Pictura Gallery at FAR Center for Contemporary Arts

Pictura Gallery at FAR Center for Contemporary Arts Pictura is a nonprofit gallery for contemporary fine art photography. Pictura Gallery was established in 2008 on the Bloomington square.

Our vision for the gallery grew quickly and organically—each exhibit taught us more about the community we were serving, and how we could serve it best. Ten years later, Pictura is an integral part of everything we do at FAR. Pictura’s new home inside the FAR Center for Contemporary Arts allows us to continue sharing the best contemporary fine art photography as it evolves, especially showing how photography can interact with other forms of visual art, performance art, and literature.

Matar’s books are available at Pictura Gallery! 11-5pm Tues-Fri.“A question, an unresolved decision, runs throughout the...
05/07/2026

Matar’s books are available at Pictura Gallery! 11-5pm Tues-Fri.

“A question, an unresolved decision, runs throughout these portraits. For those who are able, when – if ever – is it time to leave your home?

Matar, like Rineke Dijkstra or Judith Joy Ross, is a sensitive and curious portraitist, especially of women and girls. She’s also a cinematic photographer who imbues her images with dramatic tension. Beautifully composed, made with an awareness of architectural space and light, her pictures nonetheless remind us that the destruction playing out on a global scale has life-altering consequences for these young women on the cusp of adulthood.”

-From Jean Dykstra A Love Letter to Lebanon
Read full article here: https://thephotosphere.substack.com/p/a-love-letter-to-lebanon

Anastasia Sierra creates a small stage from her surroundings, where her family members are bathed in theatrical shafts o...
04/23/2026

Anastasia Sierra creates a small stage from her surroundings, where her family members are bathed in theatrical shafts of light. In her series, ‘The Witching Hour,’ the main characters are a mother, her son, her father, light and shadow, shape and color. The pictures they make together show a mother’s complicated emotional state, as she watches her child grow from infancy to boyhood.

Her aesthetics are so singular that they give way to a more complex conversation about parenting and caretaking. In one photograph, her son lies on the ground looking upwards. A shadow stretches across his chest and morphs into his mother’s silhouette on the wall behind him. It’s as if the boy is birthing the shadow- as if he has somehow delivered her form into being, and not the other way around.

Anastasia Sierra received second place in this year’s prestigious Life Framer Series Award, juried by Mia Dalglish and Lisa Woodward.

Link to full post in bio

.dalglish

An excellent interview with Rania Matar was recently published by the Huffington Post. Here she speaks about returning t...
04/16/2026

An excellent interview with Rania Matar was recently published by the Huffington Post. Here she speaks about returning to Lebanon to photograph, and her motivation to show the strength of the women in a country with recurring conflict. Matar’s prints are now on view, in tandem exhibitions at Pictura Gallery and the IU Eskenazi Museum of Art.

“They [the women] were now faced with the same painful decision of whether to stay or leave: One road leading to separation from family, home, and life as they know it, the other staying despite the fraught conditions in the country, always holding on to hope for better days. I knew exactly how they felt all these years later...I saw myself in them, in a painful realization that history keeps repeating itself.” - Rania Matar

To read the full article by and , go to the link in bio.

Rania Matar’s exquisite series ‘SHE هي’ opened this past week at Pictura Gallery. This body of work looks at young women...
04/09/2026

Rania Matar’s exquisite series ‘SHE هي’ opened this past week at Pictura Gallery. This body of work looks at young women coming of age in the US and in Lebanon. Although we scheduled the exhibition almost 2 years ago, the timing has ended up being painfully relevant. Matar’s portraits capture the lives of young women who persist in uncertain times.

Poet, janan alexander opened the evening with a reading from her new work ‘come from.’ Both Rania and janan have deep roots in Lebanon that color and connect their work. Rania’s images filled our walls, and janan’s words filled the room.

Reading, Friday at 6pm! janan alexandra will be reading from her book ‘come from’ as part of the opening reception for R...
04/02/2026

Reading, Friday at 6pm! janan alexandra will be reading from her book ‘come from’ as part of the opening reception for Rania Matar’s photographic series, SHE هي, which looks at young women coming of age in the US and in Lebanon. Both Rania and janan have deep roots in Lebanon that color and connect their work.

In her debut poetry collection, ‘come from’, janan alexandra weaves from English into Arabic, exploring the joint projects of longing and belonging. Part love song for the speaker’s mother, part grief song for ongoing postcolonial loss, this book reaches for, around, underneath, and through language—feeling for its limits and possibilities.

Visit picturagallery.com to learn more

Coming soon! Pictura Gallery is pleased to present Rania Matar’s series, SHE هي, which looks at young women coming of ag...
03/26/2026

Coming soon! Pictura Gallery is pleased to present Rania Matar’s series, SHE هي, which looks at young women coming of age in the US and in Lebanon. Join us for a Gallery Walk Opening Reception with the photographer and a reading from janan alexandra. Both Rania and janan will have books available to sign following the reading.

“As a Lebanese-born American woman and mother, my cross-cultural experiences inform my art. I have dedicated my work to exploring issues of personal and collective identity through photographs of female adolescence and womanhood –both in the United States where I live and the Middle East where I am from – in an effort to focus on notions of identity and individuality within the context of the underlying universality of these experiences. I am interested in young women as they enter adulthood today, and in portraying not only their individuality, but also how they confront the environment they find themselves in.”

