Image: Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach
The Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach is presenting ‘Cursed Images: Pictures Out of Context,’ an exhibition of 20th-century vernacular photographs drawn from a recent gift to the museum from the Peter J. Cohen Collection. The exhibition focuses on anonymous, everyday snapshots whose subjects, settings or unexpected relationships generate a subtle and difficult-to-explain unease. It remains on view through November 1, 2026.
The presentation takes its title from the term ‘cursed image,’ which emerged in online forums around 2015. At the Norton, however, the phrase is applied to photographs made long before the expression entered internet culture. The exhibition proposes that the uncanny quality associated with the term can be found throughout anonymous pictures whose original circumstances and meanings are no longer fully available.
The Peter J. Cohen Collection is described by the museum as one of the largest privately held archives of anonymous photographs in the United States. Its images belong to the broad category of vernacular photography: informal, amateur or everyday pictures that circulated outside the traditional systems of art photography. With their makers and original contexts often unknown, the photographs invite viewers to examine how images persist, acquire associations and remain open to interpretation over time.
The works on view are largely listed as ‘Untitled’ by an unknown maker, with dates ranging from the 1920s–40s to the 1970s–90s. Among the identified examples are ‘Untitled [“Me trying to get up tree”],’ dated to the mid-20th century; ‘Untitled [“Susan”],’ from 1951; and ‘Untitled [“St. Peter, Nordsee, Ostern” (“St. Peter, North Sea, Easter”)],’ from 1956. Another photograph, ‘Untitled [“World’s Longest Sausage in the Making”],’ is dated May 24, 1979.
Rather than relying on a single narrative or a known artistic biography, the exhibition centers on the tension between what the photographs show and what they withhold. A seemingly ordinary scene can become strange when its purpose, participants or circumstances are unclear. The absence of information also shifts attention toward the physical and visual relationships within each image, including unusual arrangements of people and objects.
Organized by the Norton Museum of Art, the exhibition has received major support from the William and Sarah Ross Soter Photography Fund. A related program, ‘ArtSpeaks: Peter J. Cohen in Conversation with Lauren Richman,’ is scheduled for October 16. The exhibition is on view at the Norton Museum of Art, 1450 S. Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach, through November 1, 2026.
