Many of us can name a work of art, music, or literature that provokes an emotional or even a physical reaction. This photograph by Guy Mendes has that quality, and… Read More

All photographs depend on different combinations of chemicals and minerals to turn light into pictures. This week, as NOMA focuses on the materials and processes that artists use to create,… Read More

As NOMA explores the theme of process and materials, this essay looks back at an exhibition from 2011, What is a Photograph?, and some of the treasures that it included… Read More

During the Civil War, Timothy O’Sullivan made a name for himself photographing army camp life and Eastern landscapes destroyed by cataclysmic battles. In 1871 O’Sullivan enlisted in the U.S. Corps… Read More

During a week when NOMA’s team looks toward our permanent collection for examples of plant life and floral beauty, it may seem strange to focus on the humble cabbage. Carlotta… Read More

In the late 1970s, Richard Misrach produced a group of photographs in Louisiana that made dramatic use of long exposures and stroboscopic lighting. Here, the intermittent blasts of light on… Read More

Although Imogen Cunningham’s earliest photographs were soft-focused, often ethereal studies of friends presented as allegories, she would become best known for images such as this one, which presented forms in… Read More

The rose trémière, or hollyhock, is a classic summer bloom with flowers arranged vertically on long stems. Eugéne Atget came across this hollyhock in a Paris, where he roamed the… Read More

This unique photograph, made without using a camera, has a wonderful story behind its creation, much of which is written directly on the surface of the photograph. The word “photograph”… Read More

The story behind the making of this photograph is a lesson in how photographers craft stories into pictures. Lewis Hine, who was well known for this ability once said, “If… Read More

In this photograph, Arthur Siegel captures the visual power of people united by a common cause. At different times in his career, Arthur Siegel worked as a photojournalist and documentarian,… Read More

  Dorothy Norman was only twenty-two years old when she walked into the Intimate Gallery and met Alfred Stieglitz, then sixty-three. Although they were separated by more than forty years… Read More

It is often said that a portrait photograph represents some kind of exchange between the photographer and the subject, and that the resulting image, as the product of this exchange,… Read More

In only his second year in Paris, after moving there from Hungary, André Kertész received an invitation to visit Piet Mondrian’s apartment and studio. There, he was immediately immersed in… Read More

This week, as NOMA turns its focus towards themes of connection, we are thinking about how human relationships shape artists’ careers, and how we can use those connections to interpret… Read More

Danny Lyon took his first photography gig when he joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), an organization of young activists that orchestrated sit-ins and carried on the Freedom Rides… Read More

In the winter of 1937 the Ohio River overran its banks and flooded the land between Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Cairo, Illinois, killing almost four hundred hundred people and displacing approximately… Read More

When the reporter and newspaper editor Jacob Riis purchased a camera in 1888, his chief concern was to obtain pictures that would reveal a world that much of New York… Read More