Second Nature: Photography within the Age of the Anthropocene – KC STUDIO

Gideon Mendel, Anchalee Koyama, Taweewattana District, Bangkok, Thailand, November 2011 from the collection Drowning World: Submerged Portraits, 2011. Laser print on cloth, dimensions variable. (courtesy of the artist and Axis Gallery, New York & New Jersey. ©Gideon Mendel.)

On view May 22 – September 13, 2026, at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

This summer time, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art presents an exhibition that asks a troublesome query: what does our planet seem like now that people themselves have grow to be a geological drive?

Second Nature: Photography within the Age of the Anthropocene, on view May 22 by means of September 13, 2026, is the ultimate cease of this primary main exhibition to look at the Anthropocene by means of the lens of latest pictures. Bringing collectively roughly 45 artists working throughout the globe, Second Nature reveals how photographers are documenting—and difficult—the profound environmental and social transformations of our time.

Just over twenty years in the past, scientists launched the time period “Anthropocene” to explain a brand new epoch outlined by human impression on Earth’s local weather and ecosystems. Since then, the concept has migrated far past the sciences, shaping debates in philosophy, economics, geography, and the humanities.

Second Nature interprets this complicated idea into highly effective visible phrases. Organized into 4 thematic sections—“Reconfiguring Nature,” “Toxic Sublime,” “Inhumane Geographies,” and “Envisioning Tomorrow”—the exhibition presents pictures which might be without delay mesmerizing and unsettling: aerial views of landscapes which might be each breathtaking and contaminated, monumental depictions of city growth, collages that confront colonial histories embedded within the land, and speculative visions of futures that really feel alarmingly shut.

These artists confront the realities of melting ice, rising waters, and relentless useful resource extraction, however additionally they probe deeper questions on energy, historical past, and duty. The Anthropocene, the exhibition suggests, shouldn’t be a single story however a tangled internet of relationships between humanity, business, and ecology—one whose penalties are nonetheless unfolding.

Organized by the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University and the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, and co-curated by Kemper Museum’s Executive Director Jessica May and Marshall N. Price, Second Nature arrives in Kansas City at a second of worldwide consideration. As the town prepares to welcome guests from around the globe, the exhibition affords a well timed provocation: an opportunity to see our altering planet by means of the eyes of worldwide artists who’re each witnesses to—and individuals in—this extraordinary age.