By Elin Spring and Suzanne Révy
Those April showers worked! As the world continues to rage, masses of pastel pink, chartreuse green and bridal white blooms are proclaiming the rites of spring. It seems fitting that a profusion of photography exhibits and events are also escorting the month of May. We have listed these geographically for your planning convenience and invite you to check back throughout the month, as we update continually.
SOWA – Boston’s South End Arts District
Gallery Kayafas – Start the month right with a celebration for Palm Press at the gallery TONIGHT! Thursday, May 2nd from 6:00 – 8:00pm and visit again on First Friday, May 3rd from 5:30 – 8:00pm to view three photo exhibits: Celebrating Palm Press, a photographic tribute to its artistic and staff affiliates over five decades, the glowing panoramic Arizona Landscapes by Gus Kayafas, and pensive black & white Beautiful Veins by Ross Kiah & Mae Whitmore, on view through May 11th, 2024.
For more information, go to: https://www.gallerykayafas.com/
Galatea Fine Art – To celebrate the 2nd printing of photographer Jane Paradise’s Dune Shacks of Provincetown, the gallery is hosting an Opening Reception and book signing on First Friday, May 3rd from 6:00 – 8:00pm. To us, it’s no mystery why this inspirational book sold out. You can find out in our book review and by visiting the exhibit, on view through June 2nd, 2024.
To read our book review, go to: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/book-review-sarah-malakoff-personal-history-and-jane-paradise-the-dune-shacks-of-provincetown/
For more information, go to: https://www.galateafineart.com/

“Hide and Seek” 2019 by Nadiya Nacorda, courtesy of the artist and Abakus Projects, Boston.
Abakus Projects – Take it From Here “features artworks by photographers who use the camera as a multifaceted site of imagination, play, and self-exploration. Considering photography’s sordid relationship with the politics of representation, the selected artists collectively highlight new freedoms and visual possibilities of self-expression alive within the medium.” Co-curated by Zora Murff and Rana Young, it originally appeared at Filter Photo Festival in Chicago in 2021. Participating artists are Elliott Jerome Brown Jr., Jasmine Clarke, Peah Pauline Guilmoth, Alec Kaus, Tommy Kha, Lindley Warren Mickunas, and Nadiya Nacorda (photo). On view through May 26th, 2024, there will be a gallery reception on First Friday, May 3rd from 6:00 – 8:30pm.
NOTE: There will be a free, public Curators Talk at the gallery on Sunday, May 19th at 2:00pm.
For more information, go to: https://www.abakusprojects.com/
BOSTON PROPER

“Ink 105” 2022 from the series Persephone’s Graffiti by Olivia Parker, courtesy of Robert Klein Gallery, Boston.
Robert Klein Gallery – On the gallery walls, skyscapes and insect tracks drift across Olivia Parker’s inky, exploding backyard mushrooms in a collaborative dance that channels nature’s cycles of birth and death in her series Persephone’s Graffiti. In an online gallery, these arresting graphic images converse visually and thematically with Gohar Dashti’s Disappearing Nature, a series of delicate, bucolic Polaroid landscapes that she deliberately mars to imagine environments ravaged and lost at the hands of humankind. LAST CHANCE! On view through May 4th, 2024.
To read our review, go to: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/olivia-parker-persephones-graffiti-at-robert-klein-gallery-boston/
For more information, go to: https://www.robertkleingallery.com/exhibitions/79-olivia-parker-persephone-s-graffiti-gohar-dashti-disappearing/overview/

“Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1983” from the exhibit and book Passing Time (Nazraeli Press, 2023) by Sage Sohier, courtesy of the artist and Robert Klein Gallery, Boston.
Coming next to Robert Klein Gallery – In Passing Time, photographer Sage Sohier’s rich and complex B&W environmental portraits belie a deceptively simple conceit: people at leisure outdoors. Sohier made these portraits from Maine to Florida in the early 1980’s, an era when people spent more time outside and interacting with each other than indoors, mesmerized by electronic screens. Sohier’s entrancing portraits are not just a trip down memory lane, the real treasures lie below the surface. On view from May 11th – June 21st, 2024, there will be a free, public Opening Reception, artist talk and book signing on Saturday, May 11th from 3:00 – 5:00pm.
To read our book review, go to: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/the-way-we-were-book-review-of-passing-time-by-sage-sohier-and-the-orange-line-by-jack-lueders-booth/
For more information, go to: https://www.robertkleingallery.com/

