UCR ARTS Surveys Douglas McCulloh's Four-Decade Conceptual Photography Practice

Key facts

• Dispatches: The Photography of Douglas McCulloh, 1990–2025 is the first exhibition to survey the full breadth of McCulloh's work.
• The exhibition runs September 12 through December 20, 2026 at UCR ARTS: California Museum of Photography in downtown Riverside.
• McCulloh's practice centered on maps and chance operations to determine where he pointed his camera.
• Chance Encounters (1992–1999) involved speaking with nearly everyone he met across 22,000 miles of chance-selected terrain.
• Lost Among the Stars (2003–2006) was built around 90 fixed points in Hollywood history.
• Dream Street (1999–2009) chronicled a Southern California subdivision from construction to the collapse of the housing bubble.
• American Cross (2013–2025) began in January 2013 and covered more than 5,352 miles before McCulloh died on January 5, 2025, about 400 miles short of completion.
• The Great Picture (2006), made with five other artists in a decommissioned Marine Corps hangar turned pinhole camera, holds the Guinness World Record for largest print photograph at over 31 feet high and 111 feet wide.