NEW YORK, NY (June 15, 2023) – The International Center of Photography (ICP) announces the fall 2023 exhibition schedule, featuring three concurrent exhibitions that present diverse aspects of ICP’s exhibitions program: Muriel Hasbun: Tracing Terruño; Immersion: Gregory Halpern, Raymond Meeks, and Vasantha Yogananthan; and Play the Part: Marlene Dietrich will be on view September 29, 2023 through January 8, 2024. 

“These three distinct exhibitions emphasize the diversity of imagemaking that ICP continues to champion, presenting in one season a wide range of artistic practices and forms of photography including experimental processes, documentary, commercial, editorial, and vernacular,” said ICP Executive Director David E. Little. “Together, they celebrate many strands of photography throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.” 

Muriel Hasbun: Tracing Terruño 

Muriel Hasbun: Tracing Terruño is the first survey in New York of the career of multidisciplinary artist Muriel Hasbun (b. 1961). The exhibition celebrates Hasbun’s dedication to exploring identity and memory, using her personal story to examine collective histories through photography, video, and installation from the late 1980s to the present. A descendent of Salvadoran and Palestinian Christians on her paternal side and Polish and French Jews on her maternal side, Hasbun grew up in El Salvador. Reckoning with a family history filled with exile, loss, and migration, Hasbun herself had to leave her home country in 1979 at the start of the Salvadoran Civil War. She moved to France and then the United States to study, settling in Washington, DC, where she has since worked as an artist and professor of photography.  

Muriel Hasbun: Tracing Terruño presents a selection of Hasbun’s series, from her earliest photographic explorations in 1988 to recent experiments with chemigrams and expired photographic papers. The exhibition will include Santos y sombras / Saints and Shadows (1990–97), a series in which Hasbun layers negatives of archival family documents and new images to create photographs that collapse receding memories with their impact on the present. In the series X post facto (équis anónimo) (2009–13), Hasbun re-presents a selection of X-rays from her father’s dental practice, decontextualizing medical records and turning the images into landscapes and abstractions, thereby unlocking their metaphoric potential. Selections from her most recent series, Pulse: New Cultural Registers / Pulso: Nuevos registros culturales (2020–ongoing), which maps El Salvador by combining art history with seismic records, will also be included.  

This exhibition is curated by Elisabeth Sherman, Senior Curator and Director of Exhibitions and Collections at ICP. 

Immersion: Gregory Halpern, Raymond Meeks, and Vasantha Yogananthan 

Immersion features projects created by three individual artists during their respective residencies: Gregory Halpern’s in Guadeloupe, Vasantha Yogananthan’s in New Orleans, and Raymond Meeks’s in France, first near the Spanish border and then along the coast of the English Channel. The projects are part of Immersion, a French-American Photography Commission created by the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès and presented in collaboration with ICP and the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris. Each laureate of the Immersion program creates a photographic series to be shared through exhibitions and publications. This exhibition is curated by David Campany, Curator-at-Large at ICP.  

Halpern’s Let the Sun Beheaded Be, from a 2019 residency, is guided by the Caribbean’s rich diversity and its vernacular culture. Slow and intimate, Halpern’s photographs pick out small details in which the tremors of history can be felt. His book Let the Sun Beheaded Be (2020) is published by Aperture. Yogananthan made Mystery Street in New Orleans during the spring and summer of 2022. Following a group of children as they play and explore together, Yogananthan’s images are alert to the subtleties of place, friendship, and growth. The book Mystery Street (2023) is published by Chose Commune. Meeks spent much of 2022 in two regions of France that are important crossings for asylum seekers making their way to the United Kingdom. This debut presentation of The Inhabitants looks to the traces and pathways of the land itself as a silent witness to uncertain futures. The book The Inhabitants (2023) is published by MACK. 

Play the Part: Marlene Dietrich

Featuring more than 150 photographs made between 1906 to 1978, Play the Part: Marlene Dietrich examines the multifaceted evolution of Dietrich’s (1901–1992) public persona. The exhibition features photographs by well-known artists such as Cecil Beaton, Irving Penn, and Edward Steichen as well as photographers with whom Dietrich collaborated repeatedly throughout her life, including the noted Hollywood photographers George Hurrell, Eugene Robert Richee, and William Walling Jr. Previously unpublished images, snapshots, and other works complement the formal portraits and studio images that have come to represent Dietrich, illustrating the true complexity of her life. Assembled by collector Pierre Passebon, this exhibition marks the first time his noted collection will be shown in the United States.  

Dietrich is best known for her starring roles in films including The Blue Angel (1930), the first feature-length German talkie, and for her long collaboration with the filmmaker Josef von Sternberg. Born in Berlin, she emigrated to the United States in 1930, vocally opposing the rising Nazi regime, and ultimately renounced her German citizenship. She became an active supporter of US troops in World War II, raising funds for refugees, and toured with the USO. For her efforts, she was awarded the Medal of Freedom in 1947. On-screen and off, she challenged the gender and sexual norms of her time, making her a core figure in feminist and queer film history.  

Exhibition Access

ICP is open every day except Tuesday from 11 AM to 7 PM, and until 9 PM on Thursdays. Admission: $18 for adults; $14 for seniors (62 and over), military, and visitors with disabilities (caregivers are free); $12 for students (with valid ID); $3 for SNAP/EBT card holders; free for ICP members, ICP students, and all visitors 14 years and under. Admission is by suggested donation on Thursdays from 6 to 9 PM. Tickets can be reserved online at icp.org/tickets. Visitors are asked to arrive during the 30-minute window of their timed ticket to help ensure a safe flow in the lobby. For more information, read ICP’s updated Visitor Information and Accessibility guidelines and policies.  

Exhibition Support

Immersion is made possible thanks to the generous support of Fondation d’entreprise Hermès.

Exhibitions at ICP are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

About the International Center of Photography  

The International Center of Photography (ICP) is the world’s leading institution dedicated to photography and visual culture. Cornell Capa founded ICP in 1974 to champion “concerned photography”—socially and politically minded images that can educate and change the world. Through exhibitions, education programs, community outreach, and public programs, ICP offers an open forum for dialogue about the power of the image. Since its inception, ICP has presented more than 700 exhibitions, provided thousands of classes, and hosted a wide variety of public programs. ICP launched its new integrated center on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in January 2020. Located at 79 Essex Street, ICP is the cultural anchor of Essex Crossing, one of the most highly anticipated and expansive mixed-use developments in New York City. ICP pays respect to the original stewards of this land, the Lenape people, and other Indigenous communities. 

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