New Exhibit At Griffin Museum Includes Ashley Gilbertdon 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

In solidarity with Fall Of Freedom, Monroe Gallery is honored to present a preview of the important exhibition "America The Beautiful"

 

In solidarity with Fall Of Freedom, Monroe Gallery is honored to present a preview of the important exhibition "America The Beautiful", May 1 & 2.

On July 4, 2026, our nation will commemorate and celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. “America The Beautiful” confronts the idea that “American” is a uniform, monolithic identity at a critical time when our Democracy is under attack. Threats to free expression are rising, federal civil rights laws have been weakened, and the foundations of the country’s racially inclusive democracy are being challenged.

Opening reception Saturday, May 23, 4-6 pm.

Ryan Vizzions

Faces of Fascism, Minneapolis, January, 2026

Fall Of Freedom is a focused, urgent call to artists and arts institutions across all sectors to make art, music, plays, exhibitions, comedy, and beautiful protests foregrounding artistic labor and aligned with immigrants' rights organizing, to amplify all struggles against repression and state violence.

Due process gutted. Universities threatened and defunded. Students kidnapped. Migrants deported. Troops deployed. Racism rampant. Cruelty celebrated. Political leaders arrested. Citizenship stripped. Health care shredded. Women's rights rescinded. Wealth concentrated. Free speech eliminated. Genocide normalized. Science undermined. Arts assaulted. Journalism targeted. Departments shuttered. Grants rescinded. Trans banned. Lawyers capitulating. Coup makers pardoned. Budgets slashed. Abortion outlawed. Courts stacked. Boards replaced. Police unleashed. Nazis emboldened. Bombs dropped.

This is why we must resist. More here.

In an Age of Image Overload, AIPAD’s The Photography Show Reminds Us What a Photograph Can Do

 Via The Observer

April 23, 2026

Across historic masters, frontline documentarians and experimental voices, the fair builds a compelling case for a medium that keeps expanding without losing what makes it irreplaceable.

Ashley Gilbertson, Monsters on Halloween, 2025. © Ashley Gilbertson

Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography

"In the booth of Santa Fe-based Monroe Gallery of Photography, whose mission is to champion precisely those images from the 20th and 21st Centuries that exist at the singular intersection of art and journalism, is a powerful wall ensemble: two photographic portraits by Ron Haviv of figures who have already become emblematic of our troubled era—Mamdani and Zelensky—are paired with recent works capturing, in unfiltered black and white, the silent violence of ICE raids across the country as well as the vital pushback of protests in Minneapolis and beyond. Included are dramatic images by Ashley Gilbertson documenting ICE actions in Chicago; his series Monsters on Halloween captures agents driving through neighborhoods in Niles, Illinois, for hours, stopping and detaining landscapers and construction workers as residents emerge from their homes to film and protest. Mark Peterson documents ICE protests at 26 Federal Plaza in New York, and Ryan Vizzions crystallizes into an image that already feels historical, capturing the memorials following the killing of Renee Good by ICE in Minneapolis. The people portrayed here are shown as vulnerable within broader systems and dynamics, yet resilient in the strength of community.

These are “images that are embedded in our collective consciousness and which form a shared visual heritage for human society,” founder Sid Monroe told Observer, when asked about the significance of photojournalism in an era of manipulated media. Also in the booth is a group of images from Diné (Navajo) photographer Eugene Tapahe’s “Jingle Dress Project,” which aims to bring global attention to Native American issues, including land acknowledgment, women’s rights and, most urgently, the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW). A powerful image of fierce Native American sisters standing in the snow against a bright blue sky, dressed in traditional, colorful clothing—resolute and determined as they face the unknown horizons of their culture—is an absolute standout of this edition.

Eugene Tapahe, Togetherness, Sisters, Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, Goshute and Timpanogos, 2023 Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography

Completing the presentation are vintage photographs, including iconic shots by Tony Vaccaro, ranging from Enzo Ferrari and Ferrari cars to portraits of contemporary masters such as Alexander Calder in his studio. Notably, all works in Monroe’s booth—whether historically significant or iconic—remain relatively accessible, with most priced between $3,500 and $7,500."

