Dana Lixenberg: American Images

Spanning more than three decades, this exhibition offers the first comprehensive overview of the work of Dutch photographer Dana Lixenberg. Drawing on key series made in the United States, it presents a nuanced and deeply human portrayal of American life. Across social and geographic contexts, her work unfolds through carefully composed images that resist stereotype.

Lixenberg is known for her stripped-down approach, working with a large-format 4 × 5-inch view camera. Its deliberate pace demands time, stillness, and collaboration, shaping the encounter as much as the image. Rather than capturing moments of display or performance, her portraits emerge with quiet attention to posture and gesture, allowing individuals to settle and appear without affectation.

Born in Amsterdam in 1964, Lixenberg moved to New York in 1989. She looked to her adopted country with openness and curiosity, guided by her subjects. This way of working evolved into a photographic language grounded in empathy and mutual trust, offering a counterpoint to more sensational or reductive representations.

Beginning in the early 1990s, Lixenberg contributed portraits to major international publications, among them figures from the worlds of politics, entertainment, and the arts. Alongside this editorial work, she developed long-term projects with communities facing social and environmental precarity. Central among them is Imperial Courts, initiated after the 1992 Rodney King uprising, an engagement with residents of a public housing project in Watts, Los Angeles.

American Images also includes series on unhoused individuals in southern Indiana and on an Iñupiaq community in Alaska whose way of life is increasingly threatened by the consequences of climate change. Each subject is approached with equal care and respect, without privileging fame, status, or circumstance. This ethic extends to Lixenberg’s working process, seen in Polaroid test shots, shared with subjects during sittings, which form an intimate record of encounters over many years.

Throughout her practice, Lixenberg photographs both widely recognized cultural figures and people far from public visibility. By refusing such hierarchies, her work places icons and everyday individuals on equal footing, allowing each person to appear with dignity and specificity. Together, these works reflect the culture of the time, forming the portrait of an era.

The exhibition will travel to MAPFRE, Barcelona, Madrid (ES), C/O Berlin and Deutsche Börse, Frankfurt (DE). For more information on the exhibition, please click here.