Luhring Augustine is proud to present a two-person exhibition of photographers Joanne Leonard and Brittany Nelson, which will be on view in our Chelsea location from September 7 through October 19, 2024. This presentation will mark Leonard’s first exhibition with Luhring Augustine and Nelson’s second show with the gallery, her work previously featured in Tiptoeing through the kitchen, recent photography (Spring 2024). A conversation with both artists moderated by Elisabeth Sherman, Senior Curator and Director of Exhibitions and Collections at International Center of Photography (ICP), NY, will be held at the gallery on Saturday, September 7 from 3-4pm.

Joanne Leonard’s photographs of interiors are celebrations and examinations of the cacophony of domestic settings and many of the now-obsolete technologies of the mid-twentieth century. Shot in the late 1970s and early 1980s, these kitchens, laundry rooms, and bedrooms are filled with the entanglements and jumbled ephemera of lived-in spaces – a sphere that is historically associated with the feminine domain. The images are subtly threaded with the hectic happiness of life and family, and yet they read as crowded, confining, and overwhelming. Leonard’s use of light, and her balance of rich blacks and greys, bring a softness to these images and add a loving caress of appreciation to the overlooked appliances and products of the quotidian.

In contrast to these familiar and object-saturated interiors, Brittany Nelson’s photographs are otherworldly, with horizons expanding beyond our planetary borders. Nelson often turns to outer space in her work, employing it as a metaphor for queerness – exploring ideas of isolation and the need for human connection. The works on display in this presentation are from the Allen telescope array series, made while Nelson was in residency at the SETI Institute, an organization that is dedicated to searching for life in the universe. While there, she photographed the 42 antennas that compose SETI’s enormous telescope array, roaming the grounds alone at night with a medium-format camera and reversing the telescopes’ outward gaze by searching for them with a hand-held light source. The resulting photographs are at once shocking and soothing; while the enormous scale of the dishes is intimidating, their frontality and open presence imbue them with a sense of acceptance and even trust in the viewer, almost as if they were beings themselves.

Joanne Leonard’s (b. 1940, Los Angeles, CA) earliest work to gain recognition was a four year-long documentation in the early 1960s of daily life in the impoverished West Oakland, CA neighborhood near where she had her studio. She is known today for her photographs and photo collages depicting private moments and personal struggles of women’s lives – subjects once considered either taboo or unimportant. She taught art and interdisciplinary courses at the University of Michigan’s Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design and now holds the title of Diane M. Kirkpatrick and Griselda Pollock Distinguished University Professor Emerita. Leonard’s work is held by major collections, including Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York: International Center of Photography, New York; The Jewish Museum, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Minneapolis Institute of Art; among many additional museums throughout the US.

Brittany Nelson (b. 1984, Great Falls, MT) explores 19th-century photographic chemistry techniques and science fiction to address themes of loneliness, isolation, and distance within the queer community, and its parallels with space exploration. She is the recipient of a Creative Capital Foundation Grant in Visual Arts. Recent institutional solo exhibitions include: Le CAP - Centre d’art Saint Fons, France and Fotogalleriet in Oslo, Norway, as well as group exhibitions in a wide variety of institutions and galleries. Nelson is currently an Artist in Residence with the SETI Institute in Mountain View, CA. Her work has been featured in publications such as Art in America, Frieze, Mousse, Cultured Magazine, and The New Yorker. Nelson lives and works in New York, NY.