Whitney Museum of American Art

Photo Assembly: Photographic Practices

The Whitney Museum hosted a Photo Assembly, a collaborative forum with Aperture and the Institute of Fine Arts, to explore photography as a creative practice that responds to urgent societal questions. The event coincided with the Whitney Biennial and featured four artists—Kelly Akashi, Mo Costello, Aaron J. Nelson, and the late Metro Ways—whose work blurs the boundaries between photography, sculpture, print, and multimedia. Akashi presented a series of sculptural pieces derived from a house fire, including a corten‑steel recreation of her grandmother’s doily and CT‑scanned images of burned remnants, emphasizing materialized absence and the lingering imprint of loss. Costello discussed his "readers," bound collections of text and image circulated through community spaces—from convenience stores to his own porch—highlighting disability, pandemic‑era isolation, and the politics of distribution. Nelson’s ceramic‑based camera work and Metro Ways’ Polaroid‑derived assemblages further illustrated how photographic processes can be re‑imagined as tactile, memory‑laden objects. The dialogue underscored a shared concern: the traditional language of photography feels inadequate in an era where all images converge into a single visual syntax. By integrating scientific imaging, handcrafted materials, and public dissemination, the artists propose new vocabularies that foreground presence, absence, and communal exchange. Organizers announced a follow‑up assembly in the fall at the Institute of Fine Arts, signaling an ongoing commitment to interdisciplinary, community‑oriented conversations that expand the definition of photographic practice beyond the gallery wall.