 Via The Stranger

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Seattle-based photographer Nate Gowdy went to Minneapolis twice this year, to document the Department of Homeland Security’s Operation Metro Surge and photographed the civilian efforts to protect their communities from the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement. “When I arrived in Minneapolis, I expected to find overarmed agents, tear gas clouds, traumatized civilians, and I did. I also found people walking their dogs, running errands, meeting for dinner,” he wrote. “Daily life continued, but it was unmistakably altered. Community events were canceled. It came through in every conversation with residents: weekend plans became risk assessments about the federal agents operating in residential neighborhoods without visible name tags or badge numbers. Tension lived in lowered voices and furtive glances toward any vehicle with tinted windows.” Read more at The Stranger.

Video Produced by Dave Quantic. Assistant Editor Danielle Driehaus.

All images courtesy of Nate Gowdy

Iconic photo ‘The Soiling of Old Glory’ still makes an impact 50 years later; will be featured in "America The Beautiful" exhibit

Via WGBH

By Diane Adame

April 3, 2026

This April 5, 1976 photo of a white teenager, Joseph Rakes, assaulting a Black man, lawyer and civil rights activist Ted Landsmark, with a flagpole won the Pulitzer Prize for spot photography. The photo was taken during a protest against court-ordered desegregation busing.

Stanley Forman (used with permission)

It has been 50 years since the Pulitzer-Prize winning photo “The Soiling of Old Glory” was taken as a busing desegregation protest erupted throughout City Hall Plaza in Boston.

The photo, which was taken on April 5, 1976, shows a young white man gripping an American flag and aiming it at a young Black man during the protest. The image drew national attention for how it vividly captured racial unrest during the busing crisis in the 1970s.

“The photograph has had significant impact over the decades because it was taken during a bicentennial year where the country was celebrating a number of democratic principles which in fact were being contradicted by what the photo depicts,” said Theodore “Ted” Landsmark, the Black man captured in the photograph.

Stanley Forman, the newspaper photographer who took the photo for the Boston Herald American, still remembers that day.

“It was a Monday… I asked the editor, Alvin Saley, what was going on. He told me there was a demonstration — we went to demonstrations every day — it was an anti-busing demonstration at City Hall,” he said. “I asked if I could go to it, and he said, ‘Sure.’”

The protest was one of many happening in Boston at the time ever since the city began busing students outside of their neighborhoods in 1974 in an effort, mandated by the courts, to desegregate schools.

Forman said he was switching his camera lens when he saw a group of white student protesters walking through the plaza.

“I saw a couple of Black men taking the turn, coming up from Court Street to come onto the plaza, and they were attacked,” he said.

“Ted got the worst of it,” he said. “ They threw things at them, they kicked them, knocked them down and in the end, Joseph Rakes, who was holding the flagpole, whacked him in the nose.”

Landsmark said he was on my way to a meeting in Boston City Hall to discuss affirmative action efforts to bring more employment to people of color in the city.

“I thought that if I simply continued to walk straight, I’d be able to get into City Hall without really encountering the front edge of the demonstrators,” he told GBH in an interview remembering the incident. “But a number of the students walked by me and then several circled back, yelling racial epithets at me.”

Michael Curry, a member of the NAACP national board of directors and head of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers, said the photo continues to have an impact because it didn’t happen that long ago.

“It made it even more clear for a generation of us that Boston was a tale of two cities, one where people came for opportunity if you were Irish, Italian, Polish, and Jewish,” Curry said, “And another city that had also resisted black political, economic and educational progress in the city.”

Landsmark said he never anticipated that the photo would still be a topic of discussion all these years later.

“Many of the issues that were raised by that photo remain a salient issue, and — unfortunately — unresolved today,” he said. “My hope would be that looking back at it a half century later, we would reflect on the amount of work that remains to be done in order to achieve racial equality in the United States in this year.”

Forman said the photo often gets compared to more recent pictures racial tensions in the U.S.

“The picture gets resurrected every few years because of something happening in this country,” said Forman. “Thankfully, it hasn’t been outdone yet, but nothing lasts forever. Although this picture I think will last the test of time.”

"The Soiling of Old Glory" will be featured in "America The Beautiful", 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 May 23 - April 9, 2026 at Monroe Gallery of Photography.

She Shot Factories, Dictators and History – Up Close

Via The Story Exchange

March 31, 2026

By Victoria Flexner

The groundbreaking photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White grabbed her camera and headed to the frontlines.

