To produce Subject Studies: Chapter 1, Franco Klein asked one hundred and six individuals of different ethnicities and genders to enact a situation in four settings: a diner, a bathroom, an office, a car. Though identically staged, each performance for the camera varies subtly in gesture and expression. The series, the artist says, “deals with our own preconceived ideas of what ‘the other’ represents, and how that concept in each viewer may change the reading of the image as a whole.” Franco Klein stages these photographs in a way that creates a sense of strangeness and estrangement. Each scene is ambiguous and open to the interpretations of both subject and viewer.
New Photography 2025: Lines of Belonging, September 14, 2025–January 17, 2026
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