Consuelo Kanaga: Catch the Spirit

About

For 60 years, Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894–1978) used her camera to confront urgent social issues of her time, from urban poverty to labor rights to racial terror and inequality. Consuelo Kanaga: Catch the Spirit charts the artist’s groundbreaking work and life story, shedding light on this critical yet overlooked figure in modern photography. Following an international tour, the retrospective returns to the Brooklyn Museum, which houses the world’s most extensive Kanaga collection. Approximately 180 photographs, ephemera, and films trace the evolution of her art across time and theme, whether portraits of artists or scenes in the U.S. South. 

After starting out as a pioneering photojournalist—a rare role for women at the time—Kanaga would become known for her modernist still lifes and celebrated portraits. She captured the dignity and resilience of marginalized people, such as Black workers during the Jim Crow era. Unique among her peers, including her friends Dorothea Lange and Imogen Cunningham, Kanaga employed modernism’s powerful visual language to take on inequities by provoking thought and fostering empathy. As she put it, “Most people try to be striking to catch the eye. I think the thing is not to catch the eye but the spirit.”

The retrospective is accompanied by a catalogue highlighting Kanaga’s remarkable oeuvre while presenting new scholarship on this under-recognized artist. It includes essays by Drew Sawyer, Shalon Parker, Ellen Macfarlane, and Shana Lopes. Copublished by the Brooklyn Museum, Fundación MAPFRE, and Thames & Hudson, it is the first major publication on the artist’s work in 30 years.