“Second Nature: Photography in the Age of the Anthropocene,” Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art  – KC STUDIO

Installation view, Second Nature: Photography within the Age of the Anthropocene, May 22, 2026 – September 13, 2026, Charlotte Crosby Kemper Gallery, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Photo: E.G. Schempf, 2026.

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“Second Nature: Photography in the Age of the Anthropocene” assembles modern work by 43 photo-based artists from across the globe. Grouped into 4 main sections, the exhibition packages each penalties and concerns.  

Anthropocene refers back to the time period that scientists proposed in 2000, recognizing a brand new geological period the place humanity’s exercise created lasting environmental and climatological influence. “Second Nature” exhibits the implications of choices, motion, and inaction, a baton handed collectively between generations. Frankly, the exhibit makes it onerous to think about Earth earlier than people arrived.  

The exhibition is a dialog starter. Patrons considering “Second Nature” could expertise marvel, alarm, guilt, outrage, and even disassociation, apathy or indifference. Choose your individual journey. Evidence of the planet’s precise and imagined transformation is related to human-anchored points resembling colonialism, compelled local weather migration, and socio-environmental trauma. If nothing else, “Second Nature’s” documentation presents moments and scenes that the majority of us won’t ever witness firsthand.  

From the sequence Drowning World: Submerged Portraits, Gideon Mendel’s picture Anchalee Koyama depicts a lady standing with a younger youngster in her arms as flood waters rise to her waist in Bangkok, Thailand. A companion {photograph} of Jeff and Stacey Waters, who’re wearing waders and posed earlier than their flooded house in Surrey, United Kingdom, illustrates how comparable circumstances have an effect on lives no matter geography, social standing or financial class. 

Tunisian artist Mouna Karray’s pictures of nameless people wrapped in white sheets and posed towards dramatic landscapes tackle isolation and obscurity. Without the particular person posed, the surroundings may seem on a postcard or in a movie. Her sequence No One Will Talk About Us attracts consideration to how mining extracts assets and advantages buyers. Who considers the worth and values of the individuals who stay of their ravaged homeland?  

All photos: Installation view, Second Nature: Photography within the Age of the Anthropocene, May 22, 2026 – September 13, 2026, Charlotte Crosby Kemper Gallery, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Photo: E.G. Schempf, 2026.

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Andrew Esiebo’s towering inkjet print Untitled presents a scene of boys enjoying soccer on grime, a spirited, relatable second unfolding beneath a huge concrete overpass, urbanism writ massive. 

For consideration, the part “Envisioning Tomorrow” ponders the way forward for society inside a altering atmosphere in pragmatic and fantastical methods. Joiri Minaya facilities feminine and Indigenous our bodies in conversations in regards to the future. Visions for humanity and its observe file aren’t outlined by or restricted to the cash, know-how or sociocultural assertions of males.    

With Container #2 set in a lush forest, Minaya’s self-portrait shows her in a head-to-toe patterned bodysuit that resembles a protecting tropical pores and skin and vibrant chrysalis throughout metamorphosis. Her identification as an Afro-Latina girl is hidden and camouflaged, circumventing social projections of sexuality and exoticism assigned to ladies by colonizers endemic to her native Dominican Republic and different Caribbean nations.  

Cara Romero’s Evolvers introduces a visible conflict of boys in feathered headdresses and sun shades dashing throughout a “forest” of desert windmills that might exist in an Indigenous cyberpunk novel.  

“Second Nature” assembles must-see works starting from poisonous websites to imagined futurism, from Robert Kautuk’s picture of a conventional walrus hunt captured by a drone to Noémie Goudal’s constructed fragments of nature via picture-in-picture imagery exploring the deep time of geology. The exhibit tethers us prior to now and current of humanity’s detritus and choices to govern nature, but it surely additionally creates area for contemplation, dialog and motion to form what could come subsequent.  

“Second Nature: Photography in the Age of the Anthropocene” continues at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, 4420 Warwick Blvd., via Sept. 13. Hours 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday and 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday. For extra data 816.753.5784 or www.kemperart.org.