Richard Renaldi and Jess T. Dugan

Richard Renaldi exhibited work from his 2016 book Manhattan Sunday Morning, the culmination of a seven-year project to create an homage to the club life of New York City. With a large-format camera and black and white film, Renaldi’s landscapes and portraits capture “the mystery and abandonment of the club, the nightscape and then finally daybreak.”

Since 2011, photographer Jess T. Dugan has explored the power of identity, desire, and connection through a collection of intimate portraits. In her show at Transformer Station, Dugan displayed a selection of works from her ongoing project Every Breath We Drew, many of which have never before been seen or exhibited.

Informed by queer experience and Dugan’s own self-defined masculinity, these portraits examine the intersection between private, individual identity, and the search for intimate connection with others. Rather than attempting to describe a specific identity or group—the gender identity and sexual orientation of the individuals varies greatly—Every Breath We Drew asks larger questions about how identity is formed, desire is expressed, and intimate connection is sought.

About Jess T. Dugan

Jess T. Dugan (American, b. 1986, Biloxi, MS) received her MFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago (2014), her Master of Liberal Arts in museum studies from Harvard University (2010), and her BFA in Photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (2007).

Dugan has exhibited at venues including the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Aperture Foundation, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the San Diego Museum of Art, the Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College, the Catherine Edelman Gallery, the Griffin Museum of Photography, and at many colleges and universities throughout the United States.

About Richard Renaldi

Richard Renaldi was born in Chicago in 1968. He received a BFA in photography from New York University in 1990. He is represented by Benrubi Gallery in New York and Robert Morat Galerie in Berlin and has been widely exhibited and collected in both the United States and Europe. Four monographs of his work have been published, including Richard Renaldi: Figure and Ground (Aperture, 2006); Fall River Boys (Charles Lane Press, 2009); Touching Strangers (Aperture, 2014); and Manhattan Sunday (Aperture, 2016). He was the recipient of a 2015 fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

This exhibition was organized by Transformer Station.