Join us at ICP for the second installment of the spring Naomi Rosenblum ICP Talks Photographer lecture series featuring postmodernist commercial and art photographer Roe Ethridge. Ethridge will discuss the scope of his career as well as his latest release Rude in the Good Way (Loose Joints, $) with writer and curator Vince Aletti.
This program is being offered both in person at ICP, located on NYC's Lower East Side, and online. Current ICP students and faculty of the One-Year Certificate programs are automatically enrolled and invited to attend all lectures.
Past speakers of the Naomi Rosenblum ICP Talks Lecture series include: JEB, Philip Cheung, Edwaard Burtynsky, Naima Green, David Alekhuogie, Keisha Scarville, Johnny Miller, and Erin Schaff.
Image by Roe Ethridge, Georgia with Pinwheeel Sun, 2021.
About the Series
ICP is thrilled to honor Naomi Rosenblum’s contribution to the field and to further her life’s work through this lecture series. Naomi Rosenblum was one of the leading photography historians of her generation and the author of A World History of Photography and A History of Women Photographers. The 2025-2026 Naomi Rosenblum ICP Talks Photographer Lecture Series is made possible through generous support from the Rosenblum Family.
About the Speakers
Roe Ethridge (b. 1969, Miami) lives and works in New York and is widely regarded as a leading figure in contemporary conceptual photography. Working fluidly between commercial and art contexts, Ethridge merges imagery drawn from fashion, advertising, and daily life with art-historical genres, using the real to suggest or disrupt the ideal. His photographs explore the increasingly porous boundary between the generic and the personal, and the way images gain new meaning through sequencing, recombination, and reuse. Ethridge has published more than fifteen books, including American Polychronic (MACK, 2022), Neighbors (MACK, 2016), Sacrifice Your Body (MACK, 2014), Le Luxe (MACK, 2011), and Rockaway, NY (SteidlMACK, 2007). His commercial collaborations include major ongoing projects with Calvin Klein, Chanel, and Louis Vuitton. His work has been exhibited widely in the United States and internationally. Significant solo presentations include Momentum 4, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2005); Charles Riva Collection, Brussels (2012); Le Consortium, Dijon, and M Museum Leuven (2012–13); and a major mid-career survey, Nearest Neighbor, at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, for the 2016 FotoFocus Biennial. Ethridge was included in New Photography 2010 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and in the Whitney Biennial (2008). He was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2011. Ethridge’s work is held in major public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Tate, London.
Vince Aletti is a writer and curator based in New York City. His writings on music and photography have been published widely. Between 1973 and 1978 Aletti wrote a highly prescient weekly column on the emerging disco scene for Record World magazine, and between 1987 and 2005 he was the art editor and photography critic for The Village Voice. His writings have also appeared in The New Yorker, Artforum, and Vogue Italia, among many other publications. His book Issues: A History of Photography in Fashion Magazines was published by Phaidon in 2019. The Drawer was published by Self Publish, Be Happy in September 2022 and went on to win the 2023 Aperture/Paris Photo Photobook of the Year award. An exhibition at White Columns inspired by The Drawer in 2024 was Aletti’s fifth collaboration with the gallery, following on from his 2008 exhibition Male: Work from the Collection of Vince Aletti; the 2014 exhibition of Robert Kitchen’s work, and the 2019 exhibition of Ed Baynard’s work (both curated by Aletti); and the 2008 White Columns publication of Aletti’s collected writings on disco, Disco File, which was subsequently republished in an expanded edition by DJ History/D.A.P.
Header image by Roe Ethridge, Chanel No 5 from 1924 on Tray of Pearls and Mirror Checkerboard, 2025