Editors Note: In honor of Women’s History Month, we’re sharing profiles of influential women in journalism.

Margaret Bourke-White is arguably one of the most influential photojournalists of the 20th century. Over a four-decade career, she photographed factories and skyscrapers, world wars, poverty in the American South and political violence across the globe. She famously photographed Mahatma Ghandi hours before he was assassinated, and captured a rare smiling image of Joseph Stalin. Along the way, she blazed trails for women in the media, becoming the first female photographer for LIFE Magazine, the first Western photographer allowed in the Soviet Union and one of the first journalists to document the Nazi concentration camps in 1945.

Born in 1904 in New York City, Bourke-White studied at several universities, including Cornell, where she began serious experiments with photography. She discovered that the camera could translate her fascination with machines, structures, and patterns into striking visual images (many of which are now owned by the Museum of Modern Art).

In the late 1920s, Bourke-White opened a studio in Cleveland, Ohio, and began specializing in industrial subjects, such as the Otis Steel mill. Undaunted by the difficulties of photographing in physically challenging conditions, where molten heat could literally melt her film, she documented steel production and American factories. She quickly attracted national attention and corporate clients.

The publisher Henry Luce hired Bourke-White in 1929 as the first staff photographer for his new business magazine Fortune. There, Bourke-White produced ambitious photographic essays on American industry, architecture and economic life. While her work demonstrated the immense power of American industry, Bourke-White also chose to expose the human cost of technical advancement – particularly in the American South.

In the mid-1930s, she worked with novelist Erskine Caldwell (whom she would later marry and divorce) to document the lives of poor sharecroppers and rural families in the Dust Bowl. The resulting photos became the book, You Have Seen Their Faces, which was published in 1937. Portraits of stoic subjects, and landscapes of desolate farms and makeshift homes, drew attention to the profound inequalities of the era. Historians note that her use of the photographic essay—sequenced images that built a narrative—became a hallmark of her style and a model for later documentary work in film and journalism.

By 1936, Luce was getting ready to launch his next venture, LIFE Magazine, which would be centered around visual storytelling. Bourke-White became the magazine’s first female photojournalist, and her image of Fort Peck Dam in Montana graced LIFE’s inaugural cover. Bourke-White worked for LIFE until the late 1950s, becoming one of the magazine’s defining visual voices. 

Early on at LIFE, Bourke-White was assigned to photograph industrialization in the Soviet Union, a project that would see her make a number of trips behind the Iron Curtain at a time when access to Russia was extremely guarded. Bourke-White somehow managed to obtain official permission to travel through the country’s factories and construction sites, producing images of steel mills, the construction of the Dnieper Dam, but also snapshots of everyday life, like peasant women eating Borscht. Her most notable visit came in 1941 at the beginning of World War II, when Moscow came under Nazi attack – Bourke-White was there covering the invasion. It was during this visit to the Soviet Union that she photographed Stalin himself. 

According to The New York Times, Bourke-White wrote of that meeting, 

“I made up my mind that I wouldn’t leave without getting a picture of Stalin smiling…I went virtually berserk trying to make that great stone face come alive…I got down on my hands and knees on the floor and tried out all kinds of crazy postures searching for a good camera angle. Stalin looked down at the way I was squirming and writhing and for the space of a lightning flash he smiled—and I got my picture. Probably, he had never seen a girl photographer before and my weird contortions amused him.”

During World War II, Bourke-White’s career entered a new, perilous phase, as she became the first American female war photojournalist. She covered the siege of Moscow, flew on bombing missions over North Africa, and later accompanied General George Patton’s Third Army into Germany. She survived torpedo attacks at sea, enemy fire, and a helicopter crash, earning the nickname “Maggie the Indestructible” from her colleagues at LIFE. Her photographs of the newly liberated Buchenwald concentration camp—gaunt survivors, piles of corpses, the stark infrastructure of genocide—were among the first images to confront the American public with the full horror of Nazi atrocities.

In the late 1940s, Bourke-White’s attention turned toward the upheavals of decolonization and racial injustice. She covered the 1947 Partition of British India into the new nations of India and Pakistan, producing graphic images of mass migration and communal violence. She also photographed Gandhi by his spinning wheel only hours before his assassination in 1948. Shortly afterward, she reported from South Africa, documenting the early years of apartheid. She later covered the Korean War for LIFE.

