Robert Mann Gallery

Robert Mann Gallery is happy to announce the opening of its new location in Suite 4C within the West Chelsea Arts Building on West 26th Street. Currently on view, How She Sees: Redux. Referencing our original 2021 exhibition that featured black-and-white prints by early-twentieth century women photographers, this updated version highlights contemporary works made by several female artists that invite viewers into imaginative environments. With works by Holly Andres, Julie Blackmon, Sandra Cattaneo Adorno, Cig Harvey, Maroesjka Lavigne, Mary Mattingly, Susan Rankaitis, and Jennifer Williams.

At the turn of the twentieth century, when photographs were crafted as material objects to hold and cherish, gold was used in the production of a short-lived process called Orotone, resulting in overtly warm-toned images that glistened in the light. Often presented in ornately decorative frames, Orotones—sometimes called “Curt-Tones” due to their popular use by the photographer Edward Curtis—were admired by those in the American Arts and Crafts movement for their involved handiwork and singularity. Robert Mann Gallery is delighted to present Gold Standards: The Art of the Orotone. Most of these unique objects were produced as tourist souvenirs meant to immortalize an ideal yet incomplete picture of the American West, a sort of perpetual golden hour cast upon a regularly contested landscape. Yet within several of these flamboyant frames we find majestic views that would become familiar hallmarks by well-known twentieth-century photographers.

One thing is certain about New York City—it is always changing. We know this on an instinctual level, but the art of the times is what reveals the city’s shapeshifting energy. As a versatile medium, photography both documents what a camera views while simultaneously revealing more than what is seen at any given moment. Robert Mann Gallery is pleased to present Fragmentary Glimpses: Alfred Stieglitz and David Vestal in New York, on view starting February 5. This intimate exhibition invites viewers to look at New York through the lens of two photographers who were infatuated with the city’s ever-evolving landscape: Alfred Stieglitz and David Vestal. In the early 1900s, Alfred Stieglitz hosted modern art exhibitions at his Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession—named after the Pictorialist group he helped found in 1902—and promoted photography as a legitimate artform through the pages of Camera Work. From 1903 to 1917, this quarterly journal showcased new work by leading artists alongside art criticism and philosophical essays. While the journal primarily featured the work of others, the October 1911 issue focused on Stieglitz’s own photographic vision and is considered one of the journal’s most important issues. Fragmentary Glimpses presents the entire collection of images that Stieglitz published for Camera Work, Vol. 36— “snapshots” (as critics called them) of New York at one of its many turning points. Steamboats and locomotives transport people faster and further than ever before, while airships and newly built skyscrapers usher in an era of reaching new heights. Such iconic works as The Steerage (1907), The Terminal (1892), and Spring Showers (1900) demonstrate how Stieglitz’s modernist framing and ability to render the city’s changing atmosphere—both natural and man-made—helped initiate a new direction for photography at the turn of the twentieth century. A main figure in and proponent of Pictorialism, Stieglitz mastered the photogravure technique, a photomechanical process that allowed for atmospheric and painterly effects while being mass produced. Decades later, David Vestal photographed the city and its people living in modernity’s shadowy aftereffects. Arriving to New York in the late 1940s after studying painting at The Art Institute of Chicago, Vestal took up photography and joined the renowned Photo League of socialist practitioners. Distinctly more steeped in aesthetic concerns than political ones, his sensitive compositions and attention to light still skillfully capture the unsettling social realities that lingered like smog in most postwar American cities. The title for this duo show comes from an essay featured in Stieglitz’s October 1911 Camera Work issue. Referring to New York as “a vision that rises out of the sea,” the photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn writes how the city “glimmers for a while in the sun…[then] vanishes, but for fragmentary glimpses….” Both photographers knew intimately how their cameras could both capture the city’s insatiable hunger for progress while depicting its illuminous and hazy luster. View the exhibition in person and online starting February 5, 2026. Public visiting hours are Tuesday–Friday, 10am–6pm, and Saturday from 11–6pm. For additional hours please make an appointment. For additional information and press materials, please contact the gallery by email (mail@robertmann.com).

ringl + pit pit with Veil, 1931 Silver print © ringl+pit, Courtesy Robert Mann Gallery

image caption: Michael Kenna Brooklyn Bridge, Study 1, New York, NY, USA, 2006 Toned silver print © Michael Kenna, Courtesy Robert Mann Gallery

image caption: Drift Heartbeat, 2023 Archival pigment print © Drift, Courtesy Robert Mann Gallery

image caption: Spandita Malik Sameena, 2025 Unique photographic transfer print on khadi fabric, zardozi, gota-patti embroidery, beadwork 44 x 33 inches © Spandita Malik, Courtesy Robert Mann Gallery

image caption: O. Winston Link NW1103 Hotshot Eastbound, laeger, West Virginia, 1956 Silver print 16 x 20 inches © O. Winston Link Museum and Winston Conway Link, Courtesy Robert Mann Gallery