Whitney Museum exhibition Trust Me explores intimacy and feeling in photography through 11 artists

Trust Me at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York presents photographs emphasizing intimacy, care, and connection from the museum's collection. The exhibition features 11 artists whose work foregrounds emotional exchange and collaborative processes. Moyra Davey's 16-part installation Trust Me (2011) shows folded photographs sent through mail to writer Lynne Tillman, who added text fragments from her novel. Genesis Báez's Crossing Time (2022) depicts the artist and her mother connected by a thread's shadow, representing intergenerational bonds. Barbara Hammer's silver gelatin print Barbara & Terry (1972) portrays the artist with partner Terry Sendgraff in a vulnerable lesbian intimate scene. Lola Flash's Untitled, Provincetown, MA (1990) uses a cross-color technique to render queer people of color anonymous while challenging photographic norms. Muriel Hasbun's X post facto (6.7) (2009–13) rephotographs a dental X-ray from her father's archive, memorializing victims of the Salvadoran Civil War (1979–92). Mary Manning's His Estate (2022) rephotographs floral images using their father's old camera as an elegy. The exhibition runs through February 2024, making a case for feeling as both analytical mode and creative means in photography. Theoretical context includes Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida (1981) with its concept of punctum and Elspeth H. Brown and Thy Phu's Feeling Photography (2014), which traces emotional frameworks in photographic analysis.