MoMA’s New Photography: Communities Beyond Borders
For the 40th anniversary of its “New Photography” series, MoMA spotlights artists from four global cities, Johannesburg, Kathmandu, New Orleans, and Mexico City, long-standing centers of creativity predating the nation-states that now contain them.
Since 1985, “New Photography” has celebrated artists who expand the medium’s horizons. This edition brings together 13 voices at different stages in their careers. “Their work reflects kinship and solidarity in a turbulent moment,” curator Roxana Marcoci notes, “while sustaining communities and tracing connections across and beyond borders.”
River at Chalmette Battlefield (Fazendeville) from Landscapes of Matter. 2023 © 2025 Renee Royale.
Saraswati Rai Collection / Nepal Picture Library. A mass meeting of former kamlaris (women bonded labourers) in Kanchanpur, Nepal (2010) from The Public Life of Women: A Feminist Memory Project. 2023. Digital Image. © Courtesy GEFONT Collection / Nepal Picture Library
Lines of Belonging on view at The Museum of Modern Art © Robert Gerhardt
Some artists give new life to the archive: The Nepal Picture Library’s “Public Life of Women: A Feminist Memory Project” presents photographs and documents that trace Nepali women’s struggles and everyday lives. In New Orleans, Gabrielle Garcia Steib turns family archives into moving images that connect Latin America with the U.S. South. In Mexico City, Sandra Blow captures the strength and artistry of LGBTQ+ youth culture.
Sandra Blow. Allan Balthazar (2017) from Untitled. 2017-20. © 2025 Sandra Blow
Tania Franco Klein. Mirrored Table, Person (Subject #14) from Subject Studies: Chapter 1. 2022. © 2025 Tania Franco Klein
Gabrielle Garcia Steib. Still from The Past is a Foreign Country. 2020. Super 8 and archival footage © 2025 Gabrielle Garcia Steib
The exhibition “New Photography 2025: Lines of Belonging” will be on view at the MoMa in New York City until January 17, 2026.
