As a glut of images parades through our lives, photographers re-educate us on how to see. In 2025, Sara Cwynar mounted an alphabet’s worth of search engine-produced images at ICA Boston; Inuuteq Storch introduced MoMA PS1 audiences to the vast social and environmental world of his hometown in Sisimiut, Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland); and Amant, New York celebrated Dietemar Busse’s 1990s Polaroid portraits of the city’s celebrities and other characters. And that’s just the start. If the year offered us plenty of A.I. slop to wade through, the following photo moments encouraged us to reconsider what we know about lust, creativity, and the cosmos.

Centre Pompidou Bids Adieu with Wolfgang Tillmans

Wolfgang Tillmans at the Bpi, January 2025 © Centre Pompidou

In September, Paris’s beloved Centre Pompidou closed for a five year renovation. Wolfgang Tillmans gave the lauded institution a proper sendoff with a blockbuster exhibition, “Nothing could have prepared us – Everything could have prepared us,” situated in its nearly 65,000 square foot public information library. Tillmans easily filled the space with a breathtaking range of work, made between the 1980s and today. He rearranged the books and furniture and mounted still lifes, youth portraiture, photographs of abstracted hues, and pensive environmental shots of the sea and the stars in unusual configurations. Tillmans’s worldview gets more expansive and far-reaching with age, a lesson to us all to keep pushing for depth and meaning no matter the external chaos the year may bring.

Ana Mendieta, Reframed

Installation view of Ana Mendieta: Back to the Source at Marian Goodman Gallery. Photo: Alex Yudzon. © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery

Ana Mendieta infused 1970s feminist art with blood and mysticism. She took inspiration from Santería and contorted her own body into configurations that evoked the violence she and other women encountered in the world. Her photographs document the artist’s performances and sculptural engagements with the land: Mendieta insisted on capturing, for posterity, her involvement with the material and spiritual worlds. Her ghostly “Silueta” series featured her bodily outline carved or otherwise sculpted into the natural environment. These works became ever more haunting after her untimely death at age 36 in 1985. Marian Goodman Gallery opened its inaugural exhibition of the artist’s work this year, titled “Back to the Source,” featuring these iconic photographs and a selection of other films, photographs, prints, and drawings.

Ana Mendieta, “Sandwoman,” 1983. Black-and-white photograph. © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery. Photo: Alex Yudzon.

Mendieta was one of the artists they chose to spotlight at Art Basel Miami Beach earlier this month as well. “We were especially honored to showcase Ana’s work, Sandwoman, (1983) on our booth; the work was created on the sands of Miami in 1983,” said Junette Teng, managing partner at Marian Goodman Gallery. “Ana and her sister Raquelín arrived in Miami in 1961 as part of Operation Pedro Pan, a U.S. government rescue program created after the Cuban Revolution. In her travels to Cuba years later, Ana would often return to Miami as a way for her to connect memory, exile, and the transient concept of home.”

She added, “As we have seen in New York, Ana’s art continues to be a great source of inspiration for visitors. Many of the visitors to the fair, especially locals, were incredibly moved seeing Sandwoman presented here.”

But this is just the beginning of a Mendieta resurgence. The show precedes a major retrospective at the Tate Modern, which will open in July 2026. The new representation, the institutional showing, and mounting creative interest in the artist promise to elevate Mendieta from art world favorite to household name.

Tyler Mitchell Was Everywhere

Front cover of Tyler Mitchell: Wish This Was Real (Aperture, 2025); cover image: Tyler Mitchell, A Glint of Possibility, 2022; from Tyler Mitchell: Wish This Was Real(Aperture, 2025). © Tyler Mitchell and courtesy Gagosian

Tyler Mitchell shot to global prominence in 2018 when he shot Beyoncé for Vogue. At age 23, he was the first Black photographer the publication had ever hired for a cover story. Mitchell has made Black utopia his primary subject, though he’s also explored histories of slavery via ghostly images that engage with the Southern Gothic. This year, the artist turned 30 and put out Wish This Was Real, a new monograph with Aperture, who feted him at its yearly gala; mounted his debut exhibition at Gagosian New York (and showed his third with Gagosian London).

