September 13th, 2025 - November 15th, 2025 ​

Opening Reception: 6 PM - 9 PM, Saturday, September 13th, 2025

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Hawthorn Contemporary is pleased to announce the opening of Seen/Unseen: Contemporary Views on Gender and Representation by Tara Bogart and Christa Blackwood

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Seen/Unseen presents the work of two photo-based artists that employ experimental, historically rich photographic processes that engage with issues of gender, power, and representation, including perceptions of beauty, masculinity and femininity. Tara Bogart’s cyanotypes, videos and prints examine gender and the processes of aging through a striking use of vibrant, painterly hues and a crisp, meticulous centering of the human body.  Christa Blackwood’s photographs incorporate an evocative use of embellished color and scale, as well as marbling and other manipulations of silver gelatin prints as a commentary of the male gaze and the ongoing objectification of women. Both bodies of work pay homage to the pioneering work of Victorian photographers Anna Atkins (1799-1871) and Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879).  Together, these recent works highlight gendered distinctions between the representation and assessment of women and men’s bodies in media and other visual culture realms, past and present.  

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Christa Blackwood is a photo, text and installation artist working with themes related to identity, history, and popular culture. Raised in Oklahoma City and New Orleans, Blackwood now lives and works in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She received a Master of Arts from New York University and Bachelor’s degree in Classics and Filmmaking from The University of Oklahoma. She has exhibited her work since the early 1990’s, most notably at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Ogden Museum, The Houston Center for Photography, The Institute of Fine Arts NYU, San Francisco City Hall and the Contemporary Austin. Her work has been featured in many publications, including The New York Times, The Chicago Sun Times, The Village Voice, Lenscratch and Art Desk Magazine.

 

Blackwood teaches photography at Colorado College and founded and managed The Children’s Photographic Collective, offering free low-cost photo and literacy workshops to elementary through high school students in New York City and Austin, Texas from 1995-2007. 

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"For over a decade, my artistic practice has been rooted in an ongoing exploration of gender, power, and representation. Since 2013, I’ve worked almost exclusively with a core group of male collaborators— Sam, Blake, Morgan, Richard, and Matt—reimagining the visual language of the photographic figure study.

 

Our process often begins with a twist: the models themselves select reference images from a vast archive of historical figure photography— images that, more often than not, depict women through the lens of male photographers. This reversal is intentional. We’re engaging with, and subtly subverting, a canon shaped by artists like Weston, Stieglitz, White, Callahan, Newton, Man Ray, Gowan, and Gibson. Their work becomes both inspiration and foil—material for homage, critique, and transformation.

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The photographs are created using large-format film cameras, both in studio and on location. The final works span silver gelatin prints, photogravures, and platinum prints on vellum. Many of the silver prints are uniquely toned with Benadryl or layered with marbling and hand-painted interventions—each piece a tactile, alchemical object. Our collaborative journey has taken us across the American landscape— from the surreal dunes of White Sands, NM, to the sculptural rock formations of Garden of the Gods, CO; from the lush Piney Woods of East Texas to the haunting bayous of Louisiana; from Moab’s red earth to the windswept Texas Gulf Coast, standing in for the iconic dunes of Oceano, CA.

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This body of work is as much about reclaiming gaze and agency as it is about beauty, vulnerability, and the shifting terrain of masculinity. It’s a living archive of collaboration, reinterpretation, and resistance."

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Tara Bogart is a visual artist based between Milwaukee and Paris. Working in photography, video, and alternative processes, her practice explores identity, femininity, and beauty through both historical and experimental methods. Influenced by a lifelong family history of collecting and her deep ties to French culture and landscapes, Bogart’s work seeks what is profoundly human.

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She earned her master’s degree in photography and Image Making from Paris College of Art and currently teaches at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. Bogart’s work has been exhibited at Aperture (New York), Catherine Edelman Gallery (Chicago), Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech, Portrait Society Gallery (Milwaukee), and INOVA (Milwaukee), among others. Her projects have been featured in The New Yorker, CNN Worldwide Photos, Zoom Magazine, The British Journal of Photography, and The New Republic.

 

Her work is included in notable collections such as the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris) and the J.Crew Corporate Collection.

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534 Moons.

I am in a blue period.
Don’t know how long it will last.
I am in a blue period, exploring new frontiers.
I am a bright burning star with light years to go.

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For many women the transition from child-bearing age to not can last two to ten years.
We function in silence for fear of being misunderstood by those who have not yet or will
never experience this long and continuously evolving transformation. It can be lonely and
singular with many highs and lows.

While perimenopause to menopause has been physically turbulent at the same time success,
love, joy, adventure, and poetry, goes on. Menopause has marked me like a scar that signifies
the pain and fragility of my changing body. But it is only that. I am beginning to discover the
“awakening” that comes on the other side of this journey.
Physical"

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