Trust Me

Aug 19, 2023–Feb 25, 2024

Two people embrace, one partially hidden by foliage.
Two people embrace, one partially hidden by foliage.

D'Angelo Lovell Williams, Elysian, 2018. Inkjet print: sheet (sight): 44 9/16 × 29 1/2in. (113.2 × 74.9 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Photography Committee 2020.129. © D'Angelo Lovell Williams

Drawn from the Whitney’s collection, Trust Me brings together photographic works that invite shared emotional experience. The artists in the exhibition embrace intuition and indeterminacy as part of their creative process and recognize that vulnerability, usually associated with powerlessness and exposure, can play a role in forging connection. Depicting familial and ancestral bonds, friendship, romantic partnership, and other networks of influence and exchange, these photographs make such connection visible—in the image and often beyond it—by evoking the overlapping lives and loves of the works’ creators, viewers, and caretakers.

The exhibition features an intergenerational group of artists: Laura Aguilar, Genesis Báez, Alvin Baltrop, Jenny CalivasMoyra Davey, Lola Flash, Barbara Hammer, Muriel Hasbun, Dakota Mace, Mary Manning, and D’Angelo Lovell Williams. Many of their images do not include people but instead offer reflections on everyday surroundings and experiences, with objects often representing intimate aspects of the artists’ lives. Precisely staged or in response to chance encounters, these images encourage careful attention. As artist and writer Lydia Okrent has said about Manning’s photographs, such work “emboldens available tenderness,” kindling through the image something already present in the viewer.

In addition to taking up themes of vulnerability, the artists in the exhibition have chosen a precarious medium. Photographs emerge through combinations of light, chemicals, time, and chance, and yet these same elements can also push an image past legibility. Many of the artists draw parallels between material and emotional contingency, and welcome accidents, imperfections, and the unexpected. Gambling on the power of images to carry deep feeling, the works in Trust Me ultimately offer space for expanded capacity, reciprocity, and learning.

The exhibition is organized by Kelly Long, Senior Curatorial Assistant at the Whitney Museum of American Art.


En español

Seleccionadas de la colección del Whitney, Confía en mí reúne obras fotográficas que invitan a una experiencia emocional compartida. Los artistas en esta exposición adoptan la intuición y la indeterminación como parte de su proceso creativo y reconocen que la vulnerabilidad, usualmente asociada a la impotencia y a la susceptibilidad, puede desempeñar un papel en la creación de conexiones. Estas fotografías, que representan lazos familiares y ancestrales, de amistad, relaciones románticas y otras redes de influencia e intercambio, hacen visibles estas conexiones, en la imagen y con frecuencia más allá de ella, evocando las vidas y los afectos superpuestos de sus creadores, espectadores y cuidadores.

La exposición presenta un grupo intergeneracional de artistas: Laura Aguilar, Genesis Báez, Alvin Baltrop, Jenny Calivas, Moyra Davey, Lola Flash, Barbara Hammer, Muriel Hasbun, Dakota Mace, Mary Manning y D’Angelo Lovell Williams. Muchas de sus imágenes no incluyen personas, sino que ofrecen reflexiones sobre el entorno y las experiencias cotidianas con objetos que frecuentemente representan aspectos íntimos de la vida de los artistas. Escenificadas con precisión o como respuesta a encuentros casuales, estas imágenes invitan a una mirada atenta. Como dijo la artista y escritora Lydia Okrent sobre las fotografías de Manning, este trabajo “realza la ternura existente”, despertando con la imagen algo ya presente en el espectador.

Además de retomar temas sobre la vulnerabilidad, los artistas de esta exhibición eligieron un medio precario. Las fotografías emergen a través de una combinación de luz, sustancias químicas, tiempo y azar, elementos que pueden hacer que una imagen pierda legibilidad. Muchos de los artistas establecen paralelismos entre la contingencia material y emocional, y le dan la bienvenida a los accidentes, las imperfecciones y a lo inesperado. Apostando por el poder de las imágenes para transmitir sentimientos profundos, las obras de Confía en mí en última instancia ofrecen un espacio para expandir la capacidad, la reciprocidad y el aprendizaje.


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Jenny Calivas, Self-Portrait While Buried #12, 2021

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In her ongoing series Self-Portraits While Buried, Jenny Calivas pays homage to artist Ana Mendieta’s Silueta Series (1973–80) and broader traditions of feminist image-making. In Calivas’s photographs, the culmination of a larger performance, a wired timer shutter remains visible in the artist’s hand. Although her collaborators play a critical role in both the burial process and in helping to frame the image, Calivas retains control of the camera and how her body is depicted on film. The artist’s agency is central. Through the meditative ritual of returning to and emerging from the earth, Calivas seeks to reclaim and rediscover her relationship to the natural world.


Essay



Audio guides

Two people embrace, one partially hidden by foliage.
Two people embrace, one partially hidden by foliage.

D'Angelo Lovell Williams, Elysian, 2018. Inkjet print: sheet (sight): 44 9/16 × 29 1/2in. (113.2 × 74.9 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Photography Committee 2020.129. © D'Angelo Lovell Williams

Hear directly from artists and curators on selected works from the exhibition.

View guide


In the News

“This exhibition is breathtakingly intimate.” —Conde Nast Traveler

“Trust Me does an impressive job of showing audiences the true diversity and range of the photographic medium.” —The Guardian

“Gambling on the power of images to carry deep feeling, the works in Trust Me ultimately offer space for expanded capacity, reciprocity, and learning.” —Juxtapoz

“While many of the works included in “Trust Me” individually and overtly comment on themes of intimacy…Long’s depiction of relationality extends more broadly through the lines one can draw between the 11 artists included in the exhibition.” —The Williams Record

“La exposición se desmarca de la fotografía convencional, haciendo hincapié en la intuición y la vulnerabilidad como modos de expresión creativa.” —Telemundo

“…this fiercely tender grouping holds its own.” —Art Review

“Depictions of ancestral bonds, friendship and romantic partnership are captured intimately in photographs that could have only been made with vulnerability by the artist.” —SVA Features


On the Hour

A 30-second online art project:
Maya Man, A Realistic Day In My Life Living In New York City

Learn more about this project

Learn more at whitney.org/artport

On the Hour projects can contain motion and sound. To respect your accessibility settings autoplay is disabled.