METROPOLITAN PHOTOGRAPHY GALLERY
mickey smith
About the photographer
MICKEY SMITH (US/NZ) is a conceptual artist and photographer renowned for her in-depth exploration of libraries, books, and archives, examining their social significance and physical form. Her research-driven practice spans image making, writing, and video installation. Since 2003, her work has been shown internationally and is included in collections such as the Museum of Modern Art Library, Sheldon Museum of Art, and Weisman Art Museum. She has received grants from the McKnight Foundation, CEC ArtsLink, Americans for the Arts, and Creative New Zealand. Notable publications include MICKEY SMITH: Morphologies (September 2024), As You Will... Carnegie Libraries of the South Pacific, and Denudation. Smith holds a BA in Photography from Minnesota State University Moorhead (1994) and a Diploma in Jewellery Design from Hungry Creek Art & Craft School, NZ (2019). She is also a spokesperson for Harbour Hospice Auckland.
Geraldo de barros
About the photographer
The Fotoformas of Geraldo de Barros (1923-1998) were created from the late-1940s through early 1950s, largely in São Paulo. As fitting this period of intense urban growth and industrialization, de Barros’ series of photographs captures a city in flux. But this was not a heroic, productivist vision of a mechanized city. Instead, the Fotoformas present a strangely heterogenous array of subjects: a torn and stitched canvas loosely hung across the picture plane, a graffito of an angel, spiraling geometries of iron and glass, a woman’s bare derrière, balloons caught in wires against a clouded sky.
Michael Patrick O'Brien
About the photographer
A photographer of things, people, and spaces who owes as much to the practitioners large format photography as to representational painters such as Catherine Murphy, John Singer Sargent, and Fairfield Porter, Michael Patrick O’Brien images people and places known to him, primarily family, in an ongoing and open ended body of color photographs. This image-by-image engagement with familiar people and places forms a consistent practice within his broader work as an artist.
Paul Raphaelson
About the photographer
In 2013, Paul Raphaelson received permission from the developers of the Domino site to explore every square foot of the refinery just weeks before its gutting and demolition. Raphaelson is the last photographer given access to the factory.
atsuko morita
About the photographer
Using a pinhole camera I crafted specifically for this project, I have captured one moment from each day in my life. The photos are clustered by month, with a small portion of the negative exposed for each calendar day.
Herman Mhire
About the photographer
"My current body of work is based upon photographs I took in the spring of 2017 on my way to the Taschen bookstore on the rue de Buci in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. As I walked by a vacant boutique whose windows had been whitewashed from the inside, I observed broad white brushstrokes merged with reflections of facades on the opposite side of the street. Remnants of posters taped to and subsequently torn from the boutique windows were juxtaposed with voids permitting views into the boutique's interior where discarded furniture had been stacked haphazardly. I was intrigued by the multiple levels of reality before me and began to make new images based upon this experience.”
Herman Mhire