One of the Most Important Living American Photographers Just Got a Landmark Show
A landmark retrospective, the photograph that broke the color barrier, and the biggest spring auction season in years
THE FRAME
Carrie Mae Weems Opens Her First Belgian Retrospective — and It’s a Landmark
The Heart of the Matter, the first retrospective of Carrie Mae Weems in Belgium, opened at FOMU — Fotomuseum Antwerp on March 20 and runs through August 23, 2026. Curated by Sarah Hermanson Meister and organized by Gallerie d’Italia – Intesa Sanpaolo in collaboration with Aperture, the exhibition brings together more than 100 photographs and videos spanning five decades of one of the most influential careers in contemporary photography.
The show includes landmark works: Kitchen Table Series (1990), the project that first announced Weems as a major voice; Museums (2006), her meditation on institutional power; and Preach (2024), a new immersive installation created specifically for this exhibition that connects Weems’s spirituality with the history and vitality of Black worship in the United States. Throughout, Weems appears in her own photographs — as subject, guide, and muse — using her experiences as a Black woman to illuminate histories that the mainstream has often left in shadow.
Her work is held by MoMA, the Guggenheim, Tate, Centre Pompidou, the Barbican, and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, among others. This exhibition eschews chronology in favor of a framework that centers Weems as a creative form — asking us to confront urgent political events and persistent social cycles, with her perspective and ethics as the compass.
WHY IT MATTERS:
Weems is arguably the most important living American photographer. Her work has shaped how we think about race, gender, power, and memory in images — and she has done it while insisting on beauty, narrative, and emotional directness. The FOMU show is the latest stop in a year that has placed photography’s political and social dimensions at the center of museum programming worldwide (Muholi’s Hasselblad, Opie in London, the Getty’s Black Arts Movement show in LA). For collectors: Weems’s market has been strong and steady; this kind of institutional touring only deepens it.
ON VIEW
New This Week
100 Photographs to Inherit the World
MUDEC — Museo delle Culture, Milan
Through Jun 28, 2026
Curated by Denis Curti, this exhibition charts two centuries of photography across six sections — from daguerreotypes to the digital age. 100 images spanning Man Ray, Kertész, Cartier-Bresson, Mapplethorpe, Joel Meyerowitz, Claude Cahun, Sandy Skoglund, and Newsha Tavakolian, among others. Not a greatest-hits anthology but a critical journey through photography’s cultural legacy — and what it means to inherit the world through images. MUDEC
Laura Aguilar: Body and Landscape
The Huntington, San Marino
Through Sep 7, 2026
Drawn from recent acquisitions from the artist’s estate, this exhibition traces Laura Aguilar’s groundbreaking use of self-portraiture within the natural environments of Southern California and the Southwest. A Chicana and queer artist who died in 2018, Aguilar reframed the Western landscape as a site of personal power, resilience, and reclamation. A second rotation, Day of the Dead, follows in September. The Huntington
Budapest Photo Festival 2026
Budapest
Through May 15, 2026
The 10th anniversary edition of Hungary’s leading photography event features a major exhibition dedicated to René Burri alongside a survey of contemporary Hungarian photography. City-wide programming across galleries, museums, and cultural institutes. Budapest Photo Festival
Closing Soon
Apr 4: Come As You Are: Grunge, Counterculture, and the Seattle Sound — Musichead Gallery, Hollywood.
Apr 13: Ruby Bell: Glow — Leica Gallery, West Hollywood.
Apr 25: Binh Danh & Renee Royale — ROSEGALLERY, Santa Monica. JR: Horizons — Perrotin, Los Angeles.
May 4: Eugène Atget: The Making of a Reputation — ICP, New York.
IN FOCUS
The Red Ceiling — William Eggleston, 1973
A bare lightbulb hangs from a blood-red ceiling. White electrical cords snake across the surface. That’s it. The photograph is formally titled Greenwood, Mississippi, but the art world knows it simply as “The Red Ceiling.” William Eggleston made it in 1973 using the dye-transfer process — a printing technique borrowed from advertising that saturated color to an almost hallucinatory intensity. It became his signature.
Three years later, on May 25, 1976, Eggleston’s work went on view at The Museum of Modern Art in New York — the first solo exhibition of color photography in MoMA’s history. John Szarkowski, the museum’s legendary photography director, selected 75 prints and wrote the accompanying monograph, William Eggleston’s Guide. The reception was divided and passionate. Critics called the work “banal” and “boring.” The New York Times review was withering. Henri Cartier-Bresson, who had become a friend, told Eggleston flatly: “You know, William, color is bullshit.”
Eggleston described his method as “photographing democratically” — every subject held equal significance, whether an empty living room, a dog drinking from a puddle, or a woman perched on a curb. The photographs depicted the American South without grand narratives: modest homes, flat landscapes, local strangers, dining rooms, and odd souvenirs, all rendered in saturated color that made the ordinary feel strange and the mundane feel sacred.
WHY IT MATTERS:
That 1976 MoMA show broke the color barrier in art photography. Before Eggleston, serious photography meant black and white. After him, color was no longer a compromise — it was a language. Szarkowski wrote that Eggleston and his generation worked “as though the world itself existed in color, as though the blue and the sky were one thing.” The exhibition and the Guide are now considered among the most important events in the history of the medium. Eggleston, who is 86 and still lives in Memphis, won the Hasselblad Award in 1998 — the same prize that went to Zanele Muholi this year. An Eggleston print, Untitled (Louisiana), is among the lots at Phillips on April 11, estimated at $30,000–50,000.
FAIR & FESTIVAL WATCH
Coming Up in April
EXPOSED Torino Foto Festival
Turin, Italy
April 9 – June 2, 2026
The third edition of Turin’s international photography festival. This year’s theme, Mettersi a nudo (My Heart Laid Bare), is curated by CAMERA – Centro Italiano per la Fotografia under the artistic direction of Walter Guadagnini. EXPOSED
KYOTOGRAPHIE
Kyoto, Japan
April 18 – May 17, 2026
Theme: Edge. Thirteen photographers from eight countries including Daido Moriyama, Anton Corbijn, Pieter Hugo, and Ernest Cole. Set across Kyoto’s temples and machiya townhouses. KYOTOGRAPHIE
AIPAD: The Photography Show
New York City
April 22–26, 2026
The 45th edition at the Park Avenue Armory. New “Focal Point” single-artist sector. Aperture Portfolio Prize awarded at the fair. AIPAD
THE AUCTION BLOCK
Coming Up in April
Phillips Photographs — New York, April 11
The spring’s marquee photography auction. Highlights from the catalogue:
Wolfgang Tillmans, Freischwimmer 123 — Est. $150,000–250,000
Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #49 — Est. $120,000–180,000
Edward Weston, Nude (Tina on the Azotea) — Est. $100,000–150,000
Tina Modotti, Bandolier, Corn, Sickle — Est. $100,000–150,000
Bernd and Hilla Becher, Winding Towers — Est. $100,000–150,000
William Eggleston, Untitled (Memphis) — Est. $100,000–150,000
Sebastião Salgado, Gold Mine — Est. $100,000–150,000
Robert Frank, Parade — Hoboken, New Jersey — Est. $70,000–100,000
Cindy Sherman, Untitled #471 — Est. $70,000–90,000
Thomas Ruff, substrat 21-I — Est. $50,000–70,000
Catherine Opie, Untitled #4 — Est. $40,000–60,000
William Eggleston, Untitled (Louisiana) — Est. $30,000–50,000
Sotheby’s Photographs Part II — Online, Closing April 16
Bidding opens April 8. Highlights from the catalogue:
Diane Arbus, Identical Twins, Roselle, N.J. — Est. $70,000–100,000
Helmut Newton, Blonde and T.V., Hotel Gallia, Milan — Est. $70,000–100,000
Richard Misrach, Untitled (#328-02) — Est. $50,000–70,000
Albert Watson, Kate Moss, Marrakech, January 1993 (III) — Est. $25,000–35,000
Peter Beard, Heart Attack City — Est. $20,000–30,000
Nan Goldin, J. and Richard in Bed, Chicago Ill. — Est. $12,000–18,000
Graciela Iturbide, Mujer Ángel, Desierto de Sonora, México — Est. $6,000–9,000
OFF THE PRESS
New & Noteworthy
Bounty by Steve McQueen
MACK, March 2026
The artist and filmmaker continues his exploration of colonial history through meditative photographs of Grenada’s flora — studying the island’s plant life as permanent markers of beauty in a land ravaged by exploitation. The title alludes to both the generosity of nature and the sum paid to slave catchers. Designed by Irma Boom. Includes Derek Walcott’s poem “The Bounty” and a new text by Dionne Brand. MACK
Lonely Are All the Bridges by Robin Hinsch
GOST, February 2026
“This is not a war book. Not exactly.” Robin Hinsch photographed Ukraine over more than a decade — from his first visit in 2010 to the present. Soviet ruins and historical monuments sit alongside misty, rain-soaked landscapes. A melancholic vision of a country caught between a contested past, a brutal present, and an uncertain future. 76 images. Essay by Julian Stallabrass. GOST
Album, 1969–82 by Guido Guidi
MACK, February 2026
Rediscovered negatives from the beginning of Guidi’s career — his family, friends, and the deserted streets of 1970s Italy. High contrast, disorienting framing, and the anarchic energy of youth, revisited with the shrewd instincts of a master editor. The second of three volumes engaging with Guidi’s black-and-white work. Limited edition of 1,000 signed copies. MACK
OPEN CALLS
Deadlines This Month
Hasselblad Foundation Photo Book Grants — Deadline April 1. No fee. Two grants of SEK 100,000 (~$10,800) each. International. Submit digital dummy via Picter.
CPA Artist Grants 2026 — Deadline April 7. Five grants of $5,000 each. Carmel.
PPA Photo Award 2026 — Deadline April 12. No fee. $2,000 prize.
Inge Morath Award 2026 — Deadline April 30. No fee. $7,500. Women and nonbinary photographers under 30.
THE WEEKS AHEAD
Key Dates: March 30 – April 19
Apr 1: Deadline — Hasselblad Photo Book Grants.
Apr 4: Last day — Come As You Are, Musichead Gallery, Hollywood.
Apr 7: Deadline — CPA Artist Grants.
Apr 9: EXPOSED Torino Foto Festival opens.
Apr 11: Phillips Photographs auction, New York.
Apr 13: Last day — Ruby Bell: Glow, Leica Gallery, West Hollywood.
Apr 16: Sony World Photography Awards winners announced, London.
Apr 19: LACMA David Geffen Galleries grand opening, Los Angeles.
ONE QUESTION
What photograph changed how you see the world?
Not the most famous. Not the most expensive. The one that changed something for you. Tell us in the comments — we’ll feature the best responses next week.
DID YOU KNOW?
Female collectors are changing what gets bought — and what gets valued. According to the Art Basel & UBS Survey of Global Collecting, women high-net-worth collectors are outspending men in photography, digital art, and installations. In fact, female collectors averaged USD $519,960 on art and antiques in 2024 — 46% more than their male counterparts. They're also more likely to support female artists, with women holding a higher share of works by female artists in their collections (49%) compared to male collectors (40%). And with a tendency to seek out unknown artists and work with personal meaning, female collectors are quietly but powerfully reshaping the art world's canon.
ON THIS DAY
April 1, 1960: NASA launched TIROS-1, the first weather satellite — and the first spacecraft to photograph Earth from orbit. The grainy, black-and-white images it sent back weren’t art, but they changed how we see our planet forever. Photography’s reach extended beyond the surface of the Earth for the first time.
