14 January 2026: 10×10 Photobooks hosted a salon with Michael Ackerman and Sadie Bridger at the Red Door Gallery. Michael shared books and two video works, while Sadie introduced her photographic series, Remembering Mahsa and Mary.
Michael Ackerman (@michaelackermanwork) is a photographer and visual artist, working on long-term projects in a radically independent territory that merges documentary, fiction and autobiography. His work explores time and timelessness, personal history and the history of places, immediate family and love. His books include End Time City (1999), Fiction (2000), Half Life (2010), Epilogue (2019), Smoke (2023) and Homesick New York (2025). End Time City, a haunted portrayal of the Indian city Benares, received the Prix Nadar and the ICP Infinity Award.
In tandem with his books, Ackerman will present two videos. The first video, Homesick New York, with images from his book of the same title, is a deeply personal meditation on memory, belonging and the enduring pull of Ackerman’s hometown of New York City after a long absence. The second video, TIME Moving and Storage, is a non-chronological retrospective that incorporates work from various projects and places, made over 30 years. In merging and re-editing the work, it aspires to tell a visual life story.
Sadie Bridger (@sadiebridger) is an artist who explores the separations between races, classes and genders, and the possibilities of overcoming them. She received her MFA from Rochester Institute of Technology, where she studied with Mary Ellen Mark. Bridger has exhibited in New York, North Carolina, throughout South America and at the Tate Modern in London. Her work has been recognized by Alex Haley and Eddie Adams and is included in the permanent exhibition in Philadelphia honoring the Constitution.
In her series Remembering Mahsa and Mary, Bridger meditates on the paradoxes women face through the symbolism of the veil, a historical marker of religious purity. In daily life around much of the world, the veil has become a self-sustaining article of repression. Bridger focuses on two major elements: the historical significance of the veil and the contemporary story of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian whose death sparked the beginning of the Women Life Freedom movement. Bridger’s images oscillate between darkness and light, and speak to the ability of women to transcend repressive boundaries that negate their equality.
A big thank you to Jeff Gutterman for salon photos and the Red Door for hosting and facilitating this salon.