Times Journalists Subpoenaed as Trump Escalates Pressure on Media

 Via The New York Times

July 11, 2026

Times Journalists Subpoenaed as Trump Escalates Pressure on Media

The Justice Department is seeking to compel testimony from reporters who wrote about the new Air Force One. The Times called the move a “brazen act.”

“The appearance of federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects,” said David McCraw, The Times’s top newsroom lawyer, in a statement on Friday evening. ---click for full article

Santa Fe named favorite American city by 'Travel + Leisure' readers for second straight year

 Via The Santa Fe New Mexican

July 7, 2026

Travel + Leisure readers have selected Santa Fe as their favorite American city for the second year in a row.

The announcement was made Tuesday morning on NBC-TV's Today show.

Santa Fe Mayor Michael Garcia issued a statement crediting nearly everyone for their part in keeping Santa Fe on top.

“The recognition belongs to our residents, our artists, our small businesses, our hospitality workers and everyone who helps make The City Different such a special place,” he said.

On July 2, 2026 Monroe Gallery hosted a Gallery talk with independent photojournalist Ryan Vizzions.

In September of 2016, Ryan Vizzions traveled from Atlanta, Georgia to stand in solidarity with the Standing Rock NoDAPL movement. Bringing his camera with him, but not intending to be a media source, Vizzions soon found himself using social media to reach over half a billion people with his photographic documentation of events unfolding over the months. With viral reach of one photograph in particular, "Defend The Sacred", Vizzions’ photography helped bring awareness around the world to the movement.

In late 2020, in the midst of the Covid-19 Pandemic, Vizzions embarked on a long term, multi-year project traveling and photographing across the United States to create a photography book documenting all 50 states. 

In January, 2026 Vizzions documented "Operation Metro Surge" by ICE in Minneapolis involving roughly 3,000 federal agents, leading to the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti. His photograph of a masked ICE agent appeared as a full-page spread in the Sunday Opinion page of the February 1, 2026 issue of The New York Times. He has contributed considerable time to photographing and archiving the street memorial of Renee Good.

July 4: America The Beautiful

 

Neil Leifer: Statue of Liberty, New York Harbor, July 3, 1986

For July 4, have breakfast at Pancakes on the Plaza and visit the exhibition America The Beautiful.

America The Beautiful is an exhibition of compelling and provocative photographs illustrating America, American life, and the American people as the United States prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday amid the erosion of civil rights, human rights, and democratic norms. Open 10-4 on July 4, admission is free.

Pancakes on the Plaza brings friends, families, and neighbors together for a morning of fantastic food, incredible entertainment, and patriotic fun in the heart of downtown Santa Fe. 

Best of all? Your breakfast makes a difference! Every ticket purchased directly supports local youth. As part of our two-year support cycle, proceeds from this year's event will fund life-changing grants for The Sky Center, Gerard's House, Communities in Schools, and the Santa Fe Symphony.

Tickets

Ella Watson, American Gothic, Washington, D.C. by Gordon Parks

Via Bowdoin College Museum of Art

June 26, 2026

In his famous photograph Ella Watson, American Gothic, Washington, D.C. (1942), Gordon Parks (1912 –2006) positioned Ella Watson, who worked as a janitor in government offices, in front of an American flag with a broom and mop in her hands. In her pose and title, she echoes Grant Wood’s 1930 painting American Gothic, an iconic image of rural American resilience, while also providing a critique of the country’s inequities.

Parks created this image while on a year-long fellowship with the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in Washington, D.C, a New Deal program originally designed to help farmers recover from Depression-era agricultural disasters. In the 1930s, the FSA began hiring photographers to record the conditions of those who lived in rural or small-town environments and illustrate the necessity of federal assistance. In addition to Parks, famous photographers like Ben Shahn, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and Arthur Rothstein worked for the FSA (and their works can be found in the BCMA’s collection).

Having spent his youth in progressive Northern cities like Minneapolis and Chicago, Parks was unprepared for the challenges he faced upon his arrival in the then-racially segregated city of Washington, D.C. Parks recalled that in a single day he was “refused service at restaurants, barred from a theater, and dismissed by a department store clerk.” He later said, “I had experienced a kind of bigotry and discrimination here that I never expected to experience.”

In response, Parks decided to focus on documenting Black life in the capitol, and turned his attention to Ella Watson, who worked as a charwoman, or cleaning woman, in the FSA building. After learning about her family and her struggles, Parks decided to make Watson the subject of his first extended picture story, and for four months Watson gave the photographer access to her home and community. The resulting photographs—which show Watson not only her work as a custodian, but also at home with her family, and serving as a deaconess at her church—were a breakthrough in Parks’ career. Through Watson, Parks gained an intimate, humanist perspective on Black American life beyond the historical gleam of white Washington, D.C., one that captured both struggles and moments of joy.

Parks saw in Watson a potent critique of the country’s inequalities as well as an illustration of American fortitude. In creating the photograph, the artist said: “I felt that I must photograph this woman in a way that would make me feel or make the public feel about what Washington, D.C., was in 1942. So I put her before the American flag with a broom in one hand and a mop in another. And I said, ‘American Gothic’—that’s how I felt at the moment.” The photograph reveals Parks’ experience of coming to terms with the segregated city he once embraced as “the seat of democracy,” with all its promises and perils.

Notably, When Parks showed American Gothic to Roy Stryker, the head of the Historical Division of the FSA and Parks’ boss, he was warned that its publication could cost them their jobs. As the FSA was a government agency, the provocative image was considered too controversial. Despite being taken in 1942, the photo remained unpublished until 1948, when Parks became the first Black staff photographer at LIFE magazine.

