Press arrests used to silence protest coverage in 2025

Via US Press Freedom Tracker

December 15, 2025

 While covering anything from protests to government meetings, journalists in 2025 were pulled from news scenes, placed in cuffs and held in custody from minutes to days — long enough for deadlines to pass and breaking news to go cold.

As of Dec. 15, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker has documented at least 32 instances in which journalists were detained or charged just for doing their jobs. While that count is lower than the 50 documented last year, each one is a warning flare that something fundamental is shifting in how authorities police information and those who gather it. Most were released without charges or had them quickly dropped, but the impact extends far beyond the time spent in custody.

One journalist arrested while covering a protest told the Tracker his arrest stopped the news from getting out. “Talk about putting the brakes on press freedom,” he said.

Protest beat as battleground

Protests have long been where the fault lines of press freedom are most visible, and 2025 was no different. Nearly 90% of the arrests and detentions this year occurred while journalists were covering demonstrations.

They all also centered around a single issue: immigration.  --click to read full report

STEVE SCHAPIRO: BEING EVERYWHERE SCREENING IN SANTA FE

 STEVE SCHAPIRO: BEING EVERYWHERE

DEC 29 & 30 · FILMMAKER Q&A

Over six decades, photographer Steve Schapiro bore witness to some of the most significant social and cultural moments in modern American history.

Monroe Gallery represents Schapiro’s historic photographs, and several are featured in the current “Artists Behind The Art” exhibition.

Shot shortly before his passing by filmmaker Maura Smith, Steve Schapiro: Being Everywhere is a loving tribute to a man who was the quintessential "fly on the wall," waiting for moments to unfold and capturing them with a naturalism and skill that's nothing short of dazzling.

Sky Cinemas    (505) 216-5678

1606 Alcaldesa St. Santa Fe, NM 87501

Monday, December 29 7 PM

Tuesday, December 30  5PM

The Destinations Podcast: Healing, Art & The Sacred Power of the Jingle Dress with Eugene Tapahe

 Via Culturs

In this powerful episode of the Destinations Podcast, we sit down with Eugene Tapahe, a Navajo (Diné) artist, photographer and cultural storyteller whose work bridges healing, identity and the sacred connection to the land.

Tapahe shares his deeply moving journey growing up on the reservation, the origins of the Jingle Dress Healing Project and how Native traditions became a source of unity during COVID.

From sand installations made with soil from across the world to protecting sacred lands and preserving Indigenous identity, this conversation is an inspiring reflection on resilience, spirituality and cultural preservation.

Listen to the episode here and don’t forget to like and subscribe!

TIME Top 100 Photos of 2025; includes photo by Mark Peterson

 Via TIME

November 25, 2025

We stand at scenic overlooks and lift our lens to capture a post card view that, of course, looks better on a postcard. It’s not about gear, or the 10,000 hours. It’s simply that almost any photograph is improved by having people in it—a lesson TIME’s Top 100 Photographs of 2025 underscores in images that capture not only a year, but also the faint but discernable shadow cast by a less human future.

The moments photojournalists document tend to be most visible on faces: the panic of a fallen runner about to be spiked, the anguish in an immigrant in a headlock, a smiling Buddha toppled in a quake. Robots (in a footrace, at a bedside) serve as comic relief partly because they have no faces. But, as machines, they carry the same ambiguous edge as artificial intelligence. In Ahmedabad, the tail section of an Air India flight juts from a building like a paper airplane that sailed in and stuck. And in Portland, Ore., sworn agents of the United States government all but disappear inside red smoke, body armor and gas masks. — Karl Vick

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani talks to the press and meets with supporters at a park in Midtown Manhattan, on Oct. 28. Mark Peterson—Redux

New Exhibition: Artists behind The Art

Tony Vaccaro: Alexander Calder, France, 1957

 

Monroe Gallery of Photography announces a new exhibit “Artists Behind The Art”. The exhibition opens with a public reception Friday, November 28 from 5 – 7 pm, and you can kick off the Holiday Season at the Holiday Plaza Lighting!

The exhibit continues through January 25, 2026.

Many of the most influential artists of the past century are, in a sense, unseen. This exhibition shows us the human beings behind some of the 20th century's most vital works of art. The photographs range from posed, candid, and working shots to behind the scenes of artists at work. In these photographs the essential personality of the artist is revealed, and an image of the past becomes visual history.

Artists depicted in the exhibit include Richard Avedon, Francis Bacon, Alexander Calder, Judy Chicago, Willem De Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Rene Magritte, Henri Matisse, Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Georgia O’Keeffe, Andy Warhol, Andrew Wyeth, and many more.

View the exhibition here.

Fall Of Freedom

 

Fall of Freedom is an urgent call to the arts community to unite in defiance of authoritarian forces sweeping the nation. Our Democracy is under attack. Threats to free expression are rising. Dissent is being criminalized. Institutions and media have been recast as mouthpieces of propaganda.