Feature Image: “Miriam, Khiyam, Lebanon, 2019” from the series SHE by Rania Matar, courtesy of the artist and Robert Klein Gallery, Boston.
Leica Gallery Boston – Can You See Me? features three master photographers who grapple with issues of femininity, from birth to coming of age to aging and death: Eva Woolridge’s In These Hands: Black Birth-Workers’ Project, Rania Matar’s SHE (above), and Maggie Steber’s Madje Has Dementia. On view through June 8th, 2024, there will be a Reception with all the artists on Friday, May 17th from 6:00 – 8:00pm.
For more information, go to: https://leicagalleryboston.com/exhibitions/

“Stories: Chapter 2” 2010, by Alexandra de Steiguer, courtesy of the artist and Pucker Gallery, Boston.
Pucker Gallery – In her solo exhibit STORIES: Once Upon A Timeless, Alexandra de Steiguer imagines the many lives that have inhabited the Isles of Shoals off the coast of Maine. The sole resident caretaker during the five deserted months of winter for the past 27 years, de Steiguer’s glorious, ruminating B&W photographs insinuate narratives from the past in her latest series. On view from May 11th – June 3rd, 2024, there will be a free, public Opening Reception with the artist on Saturday, May 11th from 3:00 – 6:00pm.
To read our review, go to: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/alexandra-de-steiguer-stories-once-upon-a-timeless-pucker-gallery-boston/
For more information, go to: https://www.puckergallery.com/

“Off Playing Bridge” by Toni Pepe, rephotographed press picture, courtesy of the artist and the Boston Athenaeum.
Boston Athenaeum – Photographer Toni Pepe layers the tension between the pleasures of parenting, its enormous physical toll, and the cultural and psychological demands of “good mothering” in her solo exhibition Mothercraft. Employing discarded press images found on Ebay and at flea markets, Pepe holds them up to the light and re-photographs from the back side so that the bias-laden handwritten press notes appear as an overlay on the shadow image. With images dating from 1903 to as recently as 1997, Pepe has amassed a visual compendium of shifting 20th century motherly tropes. LAST CHANCE! On view through May 7th, 2024.
To read our review of this work in an October 2022 exhibit, go to: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/toni-pepe-an-ordinary-devotion-lisa-rosowsky-othering-jane-szabo-family-matters-at-danforth-art-in-framingham-ma/
For more information abut this exhibit, go to: https://bostonathenaeum.org/visit/exhibitions/mothercraft/

Carte-de-visite portrait of Harriet Hayden, one of Boston’s leading abolitionists, photographer unknown, courtesy of the Boston Athenaeum.
Also at Boston Athenaeum – Framing Freedom: The Harriet Hayden Albums examines Black abolitionists’ private lives and social activism through the perspective of a Black woman’s photograph albums from the mid-1800s. A freed slave from Kentucky, Harriet Hayden lived with her husband on Beacon Hill and became a major stop on the Underground Railroad, helping others to their freedom. Harriet’s collected albums of carte-de visite (calling cards) were a form of community building through photography, wherein the sitters controlled their own presentation. This rare collection, curated by Makeda Best, Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Oakland Museum of California, and Virginia Reynolds Badgett, former Assistant Curator at the Boston Athenaeum, offers a new way to look at Boston’s history of Black society and activism, on view through June 22nd, 2024.
For more information, go to: https://bostonathenaeum.org/whats-on/exhibitions/harriet-hayden-albums/

“Braids” from the series Cousins by Kristen Joy Emack, courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas, Boston.
Also at Boston Athenaeum – Kristen Joy Emack’s Cousins is a longterm project of intimate portraits featuring the artist’s daughter and her three cousins, probing the rarified world of girls of color. In her sensitive, questioning and affecting B&W images, Emack explores how the cousins close relationship continues to shape them. This exhibition coincides with the Boston Athenaeum’s recent acquisition of Emack’s photographs and will be on view through August 26th, 2024.
NOTE: As part of Boston Athenaeum’s ongoing Salon Series, Kristen Joy Emack will be in conversation with photo historian Dr. Alisa Prince on Monday, May 20th from 6:00 – 7:00pm, with a reception to follow. To join the waitlist, go to: https://events.bostonathenaeum.org/en/g/H5QRRnd8mB/salon-series-cousins-with-kristen-joy-emack-and-alisa-prince-5a2KUm1Ld2b/overview
For more information about the exhibit, go to: https://bostonathenaeum.org/whats-on/exhibitions/cousins/
To read our review of this series, go to: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/shawn-bush-angle-of-draw-and-kristen-joy-emack-cousins-at-gallery-kayafas-boston/

