Hot Mirror Article: Eugene Tapahe: Healing and the Jingle Dress

 Via Hot Mirror

June 26, 2025

Togetherness, Sisters, Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, Goshute and Timpanogos, 2023

©Eugene Tapahe, Courtesy of Monroe Gallery

Eugene Tapahe: Healing and the Jingle Dress by Brian Byrd

Brian Byrd is a freelance photographer with more than two decades of experience advancing communication as a catalyst for social change. He serves on the board of directors for the Overseas Press Club of America and the advisory board for WITNESS, a global NGO founded by musician Peter Gabriel that uses video and digital technology to document human rights violations.

Art Heals: The Jingle Dress Project - New Exhibit

While wandering through this year's Association of International Photography Dealers (AIPAD) show in New York City, it's easy to become overwhelmed by the vast number of photographs on display. Yet among the visual cacophony, the Monroe Gallery booth stood out as one of the few to highlight the work of Native American artists. Eugene Tapahe's photographs from his Art Heals project commanded attention—not merely for their striking colors juxtaposed against nature's beauty, but for the profound story they tell. These images, featuring jingle dress dancers in magnificent landscapes, invite viewers into a space where cultural heritage, environmental connection, and healing converge in visual harmony.

Walking in Beauty

"I draw inspiration from my Diné (Navajo) traditions and modern experiences," said Tapahe. "My work reflects the beauty and resilience of Native American culture. I strive to unite these two worlds in my concepts while transcending worldly uncertainties."

At the core of Tapahe's artistic vision is the traditional Navajo philosophy "to always walk in beauty," a principle that guides both his creative practice and personal journey. Through various visual mediums—photography, video, printmaking, installation, and mixed-media sculpture—Tapahe creates a delicate balance between past and present, using subtle contrasts, natural colors, and contours to offer unity, hope, and healing in a world often marked by disconnection.

In the early months of 2020, as the world retreated into isolation, the Diné (Navajo) artist found himself at a painful crossroads. His art shows were canceling one by one, and personal tragedy struck when he lost his aunt to COVID-19. "I felt like I was broken," he recalls. "I felt like there was nothing good going to happen."

Then came the dream that would change everything.

Tapahe describes a peaceful vision where he sat in a Yellowstone meadow watching grazing bison. The tranquility was interrupted by the distinct sound of jingles—and suddenly, beautiful jingle dress dancers appeared, performing alongside the bison. He awoke with a profound sense of healing and hope, immediately sharing his vision with his family.

"This dream is telling me that we need to take the jingle dress to the land, to heal the land," Tapahe told his wife and daughters. "And if we heal the land, we're going to heal the people." --click for full article

The exhibit opens July 5, 2025, with an artist’s talk at 5:30 p.m. It will continue during the renowned Santa Fe Indian Market weekend, the world’s largest Native American art market, August 16 and 17, and conclude on September 14, 2025. 

Join the Rijksmuseum and the John Adams Institute for a special event featuring Nina Berman whose work is on view in the major exhibition on American photography.

 Via The John Adams Institute

American Photographers in conversation. In collaboration with the Rijksmuseum

Feb 09, 2025, 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm,   Rijksmuseum (Auditorium), Museumstraat 1, Amsterdam

Tickets for the public event are sold out. You can still purchase tickets for the livestream via the buy tickets link here.

Join the Rijksmuseum and the John Adams Institute in welcoming photographers from the United States whose work is on view in the major exhibition on American photography. Their collective works invite us to investigate what America is, not only in the present, but also what it has been in pivotal moments since the invention of photography itself. Captured through their lenses, events, individuals and movements of national importance are brought into focus.

Following an introduction to the exhibition by curator Hans Rooseboom, photographers Bryan Schutmaat, Sarah Sense and Nina Berman will tell us more about their work. They will explore diverse aspects of the United States in conversation with the audience and moderator Clarice Gargard (Lilith Agency).

Program information

About Bryan Schutmaat: Based in Austin, Texas, Schutmaat’s work has been widely published and exhibited. His meditations on people and place picture a wide variety of contemporary issues, from poverty to climate change. He has won numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship and the Aperture Portfolio Prize, and his work has appeared in the Atlantic, New Yorker, and National Geographic, among other publications.

About Sarah Sense: Born in Sacramento, California, Sense practices what she calls photo-weaving, combining traditional Chitimacha ad Choctaw art and craft techniques with photography. Her works investigate landscapes from a Native American perspective, focusing on the colonial impacts on the climate. She is a graduate of Parsons the New School for Design, and her work has been exhibited in major galleries and museums around the world.

