Image: Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York
Yancey Richardson will present 'Once More, With Feeling', a group exhibition highlighting the work of the 2026 Yale MFA graduates in photography. The show brings together Christian Badach, Chen Xiangyun, Jasmine Clarke, Faith Couch, Christopher Postlewaite, Olivia Reavey, John Shen, Em Wall and Andrew Warner, and is scheduled to run from August 12 through August 28, 2026.
The gallery’s announcement frames the presentation as an annual-style thesis showcase grounded in Yale’s photography program, which it describes as a two-year course of study admitting ten students a year. According to the release, the program emphasizes a broad definition of photography as a lens-based medium open to a range of expressive means, with students working individually and in groups with faculty and visiting artists.
The artists’ projects span documentary, collaboration, installation, self-portraiture, experimental imaging and mixed-media approaches. Badach’s photographs follow a woman named Cedar, who lives with hypermobility disorder, and use the shared landscape of Western Massachusetts to think through movement, seasonality, pain, love and caretaking. Chen’s work extends across photography, sculpture, video, installation, collaboration and archiving, with the exhibition including 'Jajang Billiards' (2026), a 360-degree view of billiards culture in the Northeastern United States focused on pool hall facades, cinematic movement and stories from players and amateurs.
Clarke’s photographs attend to small, fleeting moments of family life and the shifting memories attached to them, using figures and cast shadows to question perception within domestic space. Couch’s practice centers self-depiction as a way to enter and reshape visual histories that have excluded or flattened Black life, building images through wardrobe, lighting and composition that sit between documentation and fabrication. Postlewaite’s photographs, influenced by the idea of the photobooth, are made in collaboration with his spouse and extended circle of friends, while also extending into landscapes and lived environments in Philadelphia, including bars, nightclubs, homes and bedrooms.
Reavey’s self-portraits set her body against industrial artifacts and, in other works, place her in spontaneous scenes or performances with friends or models, often male and often nude. Shen’s practice treats photography as both image and object, working across experimental photography, scientific optical systems and handmade imaging apparatuses to reconsider visibility, memory and representation. Wall’s work links photography and family through images shaped by a Mormon upbringing in Michigan, using the twin lens reflex camera first given to their mother by Wall’s grandfather, while Warner’s work examines attire, control, perception and the breakdown of character through self-portraiture, performance, landscape and the portrait studio.
The exhibition is curated by Archie Caride and Cortney Norman. Yancey Richardson is located at 525 West 22nd Street in New York, and the exhibition will be on view there from August 12 to August 28, 2026. An opening reception is scheduled for Wednesday, August 12, from 6 to 8 PM, followed by a group artist walkthrough on Thursday, August 13, from 3 to 5 PM.