In the 1950s, Bourke-White’s output slowed as she began to suffer from Parkinson’s disease. Even as her health declined, her work continued to circulate widely in books, exhibitions, and magazine retrospectives, cementing her reputation. She died in 1971 at the age of 67. 

Today, historians credit Bourke-White with helping invent the modern photographic essay. Her photos are not just works of art, but important artifacts in their own right. By capturing war, conflict and modernization from the front lines, Bourke-White created some of the most valuable visual documentation of the 20th century.   Full article here

Margaret Bourke-White: Photojournalist is on exhibit through April 26, 2026

Meet the caretakers archiving Renee Macklin Good's memorial, Ryan Vizzions and James Forbes

 Via MPR News

March 24, 2026

Ryan Vizzions has been photographing items left behind at the memorial for Renee Macklin Good, who was fatally shot by a federal agent in January in Minneapolis. Ben Hovland | MPR News

Nearly three months after Renee Macklin Good was fatally shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis, a dedicated group of volunteers still watches over the site daily. They’re thinking now about the future of the memorial there as they archive what mourners have left behind.

“It's really important for me … to make sure that we preserve these items for future generations,” said Ryan Vizzions, a volunteer who’s been living for months in his van with his dog, Freedom.

Vizzions is collecting and documenting signs, stuffed animals, hats and candles from the memorial in a garage a few minutes' drive away — a space provided by someone he met through social media.

It's a cozy space. There are large boxes of signs, each neatly labeled by size. Some of them had been outside for months and needed to be dried out before Vizzions could photograph them.

He has a box of small items he hasn’t gotten to yet: handmade bracelets, small trinkets. Archiving requires attention to detail.

It isn't clear what will happen to the materials once they're photographed and archived.

For the pair, the fire reiterated the need to protect and preserve the memorial. Visitors continue to show up daily with letters, flowers, candles and signs.

Caretakers have created a path at the vigil site with mulch and stone pavers. They hope to plant flowers now that it's warm outside.

Vizzions said it’s a balance between trying to honor Macklin Good while also honoring the community that lives immediately around the memorial.

For the pair, the fire reiterated the need to protect and preserve the memorial. Visitors continue to show up daily with letters, flowers, candles and signs.

Caretakers have created a path at the vigil site with mulch and stone pavers. They hope to plant flowers now that it's warm outside.

Vizzions said it’s a balance between trying to honor Macklin Good while also honoring the community that lives immediately around the memorial.

Full article here

Monroe Gallery will exhibit a selection of Ryan Vizzions' photographs from Minneapolis at The Photography Show presented by AIPAD, April 22-26 in booth B10.

Ryan Vizzions: The Tender Work of Preserving Renee Good’s Memorial

 Via Hyperallergic

March 16, 2026

Ryan Vizzions is archiving the objects left at the site of Renee Good’s murder. (all photos by and courtesy Ryan Vizzions)

Ryan Vizzions, a photojournalist from Atlanta, had already arrived in Minnesota when federal immigration agents murdered poet and mother Renee Nicole Macklin Good.

For the last five years, the traveling photographer has been living out of his small van as he travels across the country for a photo survey exploring what it means to be American in all 50 states. He was taking photos at Lake Superior when he learned of Good’s killing, and drove immediately to the street where agents shot Good in her car. He arrived in time for a massive vigil held in Good’s memory.

Nearly two months after Good’s murder, Vizzions is still in Minnesota, but his focus has shifted from observation to intervention. He is now the de facto archivist of Good’s memorial site, where mourners have left hundreds of devotional objects, short notes, and artwork in protest and in grief.

Vizzions among Good memorial objects at his undisclosed storage site

“I want to make sure people in the future understand what happened here,” Vizzions told Hyperallergic in an interview.

So far, Vizzions has photographed about 200 items and relocated fragile objects to what he described as a “secret location” in the southern part of the city.

He’s left behind some items, including plastic signs, for the public to view. Alongside community members, Vizzions is maintaining the site, including by removing what he described as hundreds of pounds of decaying flowers.

Among the items Vizzions has documented is a note signed by an employee of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the agency driving the Trump administration’s escalating immigration enforcement tactics. 

“Ms. Good,” the message reads, “We will never forget you. Rest in peace and power. Your work on earth is done. Your legacy lives on.” 

