Photography at Picture Room features eight artists whose work plays a central role in the Picture Room collection.

While the formal and conceptual frameworks vary greatly, unexpected linkages arise when placed in conversation with one another. Each artist is based in a major metropolitan area but focuses their frame on the natural environment. This takes shape in the form of treacherous sunflowers emerging from a sidewalk, designated parks or urban “natural” environments, or in depictions of spaces in which it’s clear that the photographer has left the city altogether, having captured a form in the sand or on a rocky cliffside. Photography at Picture Room presents the layered lenses that comprise our Brooklyn-based collection.

Including work by Aaron Hegert, Adjua Gargi Nzinga Greaves, Alana Celii, Daniel Dorsa, Donavon Smallwood, Johanna Tagada-Hoffbeck, Landon Speers, and Logan Jackson. On view at Picture Room from June 8 – July 31, 2023.

Aaron Hegert (b. 1982) lives and works in Texas. He is currently the Assistant Professor of Photography at Texas Tech University. His work has been exhibited and published widely with recent exhibitions at Utah Museum of Contemporary Art; Aperture Foundation in New York City; and University Art Gallery at UCSD. He is a Fulbright Scholar and a founding member of Everything Is Collective.

Adjua Gargi Nzinga Greaves (b. 1980) is an artist chiefly concerned with postcolonial ethnobotany working in the mediums of scholarship, corporeal wisdom, archival gesture and language. This series features annotated photographs of Greaves’s source material, curated into interrelated catalogs. Her work has been published, exhibited, and reviewed by About Place Journal, The Brooklyn Rail, Ugly Duckling Presse, Artists Space, ISSUE Project Room, Hyperallergic, and 4 Columns. Formerly a Monday Night Reading Series curator at The Poetry Project, site director for Wendy’s Subway, and an artist-in-residence at Rauschenberg Residency, Greaves is currently based in Providence, Rhode Island where she is a candidate for the MFA in Poetry from the Literary Arts Program at Brown University.

Alana Celii (b. 1986) lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She is currently a photo editor at The New York Times. Her work has been published in numerous publications and exhibited internationally in cities including Athens, Berlin, Istanbul, London, Los Angeles, New York, Sydney, and Toronto.

Daniel Dorsa (b. 1988) is a Brooklyn-based photographer who works across portraiture, fashion, landscape and visual reportage. Dorsa’s work has been commissioned and published by The New Yorker, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, WSJ Magazine and Time Magazine, as well as by clients such as Herman Miller, Uniqlo, SSENSE, Levi’s, Atlantic Records, Airbnb and Matches Fashion. Dorsa’s first book, Paradise (Pomegranate Press.), draws together photographs made between 2017 and 2020 in south and central Florida, exploring isolation and environmental decay.

Donavon Smallwood (b. 1994) lives and works in New York, NY and is a graduate of Hunter College. Smallwood’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently at Foam and Galerie Wouter van Leeuwen. His photographs are included in a handful of collections, including the Rijksmuseum. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2021 Aperture Portfolio Prize. Periodical features and editorial clients include The Atlantic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Guardian. Languor, Smallwood’s first monograph, was released by Trespasser in winter 2021.

Johanna Tagada (b. 1990) is a painter and interdisciplinary artist from Strasbourg, France. Currently based in London, her practice is built on her own daily meditations, expanding outwards to incorporate ecological observations and wider cultural theories. Her work has been exhibited widely in Japan, as well as in France, Los Angeles, London and New York. Her first book Daily Practice was published in 2018 by InOtherWords Imprint.

Landon Speers (b. 1988) is a photographer and musician based between NYC and the Hudson Valley. His work has been published in publications including The New York Times, W Magazine, Vogue, New York Magazine, & The Fader.

Logan Jackson (b. 1991) lives and works in Brooklyn. His work has been exhibited internationally and featured in various publications, including The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, i-D, and W Magazine, and brand collaborations with D.S. & Durga, Glossier, Chanel, Marc Jacobs, KENZO, and Onitsuka Tiger.