Tyler Mitchell, True Care, 2024. Photo: Aperture

Mitchell shot photography for the Met’s Costume Institute exhibition (and impressive accompanying tome) Superfine: Tailoring Black Style. The monograph shares a title with Mitchell’s touring show, which is on view at Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris through January 25, 2026.

The Art World Remembered Martin Parr

Martin Parr, Japan. Miyazaki. The Artificial beach inside the Ocean Dome (1996). Photo: Martin Parr/Magnum, courtesy of Rocket Gallery.

British photographer Martin Parr passed away at the age of 73, leading to an outpouring of appreciation for his singular aesthetic. Parr gained renown in the mid-1980s for his photographs of the British coast. He captured New Brighton, a working class resort town, in all its congested chaos. Trash, crowds, and unhappy children filled his colorful frames. The series, which he titled “The Last Resort,” epitomized Parr’s wry perspective on the world. He often focused on humanity’s excesses and participation in prosaic traditions: eating at buffets, waiting in lines, and embracing touristic rituals. The Guardian published a series of remembrances from art world figures ranging from artist Grayson Perry to curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. Parr will be missed.

The Largest Diane Arbus Show Ever Hit the U.S.

Diane Arbus: Constellation Co-Presented by Park Avenue Armory and LUMA. June 5–August 17, 2025 at Park Avenue Armory. All artworks © The Estate of Diane Arbus exhibited courtesy of Collection Maja Hoffmann/LUMA Foundation Installation. Photo: Nicholas Knight

“Constellation,” the largest exhibition of Diane Arbus photographs to-date, made its U.S. debut at the Park Avenue Armory (a 2023 edition, pictured above, appeared at LUMA Arles). Around 450 photographs went on view, many never before seen. The show featured an unusual curatorial conceit: The photographs appeared on walls and on metal lattices, with mirrored surfaces that reflected viewers, the photographs, and their back sides. The show transformed into a maze of midcentury faces, a labyrinth of the human strangeness Arbus made her main subject. Arbus’s visionary talent and delivery are indisputable. But the presentation exhausted some viewers and encouraged a future edit or thematic grouping of Arbus’s extensive oeuvre. 

Irving Penn’s Market Got a Major Boost

Irving Penn, Gingko Leaves, New York (1990). © The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn’s crisp, classic photographs spanned most of the 20th century and never really went out of style. But a fall auction launched them back into the news. In October, Phillips presented “Visual Language: The Art of Irving Penn” and brought 70 works to auction in partnership with the Irving Penn Foundation. Fashion photography, still lifes, and even paintings Penn created across his seven-decade career evidenced the artist’s range, beyond the iconic Vogue images for which he may be best-known. Sixty-six lots sold for a total of $4.8 million. Phillips set a record for the artist’s market with Gingko Leaves, New York (1990), which handily beat its $200,000–$300,000 estimate and achieved $567,600. 

Sam Penn Captured a Global Pop Star, Then Her Own Intimate World

Sam Penn, Bed Kiss (2025). Courtesy of the artist.

As the American media diminishes trans people to political talking points and cultural flash points, photographer Sam Penn proudly displayed what her own romance really looks like. After the photographer went on the road with Lorde and shot her Ultrasound World Tour, she opened Max, her first show with photographer Ethan James Green’s New York Life Gallery.

Penn captured intimate moments with her some-time romantic partner Max, who wrote an accompanying text. Both photographer and writer are trans. Penn frames the pair in a bathroom mirror and in bed, mid-coitus, and otherwise bare or aided by a strap-on.  A series of landscapes and cityscapes, featuring a nocturnal grove, midtown Manhattan, Fort Tilden, and other nearby locales, offers brief, beautiful departures from these interior spaces. One of Battle’s passages reads, “Sam traipses downstairs in an oversize black jumper and tells me about a prophetic dream while sipping cardamom tea. She says that I’m her boyfriend in an interview for an arts magazine, but by the time the piece runs in November, I’m not.”

