Representing all things photography through exhibitions, consignments and appraisals!
It’s an exciting year ahead as we begin 2024 at our new east side Canyon Road area location on Delgado Street with a January 27 open house from 1-5pm.
Hours of operation are Tuesday – Saturday 11-5pm. We are also open by appointment. Please call us to schedule a visit at 505-577-6708.
WE HAVE PARKING! Parking is available in the big lot right across the street from the gallery or on the street!
Following Danny Lyon’s extensive retrospective New Mexico exhibition ‘Journey West’ at the Albuquerque Museum this Summer, Obscura Gallery is thrilled to present ‘Danny Lyon: Prints and Photographs 1963 – 2023’, featuring the seminal documentary photographer’s 60-year career of exploring people, places, and land through photographs and montages. Also included will be a selection of new works that capture New Mexico’s diverse landscapes, seeking to raise awareness of fires, drought, and climate change. Other featured works span Lyon’s career photographing the Civil Rights Movement, the Texas Prison System, the Chicago Outlaw Motorcycle Club, and more. The latter culminated in his seminal book, ‘The Bikeriders’, a landmark of modern photojournalism that collected interviews and photographs, documenting the abandon and risk implied in the name of the Chicago Outlaw Motorcycle Club. A feature-length film by Jeff Nichols, ‘The Bikeriders’, is based on Lyon’s book of the same name and will be released soon.
WATCH THE RECORDED ZOOM WEBINAR WITH THE CAPONIGROS HERE.
Please join us Friday, September 15 from 5-7pm for the artist reception of Two Generations: Paul Caponigro and John Paul Caponigro, a father-and-son exhibition including over two dozen photographs highlighting the careers of this family of artists. John Paul will give an informal chat at 4pm before the reception begins.
For both artists, Santa Fe was home for over twenty years (1970 – 1990s) while Paul lived here raising John Paul in a community of artists. Now, decades later, their work will be shown together in this joint exhibition at Obscura Gallery. Responding to interest in seeing the work of father and son together, the show “Two Generations” was originally assembled from the personal collection of John Paul and first exhibited more than three decades ago – it has traveled and evolved ever since and we are thrilled to have curated our own version at Obscura Gallery.
While at first glance both artists seem a world apart — Paul’s work in black and white gelatin silver and John Paul’s work in vivid color by use of digital means — their work is unified by the same spiritual thread that runs through their landscape photography. They both revere the land they photograph and try to convey their responses to the land they love. They are both successful photographic interpreters of the majesty that our Earth offers us.
VIEW THE VIRTUAL EXHIBITION TOUR HERE.
Please join us for a book signing and intimate exhibition of Henry Horenstein’s recently published, Speedway. With a foreward by Ray Magliozzi of ‘Car Talk’, Horenstein’s images in the book “present us with a slice of what the world of motor racing looked like then [in 1972], before racing became big business, as it slowly morphed into Nascar – the worlds fastest growing sport.”
THE MONTH OF AUGUST 2023
This August, Brant Mackley Gallery has a stellar exhibition of contemporary Sikyátkii revival pottery by Hopi potter Bobby Silas in his first solo exhibition and we are thrilled to be exhibiting photographs that complement this incredible work!
Silas is the first Hopi to use the lost tradition of lignite coal-fired pottery in hundreds of years. Bobby will be bringing new works weekly until Indian Market so come before the reception if you wish, the show is up and ready for viewing!
Below is a selection of the photographic works included in the exhibition, and visit the gallery to view the entire selection.
EDWARD CURTIS, A Hopi Girl, Plate 406, 1905, 15.5 x 11.25″ Image Size, 18 x 22″ paper size, vintage photogravure on Holland Van Gelder paper from Portfolio 12.
WILLIAM HENRY JACKSON. View in Tewa Looking Towards Walpi, AZ, 1875, (Nampeyo the Potter and her brother Tom Polacca on the roof of the Corn clan dwelling in the village of Hano), 1875. 4.5 x 6″, Vintage albumen.
JOHN K. HILLERS. Walpi, Mokitown, Arizona, c.1872-3, 9.5 x 12.5”, vintage albumen print
Obscura Gallery is thrilled to welcome Debbie Fleming Caffery back to Santa Fe for a Summer solo exhibition, Portraits of Birds, a beloved project Debbie has undertaken most of her career. At a young age growing up on the Bayou Teche in Louisiana, Debbie was inspired by her grandfather, who raised doves, pigeons, and chickens and took her on day trips to visit wild birds. Throughout Debbie’s career, she continued her passion for these creatures, photographing birds in many varied settings: living wild in Louisiana, freed from animal markets in Mexico, and most recently rehabilitated as Avian Ambassadors in New Mexico. Debbie brings the same sensitivity into this stunning collection of black and white gelatin silver portraits of birds as she is known for when photographing people of various cultures.
VIEW THE VIRTUAL EXHIBITION HERE.
The artist reception takes place on Friday, July 7 from 5-7pm.
DOWNLOAD THE FULL PRESS RELEASE HERE.
VIEW THE ENTIRE BIRD PORTFOLIO HERE.
A select survey of photogravures representing over a century, with prints dating from as early as 1897 to contemporary prints made in 2023. The earliest print in this exhibition is by Alfred Stieglitz from his 1897 portfolio Picturesque Bits of New York and Other Studies created from a steel plate. The most recent work included in the exhibition are 2023 abstract prints of New Mexico and Patagonia created from polymer plates by Santa Fean Eddie Soloway.
