Black Box: A Photographic Memoir by Dona Ann McAdams is available from Saint Lucy Books.
The exhibit Dona Ann McAdams: Black Box will be on view at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery April 18–June 7, with an opening reception April 17, 6 pm–8 pm. Dona will be in conversation with Eileen Myles at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery on May 15.
NEWS
«Το γυναικείο βλέμμα με ενδιέφερε περισσότερο» – Η Dona Ann McAdams συνδύασε ποίηση και φωτογραφία
IN MAGAZIN, March 26, 2025
‘The female gaze interested me more’: the radical vision of Dona Ann McAdams – in pictures
THE GUARDIAN, March 20, 2025
“From nuclear power plants to Aids protests, the photographer has spent half a century capturing her activist community.”
15 must-read LGBTQ+ books to dive into this spring
GCN, Carla Jové, March 7, 2025
“5. Black Box – Dona Ann McAdams… This compilation portrays moving black-and-white pictures which will give goosebumps to any queer history lover.”
Why Some Photos Feel More Powerful Over Time: Black Box by Dona Ann McAdams
ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY, February 2025
“From intimate portraits to radical political moments, Black Box is a time capsule of resistance, art, and the hidden power of forgotten images.”
PHOTOBOOK JOURNAL, Lee Halvorsen, February 2025
“McAdams’ life/photo journey has been extraordinary, finding herself and her camera in places with people and in times that are historic and memorable. She brings those bits of life to the reader in theatric intimacy, drama, and matter-of-fact reality.”
Dona Ann McAdams’s Repository of Memory
HYPERALLERGIC, February 18, 2025
“Two expressive strands, one a retrospective of her strongest visual work and the other a series of flash memoirs, join to produce an object that is greater than the sum of its parts — a singular fusion of literary and photographic art.”
Dona Ann McAdams, Black Box: A Photographic Memoir
COLLECTOR DAILY, February 6, 2025
“Dona Ann McAdams is a beloved figure among creatives. Her network expands wider than usual, encompassing fellow photographers along with illustrators, activists, jockeys, and goatherds. She’s the first degree of separation connecting Harvey Milk, Angela Davis, David Bowie, John Malkovich, David Wojnarowicz, and Maurice Sendak.”
Dona Ann McAdams: Timeless Agitprop Work
WRITING ABOUT OUR GENERATION, January 2025
“McAdams enlivens her new book with stories about some of the artists of that era, including Eileen Myles, Meredith Monk, Karen Finley, and David Wojnarowicz - a body of work that won her Obie and Bessie Awards. As important as her performance work, the volume offers her adroitly shot images of queer liberation, ACT UP, antinuclear, and pro-choice protests — agitprop work that is of its time, but timeless.”
'Black Box: A Photographic Memoir': Dona Ann McAdams' intimate collection of stories and images
THE BAY AREA REPORTER, January 18, 2025
“From childhood memories of learning how to take care of horses to her urban photojournalism at performance spaces and nightclubs in New York City, McAdams vision extends beyond categorization or eras (1970s to today). Compositionally, her work rivals Diane Arbus (an early inspiration, she notes in an essay about a school trip to the Museum of Modern Art), Robert Frank and other classic 20th-century photographers.”
Exclusive Interview with Dona Ann McAdams about 'Black Box'
ALL ABOUT PHOTO, January 12, 2025
“The book brings together McAdams’ striking historical images with personal reflections that read like prose-poems. Her photographs, taken between 1974 and 2024, document astonishing moments and people across decades of American life.”
Dona Ann McAdams’ memoir blends poetry and photography
CREATIVE REVIEW, January 7, 2025
“Rich in lyricism, the US imagemaker’s new photo book shares intimate stories from her childhood through to the present day.”
January Short Fuses — Materia Critica
THE ARTS FUSE, John R. Killacky, January 1, 2025
“In her photography, social documentarian Dona Ann McAdams has always focused on the particularity of a place and the innate humanity of the people in that locale. Her latest book, Black Box: A Photographic Memoir (Saint Lucy Books), chronicles her 50-year stellar career, beautifully reproducing 107 pictures as well as serving up some interesting backstories.”
Thinking Inside the Box: 'Black Box' by Dona Ann McAdams
SEVEN DAYS, John Killacky, December 18, 2024
“A photographic memoir documents the Vermonter's 50-year career of taking pictures of everything from gay activists to goats.”
Dona Ann McAdams: Black Box: A Photo Memoir
VERMONT CENTER FOR PHOTOGRAPHY, November 1–December 29, 2024
Book launch and artist talk: Saturday, December 14, 5–6:30 p.m.
