Howard Greenberg Gallery in collaboration with Sasha Wolf Projects present Rahim Fortune: Reflections; an exhibition of compelling and heartfelt photography exploring the American South, on view from March 22 through May 24, 2025. Rahim Fortune: Reflections weaves documentary photography with Fortune’s personal history into an expression of compassion for the American South, a region that has nourished the artist both personally and creatively. Reflections features two distinct series –Hardtack and I Can’t Stand To See You Cry – with 30 photographs and an untitled 2021 film made in collaboration with De Randle. Also on view will be eight works curated by Fortune from the Howard Greenberg Gallery collection, presenting related photographs by Gordon Parks, James Van Der Zee, Roy DeCarava and Prentice H. Polke.
“The title of the show has a layered meaning for me. I am reflecting back on ten years of work, which I have made in the South whilst simultaneously reflecting on the Howard Greenberg archive within a larger history of photography,” said Rahim Fortune.
In Hardtack, Fortune borrows from the language of vernacular and archival photography to investigate his community’s relationship to the medium. While deeply rooted in the landscape, Fortune utilizes sites of historical and cultural significance as guides rather than subjects, to illustrate the profound connections that bind modern Black communities to their regions amid both adversity and joy. A prominent theme in Hardtack is Fortune’s captivating portraits of coming-of-age traditions. Young bull riders, praise dancers, and pageant queens inherit and embrace these communal rituals. Through Fortune’s lens, the rigor, discipline, and creative flair of these cultural performances and the intergenerational conversation between young people and elders who pass down these traditions are celebrated.
I Can’t Stand To See You Cry explores Texas, the surrounding states, and the people fixed within its complex landscape. Fortune examines relationships between family, friends, and strangers, all navigating a flood of health and environmental challenges with grace. The artist examines the friction between public and private life and the unspoken tensions of daily existence through an approach rooted in the landscape and his own experiences. Fortune’s autobiographical approach to photography attempts to unpack his identity and experiences amid a pandemic, civil unrest, a cross-country move, a career, and the loss of a parent – reflecting about the future and the past
Rahim Fortune, b. 1994, is a Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma visual artist. He uses photography to ask fundamental questions about American identity. Focusing on the narratives of individual families and communities, he explores shifting geographies of migration and resettlement and the way that these histories are written on the landscapes of Texas and the American South. Fortune’s monograph, I Can’t Stand to See You Cry, was published by Loose Joints in 2022. It was nominated for the Paris Photo-Aperture Photobook of the Year and won the Rencontres d’Arles Louis Roederer Discovery Award 2022. His 2024 monograph, Hardtack (Loose Joints), has garnered international attention, earning a nomination for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2025. His work has been featured in exhibitions worldwide and is part of many permanent collections, including the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; LUMA Arles, France; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Virginia Museum of Art, Richmond; Nelson Atkins Museum, Kansas City, MO, and Boston Museum of Fine Art. Fortune is represented by Sasha Wolf Projects, New York, NY.
Rahim Fortune : Reflections
March 22 – May 24, 2025
Howard Greenberg Gallery
41 E 57th St 8th Floor
New York, NY 10022
www.howardgreenberg.com.