The card, which is covered in stickers, is signed, “A DHS employee.”

“That was probably the most surprising because that’s somebody who is involved with the same institution that ultimately killed her,” Vizzions told Hyperallergic. 

Mourners attended a vigil for Good hours after federal agents killed her.

Vizzions made the leap from outside observer to active participant in Minneapolis’s response to Good’s murder after someone attempted to burn the memorial site and extreme winter conditions set in, threatening to destroy the makeshift monument.

On February 18, someone poured gasoline on the memorial and lit a flame. Vizzions said that he and a group of community members watching over the site at night were able to stop the fire from spreading.

While Vizzions has previously photographed political apexes, including Dakota Access Pipeline protests at Standing Rock, he said he had never before inserted himself in the communities he covers.

“ As a photojournalist, oftentimes you’re divided from the community because you’re on the outside looking in,” Vizzions said. “And I wanted to serve.” 

Vizzions told Hyperallergic that Good’s parents are aware of his project and that he is in communication with a family friend who is serving as a mediator. Ultimately, Vizzions said, he will respect the family’s wishes for any next steps for the collection. He expects that some of the items could end up in the collections of private institutions or in the archives of the Smithsonian, but noted that whatever happens next will not be his decision to make. 

In the meantime, he is photographing and digitizing items from Good’s vigil so that anyone can experience them, regardless of where they live.

“It’s  really important for me to make sure that the folks who couldn’t be here, and the family who couldn’t come to the vigil because of everything happening, are able to access the memorial in person or online,” Vizzions said.

The photographer recalled one snow-covered note that made him cry. It read: “ We all carry whistles now. I hope you hear them. I hope you’re home. We all carry each other now. I know you’re with us. I know you’re home.”

The message is a nod to activists’ use of whistles to alert community members of potential immigration raids.

“It was just on a small note that was tucked somewhere,” Vizzons said. “But that’s just one of hundreds, if not thousands, of items that people have left. It’s that message and the other message that really make it feel like we have an obligation to protect these offerings that people brought to her.”

Full article here

See Ryan Vizzions' photographs from Minneapolis at The Photography Show Presented by AIPAD April 22-26, Monroe Gallery Booth B10.

 

Margaret Bourke-White review in Musee Magazine: "The absence of women in a field that actively constructs our visual culture and collective memory is striking. It makes it all the more crucial to revisit those who broke through its barriers"

 Via Musee Magazine

March 11, 2026

Written by Georgina Laube 

Fort Peck Dam, Fort Peck, MT, 1936 (Cover for first issue of LIFE magazine) | Margaret Bourke-White/©Life Picture Collection | Courtesy of Monroe Gallery

For decades, photography has occupied a complicated position: dismissed at times as mere documentation, yet simultaneously employed to shape public memory. It was the first medium to meaningfully collapse the distance between nations and cultures, bringing distant events into people’s homes. Few forms of communication carry the same presumption of accuracy. Photography has long underscored the notion that “seeing is believing,” and in doing so, it has profoundly shaped our understanding of history, conflict, and identity. Whether we acknowledge it or not, much of our worldview is constructed through the images we consume. In many cases, photography has become our cultural truth.

Hats in the Garment District, New York, 1930 | Margaret Bourke-White/©Life Picture Collection | Courtesy of Monroe Gallery

Since its inception, however, the photographic medium, particularly photojournalism, has been largely dominated by men. And in many ways, it still is. Emerging in the mid-nineteenth century, war quickly became one of its defining subjects, so central that photojournalism itself is often understood as having grown out of war photography. From the Mexican–American War, the first conflict to have photographic evidence, to the Crimean War, the first extensively documented war, photography is historically employed as a tool of record and reportage. Yet due to systemic barriers and rigid beliefs about women’s roles, documentary photography remained largely inaccessible to female practitioners.

Plow blades, Oliver Child Plow Co, South bend, Indiana, 1930 | Margaret Bourke-White/©Life Picture Collection | Courtesy of Monroe Gallery

The absence of women in a field that actively constructs our visual culture and collective memory is striking. It makes it all the more crucial to revisit those who broke through its barriers. For not only do we owe to them to merely acknowledge their often overlooked presence, but to recognize that their perspective itself also shapes our history. It is imperative that it is more understood that women are not passive bystanders to cultural memory. Very often they are the ones actively shaping it. It is precisely this recognition that makes the latest exhibition at Monroe Gallery of Photography not only compelling, but timely. By allowing us to intimately revisit Margaret Bourke-White’s works, the Monroe Gallery offers more than a historical survey; it actively confronts and corrects not only the history of the medium but history as a whole.