This exhibit covers nearly six decades depicting pivotal moments in the US, such as the Queer Liberation movement, the Culture Wars, and the Performance Arts scene of the 1980’s and 1990’s.
BLACK BOX: Dona Ann McAdams
In this 12-minute film directed by John R. Killacky, Dona Ann McAdams tells the stories behind some of the photographs in her 2024 book Black Box: A Photographic Memoir.
CHICAGO READER, July 27, 2023
Art for the Future: Artists Call and Central American Solidarities at the DePaul Art Museum explores a forgotten nationwide solidarity movement.
The Top 50 Exhibitions of 2022
HYPERALLERGIC, December 28, 2022
Coming in at #22: Art for the Future: Artists Call and Central American Solidarities, an exhibit including work by Dona Ann McAdams. “Timely and historical, urgent and archival, this exhibition explored the political artworks, films, poetry, performances, and actions created by participants in the formative 1980s transnational activist campaign Artists Call Against US Intervention in Central America.”
What Does Solidarity by Artists Look Like?
HYPERALLERGIC, November 17, 2022
“Black-and-white photomurals by Dona Ann McAdams depict Artists Call protests, such as ‘Procession for Peace march with Artists Call Against U.S. Intervention in Central America banner, New York’ (1984).”
Female Photographers and Feminism: Part Fourty-Four
FOTO FEMME UNITED, September 12, 2022
“McAdams embraces the strengths of sensitivity and that is evident in her work. Her black and white images somehow engage the viewer both physically and emotionally. Her work is incisive, direct and utterly uncompromising.”
The Williamsburg Building That Painted Over Basquiat
NEW YORK MAGAZINE, May 17, 2022
“The documentary photographer Dona Ann McAdams, who lived in the building in the late 1970s, remembers leaving for a trip and finding the graffiti when she returned.”
Whose Streets? Our Streets! NYC 1980-2000
HOWARD THURMAN CENTER FOR COMMON GROUND, March 31–April 22, 2022
Dona Ann McAdams is one of the 37 photographers whose work will be on display. These photographers documented ordinary New Yorkers as they rallied, marched, and demonstrated. On view Fridays 9 a.m.–7 p.m. and Saturday, April 2, noon–5 p.m. at Boston University’s Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground (second floor), 808 Commonwealth Avenue, Brookline, MA 02446.
Radical Conventions: Cuban American Art from the 1980's
LOWE ART MUSEUM, March 17–June 12, 2022
“A landmark exhibition, Radical Conventions is the first major museum presentation to focus solely on Cuban American art created during the 1980s.” This exhibit includes four photographs by Dona Ann McAdams, including Carmelita Tropicana, “Cement Beach,” taken at a performance at PS 122 in New York in 1988.
TUFTS UNIVERSITY ART GALLERIES, November 2021
“On January 20, 2022, Tufts University Art Galleries (TUAG) will open the most in-depth exhibition to date to explore the seminal 1980s activist campaign Artists Call Against US Intervention in Central America… The forthcoming exhibition, titled Art for the Future: Artists Call and Central American Solidarities, provides an expansive examination of the campaign through the work of more than 100 artists and archival materials, including materials drawn from the personal archives of Lucy Lippard and Doug Ashford as well as from the Museum of Modern Art Library & Archives. Art for the Future will remain on view through April 24, 2022.”
THE ART NEWSPAPER, January 5, 2022
“A dozen boxes of materials found in the Museum of Modern Art’s library served as the impetus for a new exhibition on the legacy of the Artists Call group at Tufts University Art Galleries… How the material ended up at MoMA remains a mystery but based on the handwriting found on it, it was likely preserved by the artist Coosje van Bruggen, who was a key figure in the group, and whose husband Claes Oldenburg designed Artists Call’s most recognised poster.” Dona Ann McAdams is among the artists whose work is included in the exhibit, on view January 20—April 24, 2022.
Beginnings, with Moby, Blair Brown, John Kelly and Dona Ann McAdams
SHADOW // YADDO, September 23, 2021
On this episode of Yaddo’s podcast, Dona Ann McAdams offers a preview of “Hardboots & Legends,” her ongoing project on the behind-the-scenes backstretch workers at the oldest horse racing track in America, Saratoga Racecourse.
Reflection: On Dona Ann McAdams’ 'Performative Acts,' And How The Camera Can Create Intimacy
VERMONT EDITION (VPR), August 10, 2021
Shanta Lee Gander spoke with Dona Ann McAdams about Performative Acts, on view at the Bennington Museum through August 15, 2021.
