8.5″x11.19″; gelatin silver print; 1930; © Estate of Pere Català i Pic; Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Purchase, Advisory Council for Photography and James Kloppenburg, class of 1977, 2025.35.
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Photo-Design: Persuasion, Critique, Fantasy
at Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie, New York, USA
3 October 2026-31 January 2027
Typically understood as a tool for seeing the world as it is, photography is equally valuable for imagining what could be. This exhibition argues that the visionary potential of photography has been chiefly expressed through design. Spanning a century, from the 1920s to the present, this exhibition offers “photo-design” to describe how graphic designers, architects, and artists use photography to imagine new ways of living in times when the future seems uncertain and not guaranteed.
10.75″x8.63″; gelatin silver print; 1949; © Estate of Grete Stern; Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Purchase, gift of Mrs. Frederick Ferris Thompson, by exchange 2024.1.
Works by artists and designers including Marshall Brown, the Guerrilla Girls, László Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, Eduardo Paolozzi, Jorge Rigamonte, Grete Stern, and many others illuminate how photo-design shapes our experiences of the modern world. Design offers radical ideas about how to live, taking advantage of photography’s strong association with reality, using equally radical and disruptive techniques including collage, montage, and experimental printing to envision new futures.
Today as a century ago, one way we begin to emerge from disaster is to imagine our way out of it.
This exhibition is generously supported by The Rosalie Thorne McKenna Foundation and Hoene Hoy Photography Fund, as well as the Horace Goldsmith Exhibitions Fund. It was organized by Jessica D. Brier, curator of photography, with key contributions by Katherine Bernstein ’27, Anna Kozloski ’25, and Dhara Zoe Tisato Ware ’26.
(text adapted from material provided by the museum)
INFORMATION
Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center
124 Raymond Avenue
Poughkeepsie, New York 12604 USA
(845) 437-5632
Hours:
Tuesday-Sunday, 10AM-5PM
Thursday, 5PM-9PM, September-May