It’s both as tumultuous and exciting as any other youthful romance, and more moving for the participants’ willingness to reveal themselves to a world that’s so often hostile to their identities. It’s a show of intimate, quiet, defiance, and a refreshing, rare take on trans people depicted as sexual beings.  

Jack Pierson Quietly Owned Miami Art Week

Photography legend Jack Pierson has made his mark across America, shooting pictures of his queer community, collecting abandoned letters from storefront signs to make sculptures, and mounting a giant message in the Mojave Desert, at the edge of the country, that proclaims “THE END OF THE WORLD.” His star took a more mainstream turn this year when Obama announced that he’d be creating a found letter sculpture, reading “HOPE” for his forthcoming presidential library. Throughout his broad art practices, he’s maintained steady traction in the fashion world. This December, the artist quietly ruled Art Basel Miami Beach with an army of barely clad men.

“Jack Pierson: The Miami Years” is on view at The Bass through August 16, 2026. Courtesy of the artist, Regen Projects, Lisson Gallery, and The Bass.

The photographer mounted “Jack Pierson: The Miami Years,” a solo exhibition at the Bass Museum that documented his brief 1984 tenure in the city at the outset of his career. One new commission for the show, the monumental ARRAY (MIAMI) (2025), unites found images and ephemera with Pierson’s own photographs. Swimsuits, palm trees, half-dressed men, and a printed flyer for a wrestling competition at the Miami Beach Convention Center coalesce to create a diffuse portrait of the city. Pierson’s three galleries, Lisson, Regen Projects, and Thaddaeus Ropac, all presented his work in their fair booths.

Nearby, Pierson curated Tuxedo Park, a pop-up iteration of Elliott Templeton, the intimate Lower East Side gallery he co-runs with Evan Lincoln in a rundown apartment house, marked only by a doormat with their logo in art deco font. Among the outré treasures was a mini sculpture by Alma Allen, who will represent the U.S. at the upcoming Venice Biennale. Haunting photographs by Vienna Actionist Rudolf Schwarzkogler presented male subjects blindfolded or bound like mummies. A series of vintage “posture study photographs” from the 1950s accentuated the male nudes’ regal appearance in apparently research-oriented studies. A ca. 1928 pencil study of a nude, muscular gentleman by Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita brought poetic charm to the eroticism. The show was a true standout amidst the big-budget fair goings-on and activations.

An installation view of Tuxedo Park. Courtesy of Elliott Templeton.

Man Ray Inspired Met Audiences

The Met’s “Man Ray: When Objects Dream“ proved there’s plenty more to say about the eponymous icon of early-20th century Dada and Surrealism. The show, curated by Stephanie D’Alessandro and Stephen C. Pinson, focuses heavily on Man Ray’s “rayographs,” which the artist made by placing everyday objects atop photo paper and exposing them to light. They were mysterious and painterly, illuminating the work Man Ray made across disparate media, from painting to sculpture and more traditional photography. 

Man Ray, Lee Miller (1929).  The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of James Thrall Soby © Man Ray 2015 Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris 2025

The curators wrote: “The artist’s boundary-breaking experimentation in diverse media, as well as his adjacency to and independence from multiple modernist movements, especially Dada and Surrealism—in short his ‘in-betweenness’—offers a fresh approach to understanding his idiosyncratic output, and, in particular, his rayographs.”

The show galvanized crowds who needed a creative boost, a sign to try out a new form, or an image to slowly unlock the mind. Many of the works on view are promised gifts from collector John Pritzker. This group includes Le Violon d’Ingres (1924), Man Ray’s famous image of a woman’s naked back superimposed with two black marks that resemble the sound holes of a violin. Pritzer purchased it at Christie’s in 2022 for $12.4 million.