The photogravure is an intaglio print process that, in the early development of photography, was invented to produce high-quality ink reproductions of photographs, featuring deep shadows and luminous highlights. Early photographic pioneers Joseph Nicéphore Niepce and William Henry Fox Talbot invented the process in the 1840s, and then it was perfected in 1879 by Karl V. Klíč. Traditionally, photogravures were photographs that were etched into a metal plate using light sensitive carbon tissue. The plate was then inked and run through a printing press to produce a positive ink print known for its distinctive, luminous tonal qualities. With most contemporary photogravures, the metal plates have been replaced with polymer plates and other less toxic chemicals are used in the process.
Visit us at BOOTH #113!
Obscura Gallery is devoting the entire 2023 AIPAD booth to a survey of the late Kurt Markus’s storied photographic career. Kurt Markus was “celebrated as a fine artist and a chronicler of the American West” as Alex Williams wrote in The New York Times when Markus passed away last year. Kurt is perhaps best known for his portraits of cowboys in the American West and also enjoyed a distinguished career as one of the world’s preeminent fashion photographers. Over the course of a decade, Obscura Gallery owner Jennifer Schlesinger curated three solo exhibitions of Kurt Markus’s work including The Fashion Years retrospective, Monument Valley 2002-2017, and Dunes, Namibia 2002-2008, as well as a Cowboys in the West exhibition, all of which will be included in Obscura Gallery’s booth at The Photography Show presented by AIPAD. Kurt’s latest book published posthumously, Christy, chronicles the travels he and model Christy Turlington made over the course of a 25 year-long friendship, and the book and prints will be available for sale in the AIPAD booth as well.
Still Beauty is a three-person photographic exhibition representing the beauty found within the cold, quiet, short days of winter. The exhibition includes two gallery artists, California-based Brigitte Carnochan and New Jersey-based Michael Massaia, as well as guest artist Jim Bailey, from New Mexico.
Brigitte Carnochan’s series Still Beauty, from which the show derives its title, includes luminous color still lifes that she creates from plants she grows in her garden. Michael Massaia captures the images for his large format gelatin silver prints during quiet hours of the night in Central Park, New York City. In his printing, he adds subtle color through meticulous use of special darkroom toning techniques. Jim Bailey combines the extremes of climbing and ski mountaineering in Norway, France and the United States with photographic artistry, contrasting human interaction with other-worldly landscapes.
The opening reception takes place on Friday, January 27, 2023 from 5-7pm and the show continues through April 1, 2023. Brigitte Carnochan and Jim Bailey will be in attendance at the reception.
Obscura Gallery announces our second annual Winter Holiday exhibition, One-of-a-Kind II, a group show of unique photo-based artworks found exclusively at our gallery. The exhibition consists of six contemporary artists producing one-of-a-kind artworks through various photo-based processes. This year’s exhibit features William Albert Allard (U.S), Angie Brockey (U.S), Coco Fronsac (France), Lori Henson (U.S and Mexico), Erin McGean (Canada), and Robert Stivers (U.S). The exhibition reception takes place on Friday, November 25, from 5-7pm.
In the 21st Century we are most familiar with photography as a medium enabling multiple prints of the same image. Yet many of the photographic processes that were used in the 19th and 20th Century yielded one-of-a-kind prints. In some cases, the processes made a singular print for each exposure; in other cases, the treatment of prints during production led to singular images. Included in this exhibition are 1980’s vintage Polaroid positive prints, contemporary tintypes, early 20th Century gelatin silver prints with contemporary mixed media, photo collage, encaustic, and hand-applied surface texture to gelatin silver prints.
VIEW THE WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION HERE.
DOWNLOAD THE FULL PRESS RELEASE HERE.
Obscura Gallery is excited to present a solo exhibition by fine art portrait photographer Rashod Taylor, which includes his two poignant and sensitive projects, Little Black Boy and My America. Through the use of wet-darkroom printing methods including the 19th Century wet-plate collodion process as well as the enlarging process on gelatin silver paper, the artist uses portraiture to express themes of family, culture, legacy, and the black experience.
RECEPTION WITH THE ARTIST:
Friday, September 23, 2022
4pm – Gallery walk-thru with the artist
5-7pm – Reception with the artist
Please join us in welcoming Rashod Taylor to Santa Fe for the first time and let’s celebrate his solo exhibition!
The exhibition is on view September 23 through November 20, 2022.
ONLINE INTERVIEW WITH THE ARTIST:
Online Zoom interview with Rashod Taylor – learn more about the work in his solo exhibition, My America.
Obscura Gallery is excited to present a community book signing event for Taos, New Mexico artist Jonathan Blaustein with his photographic book, Extinction Party (Yoffy Press). This photographic book explores humanity’s over-consumption and its impact on the planet. In an unprecedented time of the Covid-19 pandemic, Extinction Party was (coincidentally and appropriately) released in March 2020 and named one of BuzzFeed News’ best books of 2020. Obscura Gallery held an intimate exhibition during the 2020 book launch, however we are excited to re-present this book again to the public, in post-pandemic times, to give it the honor it deserves. With the photo essay – the images and titles – and the forward essay by Kevin Kwan, as well as the metaphorical story in between, the book could not be a more timely commentary on the current state of our Earth and humanity.
**We invite those who did not have a chance to get their book signed during the pandemic to please bring it to the event to have the artist sign their copy. Books will be available for purchase and signing as well. In addition we will host a raffle offering up a signed copy of the book and special give-aways.
Obscura Gallery
225 Delgado St.
Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-577-6708
info@obscuragallery.net
Member of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers
