The Blind Photographers
A new collection of pictures from blind photographers around the world suggests that blindness is itself a kind of seeing.
Galleries
A collection of 422 issues
Where the Streets Have One Name
What is the best way to honor a man like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? Photographs from a cross-country trip to document streets named after the American icon.
In Her Own Skin
A longtime leader of New York’s performance art world, Martha Wilson’s photographs exist as proof of her experiments with multiple identities.
The Writing of Art
Protesters are clashing in the street over paintings. What is it, whether in art or literature, that makes one thing better than another?
The Wild World
Photographs that find stillness in turbulence, moments close to reverence when almost nothing's in control. Peter Bohler walks us through what it’s like to find a niche in the world of glossy assignments.
Rodeo Days and Nights
From Texas rodeos to New York City streets, black and white photographs find modern life endlessly surprising.
The Emerald Triangle
A photographer earns the trust of marijuana farmers in California’s “Emerald Triangle,” as the clandestine world of cannabis cultivation begins to open up.
Playground
Inspired by memories of his own childhood in the UK—part joy, part Lord of the Flies—a photographer studies playgrounds around the world.
Scrubland Life
Three years of photographs from Europe’s mountainous backcountry, where off-the-grid communities struggle for autonomy.
The Ghost Army
Art from World War II's masters of deception—including the likes of Bill Blass, Ellsworth Kelly, Art Kane—who served in a top-secret unit that fought the enemy with trickery.
Sacred Headwaters
Dramatic photography from one of British Columbia’s most stunning spaces, under constant threat from mining development.
Objects of Affection
A darkly pop sensibility turns familiar objects on their heads—so a toothbrush becomes erotic, and popsicles are strangers in a crowd.
May the Road Rise to Meet You
The traveling salesman would seem to be an elusive, dying breed in America. In Sara Macel’s “May the Road Rise to Meet You,” she hits the road with her telephone-pole salesman of a father, rediscovering him in the process.
Get Out of Jail Free
The bachelorette party can seem like a crude, commercial ritual. But at its core are emotional ties that bind.
Mars on Mars
Stella Maria Baer has made a life for herself in the Northeast. But her ethereal treatment of the cosmos and the desert have won her a massive, devoted following.
A Perfect, Unattainable Romance
Niagara Falls is known as the perfect place for a romantic honeymoon, or a spectacular death. Rebecca Bird’s paintings capture arrested motion with poise, mystery, and careful attention.
No Gimmicks
Too often we assume art requires interpretation. But paintings don’t need to broadcast meaning to be meaningful.
In These Woods
Over seven years, an artist watches a beloved forest suffer a “massive tree mortality event,” then gradually recover and become something new. The result: a lesson in entropic beauty.
Southern Cavaliers
Biker rallies, rodeos, and other loud gatherings in the American South. Watch out for the flaming torches.
Tales From the City of Gold
Photographs of communities existing around the mine dumps of Johannesburg, South Africa—defunct mines that were closed decades ago being re-mined for any traces of gold.
Night Divers
Paintings of divers, ships at sea, and Superman—wearing underpants or not—find common ground in quiet mystery.
Farce and Sensibility
Paintings of peculiar worlds where butterflies sizzle in frying pans. The more you pay attention, the less you’ll understand.
Ghosts in the Sunlight
Female subjects painted in classics by old masters—“Diana After the Hunt,” “The Rape of Europa”—get their voices restored, and with them new narratives and powers.
Magnetic Dust
Paintings made from commercial cassette tape can’t help but embrace a sense of decay that’s inherent to the material.
Woman in My Heart
Portraits of a queer community in South India treat gender, biology, art, and family with emotional nuance—no exoticism in sight.
Melting Away
Incredible photographs from 10 years of documenting the quickly changing landscapes of the Arctic and Antarctic, where no two icebergs are alike.
Mark Mothersbaugh: Myopia
A new book surveys the artistic career of Mark Mothersbaugh, from drawings that inspired DEVO to recent film scores.
The Paint Storm
Whitney Bedford’s paintings of ships and shipwrecks, ocean ice and fireworks, are simultaneously hot and cold, catastrophic and serene. It’s a tension that makes for some very turbulent art.
Another Space and Time
Popular notions of the Great American Desert were of a land barren and uninhabitable. But away from the frills of modern life, photographer Robin Mellor finds answers when he asks his subjects, “What’s the meaning of life?”
Terminal Bar
Portraits of the hustlers, businesswomen, singers, and teachers who were regulars at one of Manhattan’s most notorious dives.
The Power of Ritual
An artist’s personal issues become manifest through dozens of identically dressed little men.
Under the Volcano
A Seattle painter creates friendly portraits of volcanoes in part to mitigate fears of complete system failure.
Umbrellas of Hope
A week’s worth of street photographs and interviews from the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong—that most civil of civil disobedience movements.
Dark Markets
A new book captures Chicago’s financial markets at a moment when there are no offers for trades—any trading company’s horror vacui.
History of Magic
Alison Blickle’s paintings—full of ceremony, mysticism, and sisterhood—remain electric with desire, even when the object of desire is a mystery.
Going Nowhere
Mid-century magazine clippings find new life in collages that are just the right amount of weird and clever.
Fractured Fauna
Copper deer, bears with cabinet legs, and other absurdities to be found in the future wild.
Visible Men
Portraits of black men that bring attention to the unique humanity of each individual.
The Shape of Paper to Come
In elaborate collages and installations, paper can generate elements that are capable of building new worlds.
Yosemite
Susanna Bluhm’s paintings of Yosemite and other locales are full of place and history—and, as she tells us, plenty of sex and weather, too.
All About Eves
Eve becomes a woman of many lives, whether trying her first cigarette or weeping in a wedding dress.
Kodak City
Photographer Catherine Leutenegger chronicles the decline of the Eastman Kodak Corporation and the city built by Big Yellow.
Melt Your Television
A young abstract painter from San Francisco explains why Instagram is the best art critic of all.
Past Time
The business and madness of modern sports appear, through subtle augmentation, in classics of American art.
New York From 1,200 Feet
Paintings of New York from the perspective of a plane flying at 1,200 feet, along the Hudson River.
Remnants of the Underground Railroad
The Thirteenth Amendment passed 150 years ago, abolishing slavery. Today, little of the Underground Railroad still remains. A painter hits the road to discover what’s intact.
Grace Happens
Tobacco farmers, churchgoers, and signs of rapid growth crop up like kudzu along North Carolina’s Highway 15-501, aka Tobacco Road.
Salix Polaris
Portraits of scientists, explorers, and other “professional dreamers” who have found their way to the North Pole.
We Shall
Paul D’Amato’s portraits, collected in the masterful new book “We Shall,” represent 10 years of photographing the west side of Chicago.
The Chinese Party!
A redacted version of Mao Tse-tung’s “Little Red Book,” illustrated with photographs of contemporary China, becomes a story for modern times.
Paradise With a Limp
Cityscapes as you’ve never seen them before, built from luxury watches, sapphire pools, and other media prescriptions for the perfect life.
Days of the Dead
Large-scale, hand-drilled portraits—where pixels are drilled from enormous blown-up photographs—of people killed in Mexico's drug wars.
The Internet Is So Loud
Large-scale abstract paintings that recall networks, maps, and schematic diagrams—and with each subsequent viewing can become anything at all.
Frontcountry
Photographs of life inside a mining boom, from Montana to Texas, that’s producing a new, modern version of the Wild West.
American Library
Photographs from a new book of American public libraries—some famous, some neglected, some both—plus an essay by former Poet Laureate Charles Simic.
Life at an Incredible Height
In Mumbai, paltry regulation means hundreds of new skyscrapers bring more lows than highs. Photographs of new construction, with titles named after the buildings’ advertising slogans.
Redwood Saw
Haunting portraits of ancient old-growth forests in Northern California and the people who live in the former boom town next door.
Hispanic Tennessee
Evidence of diversity emerging in Northeast Tennessee, historically one of the United States’ most conservative, homogeneous regions.
The Age of Axe Shower Gel
Sumptuous, extremely close-up paintings of hair gel, body wash, and other beauty products, using 5-hour Energy powder, Viagra, and MDMA to create pigments along the way.
Rule-Based Systems
The power of architecture, the architecture of power—it’s all one and the same (and occasionally beautiful) in the business of high-tech.
Self-Portrait in a Convex Smartphone
An artist observes her own process of making art, from daily encounters with her computer to personal reflections on how life itself unfolds.
Life Aquatic
Paintings of swimmers underwater, from an ongoing series that pays homage to summers spent sinking and floating in the lakes of Minnesota.
The High Life
Aerial views made from direct observation, enlivened by composite viewpoints, heightened color, and the manipulation of light and scale.
Slight Exposure
Found photographs hand-altered with embroidery and collage, transforming pictures that were somehow incomplete.
Waiting for an Intervention
Street photography has never been more popular, now that everyone has a camera in their pocket. But truly good work requires constant failure—and constant walking.
Editors' Favorites From 2013
The staff choose their most-liked pieces published in 2013: a trip to Patsy Cline's divided hometown, the complete biography of North West, a cold case of hit-and-run, and no shortage of great quotes about dead bodies.
Human Interest Story
In the “visibleInvisible” series, a pediatrician-photographer takes luminous portraits of people considered to be outside beauty’s dominant ideal.
Silent Lights
Human beings captured behind closed doors, in their most animal state. Some images may be considered NSFW.