Diversion Tunnels, Ft. Peck Dam, MT, 1936 | Margaret Bourke-White/©Life Picture Collection | Courtesy of Monroe Gallery

Bourke-White was not only a pioneer for women, she also actively used her lens to shape American visual identity. A founding photographer of Life magazine and the photographer of its first cover, she shaped how twentieth-century America saw itself and its place in the world. And with that how we reflect on that period in the contemporary period. She documented the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, photographed the liberation of concentration camps at the end of World War II, and captured the final images of Mahatma Gandhi. Yet despite the scale of her influence, her name is too often overshadowed by her male contemporaries and insufficiently centered in photographic history.

Farmer Art Blooding with family battling "dust bowl" winds white inspecting his newly bought farm, Colorado, April, 1954| Margaret Bourke-White/©Life Picture Collection | Courtesy of Monroe Gallery

When she is overlooked in the history of photography, she is, in effect, overlooked in history itself. and so too is the role of women in shaping it. On view until April 26, 2026, Monroe Gallery of Photography uses its space to serve as a reminder that the visual memory we inherit was, in part, constructed through her lens.

View the exhibition here.

Ryan Vizzions archives Renee Good memorial site artifacts

 Via The Minnesota Star Tribune

By Alicia Eler

March 3, 2026

Ryan Vizzions:  

January 7th, 2026 - After the murder of Renee Good by a masked federal agent, a vigil was held in her honor. Upward of 10,000 Minnesotans showed up to pay their respects at the location she was killed

What happens next depends on the family’s wishes.

Ryan Vizzions started collecting posters from the spontaneous public memorial that sprung up at the site of Renee Good’s killing. The traveling photographer appointed himself the site’s caretaker.

He also gathered many other items — a cookie jar filled with handwritten letters rolled into scrolls, letters addressed to Good’s family, a canvas covered with names of people killed by federal agents since 2025.

“All these are prayers,” Vizzions said. “These are things that people brought because they cared. We owe it to them to try and preserve them and save them and make it so the future can learn about what happened here.”

When it comes to archiving spontaneous public memorials, there are no clear pathways for what to do. The work is fluid, and caretakers volunteer because they feel called to do so. It’s all open-ended and grassroots; people write the rules as they go along. Even the city of Minneapolis doesn’t have timelines for what happens to memorials, city spokeswoman Jess Olstad said.

At Good’s site, it’s unknown where the gathered items will ultimately go, but community members are in contact with the Good family about next steps.

Vizzions initially rented a storage unit for the posters and other items, but moved them to a more secure undisclosed residential location in south Minneapolis.

“These sites emerge when the future feels uncertain and the past feels unfinished,” said Alex Pretti memorial site caretaker Jadah Green, 43, at a “Caring for Spontaneous Public Memorials After State Violence” panel discussion Feb. 27. “They are not permanent installations. They are not yet historical memory. They are living thresholds.”

Vulnerable memorials

Vizzions has been guarding, cleaning and organizing the site since the week after Good was killed. The site is vulnerable to changing weather and vandalism ― like when someone poured gasoline on it and lit a nearby pile of wood on fire Feb. 17.

The city doesn’t take care of the sites, but might help with cleanup or security. Caretakers do the daily work of talking to visitors, cleaning the site and keeping it beautiful.

Paul Eaves of Minneapolis helps out at George Floyd Square and the Pretti and Good memorial sites.

“It’s not about ego,” said Eaves, 77. “It’s about service.”

Minneapolis City Council Member Jason Chavez said he would like to see a permanent memorial for Good, but stressed that it’s up to the family, and it isn’t a decision that the city will or should make.

“I’ve heard from so many Latino neighbors, immigrant neighbors, about the courage that Renee Good had to look out for our community in a time when many of us feel like we have been sent back into the shadows,” said Chavez, who called the memorial a sacred space. “She brought light into this world.”

He wants caretakers and people affected by ICE to have a place “to mourn and celebrate Renee’s life, and a place where we can never forget what the federal government did and continues to do to our community.”

