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

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

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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

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.

New Exhibit At Griffin Museum Includes Ashley Gilbertson and Mark Peterson

Via The Griffin Museum of Photography

Vision(ary) is the Griffin Museum of Photography’s annual summer public art exhibition dedicated to the art of visual storytelling. This public art installation features individual exhibitions with distinct photographic styles, including banners hung on light standards and art installations around the Griffin Museum.

From the Civil Rights Movement to contemporary struggles for racial equity, gender justice, environmental protection, labor rights, immigration reform, and democratic accountability, protest has shaped the American narrative.

Photography has been central to this history—documenting resistance, amplifying voices, and creating images that define collective memory.

In the light of America’s 250th anniversary, this year’s edition, Raising Our Voices, presents photographic projects that focus on advocacy, social justice, and activism within the United States—past or present.

Vision(ary) is supported by the Winchester Cultural District, Winchester Cultural Council, John & Mary Murphy Foundation, En Ka Society, Winchester Rotary, Winchester Savings Bank, Griffin Museum Directors Circle, and other cultural and private partners. The exhibition concept and Photo Cube structures are designed by our long time producing partner, Photoville.

Ashley Gilbertson

Ashley Gilbertson

An Occupy Wall Street demonstrator is arrested on Broadway and Wall Street on November 17, 2011

On September 14, 2008, financial markets around the world plummeted, heralding the beginning of the current economic crisis, the most severe since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Bear Sterns and Lehmann Bros. went bankrupt overnight, and trillions of dollars were invested by the federal government in bail-outs and loans. The nucleus for the crash was Wall Street, where high risk complex bonds turned into toxic assets and unregulated trading imploded.

Three blocks from the Stock Exchange and almost exactly three years later, the Occupy Wall Street protest movement began.

For two months hundreds of people occupied a small wind swept plaza known as Zuccotti Park, where tents, a kitchen, a library, and a twenty-four hour drum circle were quickly set up. Occupiers represented hundreds of different causes, though their overarching frustrations lay with economic inequality and corporate greed. Their slogan “We are the 99%” referred to the enormous income gap between the wealthiest 1% and the rest of the population.

These pictures depict Wall Street during the crash in 2008 and the Occupy movement of 2011. --Ashley Gilbertson

Mark Peterson

“The Memory Hole is a look at America from November 5, 2024 when President Trump was elected to a second term, till the present, how it has changed America.  I am photographing this time for others to see knowing that in the future these images will be dismissed as fake news . As in The Memory Hole in George Orwell’s book 1984, the truth will be burned: ‘There was a memory hole in the opposite wall. O’Brien lifted the grating. Unseen, the frail slip of paper was whirling away on the current of warm air; it was vanishing in a flash of flame. O’Brien turned away from the wall. ‘Ashes,’ he said. ‘Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does not exist. It never existed.'” --Mark Peterson

Ashley Gilbertson and Mark Peterson have photographs included in the current exhibition "America The Beautiful", on view at Monroe Gallery through August 9, 2026.

Gallery Talk - RYAN VIZZIONS: From Standing Rock To Minneapolis

  

                                       

Ryan Vizzions: Faces of Fascism, Minneapolis, January, 2026

On July 4, 2026, our nation will commemorate and celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence amid the erosion of civil rights, human rights, and democratic norms. Monroe Gallery presents a special Artist Talk in conjunction with the current exhibition "America The Beautiful".

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 documentation of events unfolding over the months and helped bring awareness around the world to the movement.

In late 2020 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. Vizzions documented "Operation Metro Surge" in January, 2026 by ICE in Minneapolis involving roughly 3,000 federal agents, leading to the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti. His phootograph of a masked ICE agent appeared as a full-page spread in the February 1 edition of The New York Times Opinion section.

Vizzions has contributed considerable time to photographing and archiving the street memorial of Renee Good.



Thursday, July 2, 2026

Starting promptly at 5:30 pm. Seating is limited and live on Zoom

RSVP essential to info@monroegallery.com or 505 992 0800

Zoom registration here

Stars and Strife: Monroe Gallery of Photography Exhibition Puts Sharp Focus on Images of Division and Democracy in Peril

 Via Pasatiempo

By Ania Hull

May 22, 2026

David Butow's photograph of "A protester at Ferguson police headquarters two nights after the Grand Jury decision, November 24, 2014" on the cover of Pasatiempo

“I think I was mistaken in thinking that democracy was a birthright,” Michelle Monroe says.

The co-owner of Monroe Gallery of Photography is sitting behind a large desk at the front of the art space, with her husband, Sidney Monroe. The two gallerists and curators are both warm and sharp and have no qualms about speaking their minds on the theme reflected in their latest show: America is in serious trouble.

The walls of the gallery that are visible from the front desk are filled with dozens of prints by photojournalists who’ve witnessed first-hand that "trouble" the Monroes speak of: they illustrate discrimination, racism, social and political violence, erasure of history, poverty, and the crumbling of one of the world’s oldest modern democracies. The prints are all part of America the Beautiful, a new group exhibition that opened earlier this month and runs through August 9.