“Central Alaska Range, Ruth Glacier” by Alex Joseph Hansen, courtesy of the artist and Panopticon Gallery, Boston.
Panopticon Gallery – Twenty of Alex Joseph Hansen’s stunning black and white photographs of the Alaskan glacial system will converse across decades with those of the legendary Bradford Washburn in Glacier: Bradford Washburn’s Mountain Photography Meets Contemporary Counterpart. On view through July 30th, 2024, there will be a Gallery Reception on Thursday, May 23rd from 6:00 – 8:00pm, with an Artist Talk at 7:00pm.
For more information, go to: https://www.panopticongallery.com/alex-hansen

“The Meadow” 2003, from the series The Meadow by Barbara Bosworth (American, born in 1953). Photograph, inkjet print, Scott Offen Collection, © Barbara Bosworth, courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA, Boston) – During her long career, photographer and naturalist Barbara Bosworth has created a trilogy of seminal projects devoted to The Meadow, The Heavens, and The Sea. In The Meadow, Bosworth, her large-format camera, and writer friend Margot Anne Kelley chronicled a meadow in Carlisle, Massachusetts over 15 years at different times of day and in all seasons. In the large-scale photographs on exhibit, Bosworth’s incessant curiosity, detailed observations and sense of belonging to the environment invite viewers to share her visceral and spiritual connections. The Meadow will be on view in the museum’s Herb Ritts Gallery from May 25th – December 1st, 2024.
For more information, go to: https://www.mfa.org/exhibition/barbara-bosworth-the-meadow

Stephen Shames, Oakland, California: Kathleen Cleaver, Communications Secretary and first female member of the Party’s decision-making Central Committee, talks with Black Panthers from Los Angeles who came to the “Free Huey” rally in DeFremery Park (named by the Panthers Bobby Hutton Park) in West Oakland (detail), 1968. Archival pigment print. Gift of Lizbeth and George Krupp. © 2023, Stephen Shames. Courtesy of MFA, Boston.
Continuing at MFA, Boston – Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party gathers twenty-seven photographs by Stephen Shames that document the efforts these women undertook at community schools, free medical clinics, voter registration sites, community nutrition programs, and elder care centers across the United States, recalling and underlining their importance to the civil rights movement. On view through June 24th, 2024.
For more information, go to: https://www.mfa.org/exhibition/comrade-sisters-women-of-the-black-panther-party

From the series Little Planet by Fran Gardino, courtesy of the artist and Arnold Arboretum, Boston.
Arnold Arboretum – In his solo exhibiton, Fran Gardino presents two glorious series featuring photographs created across the Aboretum over the last 10 years: Little Planet, square-format images in which panoramas are curved back on themselves to create circular images that reflect the cycles of the earth and The Many Moods of the Arboretum, a series of digital photographs that have been stitched together into panoramas to show the full breadth of the landscape. On view through June 9th, 2024.
For more information, go to: https://arboretum.harvard.edu/events-2/current-and-past-art-shows/
CAMBRIDGE & BROOKLINE
Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology at Harvard University, Cambridge – In his award-winning project, Manifest: Thirteen Colonies, Wendel A. White selected and photographed objects with charged historic and spiritual impact on African Americans. Black and white baby dolls from a famed social science experiment, a midcentury voting machine, a lock of Frederick Douglass’ hair all gain resonance in White’s spare, naturally-lit images. As the 2021 Robert Gardner Fellow in Photography at the museum, White’s exhibition will be celebrated with a free Preview and Conversation with White and William E. Williams, Haverford College Professor, on Thursday, May 16th from 6:00 – 8:30pm. The exhibit is accompanied by a book published by the museum in conjunction with Radius Books and will be on view from Saturday, May 18th, 2024 through Sunday, April 13th, 2025.
For more information, go to: https://peabody.harvard.edu/news/wendel-white-photo-exhibition-manifest-thirteen-colonies-open-harvard%E2%80%99s-peabody-museum
Bridge Gallery, Cambridge – Unbowed. Unbroken.: Portraits of Cultural Resilience highlights the work of the two winners of the 2024 ZEKE Awards, Natalya Saprunova and Sarah Fretwell, with a nod to the five photographers who won Honorable Mentions. On view through May 18th, 2024.
NOTE: There will be an Artists Talk, both in-gallery and on Zoom, on Monday, May 20th from 7:00 – 8:30pm. For free registration, go to: https://socialdocumentary.net/cms/2024-festival-zeke-award-winners-bridge-gallery
For more information, go to: https://www.bridge.photos/shows