Today, Gordon Parks’ Ella Watson, American Gothic, Washington, D.C. is one of the most iconic photographs in the history of American art and documentary photography writ large. It is currently on view in USA @ 250 at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.

Anne Strachan Cross
Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow

Also on exhibit in America The Beautiful through August 9, 2026

The Stunning Photojournalism That Made Mother Jones; includes feature by Nina Berman

 Via Mother Jones

June 25, 2026

“For decades, Mother Jones has seen photography as an essential component of its reporting,” says longtime contributing photographer Ken Light. “Photographers and their work have had and been an important voice within the magazine to reveal the truth.” The magazine’s photography has served as an uncompromising mirror to the world, evolving from the gritty black-and-white traditions of humanist documentary into an expansive, multiplatform chronicle of our time.

Across five distinct eras, this retrospective highlights a small fraction of great work from that 50-year journey. While the magazine’s editors could never have known at the time what a decade would bring, trends about each time period emerged when recently going through back issues. --Full article here

Nina Berman, “Returning From Iraq, the Damage Done,” March 2004

As the first waves of soldiers returned from Afghanistan and Iraq, frequent contributor Berman turned her camera on the complicated ways in which these veterans processed being back home. One of her subjects, 22-year-old Luis Calderon, was a former Army tank operator who was destroying a mural of Saddam Hussein when part of the wall crashed down, breaking his neck and paralyzing him. (Redux)

New Georgia O'Keeffe Documentary

 

Via WNYC

Photo by Tony Vaccaro: American painter Georgia O'Keeffe is standing outside her art studio holing her pelvis series color painting.

150th Anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn

Ryan Vizzions:  Sitting Bull Healing ride, from Poplar, MT to Fort Buford, ND, 2026

Via Native News Online

On June 25, 26, and 27, 2026, the National Park Service, in partnership with Tribal Nations, descendants, historians, elected officials, authors, military representatives, and cultural organizations, will commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The observance will provide opportunities for reflection, education, and cultural exchange.

The Battle of the Little Bighorn, fought on June 25–26, 1876, in what is now southeastern Montana, was a major conflict between the combined forces of the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes and the 7th U.S. Cavalry under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer. The battle took place during rising tensions over U.S. efforts to force Native nations onto reservations following the discovery of gold in the Black Hills, a region sacred to the Lakota.

Custer divided his regiment and launched an attack on a large encampment of Native families and warriors along the Little Bighorn River, but his forces were overwhelmed and defeated in what became one of the most well-known Indigenous military victories in North American history. The engagement resulted in the deaths of Custer and many of his men, and it remains a defining and heavily studied moment in U.S. and Native American history, symbolizing both Indigenous resistance and the escalating conflict over land, sovereignty, and U.S. expansion.

Event Details

Ryan Vizzions:  Sitting Bull healing ride, Montana, 2026

Related:

Gallery Photography Ryan Vizzions is covering the over 300 mile Sitting Bull Healing ride, from Poplar, MT to Fort Buford, ND for the 150th anniversary of Little Bighorn. Vizzions will present an Artist talk on Thursday, July 2 "From Standing Rock To Minneapolis" in association with the current exhibition "America The Beautiful". 

RSVP/Register here

Gray Zones: Unmaking the Myth of a Polarized Nation Features Photography By Nina Berman and Ron Haviv

 Via Puffin Foundation

Gray Zones: Unmaking the Myth of a Polarized Nation

Our summer exhibit was inspired by the semiquincentennial of the United States, which feels less and less united with every passing day. And yet the reality is that all of us, whether we are urban or rural, queer or straight, born in the USA or elsewhere, share similar struggles, loves, hardships, and joys. The dominant narrative is invested in dividing us, in order to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the few while keeping the rest of us on the margins. This exhibition – an extraordinary collection of work by highly accomplished photographers – challenges viewers to reconsider what are traditionally thought of as lines of division. It is an invitation to see ourselves in each other, regardless of race class, or other differences. It is a reminder that solidarity is not only possible but necessary if we are to continue as a nation.

The show will open on Saturday, June 20th. Puffin Brooklyn will be open that day from 12 pm to 5 pm. At 1 pm, several of the photographers, along with curator and participant Danny Wilcox Frazier, will discuss their works and the themes of the show. Light refreshments will be served, no rsvp needed. Please join us!

Opening June 20th, 2026

12 pm to 5 pm

With special panel discussion at 1 pm, featuring several photographers in the show along with curator and participant Danny Wilcox Frazier

An exhibition of work by eminent photographers that contradicts the narrative of extreme and intractable division in the USA

Featuring: Nina Berman, Sheila Pree Bright, Danny Wilcox Frazier, Jordan Gale, Ron Haviv, Tyrel Iron Eyes, Brooklynn Kascel, Erin Kirkland, Zun Lee, John Lowenstein, Carlos Javier Ortiz.

Curated by Danny Wilcox Frazier

Puffin Foundation

227 5th Ave. Brooklyn Between President and Carroll.

Photographs by Nina Berman and Ron Haviv are included in the current exhibition America The Beautiful, through August 9, 2026.

Flag Day, June 14, 2026

 June 14, Flag Day, 2026

Flag Day is a holiday celebrated on June 14 in the United States. It commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States on June 14, 1777 by resolution of the Second Continental Congress.

"Many prints in America the Beautiful feature various depictions of the American flag, many showing it as a symbol of identity, joy, and hope but also of oppression and violence...the interpretation of the flag depends on who's holding it.”

America The Beautiful is on exhibit through August 9, 2026.