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LIFE: Six Women Photographers

LIFE founder and editor-in-chief, Henry R. Luce, was convinced that American political, economic, and cultural power would, and should, dominate the era he defined as the “American Century.” Photojournalism, or “photo essays” as he coined them, could effectively shape an authentically American vision of the United States as an international power, inspiring its people, in Luce’s words, “to live and work and fight with vigor and enthusiasm.” By giving readers vivid images of industrial strength, women and the family, race relations, World War II, labor, and the Cold War, the photographers in this exhibition contributed to this view of the United States as a global player seeking its identity on the world stage.Six pioneering female photographers were among those who contributed to LIFE’s pursuit of this American character: Margaret Bourke-White, Marie Hansen, Martha Holmes, Lisa Larsen, Nina Leen, and Hansel Mieth. These photographers were among the few women who were retained as full-time staff or on a semi-permanent basis rather than as freelancers. Their cameras captured events both international and domestic, wide-ranging and intimate, serious and playful. Central to LIFE’s reportage was the sometimes contentious relationship between photographers and editors, with each holding a stake in the ideology and content of the final essay. Ultimately, the editorial staff, not the photographers, chose which images would be published, and thus how each story was presented.In his prospectus for LIFE, Luce stressed the importance for one “to see life; to see the world; to eyewitness great events…” It was not about reading but rather about allowing the images to tell the stories. These six photographers played a vital role in Luce’s quest to achieve that end.

Deborah Roberts: Consequences of being

Consequences of being brings together large-format paintings, works on paper, and— for the first time in Deborah Roberts’ career—ceramic sculpture. The exhibition marks a significant expansion of the Austin, Texas–based artist’s practice and a deepening investigation into the histories and legacies of colonialism. Roberts, who received her MFA from Syracuse University, uses collage to approach identity as something fragmented and continually reconstructed, reclaiming found materials and images to examine how Black bodies are seen, positioned, and understood globally.

The project broadens Roberts’ historical lens to include Germany, the Netherlands, and South Africa—nations deeply implicated in the exploitation of land and people. In these new works, she repurposes imagery and text from grocery store signage and packaging, referencing foods once discarded or given to enslaved peoples that are now reframed as delicacies. Through these transformations, Roberts considers how colonial histories continue to shape cultural identity, economic access, and the politics of consumption. While her figures bear traces of dehumanizing language and imagery, they are also imbued with presence, dignity, and spirituality, asserting survival and self-definition.

Roberts constructs her hybrid figures—often young Black children—through a distinctive collage process that combines found, manipulated, drawn, and painted elements. Drawn from the social and economic environments these children must navigate, the imagery foregrounds the precarity imposed by racial stereotyping and its impact on identity and agency. Her signature expanses of white space isolate the figures, intensifying attention to how Black bodies are centered, measured, and read in relation to structures of whiteness.

The exhibition also debuts a new ceramic bust, Zuri, named after the Swahili word for “beautiful” or “good,” affirming enduring cultural lineages and the inherent value, brilliance, and potential of Black children.

Realities Within

Realities Within presents four enduring genres of artmaking to explore how artists shape, frame, and inhabit the world. Whether a landscape, cityscape, still life, or representation of the human body, these works show how each artist’s reality is impacted by their lived experience. Separated by genre and installed “salon-style”—a term inspired by the eighteenth and nineteenth century Paris Salons, where paintings were hung from floor to ceiling, covering every inch of wall space—the dense arrangement invites close looking and visual comparison, encouraging viewers to find connections across time, style, and subject matter.

The landscape section explores artists’ responses to the natural world, from expansive vistas to intimate views. In contrast, the cityscape section examines the built environment, capturing rhythms of urban life and the evolving character of towns and cities across America. The still life section turns inward, focusing on interior spaces and objects arranged and captured with deliberation. The section with representations of the body centers on the human presence, revealing varied approaches to capturing likeness, identity, and expression.

Featuring old favorites alongside new acquisitions, Realities Within offers a dynamic survey of artistic observation, highlighting how artists have continually returned to these genres to interpret the visible world.

Rich Harrington: Fissure

For many people, personal identity flows naturally from their families, the objects they grew up with, and the physical place they are rooted in. These small puzzle pieces connect to construct one’s personality and sense of self. For others, notions of self and identity are more fluid and mysterious—a sum total that is somehow different from its constituent parts. Artist Rich Harrington has spent his career grappling with his own identity and the ways it has been shaped by popular culture.

Harrington digs into his early life experiences by constructing physical and metaphorical spaces to understand his own developing identity and his search for place within the family structure and society. For Fissure, Harrington revisits preconceived notions of gender roles and the popular culture that reinforces them. By appropriating imagery and text that once affirmed conventional ideas of gender, Harrington disrupts their original context, creating a conceptual fissure: a space where the dominant narrative fractures, allowing overlooked, suppressed, or alternative narratives to emerge. The fissures encourage viewers to question inherited assumptions and reconsider the cultural narratives that shape identity.

About the Artist: 

Rich Harrington was born in Binghamton, New York. He earned a BFA in Illustration from Syracuse University in 1980 and an MFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute, College of Art in 1993. From 1978 to 1979, he studied in London with the partners of Pentagram Design Ltd. and faculty from St. Martin College of Art and Design. Harrington’s work examines how popular culture shapes identity, referencing toys, games, teaching materials, and icons from his youth. Using painting, sculpture, video projection, and assemblage, he reassigns familiar images and texts to reveal alternative narratives, creating intersections of memory, meaning, and belonging.