ma/

For more information: https://www.brandeis.edu/hbi/artist-program/index.html

 

CENTRAL MASSACHUSETTS

Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg – Stephen DiRado, Better Together: Forty Years of Photography  presents work from the artist’s large format black and white projects including his Dinner Series, Bell Pond, Jump and portraits from Martha’s Vineyard. This retrospective also features a projection of his entire Across the Table project which boasts just over a thousand images, as well as films that examine his process of making art from everyday encounters with family, friends and surroundings. LAST CHANCE!! On view through June 1st, 2025.

NOTE: Free exhibition walk-through with Stephen DiRado on Saturday, May 31st at 1:00pm.

To read our review: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/stephen-dirado-better-together-four-decades-of-photographs-at-fitchburg-art-museum-in-ma/

Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg – Tara Sellios: Ask Now the Beasts revels in the dance between mortality and immortality through still-life images of organic material such as dried flowers, desiccated insects and animal skeletons. Sellios creates these divine and physical tableaux based on expressive and detailed sketches, then renders them in lush color on 8″ by 10″ film and large format prints. On view through January 18th, 2026. 

To read our review: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/ask-now-the-beasts-tara-sellios-at-fitchburg-art-museum-in-ma/

For more information about all exhibits and to register for events, go to: https://fitchburgartmuseum.org

 

CAPE COD

The Workspace Gallery, Eastham – Feeling the urge to protest recent events? This exhibit will inspire you. Photographer Kevin McKeon’s Good Trouble: To the Streets bears witness to the collective resistance of our time—Black Lives Matter protests, Women’s March, LGBTQ+ pride movements, and the rising surge of “Hands Off” demonstrations. With raw urgency and striking intimacy, McKeon shows people fighting injustice, demanding dignity, and as the late John Lewis urged, making “good trouble.” ONGOING

For more information, go to: https://bobkornimaging.com/good-trouble-to-the-streets-2/

 

ROAD TRIP! 

Rhode Island 

Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts, Providence – the 11th International Exhibition juried by Zora J. Murff and Rana Young featuring Olajide Adeleke, Eddy Aldana, Duygu Aytac, Emma Backer, Marina Bezrukova, Christa Blackwood, Ronald Butler, William Camargo, Marisa Colesis, Daniel Cosentino, Nicholas Dantzer, Maia Demar, Chris Diani, Sharon Draghi, Cindy Elizabeth, Jon Feinstein, Dean Forbes, Kendall Gilliam, Kris Graves, Dimitriy Gushchiin, Eric Guzman, David Hebb, Jamie Holland, Jerrie Hurd, Miles Jordan, Jessica Just, Alec Kaus, Ken Konchel, Alison Lake, Catherine LeComte Lecce, Victoria Manning, Andy Mattern, Daniel McInnes, Sarah Meftah, Hector Membreno-Canales, Yong Min Park, Dustin Nguyen, Brooks Plummer, Alkaid Ramirez, Steve Rappaport, David Rowell, Jonah Saffran-Johnson, Anastasia Shik, Katie Singleton, Colin Smith, Emma Sobel, Quincey Spagnoletti, Michael Stenta, JW Toftness, Thomas Whitworth, Shea Wilt, Sonnie Wooden & Shuyuan Zhou. On view through June 13th, 2025.

For more information: https://www.riphotocenter.org/coming-may-15th-11th-international-exhibition/

Opening later this month at Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts, Providence – Bill Parker: A Matter of Influence brings together works by nineteen former students and colleagues of William E. Parker including a wide variety of silver gelatin prints. Participating artists are Renee Allie, Mauro Altamura, Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock, John Back, Reenie Barrow, Stephan Brigidi, Hilary French, Wendy Gogel, Peg Harrigan, Ted Hendrickson, Bob Kelley, Mary Kocol, Dean Kotula, Bob Martin, Stephen Petegorsky, David Seigel, Jim Stone, Brian Swift & John Willis. Opens with a reception on June 19th from 5 to 8pm, and will be on view through July 11th, 2025. 

For more information: https://www.riphotocenter.org/coming-june-19th-bill-parker-a-matter-of-influence/

Connecticut

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven – David Goldblatt: No Ulterior Motive is a major retrospective of the late South African photographer featuring works from the 1950’s to the 2010’s. Culled from two major repositories of his work at Yale University and the Art Institute of Chicago, the exhibition features early black and white pictures along with post-apartheid large format color images. Also included,  photographs by several of Goldblatt’s peers, such as Ernest Cole, Santu Mofokeng, and Jo Ractliffe, in addition to a a generation of younger South Africans, many of whom Goldblatt mentored, including Lebohang Kganye and Zanele Muholi. On view through June 22nd 2025.

For more information: https://artgallery.yale.edu/exhibitions/exhibition/david-goldblatt-no-ulterior-motive

 

New Hampshire

Hood Museum, Hanover, NH – In her first major solo exhibition, artist Cara Romero explores themes of indigenous culture. Titled Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Living Light) the show includes over sixty large-scale photographs and site specific installations curated by Dr. Jami Powell, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Indigenous Art. On view through August 10th 2025. 

For more information: https://hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu/news/2023/11/hood-museum-present-cara-romeros-first-solo-museum-exhibition-2025

 

Maine

Maine Museum of Photographic Arts, Portland – The New Abstraction features works by Deb Dawson, Bryan Graff, Carol Eisenberg, Tara Sellios, Paul Rider, Luc Demers, Rush Brown, John Gintoff, Joan Fitzsimmons, Caroline Savage, Andrew O’Brien and Brenton Hamilton. On view from June 6th through July 26th, 2025.

For more information:https://www.mainemuseumofphotographicarts.org

 

Cove Street Arts, Portland – Phenomena curated by Bruce Brown will feature the surreal work of Adam Ekberg and atmospheric abstractions by Sarah Szwajkos. On view from June 19th through August 9th.

For more information: https://www.covestreetarts.com/exhibitions-1/phenomenapreview

 

The Parsonage Gallery, Searsport – Combining photography, poetic text, and alternative processes, Sal Taylor Kydd’s solo exhibit Heard probes themes of memory and belonging through women’s voices. Using antique vernacular photographs in her exquisitely crafted assemblages, Kydd evokes both an elegy and invocation, calling forth the voices of mothers, daughters, ancestors, and strangers to re-imagine voices lost to history. On view through June 22nd, 2025. 

For more information, go to: https://parsonagegallery.org/exhibitionschedule/heard-sal-taylor-kydd

 

Portland Museum of Art, Portland – Celebrating the acquisition of twelve unique photograms of snakeskins arranged as hieroglyphs with Jo Sandman: Skin Deep on view through August 17th, 2025. 

For more information: https://www.portlandmuseum.org/jo-sandman-skin-deep

 

Vermont

Vermont Center for Photography, Brattleboro – Presence: The Photographic World of Lotte Jacobi brings together prints from private collections and the archive of the photographer’s work at the University of New Hampshire.  Lotte Jacobi (1896-1990) was a prolific photojournalist and portrait photographer known for her dramatic black and white prints of artists, dancers and actors, along with ordinary men and women. Her humanist approach to picture making endows her images with sensitivity, pathos and grace. On view from May 2nd through June 29th, 2025. 

For more information: https://vcphoto.org/exhibits/current/

 

Shelburne Museum, Shelburne – Using a large format camera and the cyanotype process, artist David Sokosh explores the Shelburne’s collection of American ephemera. Honoring the vision of the museum’s founder Electra Havemeyer Webb, Blueprint of a Collection: Cyanotype Photography by David Sokosh presents the collection with his fresh, inventive imagery. On view from May 10th  – October 26th, 2025.

For more information: https://shelburnemuseum.org/exhibition/blueprint-of-a-collection/