Image: Jennifer Bishop. Little League. 1993, printed 2026. Courtesy of the artist. © Jennifer Bishop
The Baltimore Museum of Art will present ‘Flashback: Two Centuries of Baltimore Photography,’ a major exhibition examining the city’s role in the development of the medium through more than 200 images. The exhibition will be on view in the museum’s Special Exhibition Galleries from October 4, 2026, through February 21, 2027.
Spanning 185 years, the exhibition follows photography in Baltimore from its earliest forms to contemporary work. Its scope includes rare daguerreotypes, tintypes, Civil War-era photographs, documentary projects, photojournalism, and images made during significant cultural and political moments. Together, the works are intended to offer a historical portrait of Baltimore’s people, neighborhoods, and communities while showing how photographic practices changed across generations.
The exhibition also addresses the social conditions surrounding the making and circulation of images. According to the museum, new research and interpretation bring forward photographers whose work has often been obscured by gender and racial prejudice. The presentation asks who has access to photographic tools, who is represented, and how images are shared, positioning photography not only as a record of history but also as a force that helps shape it.
Among the historical material are photographs by Arthur Laidler Macbeth, identified by the museum as the founder of one of Baltimore’s earliest Black-owned portrait studios, and Dora Russell, who established one of the city’s first woman-owned portrait studios. The exhibition also includes work by Irving Henry Phillips Sr., whose decades of photojournalism for the Afro-American newspaper documented Black life in Baltimore. Selections from documentary surveys of the 1970s focus on the city’s neighborhoods and ethnic communities.
The contemporary section includes photographs of the 2015 Baltimore Uprising and the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests by Devin Allen, Sheila Pree Bright, Joseph Mario Giordano, and Shawn Hubbard. Other featured artists include Berenice Abbott, Diane Arbus, Margaret Bourke-White, Roland L. Freeman, John Waters, Sara VanDerBeek, Gioncarlo Valentine, and SHAN Wallace. The exhibition materials also identify works by Jennifer Bishop, including ‘Little League’ (1993, printed 2026), Wallace’s ‘Golden Time of the Hour’ (2019, printed 2021) from the series ‘Lexington Market,’ and photographs by Elinor B. Cahn and Joan Clark Netherwood.
‘Flashback’ is co-curated by Dr. Leslie Cozzi, the BMA’s curator and department head of Prints, Drawings and Photographs, and Antoinette Roberts, assistant curator of Contemporary Art, with curatorial assistant Jenna Paper-Evers and initial contributions from Andaleeb Badiee Banta, former senior curator and department head of Prints, Drawings and Photographs. Research and interpretation were supported by an advisory panel of critics, historians, curators, educators, and community-based cultural specialists.
BMA members will have preview access on October 2 and 3 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. A council talk and preview party, limited to BMA Council Members, will take place on October 3 from 6 to 9 p.m. at the BMA Main Campus, with Cozzi and Roberts discussing Baltimore’s impact on photography before a celebration in Fox Court. The public exhibition opens October 4 at the Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore.