Storytime group photography exhibit at CAA@Canal Gallery
Cambridge Art Association @Canal Gallery – Images selected by juror Sherri Nienass Littlefield for the group photography exhibit Storytime “blur the lines of past and present, reality and fiction, causing the viewer’s curiosity to fill in the wonder.” On view through May 24th, 2024.
For more information, go to: https://www.cambridgeart.org/

From the series Tossed by Pelle Cass, courtesy of the artist and Praise Shadows Gallery, Brookline.
Praise Shadows Gallery, Brookline – In his debut exhibit at the gallery, Pelle Cass’ Tossed presents never-before exhibited works featuring his signature still time-lapse images that condense hours of movement and visual minutiae into a single frame. The photographs present objects in a confused levitation, sometimes defying gravity, and always in surprising acts of rising, cresting, and falling. On view through May 17th, 2024.
For more information, go to: https://www.praiseshadows.com/exhibitions/44-tossed-solo-exhibition-by-pelle-cass/
THE BURBS

“Pulse: Seismic Register 2020.02.26.154 (Peace, January 1992)” by Muriel Hasbun, 2020, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

“New Land 230” by Rodrigo Valenzuela, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography (installation view by Elin Spring).

“Women in Skirts” 2019, by Alejandro Cartagena, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography (installation view by Elin Spring).
Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester – The museum opens a slate of shows including the group show Huellas de Existence / Traces of Existence featuring Alejandro Cartagena’s “Photo Structure/Foto Estructura,” Muriel Hasbun’s “Pulse: New Cultural Registers / Pulso: Nuevos registros culturales,” with Alejandro “Luperca” Morales. Also on view, “Nuevas Tierras/New Lands” by Rodrigo Valenzuela and “Una Mexicana en Gringolandia” by Ileana Doble Hernandez. These artists explore the role of the Latin American ethos through documentary photography, the landscape, abstraction and the archive. On view through June 9th, 2024.

From the series Una mexicana en Gringolandia, by Ileana Doble Hernandez courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography
For more information, go to: https://griffinmuseum.org/current-exhibitions/

From the series Paso del Norte by Alejandro “Luperca” Morales, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.

Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Untitled, 1963, printed ca. 1963, gelatin silver print, courtesy of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift in honor of Edward Anthony Hill. © Estate of the Artist.
Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover – Two “must see” photography exhibits this spring are A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845 originally organized by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. The second exhibit is Robert Frank and Todd Webb: Across America, 1955 that comes to the Addison from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Both exhibitions will be on view through July 31st, 2024.
To read our review of A Long Arc: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/a-long-arc-photography-in-the-american-south-since-1845-at-addison-gallery-of-american-art-in-andover-ma/
To read our review of Robert Frank and Todd Webb: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/robert-frank-and-todd-webb-across-america-1955-at-addison-gallery-of-american-art-in-andover-ma/
For more information: https://addison.andover.edu

Left: Robert Frank, Bar, Las Vegas, Nevada, 1955–56, gelatin silver print, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum purchase. © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation. Right: Todd Webb, Joe, Abiquiú, NM, 1955, printed 2023, inkjet print, courtesy of Todd Webb Archive. © Todd Webb Archive.

“Addis Neger by Aïda Muluneh, 2019, from the Mirror of the Soul series, Inkjet print. Museum purchase by exchange. 2023.33.4. Peabody Essex Museum. Courtesy of the artist. © Aïda Muluneh.
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem– As part of a larger exhibition, Ethiopia at the Crossroads, the museum will be showcasing the acquisition of six large photographs by contemporary Ethiopian artist Aïda Muluneh. PEM curator at large Lydia Peabody writes, “In bold, primary colors, Aïda Muluneh’s images revisit women’s roles in Ethiopian traditions and customs. Women painted in stark whites, vibrant reds and azure blues perform a range of tasks: clothing and food preparation as well as cultural and religious practices. These photographs express what it is to be an African woman by encapsulating gender and identity as a celebration of contemporary self-expression. As the first contemporary Ethiopian artist to have her work acquired for PEM’s collection, Muluneh raises awareness of the impact of photography in shaping cultural perceptions.” On view through July 7th, 2024.

Courtesy of the Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts
Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts, Providence – Honoring the late photographer George DeWolfe, Lasting Landscapes Lasting Influences brings together a group who worked with or were mentored by DeWolfe, including Robert Belleville, Lydia B Goetze, Lynn Harrison, Bob Hartung, Jodie Hulden, David Pinkham and John Simmons. This is the second in a series of shows to provide an update to landscape photography. On view through May 10th, 2024.
Opening later this month, Guardians of Arcadia, featuring photo illustrations by Jim Bremer, will be on view from May 16th – June 14th, 2024.
For information: https://www.riphotocenter.org/