Exhibits

Truly Blessed - Slide Show, Book Talk and Closing Reception /  by Chris Suspect

The Community Church of Washington, DC, Apr. 20, 2014 © Chris Suspect 2022

This coming weekend will be a busy one. On Saturday, June 29, I will be presenting a slide show and book talk about Truly Blessed at Maryland Meadworks in Hyattsville, Maryland. The event starts at 7pm and I will narrate the photographic process behind the making of the book. After the slide show there will be a conversation with Jason Hamacher of Lost Origins Gallery and Bilal Ali, book contributor and photographic subject. We will discuss, race, sexuality and faith, and the discrimination that faces queer African Americans on all three fronts.

On Sunday, we will celebrate the closing of the exhibit for Truly Blessed at Lost Origins Gallery in Mount Pleasant, DC, with a special live podcast of Stage Craft with legendary DC music producer Don Zientara and Alex Vidales of the band Pilot Waves. Zientara and Vidales will not only discuss the exhibit but also my early music career as a member of The Suspects and owner of Torque Records. Bilal Ali will also speak to the exhibit.

Details

Truly Blessed - Slide Show and Conversation with Bilal Ali and Jason Hamacher

Saturday, June 29th, 7-9 pm
Free

Maryland Meadworks
4700 Rhode Island Ave., Suite Bee
Hyattsville, MD 20781

Truly Blessed - Closing Reception with the Stage Craft Podcast

Sunday, June 30th, 3-6 pm
Free

Lost Origins Gallery
3110 Mt Pleasant St NW, 2nd Floor
Washington, DC 20010

About the book and exhibition

“Truly Blessed” documents a marginalized community’s response to racial and religious discrimination. Working closely with the Community Church of Washington, Suspect uses his camera to contrast the sacred and secular.

“Sometimes it is only through photographs that we can see the sacred in the secular, or the secular in the sacred. This collection, Truly Blessed, uses photography to forge a conversation between the sacred black church and secular sexual/erotic spaces, capturing sites where the body, mind, and spirit converge. Suspect’s attention to the subtlety of the performances of everyday people—engaging in rituals of their own choosing—illustrates the diverse and dynamic realities of being black and queer in America.”

– Jeffery Q. McCune, PhD Frederick Douglass Professor of American-American Literature and Culture, University of Rochester.

For more info visit
https://lostorigins.gallery/exhibitions/truly-blessed/

To see a selection of work from this exhibit visit
https://www.chrissuspect.com/truly-blessed

"Path to Insurrection" Exhibition Catalog for Flashback Museum, Torino, Italy /  by Chris Suspect

The exhibition catalog for my “Path to Insurrection” exhibit is now hot off the presses. It contains all 115 images from the exhibit in Torino, Italy, at Flashback Habitat museum. The exhibit spans 5 rooms and 3 terraces and is divided into 6 sections, “Election Night,” “Trump’s Inauguration,” “Women’s March,” “Protests from 2017 - 2020,” “Biden Wins,” “January 6,” and “Biden’s Inauguration.”

The forward is written by Jim Bourg, Reuters Photos Editor in Charge of Washington. Bourg served throughout the 2016 election, the Trump administration and the tumultuous 2020 presidential election and its aftermath.

Chris Suspect’s gritty, in your face, in the midst of the action style was a perfect fit as he set out to capture the chaos and conflict on the streets of Washington throughout the 4 years of the Trump administration and at the end of the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign, with its contentious and at times violent aftermath. Renowned war photographer Robert Capa said back in 1954: “If your photographs aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” This has never been a problem for Chris. His work in PATH TO INSURRECTION consistently takes the reader into the midst of the action. Some of his images harken back to the stark black and white realism of Weegee, the bizarre and sometimes shocking street portraits of Diane Arbus, or the street photography of his classic inspirations Elliot Erwitt, Josef Koudelka and Garry Winogrand. Not considering himself a news photographer or constrained by specific assignments or deadlines, his motivation is consistently to just to make the most compelling, interesting and unique images possible.

The catalog will be available soon by mail order world wide from King Koala Press in Italy.

The exhibit itself is wild! When one enters the hallway to the exhibition rooms, you are greeted with the sound of protest, a police light, and smoke from a fog machine.

It has been featured in all of Italy’s national media and in several international art publications. From TV to radio to print, it has been getting a lot coverage.

The exhibition runs through June 2 and then will travel to another country in Europe in November, TBA!

New Exhibit in Partnership with WhiteWall at Photopia in Hamburg, Germany /  by Chris Suspect

I am excited to announce that I will have an exhibit in partnership with WhiteWall at Photopia - The Festival of Imaging in Hamburg, Germany, September 23-26.

The exhibit consists of 19 images I have photographed over the past 10 years from various projects, events and random situations I have come across on the streets. The above graphics showcase how the exhibit will be laid out over 3 1/2 walls. The curator did an exemplary job with the layout and tying the work together, marrying different sizes, color and black and white photographs into a cohesive thread is no easy feat.

While I would love to be there in person in Germany, I am unable to make it overseas during the pandemic at this point. If you are in Germany or going to Photopia please stop by and check it out. And if you can, take a few pictures and send them to me.

Psychotic Reactions - Online Exhibit with Landscape Stories Magazine /  by Chris Suspect

Fight in a squat in Bogota, Colombia | © Chris Suspect 2021

I am honored to have two of my projects, harDCore and Gratuity Included featured in this online exhibition called Psychotic Reactions on Landscape Stories Magazine out of Italy.

The exhibit attempts to answer the question "What are the songs that struck us in our adolescence? And then how much music has been a constant presence during our life? What was hiding and what still hides behind that sort of iridescent carnival sound?"

The exhibit features work and quotes from many notable writers and photographers including Chris Killip, Deanna Templeton, Jon Savage, William Gibson, Kirk Weddle, Michael Lavine, and many more.