Join ICP online for the next installment of our Education Snapshot Series, where ICP faculty preview the themes and ideas covered in their courses within ICP Open Education.For this Snapshot, ICP Faculty members will present their upcoming courses: Deborah Feingold Portraiture and the Art of Imitation and Alexey Yurenev on Documentary Practice: Visual Strategies. This program is being offered via online livestream and is free to attend.About the CoursesPortraiture and the Art of ImitationImitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it is also a highly creative and playful way to explore one's personal style through the guise of emulating others. We begin with a discussion and visual presentation of past and present portrait photographers of note. Then, each week, students are assigned a known portrait photographer and asked to shoot in their style. The course includes critiques, demonstrations on lighting and composition, and an exploration of what makes a provocative portrait. This course is limited to 10 students.This course is offered online, October 9 through December 18, 2025 and meets weekly on Thursdays from 6:30 to 8:30 PM ET. You can find the registration link here. Documentary Practice: Visual StrategiesIn this course designed for both beginning and practicing professionals, students are introduced to a variety of visual strategies that can be applied to documentary work. Focusing on themes of community, post-truth, archive, landscape, and innovative technologies, we welcome a guest expert from each field for a presentation. Participants reflect on theoretical readings and visual references, creating work to present for critique in a supportive classroom environment.This course is offered online, September 29 through December 8, 2025 and meets weekly on Mondays from 6:30 to 8:30 PM ET. You can find the registration link here. About the Speakers Alexey Yurenev is an artist, visual researcher, and educator whose work explores the intersections of memory and technology. He is an adjunct professor in the Visual Arts MFA Program at Columbia University and a faculty member at the International Center of Photography (ICP), His work has been exhibited internationally at venues including FOAM (Amsterdam), Hangar (Brussels), MOMus Modern/Costakis Collection (Thessaloniki), and Rencontres d’Arles. He is the author of the forthcoming book Seeing Against Seeing (2025).Yurenev’s projects have been featured in The New York Times, National Geographic, Literary Hub, and Topic. His work is held in collections such as Johns Hopkins University Special Collections, FOAM Museum, and the Anti-Krieg Museum. He has been recognized by Photographer of the Year International and received the Silurian Society Award for excellence in arts and culture journalism. Yurenev is the co-founder of FOTODEMIC, an online platform for innovative visual strategies, and the founder and executive producer of Living Room, a monthly public program for ICP alumni.Deborah Feingold's iconic portraits are filled with personality, simplicity, and eloquence. Her portraits of figures as renowned and varied as musical icons, famed actors, award-winning authors, Nobel laureates, and presidents have appeared in Rolling Stone, GQ, NYT, and numerous other national and international publications. Deborah's book MUSIC is published by Damiani. Her photographs continue to be exhibited and collected worldwide. Image by Alexey Yurenev

Connect with ICP's community during our monthly Cameras and Coffee social meet-up for photographers, collectors, and camera enthusiasts! During the event, grab freshly brewed coffee by Deadbeat Club and pastries, available for purchase in the ICP café.For this session, join us for a special hand-on art activity inspired by Michael Kenna: "Japan Love Story," exhibited on the ICP ground floor on view until September 28. Educator Carlos Nuñez will lead the Haiku Booklet workshop, creating your own interpretation of Japan Love Story through Japanese poem and photo collage.Cameras and Coffee is held at ICP in our cafe the second Saturday of each month. This event is free to attend with RSVP. About Michael Kenna: "Japan / A Love Story"ICP is excited to host this exhibition sponsored and presented by Nikkei and the Financial Times as part of their 10-year celebrations, underscoring a shared commitment to the arts and cross-cultural exchange, and photography’s unique ability to shape how we see the world. Michael Kenna’s journey with Japan spans nearly 40 years—a story of dedication, devotion, and wonder. His photographs are quiet meditations, capturing not just a place, but a feeling, a presence.Michael has taught me so much—his passion, his humility, and the way he shares his vision so generously. His images invite us to see the world differently, to slow down, to feel. That is what great photography does—it connects us across time, cultures, and emotions.What I’ve always admired is the way Michael creates space—for the landscape to speak, and for us to listen. He’s not trying to impress; he’s trying to understand. And in doing so, he