SHADOW // YADDO, June 10, 2021
Shadow // Yaddo, a podcast hosted by Elaina Richardson, interviewed photographer and veteran activist Dona Ann McAdams on a chance encounter that changed the course of her life and work: the day she met civil rights leader Harvey Milk.
PERFORMANCE SPACE NEW YORK, May 26, 2021
Performance Space New York honored Dona Ann McAdams among other distinguished honorees at their 40th anniversary gala.
Caught In The Act with Dona Ann McAdams
THE AMY BEECHER SHOW, April 21, 2021
The Amy Beecher show interviewed Dona Ann McAdams about where art has taken her: the stages of Performance Space in the 80’s and 90’s, Coney Island assisted living facilities, homeless shelters, small mountain communities in Appalachia, dairy farms in New England, and on the backstretch of thoroughbred racetracks. All that and more.
Interview with John Killacky and Dona Ann McAdams
ALL THINGS LGBTQ, April 13, 2021
All Things LGBTQ, a show distributed by Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, interviewed Dona Ann McAdams and curator/performance artist/legislator John Killacky about their work, including the exhibit “Performative Acts.”
I am a Vermont Artist: Dona Ann McAdams
VERMONT ARTS COUNCIL, January 15, 2021
Desmond Peeples of the Vermont Arts Council interviewed Dona Ann McAdams about her work, her vision for the next few years, and how living in Vermont has affected her creative process. A retrospective exhibit of her work, “Performative Acts,” will be on view next at the Bennington Museum starting April 2, 2021.
Culture Wars with Dona Ann McAdams and John Killacky
VERMONT HUMANITIES COUNCIL, October 7, 2020
Dona Ann McAdams and curator John Killacky discuss the culture wars of this era and McAdams’ exhibition at the Helen Day Art Center, “Dona Ann McAdams: Performative Acts.”
Virtual Tour of Dona Ann McAdams: Performative Acts
HELEN DAY ART CENTER, August 3—December 31, 2020
Visit the exhibit at the Helen Day Art Center in Stowe, Vermont. In-person viewing by appointment, Aug. 3, 2020 through Nov. 14, 2020. This exhibit was extended through Dec. 31, 2020.
"An inside look: McAdams’ remarkable, insightful photos coming to Helen Day in Stowe"
STOWE TODAY, July 23, 2020
Curator John Killacky shares a preview of Dona Ann McAdams’ exhibit, currently on its fourth leg of a two-year statewide tour. The exhibit was on view starting Aug. 3—by appointment only—at the Helen Day Art Center in Stowe.
“I make photographs now, I don’t take them.”
STOWE TODAY, July 23, 2020
"A photographer and a subject are inherently separated by a camera... Sometimes, the photographer never knows who the people are, only the story told in a photograph’s slice of time. If you’re Dona Ann McAdams, that isn’t the case."
Woman of the Week: Dona Ann McAdams
VERMONT NEWS GUIDE, June 29, 2020
Dona was Vermont News Guide’s Woman of the Week for the week of June 29, 2020.
Interview with Dona Ann McAdams
ALL THINGS LGBTQ, June 16, 2020
All Things LGBTQ, a show distributed by Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, interviewed Dona Ann McAdams about her work.
Virtual Tour of Dona Ann McAdams: Performative Acts
CATAMOUNT ARTS, 2020
While museums around the country are closed, you can still visit Dona Ann McAdams’ touring exhibit, currently at Catamount Arts.
Catamount Arts also interviewed Dona Ann McAdams and John Killacky about the exhibit. Watch the video here:
ST. JOHNSBURY ATHENAEUM, March 20, 2020
In conjunction with her retrospective exhibition at Catamount Arts, Dona Ann McAdams discusses and shows her empathetic black-and-white portraits of performing artists, AIDS activists, political protests, people living with schizophrenia, Appalachian farmers, cloistered nuns, and others.
The Garden of Eden: Living With Schizophrenia on Coney Island
DOCUMENTING MEDICINE, 2020
"Over the past few decades, institutional homes for adults with schizophrenia and other mental disorders have multiplied on or near Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York, making the area a kind of clearinghouse for Manhattan’s mentally ill... [Dona Ann] McAdams and Brad Kessler’s project focuses on a community of schizophrenics who live in a group home called the Garden of Eden."
Photography as Social Justice: Artist Dona McAdams in St. Johnsbury
CALEDONIAN RECORD, Jan. 8, 2020
“Catamount Arts will present ‘Dona Ann McAdams: Performative Acts,’ a retrospective exhibition of work by acclaimed photographer Dona Ann McAdams, on view in the Fried Family Gallery from February 5-April 3, 2020.”