The Monroes contend that some people refuse to see an unwashed version of their country — and also concede that it is difficult to look at photos that unveil the difficult, distressing, and ugly moments of American history. But the goal of this exhibition, the Monroes say, is to bring the issues to light in the hope that viewers will not turn away.

The exhibition commemorates the 250th anniversary of the birth of the nation and of the American experiment, doing it in a way that shows a beautiful America with gorgeous vistas but also reveals a side that viewers might be less comfortable seeing, the scenes of the United States of America hidden behind Old Glory.

“We were seeing exhibitions and plans being put into place for commemorating the 250th anniversary,” Sydney says, “and we’ve seen a lot of sanitization of our reality.

“One of the great benefits of representing photojournalists is that they document history,” he adds. “Their photographs are evidence.”

The photographs are from a range of eras, beginning in the 1930s up to this year, and reflect varying topics, such as protests, veterans, immigrants' rights, and symbols of poverty and other financial hardships.

And perhaps these images aren't the ones we want to see to inspire us to celebrate this national milestone but rather represent, the Monroes say, an opportunity to face our demons.

It begins with the flag

The Monroes keep a glass container on their front desk filled with individually wrapped whistles of the same kind anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis used to alert their immigrant neighbors of an imminent Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid.

Ryan Vizzions: Faces of Fascism, Minneapolis, January, 2026

The Monroes share these whistles with gallery visitors. Last year, they gave out “Good Trouble” pins. This summer, Michelle says, they will distribute pins bearing an upside-down American flag, a symbol of distress.

A photo by independent photojournalist Tracy Barbutes in America the Beautiful shows an upside-down American flag hanging from El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. It was hung in protest of the thousands of federal job cuts that President Trump’s administration imposed early in 2025.

Many other 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.

“I suppose the American flag is like the crown,” Michelle says. “We formed against a monarchy, but we still needed a universal symbol, and the interpretation of the flag depends on who's holding it.”

Sanjay Suchak:  Scene from a birthday party…Washington, Dc, June 14, 2025

In another print in the exhibition — the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Soiling of Old Glory” that Boston Herald American photographer Stanley J. Forman took in 1976 during an anti-bussing protest in Boston — the American flag is used as weapon: A white teenager, Joseph Rakes, holds it by its pole and thrusts it finial toward Black activist and lawyer Ted Landsmark, who’s being helped to his feet by another person.

In the 2006 photograph “Ty with Flags” by documentary photographer and filmmaker Nina Berman, young Marine Sgt. Tyler Ziegel stands on the porch of his house in the shadow of a large American flag. Ziegel was seriously wounded during his second tour in Iraq by a suicide car bomber. He died in 2012 of heroin and alcohol poisoning. This photo was taken the morning of his wedding, which ended in divorce that same year.

Berman says the photo of Ziegel and others in her series of veteran photos show the realities of war and the toll of the American flag on the bodies of soldiers who’d been sent to fight for it, often not even understanding what the conflict was about.

Ron Haviv: Anti ICE protestors clash with ICE agents outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building during a protest January 17, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota

The atrocities continue through current events. Noted human rights photojournalist Ron Haviv's image in the show depicts a scene in Minneapolis on January 17 as anti-ICE protestors clash with ICE agents outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building. The American flag in Haviv’s photo obscures more than half of the scene but gives prominent focus to an ICE agent in full police-like uniform, with a bullet-proof vest and a mask reminiscent of gas masks from WWII. Behind him are other ICE agents in helmets and one in a makeshift mask made from a neck warmer.

Flags appear throughout America the Beautiful, often as a reminder that the American dream of freedom, equality, justice, opportunity is not a given.

“There’s a constant tension,” Sidney says, “between those who want to expand freedom and people’s opportunities, and people who want to restrict and determine who can be given an opportunity and who cannot.”

“You are not entitled to democracy,” Michelle adds, returning to her earlier remark that democracy is not a birthright. “It’s a responsibility. In the preamble of the Constitution, it says we must form a more perfect union. Well, now I understand that this is the responsibility of every single day. Just as a parent loves and nurtures a child, we must do the same with democracy.”

Photojournalist Ryan Vizzions’ photograph of a man standing atop a sign at the CNN headquarters in Atlanta during the May 2020 Black Lives Matter protest in response to the police killing of George Floyd symbolizes those who stand up against injustice and refuse to remain silent.

In the photo, the young man's sign reads “Black Lives Matter” in large letters. As he wields the flag, he tilts his face toward the sky, his mouth open, and he screams.

source article here

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America the Beautiful

Opening reception is 4-6 p.m. Saturday, May 23; exhibition runs through August 9

Monroe Gallery of Photography

112 Don Gaspar

505-992-0800; monroegallery.com