MoMA's "New Photography 2025": Global Perspectives Redefine the Medium

September 28, 2025

This year’s MoMA New Photography 2025: Lines of Belonging exhibition is a powerful and essential step in recognizing the dynamic, global, and deeply subjective nature of the medium.

I was so moved reading Holland Cotter’s New York Times review. Featuring 13 artists and collectives from Mexico, Nepal, South Africa, the U.S., and beyond, the show completely shatters the outdated notion of photography as a 2-D objective “truth-teller.” Through murals, sculptures, installations, and radical interventions; cutting, soaking, sewing, these artists reveal how every photograph is steeped in history, ideology, and emotion.

From left, “Dos Tlaloc (Two Tlaloc),” 2019; “Hojas de Metal (Metal Leaves),” 2019; and “Mascarón Dorado (Golden Mask),” 2019, life-size photographs by the two-person collective named Lake Verea (Carla Verea Hernández and Francisca Rivero-Lake Cortina). Credit: Robert Gerhardt

Global Voices, Experimental Forms

The exhibition highlights diverse “lines of belonging.” The Nepal Picture Library documents their feminist movement, while Sheelasha Rajbhandari critiques repressive marriage traditions. South African artists Gabrielle Goliath and Lindokuhle Sobekwa confront trauma, and American artists like Gabrielle Garcia Steib and L. Kasimu Harris preserve disappearing cultural histories. LGBTQ+ voices are also powerfully present, from Sabelo Mlangeni’s work to Sandra Blow’s vibrant documentation of queer life in Mexico City.

A Very Proud Mentor Moment!

Renee Royale, “River at Fazendeville (Chalmette Battlefield),” 2023. Royale submerged her Polaroids in Mississippi River water, its algae, dirt and pollutants, then photographed the marinated prints for display. They could be taken for washy abstract painting. Credit: Renee Royale

I have to shout out my former student, Renee Royale! Her submerged Polaroids of Fazendeville, a razed Black village, are a stunning challenge to photography’s so-called truth-telling. She transforms documentary images into abstract, deeply moving art. I could not be prouder to see her work alongside that of her peers and no less at MoMA.  She is pushing the boundaries of what photography can be.

This exhibition is more than a survey; it is a counterweight to political forces that seek to erase or marginalize these global communities and histories. Bravo to the curators for giving this urgent and evolving work the platform it deserves.