Tristan Duke: Glacial Optics | Atlas Aquae: Visual Geographies in Photographic Publishing
Opening Reception July 3 | 6:30PM
Atlas Aquæ is a bibliographical exhibition that brings together over one hundred photographic books, including contemporary works (2018–2025) and classics dating back to the 1970s, all sharing a single, multifaceted subject: water. Rivers, lakes, seas, oceans, rain, springs, islands, and ponds – each book is a stop on a visual atlas where water appears as a natural element, narrative metaphor, mental space, and an archive of time.
The exhibition also includes works on water crises, climate change, catastrophes, and aquatic fictions, making the invisible visible and narrating how water shapes landscapes, societies, and perceptions. Atlas Aquæ is an atlas made of paper, ink, and light—a kind of geography of water where every book is a drift, every image a seabed, every page a current. It's a collection of visions where the visible blends with the invisible, like the bottom and the surface, like science and dreams.
Atlas Aquæ is part of Diorami, a public and site-specific project created by the cultural association Obliquo. It explores the theme of water from multiple perspectives, with a particular focus on using photobooks and visual arts as tools for critical reflection on landscapes and the relationships that shape and transform them.
Tristan Duke: Glacial Optics
Artwork by Tristan Duke
Foreword by Michael Govan
Texts by Brandee Caoba, Mark Cheetham, William L. Fox, and Lucy Lippard
$60
Using camera lenses made of Arctic ice, Tristan Duke's ongoing, experimental photographic project, Glacial Optics, explores our current moment of climate crisis.