EXHIBITIONS

In Progress: Installation Underway

Of Light and Alchemy

September 05 – October 03 , 2025

Guest Curator: Liz Allen

Participated Artist: Participated Artists: Brenda Biondo, Meg Gould, Joshua Mokry, David Shannon-Lier, Ariel Wilson

“I am burning with desire to see your experiments from nature.” – Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre

Nascent photographic technology was a delicate dance with light and chemistry fueled by curiosity and experimentation. In 1839 two processes were announced, first in France and later in England with great fanfare. However, Louis Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot were not the only ones toiling in their labs “burning with desire” as Daguerre described his excitement in a letter to his collaborator Nicéphore Niépce in 1828. Many others endeavored with various processes to capture the potential of an image created by light bouncing off a subject onto a flat surface. Some motivated by commerce, others by science, and still others by beauty, they could not have known how photography would transform the world by advancing the dissemination of information, shaping our relationship to representation, and thus influencing culture and history.

In the exhibition, Of Light and Alchemy, the desire still burns in these artists as they continue the rich and multi-faceted tradition of experimentation and discovery that was marked by those announcements nearly 200 years ago. Through various iterations of photo-sensitive materials, the artists delve into the human relationship to time, perception and metaphor in collaboration with light and nature to further expand the boundaries of experience.

Opening Reception and Artist Talk(Brenda Biondo), September 05,2025

Artist Talk: Joshua Mokry, September 19,2025

Closing Reception and Artist Talks, (Ariel Wilson and Meg Gould), October 03,2025

Unsuspected

October 17 – November 8, 2025

Curator: Cecilia Fajardo-Hill

Unsuspected is a collective exhibition that proposes to focus on the overlooked, the insignificant, and the forgotten. Photography has a unique capacity to capture something unseen, through either a long or premeditated creative process, experimentation, chance occurrences, as documentation of performative acts, as a transdisciplinary form, a screen shot, etc. When a photographic image exists with intention -conceptual, intuitive, political, humoristic, critical, etc.- within and beyond the medium-itself-, it may reveal a visual and conceptual universe that far from confirming reality as we know it, it may expand it, question it, and reinvent it, in unexpected ways. Paradoxically, the more insignificant, overlooked or recognizable the subject, the experiential disturbance is the more potent.

This exhibition is inspired by artist Sybil Brintrup (Chile 1954-2020) a Chilean conceptual artist who worked in diverse media -video, performance, photography, poetry, objects, games- who was often overlooked. Unsuspected is about our relationship with objects and the world that surrounds and embraces us; it is about artists paying attention to what seems irrelevant or inconsequential. An intergenerational group of artists -ASU professors, MFA students and alumni, and nonaffiliated guest artists- offer images that reveal seeing with imagination and intent, within and beyond the known and the photographic medium.

April 17-26, 2025

Garden

“Garden” comprises thousands of amateur photographs sourced from digital archives and social media accounts, transferred onto glass. Many of these images are manipulated, stripped of names or any contextual information. They depict individuals who lost their lives, were forcibly disappeared, or arrested due to the socio-political conditions in Iran from the Islamic Revolution of February 1979 to the present.

April 03 - April 12, 2025

Tricky Ricky

Tricky Ricky is an interactive thesis exhibition by Richard Pence.

March 20 - March 29, 2025

long violence dreamt me west

Powerlines and trees connect communities, sharing resources, spreading communication. When the ties between them are cut, only a memory of the bond remains. That memory shifts as it passes from mouth to mouth, malleable as copper, occluding and redefining the original relationship; a story broken from its context and reimagined again and again.

February 28 - March 7, 2025

Gut-Rot

Gut-Rot invites audiences to engage with the regenerative potential of decay and our interconnectedness with one another.

Jan 24 to Feb 22

Reclaiming Red

Reclaiming Red explores the colonial implications of the color redand demonstrates how Indigenous people use it for healing, peace, sacredness, unity and Hózhó

November 15- November 25, 2024

After Party

This exhibition of expanded photography takes the mythology of the “Party School” as a point of departure.

September 06 - November 01, 2024

Tasvir Exhibition

A Research Exhibition on Contemporary Iranian Image-Based Art

March 29 to April 27, 2024

Healing – Rethinking Gender

An interdisciplinary collaborative exhibition of artists, faculty and graduate students at ASU.

January 19– February 03, 2024

Land, Body & Archive

Land, Body & Archive, an exhibition by Southwest Photo Collaborative

Phoenix Transect

Phoenix Transect features the work of ASU alumni who participated in a multi-year field study with Professor Emeritus Mark Klett.

Nov. 17-Dec. 1, 2023

Meaning Making Machines

Meaning Making Machines celebrates/visualizes the embodiment of the photographic process through the singular practices of a group of student artists.

Sept. 15 – Nov. 4, 2023

Seral Bodies

Northlight Gallery’s forthcoming exhibition Seral Bodies, is curated by Roshii Montaño and Ninabah Winton and will examine the contemporary practice of Indigenous photographers and artists.

Oct 21 - Nov 19, 2022

American Journey

Join us in the gallery for the opening reception of An American Journey Continues, photographs and digital montage by ASU Professor Stephen Marc.

Sept 8 - Oct 8, 2022

Reimagining Earth

Features the works of ASU MFA alumni who explore the experience of the human animal and the non-human creatures that share this Earth.

April 1 – 23, 2022

50 Years of Curating

Northlight Gallery celebrates 50 years with an exhibition featuring the creative works of its curators since its establishment in 1972.

March 4 – April 2, 2022

Circle of Influence

Northlight Gallery and the ASU School of Art will honor Regents Professor Mark Klett for 40 years of service to the university with an exhibition.

Oct 21 – Nov 19, 2021

Naked and The Nude

Naked and The Nude brings together works from the Northlight Gallery Permanent Collection and the Solari Foundation Collection.

Sept 9 – Oct 9, 2021

Memento Mori

Memento Mori: Memento Vivere is an exhibition on death and photography, and will showcase a collection of image-based works.

Jan 21 – Feb 19, 2021

Borders and Boundlessness

Borders and Boundlessness features the photographs of ASU MFA alumni.

September 26 - October 26, 2019

Person Perception

Person Perception Persona features portraits from the Solari Foundation on loan to Northlight Gallery by photographers well known and accepted in the canon of the history of photography.