People of the Sun
Photographed asleep, sunbathers on the beach show how endearing—and universally human—we all can be when we just lie down and let loose.
The Hunter in His Blind
A project to document Wisconsin’s broad variety of deer stands takes on new meaning after a round of chemotherapy.
Personal Kill
In training centers around the world, American soldiers are taught to kill at close range—a “personal kill.” Pictures of the places where soldiers practice, and a discussion of the US military’s increasing reliance on machines.
The Origin of New Species
Inspired by folk tales, mythical beasts, and Portuguese azulejos, an artist paints her own version of natural history.
Soliloquies
Sometimes beauty appears only for a short instant, as a flash of visual energy. It’s the photographer’s job to wait, observe, and then pounce.
The Artist Is Mother of the Woman
Many painters depict themselves, but few work exclusively in the genre of self-portraiture. Selections from Haley Hasler’s body of work—the artist in costumes of everyday life.
City of Brotherly Love
Portraits of men in Philadelphia taken just moments after they catcall a woman on the street.
Life Among Rebels
Pictures from a photojournalist embedded with a Free Syrian Army militia in Aleppo, the country’s largest city, now torn apart by war.
Love in the Kingdom of the Sick
When an artist receives a heart transplant, his drawings of the procedure acquire all the gravity of a fever dream—intensely realistic, with hallucinations of the dead.
Women of the Future
One woman powers herself with a solar panel. Another wears a neon sign in her Afro. In the future as in the past, identity is never one-dimensional.
House Music
When a photographer reviews 35 years of unposed family pictures—unexpected moments, children growing older—a symphony appears.
Somewhere In-Between
Multi-layered photographs show people’s inner lives merging with their environments—suggesting that what we see of reality is less than what actually exists.
Everything-Wallahs
Ear cleaners, knife grinders, street-side barbers—portraits of Indian tradesmen who maintain caste-prescribed professions.
Totem Goals
Modern-day totem poles constructed from Americans’ favorite consumer materials—cars, beer cans, even cheeseburgers.
True West
Irresistible watercolors of mouthy cowboys, automobile wrecks, boxing matches, rodeo clowns, and rock bands.
The Tension of Today
Square paintings that take the smallest things—a gas station’s roof, a swing set’s leg—and find unease in the most cheerful of circumstances.
Only in Burundi
A new book, “Only in Burundi,” provides a candid look into the post-conflict, everyday life of Burundians, from nuns to the president.
Between Falling and Falling
In the instance of slipping, there’s a moment of stillness just before you lose control. Selections from 10 years of a falling man’s self-portraits.
The Big Pink
A former criminologist focuses on the lighter side of Los Angeles. Oil paintings of the city’s shops, streets, and people, with a particular focus on a single bright pink store.
We Love Our Homes to Death
Foliage bursting into living rooms. Houses floating in trees. Dynamic paintings of how natural and built spaces invade one another.
Insight
Portraits of a boy who was born without eyes, from one of the 21 “new and emerging photographers” selected this year by Lens Culture.
The Art of Yielding
Experiencing a piece of art can be transporting, but the act of explaining it to someone else is an art form in itself. No wonder that docents, professors, even patrons get caught up in the act.
Bull City Summer
Selections from Sam Stephenson’s multi-artist project documenting a season with the Durham Bulls, the North Carolina AAA baseball team that inspired the film “Bull Durham,” which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.
Paris in the Seventies
From his new solo show in the United States, black-and-white selections from Takuma Nakahira’s “Circulation: Date, Place, Events,” plus a reprint of his 1973 essay, “Looking at the City or the Look From the City.”
Anacostia
Portraits of community, recreation, and environmental abuse along the riverbanks of Washington, DC’s, Anacostia neighborhood.
Point of Deliverance
Pictures from the edges of the Northern Gaeltacht, the Irish-speaking area of County Mayo and one of the last true wilderness areas in Western Europe.
India at Rest
India’s prevailing image is one of noisy animation—development, overcrowding, and horrible traffic. In comparison, night-scapes of urban India capture the life, or lack thereof, that darkness conceals.
Somebody Call Someone
New paintings that question how much we truly influence our fate, and whether or not life is just a string of accidents.
A Sense of Snow
Fine-art photography from one of the snowboarding world’s best practitioners, “Creager,” who recently retired from traveling the world in search of snow.
Elegy to the Polaroid SX-70
Even abstract art must begin with something, Picasso said. A broken Polaroid camera, grinding film through its gears, yields a surprising amount of fleeting beauty.
Inner Light
Black and white portraits of young men and women at the Milton Margai School for the Blind in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Costumes and Conflict
The Hereros of Namibia added Victorian fashion into their traditional costume under German influence in the late 19th and early 20th century. Photographer Jim Naughten explains how he became fascinated with this community.