Flashpoint! Reading Room at Printed Matter

Printed Matter presents Flashpoint!, a traveling reading room exhibition organized by 10×10 Photobooks dedicated to protest photography in print. The presentation brings together a selection of photobooks, zines, posters, pamphlets, independent journals, and alternative newspapers from the 1950s to the present. Across these formats, photography emerges as both a tool of protest and a cultural artifact of resistance, capturing political struggles as they unfold and as they are later remembered.

On view March 12-May 31, 2026.
Opening reception March 12, 6-8 pm

Related Events
Protest and Resistance Posters
Panel Discussion at Printed Matter
Adrian Franks, Arthur Fournier and Daylon Orr
Thursday, 2 April, 6 pm
Details

History Repeats Itself: Curating Protest
Sponsored by the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library
Panel Discussion at The New York Public Library
La Tanya Autry and Maggie Mustard, moderated by Deirdre Donohue
Wednesday, 13 May, 6 pm

By placing photobooks alongside posters, DIY zines, pamphlets, and independent journals, Flashpoint! highlights the manifold roles photography plays in resistance movements. Many featured works are a direct product of activist intervention, while others are carefully constructed publications made retrospectively with the intention to contextualize a historical event. This diversity of works is reflected in their wide spectrum of aesthetic approaches, which range from raw and immediate to deliberate and methodical. Presented together, these materials prompt questions about how images circulate within movements, how urgency shapes visual language, and how protest is recorded (and reinterpreted) through print.

The Reading Room is structured thematically into seven broad sections: Anti, Gender, Displacement, Race & Class, Environment, Political, and War & Violence. Each features multiple sub-themes which document resistance related to anti-government, anti-globalization, women’s rights, AIDS, anti-apartheid, civil rights, anti-imperialism, workers’ rights, territorial disputes, student protests, national populism, anti-colonialism, revolution and gun violence, among others.

Authors and artists with works in this iteration of the Flashpoint! Reading Room:
Laia Abril; Aghi; aka TAWLA; Devin Allen; Morgan Ashcom; Mathieu Asselin; Ruth-Marion Baruch & Pirkle Jones; Makeda Best; Lukas Birk; The Black Panthers; Steve Bloom, Laurie Bloomfield, Rick Kollektiff & Peter Magubane; Arthur Bondar; The Boston Women’s Health Book Collective; Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin; Julio Cesar Cardoso; Eric Timothy Carlson; Gilles Caron; Chestnut Burr: Kent State University; Alessandro Cinque; Ernest Cole; Tano D’Amico; Solmaz Daryani; Doris Derby; Roy Decarava, Jill Krementz, Danny Lyon & Marion Palfi; Emory Douglas; David Douglas Duncan; Robert Dunn; Thana Faroq; Harrell Fletcher; LaToya Ruby Frazier; Leonard Freed; Paul Fusco; Paolo Gasparini; Rosa Gauditano; Karolina Gembara; X González; Suzanne Gordon & Alan Copeland; Kris Graves; Philip Jones Griffiths; Anthony Hamboussi; Anthony Haughey; Lucy Helton; Tim Hetherington; Anthony Howarth; Sanja Iveković; Bahman Jalali & Rana Javadi; Katayoun Javan; Rigoberto Díaz Julían; Gilbert Kahn, Pierre Juillet, Christian Joubert & Michel Hermans; Kikuji Kawada; Carole Kismaric; Kazuo Kitai; Justine Kurland; Sonia Lenzi; Mary Levine & John Naisbitt; Émeric Lhuisset; March for Our Lives; Fred McDarrah; Susan Meiselas; Rafal Milach; Mashid Mohadjerin; Zed Nelson; Molly Neuman & Allison Wolfe; Satomi Nihongi; Mariette Pathy Allen; Jill Posener; Moises Saman; Kwon San-Ki, Park Seung-hwa, Song Hyeok, Lee Sohye & Lim Seok Hyun; Paul Seawright; Jordan Seiler; George Selley; Linda Simpson; Stephen Shames & Ericka Huggins; Abdo Shanan; W. Eugene Smith & Aileen M. Smith; Joel Sternfeld; Koji Taki, Takuma Nakahira, Yutaka Takanashi, Takahiko Okada & Daido Moriyama; Anastasia Taylor-Lind; Hiromitsu Toyosaki; Bas Vroege, Raoul Gottschling & Noemí; Brian Weil; Wellington Zinefest and Te Pūranga Takatāpui o Aotearoa; Koen Wessing; D’Angelo Lovell Williams; Carmen Winant; Dale Wittig; Ashima Yadava, and Xu Yong.

The presentation is based on Flashpoint! Protest Photography in Print, 1950-Present, an anthology published by 10×10 Photobooks in 2024, edited by Russet Lederman and Olga Yatskevich.

Original posters loaned by Fugitive Materials.

Printed Matter Hours:
Monday Closed
Tuesday–Saturday: 11 am–7 pm
Sunday: 11 am – 6 pm