Vizzions’ favorite piece from the memorial is a painting on cardboard of Good in blue with the American flag.

“When we were doing the watch and we’d sit out there next to the fire, this one was facing us,” he said of painting. “For three weeks I stared at this piece.”

Vizzions raised more than $2,000 to pay for the storage space and equipment, including lights, backdrop, camera stands, tables, storage boxes and more.

In 2017, he published the photo book “No Spiritual Surrender: A Dedication to the Standing Rock Movement.”

He was in northern Minnesota on another project when he heard about Good’s killing. He drove down to Minneapolis and began camping out in front of the memorial in his van.

Through the process, he feels he’s become part of the community, and he’s contributing to the greater good.

The family’s decision

Rise & Remember Executive Director Jeanelle Austin said community members waited nearly two months to reach out to George Floyd’s family after his killing in 2020.

“You have to be able to give the families the time that they need to do all of the other things that take priority, and then when the family is ready, for them to decide what they want to do,” Austin said. “As caretakers, we’re keepers of the stories ― our job is not to make final decisions or final calls of what’s to come next.” --Full article with photographs

"It’s absolutely imperative that the truth is documented.”

 Via El Pais

February 23, 2026

American photographer Carol Guzy, a four-time Pulitzer Prize winner, asserts that, in light of the brutal anti-immigration crusade being waged by the US government, the work of photojournalists ‘is more important than ever’

It was an unexpected flash of empathy. The woman’s husband had just been detained by immigration agents in a federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan, which has become the epicenter of the Donald Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in New York. Photographer Carol Guzy (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 69) saw the agents take the man away as his wife shouted, “Please, help me!” and their two children cried. Guzy decided to accompany the family to the exit. There, the woman realized she didn’t have her keys; with no way to return home, she broke down in tears again. A court security officer approached her to offer help and, faced with the scene, also began to cry. Through her own tears, Guzy captured the moment with her camera.

For the photographer, it is an image that radiates compassion at a time when people desperately need it. In the midst of an unprecedented crusade against immigration, launched by a president obsessed with carrying out the largest deportation in U.S. history, the work of photojournalists like Guzy has become, in her own words, “more important than ever” in her country’s history. With their cameras, they are building a historical record that is at once deeply alive and profoundly human, documenting the consequences of an immigration policy whose effects will be felt for decades to come. --click for full article

“It’s our challenge in the face of the disinformation being disseminated, both for us as photographers and for these brave, brave residents who are standing out there with their cell phones documenting, like Alex Pretti. It’s absolutely imperative that the truth is documented.”

"A Globe Trotting Pioneer"

 Via The Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) Exposure Newsletter

February 19, 2026

Margaret Bourke-White/©Life Picture Collection

Courtesy of Monroe Gallery

Louisville Flood Red Cross Relief Station, Kentucky, 1936

Margaret Bourke-White was a pioneer in many ways: a founding member of LIFE magazine, she was also the publication’s first female photographer, and she photographed the magazine’s first cover in 1936 (of the massive Fort Peck Dam in Fort Peck, Montana). A globe-trotting photojournalist (who was played in films by both Candace Bergen and Farrah Fawcett), she became a successful photographer in many male-dominated areas of the field, including industrial photography. When she was all of 23 years old, she photographed the Otis Steel Mill in Cleveland, where she also photographed the city’s famous Terminal Tower. Her 1937 landmark book, You Have Seen Their Faces, with text by her then-husband Erskine Caldwell, documented the lives of shareholders and tenant farmers in the deep south with empathy and grace. After embedding with the Air Force during World War II, she was one of the first people to photograph the devastation of the concentration camps, and her photographs of Gandhi following the partition of India were some of the last photographs ever taken of him before he was assassinated in 1948. A selection of this remarkable body of work is on view through April 26 at Santa Fe’s Monroe Gallery of Photography.
-Jean Dykstra

Margaret Bourke-White/©Life Picture Collection

Courtesy of Monroe Gallery

Gandhi walking with close advisors and family members, India, 1946

Image of 5-year-old boy reminds us of the power of photography

 Via National Press Photographers Association

February 1, 2026

A single image can make us stop scrolling. Make us think and feel, confront us. But what are the types of images that have the power to do this? And can they provoke societal change, bend the arc of history? A widely published photo of a five-year-old boy on his way home from school in Minnesota — wearing a winter hat with bunny ears — hints at answers to these questions.