helps us do the same. His photographs carry a sense of stillness, of care, of deep respect for the land and the people connected to it. There’s a quiet poetry to it all—rooted in tradition but always reaching toward something universal. This exhibition, made possible through the generosity of Nikkei and the Financial Times, brings that spirit to life. Thanks to their support, Michael’s work has reached thousands. People have described the experience as moving, uplifting—something close to visual poetry. The response has been heartfelt. The Japan Society put it best: “Simply beautiful and inspiring—please go and see it with your own eyes.” I couldn’t agree more. —Peter Fetterman“On my first visit to Japan, I was blown away by the aesthetics, the spiritual and religious aspects, the curiosity of the people, their friendliness and generosity. Later, I went up to Northern Hokkaido in the middle of winter, and it looked to me like a stark sumi-e ink painting, a white canvas with Kanji characters marked on it. I’ve been in love with the place ever since.” —Michael Kenna

This event is free with museum admission.Join us for a guided walking tour of the exhibitions Edward Burtynsky: The Great Acceleration and Sheida Soleimani: Panjereh, led by a museum educator.About the ExhibitionsEdward Burtynsky: The Great Acceleration The first solo institutional exhibition of world-renowned photographer Edward Burtynsky’s work in New York City in over twenty years, The Great Acceleration reveals the depth of Burtynsky's investigation into the human alteration of natural landscapes around the world, revealing both their present fragility and enduring beauty.This retrospective features over seventy photographs—including many of Burtynsky’s landmark images, some never before exhibited—alongside three ultra high-resolution murals and a visual and narrative timeline of his creative life. The Great Acceleration serves as both an urgent call for environmental awareness and an invitation to appreciate the sublimity that persists in the landscape, deepening our understanding of the global challenges we face today.Sheida Soleimani: Panjereh In Panjereh, Soleimani uses her family’s history—specifically her parents' flight from Iran as political refugees following the 1979 revolution—as a framework for exploring how meaning and memory are shaped by migration.Known for her studio-based constructions that layer photographs, props, live animals, and her parents into magical realist tableaus, Soleimani expands this approach in Panjereh while also debuting a new body of work: a series of close-up analogue photographs of injured birds. These works draw from her practice as a federally licensed wildlife rehabilitator and founder of Congress of the Birds, a care tradition she inherited from her mother.In these new images, Soleimani draws attention to the plight of migratory birds, many of whom are wounded on their journeys through populated areas, using them as metaphors for the social, political, and environmental barriers faced by displaced people around the world. The exhibition also includes a new site-specific wall drawing created especially for ICP’s galleries. Program Format/Accessibility InformationThis is a walking tour of the gallery; no seating is provided. For accessibility questions or requests, please email [email protected]. Image © Pasinee Pramunwong

Reflecting on themes of migration, reconciliation, and photography as a bridge, join us at ICP for a conversation between Sheida Soleimani and writer and curator Murtaza Vali about her exhibition Panjereh, on view through September 28.The conversation is being offered both in person at ICP, located on NYC's Lower East Side and online. Tickets to attend in person are $5 and include access to ICP’s galleries. Arrive early to see Panjereh as well as Edward Burtynsky: The Great Acceleration, also on view through September 28.About the ExhibitionIn Panjereh, Soleimani uses her family’s history—specifically her parents' flight from Iran as political refugees following the 1979 revolution—as a framework for exploring how meaning and memory are shaped by migration.Known for her studio-based constructions that layer photographs, props, live animals, and her parents into magical realist tableaus, Soleimani expands this approach in “Panjereh” while also debuting a new body of work: a series of close-up analogue photographs of injured birds. These works draw from her practice as a federally licensed wildlife rehabilitator and founder of Congress of the Birds, a care tradition she inherited from her mother.In these new images, Soleimani draws attention to the plight of migratory birds, many of whom are wounded on their journeys through populated areas, using them as metaphors for the social, political, and environmental barriers faced by displaced people around the world. The exhibition also includes a new site-specific wall drawing created especially for ICP’s galleries.About the SpeakersSheida Soleimani (b. 1990) is an Iranian-American artist, educator and activist. The daughter of political refugees who