Opening Reception with a Reading by janan alexandra:
Friday, April 3rd 5-8pm | Reading at 6:00pm
202 S Rogers St, Bloomington IN
Pictura Kids Workshop: Saturday, April 4th 11am-12pm

In Viktoria Sorochinki’s series, “Poltavaland: Ukraine’s Place of Power,” Poltava appears peaceful in the calm before th...
03/12/2026

In Viktoria Sorochinki’s series, “Poltavaland: Ukraine’s Place of Power,” Poltava appears peaceful in the calm before the storm, but that perspective is tempered with the knowledge of the coming war. We can see the past and remember the present at the same time. In her current solo exhibition at Pictura Gallery, some of the image pairings were chosen with that theme in mind. A man lying on the ground is placed next to an image of a toy plane caught in the branches of a tree. In one reality, the man could be in a state of wonder and abandon, perhaps dreaming about flight. In the shadow of war, the plane becomes ominous, and the man’s posture in the grass suggests a darker form of sleep. As viewers, we can toggle between those two interpretations, one innocent, and the other burdened.

“Poltavaland: Ukraine’s Place of Power,” is currently on view at Pictura Gallery until March 24, 2026.

Gallery Walk is tomorrow! Poltavaland by Viktoria Sorochinski is on view in Pictura Gallery and NSAL Exhibition and Awar...
03/05/2026

Gallery Walk is tomorrow! Poltavaland by Viktoria Sorochinski is on view in Pictura Gallery and NSAL Exhibition and Awards Ceremony will take place in the 505 Theater.

Friday, March 6th 5pm-8pm
202 S Rogers St
Free and Open to the Public
Food and drink available for sale

Visit our link in bio for more info on the current exhibition!

Viktoria Sorochinski’s photographs channel the inner spirit of Poltava. The creatives who inhabit the region are shown i...
02/26/2026

Viktoria Sorochinski’s photographs channel the inner spirit of Poltava. The creatives who inhabit the region are shown in their idiosyncrasies, not as numbers, as we may have grown accustomed to in recent reporting on Ukraine. Sorochinski’s photographs show the irreplaceable value and substance of individual lives.

In “Poltavaland,” the place appears peaceful in the calm before the storm, but that perspective is tempered with the knowledge of the coming war. We can see the past and remember the present at the same time. These images were made just a few years ago, but the place may already be quite different. In one of Sorochinski’s photographs, ghostly figures that emerge from a mural represent Ukraine’s fight for freedom over the centuries. The mural is covered over now and no longer exists. But in the clarity and careful fidelity of Sorochinski’s image, the temporary work of art and its sentiment live on.

Sorochinki’s solo exhibition “POLTAVALAND: Ukraine’s Place of Power (2019-2021)” is on view at Pictura until March 27, 2026.

To see the full curatorial statement for her show, go to this week’s installation of (link in bio)

.dalglish

Viktoria Sorochinski’s photographs channel the inner spirit of Poltava. The creatives who inhabit the region are shown i...
02/26/2026

Viktoria Sorochinski’s photographs channel the inner spirit of Poltava. The creatives who inhabit the region are shown in their idiosyncrasies, not as numbers, as we may have grown accustomed to in recent reporting on Ukraine. Sorochinski’s photographs show the irreplaceable value and substance of individual lives.

In “Poltavaland,” the place appears peaceful in the calm before the storm, but that perspective is tempered with the knowledge of the coming war. We can see the past and remember the present at the same time. These images were made just a few years ago, but the place may already be quite different. In one of Sorochinski’s photographs, ghostly figures that emerge from a mural represent Ukraine’s fight for freedom over the centuries. The mural is covered over now and no longer exists. But in the clarity and careful fidelity of Sorochinski’s image, the temporary work of art and its sentiment live on.

Sorochinki’s solo exhibition “POLTAVALAND: Ukraine’s Place of Power (2019-2021)” is on view at Pictura until March 27, 2026.

To see the full curatorial statement for her show, go to this week’s installation of (link in bio)

.dalglish

In the great pile of losses from last year, we counted some giants of the photo world. In Indiana, we unexpectedly lost ...
02/19/2026

In the great pile of losses from last year, we counted some giants of the photo world. In Indiana, we unexpectedly lost Lee Marks.

It was a gift then, to come across this episode of “The Expert Eye” (link in bio), a podcast by Aimee Pflieger offering an in-depth interview with Lee Marks about her life and career. Hearing Lee speak with energy and clarity, it feels like she’s still among us, quietly doing the work to make known the real value of photography.

She succeeded by following her interests with curiosity. She was in it for the love of the thing itself, for the artist, and the art. In her later work, Lee focused on serving the needs of the artists in her roster, because she believed in them and in what they made. I am inspired by all she accomplished, but also by her kindness and her unflappable nature.

- Lisa Woodward

Address

202 S. Rogers Street
Bloomington, IN
47404

Opening Hours

Tuesday 11am - 5pm
Wednesday 11am - 5pm
Thursday 11am - 5pm
Friday 11am - 5pm
Saturday 11am - 5pm

Telephone

+18123360000

Website

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