In solidarity with of Fall Of Freedom, Monroe Gallery presents a Pop Up exhibit now Online and in the Gallery November 18 - 23 of photographs documenting people struggling for their freedom; their right to live without fear, their right to speak and the right to protest inequities.

KUNM: Artists plan Fall of Freedom protest events around New Mexico

NPR: This weekend, artists are speaking out across the country

ArtNet: Artists Across the U.S. Are Staging Hundreds of Events to Protest Authoritarianism

France24: US artists launch nationwide ‘Fall of Freedom’ protest against rising censorship

Hyperallergic; Why I Joined the Artists Behind Fall of Freedom

NY Times: Artists Plan Nationwide Protests Against ‘Authoritarian Forces’

The Guardian: Artists plan nationwide US protests against Trump and ‘authoritarian forces'

WNYC: Photographer Steve Schapiro Witnessed American History

 Via All Of It with Alison Stewart

WNYC

November 15, 2025

 

 Photographer Steve Schapiro was often at the scene. Schapiro photographed historical Civil Rights marches, public figures like Muhammad Ali, David Bowie, and Robert Kennedy, and was also called to photograph films like "Taxi Driver" and "The Godfather." Before Schapiro died in 2022 at the age of 88, he sat down for interviews to reflect on his life and career. The result of those interviews is a new documentary, "Steve Schapiro: Being Everywhere".

Several of Schapiro's iconic photographs are featured in the new exhibit "Artists Behind The Art", opening at Monroe Gallery November 28, 2025 and on exhibit through January 25, 2026.

Kansas county agrees to pay $3 million over police raid on a small-town newspaper, editor says

 Via Associated Press

November 11, 2025

After the newspaper was raided. Monroe Gallery placed this ad to help support the 

Marion County Record

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A rural Kansas county has agreed to pay a little more than $3 million and apologize over a law enforcement raid on a small-town weekly newspaper in August 2023 that sparked an outcry over press freedom, the paper’s editor said Tuesday.

Marion County was among multiple defendants in five federal lawsuits filed by the company that publishes the Marion County Record, its publisher, the estate of his late mother Joan Meyer, the paper’s co-owner, employees of the paper and a former Marion City Council member whose home also was raided.

Eric Meyer, the paper’s editor and publisher, told The Associated Press he is hoping the size of the payment is large enough to discourage similar actions against news organizations in the future.

“The goal isn’t to get the money. The money is symbolic,” Meyer said. “The press has basically been under assault.”

Sheriff Jeff Soyez issued an apology that mentioned the publisher and his late mother Joan Meyer by name, along with former council member Ruth Herbel and her husband.

“The Sheriff’s Office wishes to express its sincere regrets to Eric and Joan Meyer and Ruth and Ronald Herbel for its participation in the drafting and execution of the Marion County Police Department’s search warrants on their homes and the Marion County Record,” the sheriff’s statement said.

The Marion County Commission approved the agreement Monday after discussing it in private for 15 minutes.

The raid triggered a national debate about press freedom focused on Marion, a town of about 1,900 people set among rolling prairie hills some 150 miles (240 kilometers) southwest of Kansas City, Missouri. Also, Meyer’s mother, who co-owned the newspaper and lived with him, died the day after the raid of a heart attack, which he blamed on the stress of the raid.

A search warrant tied the raid -- which was led by Marion’s police chief -- to a dispute between the newspaper and a local restaurant owner who had accused the Marion County Record of invading her privacy and illegally accessing information about her and her driving record. Meyer has said believed the newspaper’s aggressive coverage of local politics and issues played a role and that his newsroom had been examining the police chief’s past work history.

More articles from the raid

Ken Hawkin's photograph depicting NASA's original six women astronauts in training has been acquired by the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum

 

"The Six” - The original six women NASA astronaut candidates in training at the U.S. Air Force Water Survival School at Turkey Point, Florida. 1978. Archival pigment print, 20” x 16”. © Ken Hawkins for National Geographic/The Monroe Gallery 

Ken Hawkin's photograph depicting NASA's original six women astronauts in training at Water Survival School at Turkey Point, FL has been acquired by the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum for its’ permanent collection and will be featured in the upcoming “At Home in Space” exhibition at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

“The Six” are Sally Ride, Shannon W. Lucid, Margaret Rhea Sedan, Kathryn D. Sullivan, Anna L. Fisher and Judith A. Resnick.

Save the date: Artists Behind The Art Opens Friday, Nov. 28

Via Santa Fe New Mexican Winter Life

November 9, 2025

Ernst Haas: Helen Frankenthaler, NY, 1969

Monroe Gallery of Photography announces a new exhibit “Artists Behind The Art”. The exhibition opens with a public reception Friday, November 28 from 5 – 7 pm. The exhibit continues through January 25, 2026.

Many of the most influential artists of the past century are, in a sense, unseen. This exhibition shows us the human beings behind some of the 20th century's most vital works of art. The photographs range from posed, candid, and working shots to behind the scenes of artists at work. In these photographs the essential personality of the artist is revealed, and an image of the past becomes visual history.