escaped Iran in the early 1980s, Soleimani makes work that excavates the histories of violence linking Iran, the United States and the Greater SWANA Region. In working across form and medium—especially photography, sculpture, collage and film—she often appropriates source images from popular/digital media and resituates them within defamiliarizing tableaux. The composition depends on the question at hand. For example, how can one do justice to survivor testimony and to the survivors themselves (To Oblivion)? What are the connections between oil, corruption and human rights abuses among OPEC nations (Medium of Exchange)? How do nations work out reparations deals that often turn the ethics of historical injustice into playing fields for their own economic interests (Reparations Packages)? How may the layering of memory and familial history both report fact and produce a reckoning with the intimate resonances of a geopolitics of violence (Ghostwriter)? In contrast to Western news, which rarely covers these problems, Soleimani makes work that persuades spectators to address them directly and effectively.Soleimani’s work is held in permanent collections including the Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, MIT List Visual Art Center and Kadist Paris. Her work has been recognized internationally in both exhibitions and publications such as The New York Times, Financial Times, Art in America, Interview Magazine, and many others. Based in Providence, Rhode Island, Soleimani is also an Associate Professor of Studio Art at Brandeis University and a federally licensed wildlife rehabilitator. Murtaza Vali is a critic, curator, and art historian based in Brooklyn and Sharjah. A recipient of a 2011 Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for Short-Form Writing, he publishes regularly in art periodicals and exhibition catalogues for non-profit institutions and commercial galleries. Vali is an Adjunct Curator at the Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai, where he organized the widely-acclaimed group exhibitions Crude (2018-19), which explored the relationship between oil and modernity across West Asia and North Africa, and Guest Relations (with Lucas Morin) (2023-24), a sequel exhibition examining hotels and the hospitality industry across the Global South. He is also the curator of Proposals for a Memorial to Partition, an itinerant research and curatorial platform investigating the lingering trauma and legacy of partitions in South Asia and beyond. First appearing in Manual for Treason, a publication commissioned for Sharjah Biennial 10 (2011), subsequent iterations of this project have been presented at the Jameel Arts Centre (2022-23) and Twelve Gates Arts, Philadelphia (2023). Sheida Soleimani, Deliverance, 2024 © Sheida Soleimani, Courtesy Edel Assanti, London and Harlan Levey Projects, Brussels

This event is free with museum admission.Join us for a guided walking tour of the exhibitions Edward Burtynsky: The Great Acceleration and Sheida Soleimani: Panjereh, led by a museum educator.About the ExhibitionsEdward Burtynsky: The Great Acceleration The first solo institutional exhibition of world-renowned photographer Edward Burtynsky’s work in New York City in over twenty years, The Great Acceleration reveals the depth of Burtynsky's investigation into the human alteration of natural landscapes around the world, revealing both their present fragility and enduring beauty.This retrospective features over seventy photographs—including many of Burtynsky’s landmark images, some never before exhibited—alongside three ultra high-resolution murals and a visual and narrative timeline of his creative life. The Great Acceleration serves as both an urgent call for environmental awareness and an invitation to appreciate the sublimity that persists in the landscape, deepening our understanding of the global challenges we face today.Sheida Soleimani: Panjereh In Panjereh, Soleimani uses her family’s history—specifically her parents' flight from Iran as political refugees following the 1979 revolution—as a framework for exploring how meaning and memory are shaped by migration.Known for her studio-based constructions that layer photographs, props, live animals, and her parents into magical realist tableaus, Soleimani expands this approach in Panjereh while also debuting a new body of work: a series of close-up analogue photographs of injured birds. These works draw from her practice as a federally licensed wildlife rehabilitator and founder of Congress of the Birds, a care tradition she inherited from her mother.In these new images, Soleimani draws attention to the plight of migratory birds, many of whom are wounded on their journeys through populated areas, using them as metaphors for the social, political, and environmental barriers faced by displaced people around the world. The exhibition also includes a new site-specific wall drawing created especially for ICP’s galleries. Program Format/Accessibility InformationThis is a walking tour of the gallery; no seating is provided. For accessibility questions or requests, please email [email protected]. Image © Pasinee Pramunwong