About Nina Berman: Nina Berman is a documentary photographer, filmmaker, journalist and educator. Her work explores American politics, militarism, environmental issues and post violence trauma.

Read, Watch, Listen: Looking for background information in advance of the event? Read Zachary Karabashliev – 18% Gray. Using trauma as an impetus to change his life, Zack sets off for New York with a vintage Nikon. Through the lens of the old camera, he starts rediscovering himself by photographing an America we rarely see. Watch Don’t Blink by photographer Robert Frank. A documentary about the groundbreaking photographer of The Americans. Listen to Simon & Garfunkel’s America. Their 1968 anthem is steeped in national mythology and has been interpreted as both exaltation and elegy.

More about the exhibition

In more than 200 works, the Rijksmuseum has gathered a major retrospective of American photography. The medium has left an indelible mark on human history, revolutionizing the way we look at the world, be it through art, news, advertising, our everyday lives, and the digital versions thereof we fashion on social media platforms like Instagram.

Live stream tickets here

Rijksmuseum moves you to The American Dream. To the real American. To unexpected recognition. The Rijksmuseum is staging the Netherlands’ first major survey exhibition of American photography.

"As A.I. Becomes Harder to Detect, Photography Is Having a Renaissance"

 Via The New York Times

October 25, 2024

"After at least a decade of focusing almost exclusively on painting, many of the largest and most powerful art dealers are dedicating significant attention and real estate to photography.

It is part of a broader renaissance for the medium that is arriving, perhaps counterintuitively, just as images produced by artificial intelligence become virtually indistinguishable from real documentation."

Click for full article

Figge Museums "New Photography" Exhibit Includes Gallery Photographer Ryan Vizzions

 

©Ryan Vizzions: 

"Defend The Sacred", Cannon Ball, Standing Rock, Standing Rock, North Dakota, 2016

Via Quad Cities

March 24, 2022

The Figge Art Museum has an extensive photography collection that continues to grow. Beginning Saturday, visitors are invited to step into the Figge’s second-floor Lewis Gallery to view a small selection of the museum’s most recent photographic additions.

Important works by some of the most significant photographers of our time provide us with a brief survey of the collection’s recent growth and the varying impulses that guide contemporary photography, according to a Thursday museum release.

The New Photography exhibition series allows the Figge to share with the QC community some of the museum’s newly acquired works featuring objects, landscapes and figures, including photos that will adorn the Figge’s walls for years to come.

“Despite the proliferation of images made with our smart phones and circulated through social media, dedicated photographers continue to create iconic images that stand above the rest,” said Director of Collections and Exhibitions Andrew Wallace. “From the frontlines of conflict to the frontlines of daily life, photographers reward us with pictures that encourage us to look more closely at the world around us and so that we may better see ourselves.”

Acclaimed 20th-century masters including Lynn Davis and Douglas Prince — as well as recent works by Cara Romero, Victoria Sambunaris, Rebecca Norris Webb, and Ryan Vizzions — will be on view.

From the real to the surreal, the exhibition will highlight photography’s continued ability to engage, inform, and amaze. New Photography will be on view (at 225 W. 2nd St., Davenport) through July 3, 2022.

  FIGGE ART MUSEUM

225 West Second Street

Davenport, Iowa

Photography is "ripe for exploration"

Via Wall Street Journal

 Jocelyn Phillips' "Collect Contemporary Photography," to be released by Thames & Hudson in February—provides a load of tips on how to build a collection, covering topics such as how to buy, where to look and how to care for one.

Ms. Phillips, who heads Bonhams's photography department in London, calls building a photography collection "a journey of discovering tastes and interests." When starting out, she advises new collectors to see as much work as possible at exhibitions, fairs, auctions and galleries before making a purchase.

Through research, she says: "You will start to gain a sense of the kind of work that appeals to you." Also, this is the way to familiarize yourself with essential knowledge, such as the number of prints in an edition, historical influences, printing techniques, photographic styles, pricing, hanging and framing, Ms. Phillips adds.

Photography is still an affordable collectors' area, particularly if you look for emerging photo artists, she says, adding that the young market is "ripe for exploration."

Ms. Phillips confided it was hard to select 40 photo artists to profile for her book from a wealth of global talent. In the case of the famous Düsseldorf Art Academy of German artists who studied under Bernd and Hilla Becher, including Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff and Candida Höfer, she mentions them all briefly but chose Mr. Struth (best known for his large images of people in museums) for the profile. Personally, I would have chosen Mr. Gursky, who I find to be the greatest of them all—a revolutionary in his monumental views that, for example, look at today's world through mass images to make people and consumer goods look like ants in life's big picture.