Whatever your view regarding the immigration debate, the can’t-look-away photo of Liam puts a face on America’s attempt at mass deportation. --click for full article

New Exhibit: Margaret Bourke-White Photojournalist

 Via Monroe Gallery

February 1, 2026

Margaret Bourke-White/©Life Picture Collection

Louisville Flood Red Cross Relief Station, Kentucky, 1936

Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to announce an exhibition of important photographs by Margaret Bourke-White. The exhibition dates are February 6 – April 25, 2026. (No opening reception)

Margaret Bourke-White was a pioneer for women and an icon in American photography. As a founding member of LIFE (she photographed the first cover), she became a world-famous symbol of globe-trotting photojournalism. And that she did it in a male world made her success even more spectacular. Her photos have proven to have a timeless appeal, continuing to influence viewers’ opinions not only about the subjects photographed, but also about the artist behind the camera and the times in which she lived.

Margaret Bourke White was one of the most famous and most successful photographers of her time. Her combination of intelligence, talent, ambition, and flexibility made her an ideal contributor to the new journalism that developed during the thirties. She was a woman, doing a man's job, in a man's world, from the foundries of Cleveland to the battlefields in World War II. She had a deep-rooted belief in an artist’s duty to change the world. Known to her Life colleagues as “Maggie the Indestructible,” Bourke-White documented some of the most pivotal moments of the 20th century and changed the face of photography, dramatically altering the influence of photojournalism by using a new technique, the photographic essay. Not only did she document many of the most significant events of the 20th century, she also put a human face to the tragedies and the injustices of the powerful. She showed that photographers could be brave, could influence public opinion, and could be strong women.

View the exhibition here.

Ryan Vizzions Photograph From Minneapolis Featured in NY Times

 Via The New York Times

January 30, 2026

The Case Against the Department of Homeland Security

"But the rot goes deeper at the Department of Homeland Security, the behemoth that controls ICE, Customs and Border Protection (C.B.P.) and myriad other federal agencies, from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the Secret Service. Since its founding in 2002, a combination of organizational flaws and mission creep has allowed D.H.S. to evolve into the out-of-control domestic security apparatus we have today, one that views the very people it is supposed to protect as threats, not humans."

Ryan Vizzions

Ed Kashi: A Period in Time, 1977 – 2022

 Via Lens Scratch

January 25, 2026

“A single photograph may not change the world in one fell swoop, but it can change a person’s mind, which is where change begins.”– Ed Kashi

Ed Kashi is a photojournalist, filmmaker, speaker and educator who has been making images and telling stories for over 40 years. Kashi has produced a number of influential short films and earned recognition by the POYi Awards as 2015’s Multimedia Photographer of the Year. Kashi’s embrace of technology has led to social media projects for clients including National Geographic, The New Yorker, and MSNBC. Along with numerous awards from World Press Photo, POYi, CommArts and American Photography, Kashi’s images have been published and exhibited worldwide. His editorial assignments and personal projects have generated fourteen books. In 2002, Kashi in partnership with his wife, writer + filmmaker Julie Winokur, founded Talking Eyes Media. The non-profit company has produced numerous award-winning short films, exhibits, books, and multimedia pieces that explore significant social issues. Kashi is represented by Monroe Gallery, located in Santa Fe, New Mexico. --click here for full article and interview

Monroe Gallery Photojournalists Documenting Minneapolis ICE Protests and Demonstrations

 January 18, 2026

Monroe Gallery photojournalists are covering the thousands of ICE and Border Patrol officers flooding into Minneapolis and the intensifying situation after the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Good.

Mark Peterson

Via The New York Times

Ron Haviv

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David Butow

 

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Ryan Vizzions

Via Instagram



“The public should assume responsibility for creating an accurate record of what’s happening. It’s a big job that requires participation from all of civil society, including the local press, religious and community groups, librarians and teachers. Everyone. In every city. This is not an act of protest. It is record-keeping. There will come a time when people will want to know what it was like to be here, now. What was it like to work in a food truck or at a Home Depot when federal agents showed up? What was it like to be randomly stopped or followed on the sidewalk while walking home from a store? What’s it like for Native Americans to be accused by ICE of being undocumented?” --Poynter