Join ICP in the Lower East Side at Seward Park for a special birding event led by the organization, NYC Queer Birders. After learning about the local bird population, the group will walk to ICP for an introductory tour of our current exhibition, Sheida Soleimani: Panjereh followed by a hands-on activity using Soleimani’s bird silhouettes to make custom stickers and anti-strike window decals designed to protect birds from flying into windows.Bring your own binoculars. Limited binoculars will be available but are not required to join the program. We welcome all bird enthusiasts, regardless of experience.This ticket includes admission to ICP’s exhibition, Sheida Soleimani: Panjereh.About NYC Queer Birders walk:NYC Queer Birders started in February 2020 as a way to cultivate community and explore the natural world of New York City with LGBTQA+ bird-lovers. Queer Birders hosts birding events all year round, in all 5 boroughs. If you love birds, meeting new people, and spending afternoons outside in a queer-friendly setting, we would love to have you join us! We welcome all bird enthusiasts, regardless of experience.About Hannah Kirshenbaum:Hannah Kirshenbaum is an avid birder and lifelong lover of the natural world. In 2020 they founded NYC Queer Birders as a way to cultivate community and explore the natural world of New York City with LGBTQIA+ bird-lovers. Through all the seasons, Hannah leads educational birding events in all 5 boroughs and beyond. They love to welcome all bird enthusiasts, regardless of experience. Hannah's favorite bird is a Ruby-crowned kinglet because they are so adorable and you're lucky if you get to see their ruby crown!About Sheida Soleimani: PanejerahThe International Center of Photography (ICP) is proud to present Panjereh, an exhibition by Iranian-American artist Sheida Soleimani. Panjereh—which means ‘window’ or ‘passageway’ in Farsi—builds on Soleimani’s ongoing Ghostwriter series, in which she explores her parents’ experiences of political exile and migration as a lens to examine broader systems of geopolitics. Known for her intricate, studio-based compositions that combine photographs, props, live animals and even her own parents in surreal, magical realist scenes, Soleimani expands her practice in Panjereh with the debut of a new body of work featuring injured birds. These images draw from her work as a wildlife rehabilitator and founder of Congress of the Birds, a federally licensed wild bird rehabilitation center in Rhode Island. The exhibition will also include a new site-specific wall drawing created specifically for ICP’s galleries. Sheida Soleimani, Khoy, 2021 © Sheida Soleimani, Courtesy Edel Assanti, London and Harlan Levey Projects, Brussels

This event is free with museum admission.Join us for a guided walking tour of the exhibitions Edward Burtynsky: The Great Acceleration and Sheida Soleimani: Panjereh, led by a museum educator.About the ExhibitionsEdward Burtynsky: The Great Acceleration The first solo institutional exhibition of world-renowned photographer Edward Burtynsky’s work in New York City in over twenty years, The Great Acceleration reveals the depth of Burtynsky's investigation into the human alteration of natural landscapes around the world, revealing both their present fragility and enduring beauty.This retrospective features over seventy photographs—including many of Burtynsky’s landmark images, some never before exhibited—alongside three ultra high-resolution murals and a visual and narrative timeline of his creative life. The Great Acceleration serves as both an urgent call for environmental awareness and an invitation to appreciate the sublimity that persists in the landscape, deepening our understanding of the global challenges we face today.Sheida Soleimani: Panjereh In Panjereh, Soleimani uses her family’s history—specifically her parents' flight from Iran as political refugees following the 1979 revolution—as a framework for exploring how meaning and memory are shaped by migration.Known for her studio-based constructions that layer photographs, props, live animals, and her parents into magical realist tableaus, Soleimani expands this approach in Panjereh while also debuting a new body of work: a series of close-up analogue photographs of injured birds. These works draw from her practice as a federally licensed wildlife rehabilitator and founder of Congress of the Birds, a care tradition she inherited from her mother.In these new images, Soleimani draws attention to the plight of migratory birds, many of whom are wounded on their journeys through populated areas, using them as metaphors for the social, political, and environmental barriers faced by displaced people around the world. The exhibition also includes a new site-specific wall drawing created especially for ICP’s galleries. Program Format/Accessibility InformationThis is a walking tour of the gallery; no seating is provided. For accessibility questions or requests, please email [email protected]. Image © Pasinee Pramunwong