Photographer Dona Ann McAdams Considers Her Remarkable Career
SEVEN DAYS, Sept. 4, 2019
“What do goats, Pride paraders and porn stars have in common? The answer is photographer Dona Ann McAdams, who always has her subjects' backs while capturing their fronts—and sometimes affronts.
McAdams' remarkable career of agitprop and empathy takes center stage in ‘Performative Acts,’ an exhibition curated by Vermont State Rep. John Killacky (D-South Burlington), the former executive director of the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts in Burlington. Currently on view at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, the retrospective features dozens of McAdams' black-and-white photos spanning four decades of her work.”
THE BOSTON GLOBE, July 30, 2019
“See an exhibit by activist photographer Dona Ann McAdams at Vermont’s Brattleboro Museum & Art Center through Sept. 23." “Dona Ann McAdams: Performative Acts” features black-and-white photos drawn from four decades of the artist’s work, including images of avant-garde performers, cloistered nuns, racetrack workers, and pioneers of gay liberation.”
Dona Ann McAdams: Performative Acts
MONOVISIONS: BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY MAGAZINE, July 22, 2019
“McAdams works not as a detached journalist but as a fully engaged social activist. She is an empathetic artist whose subjects are not the exotic ‘other’ but rather participants and allies in her portraiture. She invites the viewer into the particularity of place and the innate humanity of the people she photographs.”
Picturing Social Justice, One Exposure at at Time
BENNINGTON BANNER, July 13, 2019
“‘The work is incisive, uncompromising, and forthright, just like the artist herself,’ BMAC Director Danny Lichtenfeld says. ‘Yet it is also meticulously crafted and suffused with empathy, especially for those who inhabit the margins of mainstream society.’”
BRATTLEBORO MUSEUM & ART CENTER, June 22-Sept. 23, 2019
A retrospective of Dona Ann McAdams’ photographs, curated by John Killacky, was on view at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center in Brattleboro, Vermont, from June 22—September 23, 2019. The exhibit then toured Vermont through November 2020. The catalog is available here.
Dona Ann McAdams: Coming into Focus
TIMES-ARGUS, June 15, 2019
“The artist is best known for her performance images, captured while she was the house photographer for the innovative New York performance space, P.S. 122. She won an Obie Award for this body of work in 1997 for Distinguished Contribution to Off Broadway. Her iconic images of the raw splendor of such provocateurs as Karen Finley and Ron Athey, who became lightning rods for malicious conservative outrage in the Culture Wars of the 1990s, are key images in the exhibition.”
Six New Exhibits Open at Brattleboro Museum & Art Center
BRATTLEBORO REFORMER, June 12, 2019
“‘Dona Ann McAdams: Performative Acts’ spans more than four decades of the social documentary photographer's work. Curated by John Killacky, the exhibit features McAdams' black and white photographs of performance artists, nuns, race track workers, people with schizophrenia, working farm animals, and anti-nuclear, pro-choice, war protest, feminist, queer liberation, and AIDS activism protests.”
Stonewall: When Resistance Became Too Loud to Ignore
THE NEW YORK TIMES, May 2019
“Here again photography opens a window on cultural histories that would otherwise be lost to memory. Dona Ann McAdams’ shots of performances at the lesbian-feminist W.O.W. (Women’s One World) Café, and other East Village clubs, are reminders of the radical talents—John Bernd, Karen Finley, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Holly Hughes, Tim Miller—that this brief time and vanished environment nurtured.”
THE GAY & LESBIAN REVIEW, April 2019
“Dona Ann McAdams’ photography is featured in both the Art After Stonewall exhibition and the We Are Everywhere book. She too is a child of Stonewall, having chronicled queer aesthetics for over thirty years, adroitly capturing the urgency of early dyke marches, ACT UP actions, and LGBT military members marching in Washington in solidarity against the ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy that went into effect in 1994. McAdams’ agitprop works are also included in a retrospective exhibition that I am curating for Vermont’s Brattleboro Museum and Art Center titled Dona Ann McAdams: Performative Acts, opening on June 22, 2019. Augmenting her photographs of avant-garde performers and pioneers of LGBT liberation, the exhibition includes resplendent black-and-white photographs of people living with schizophrenia, cloistered nuns, and racetrack workers, along with luminous images of horses, oxen, and goats.” —John R. Killacky
FRIEZE MAGAZINE, Sept. 20, 2018
Frieze: What images keep you company in the space where you work?
Martha Rosler: Prints of engravings from photos of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman and an old poster from the San Francisco Mime Troupe. A black and white photo by Dona Ann McAdams, and another of Eleanor and David Antin on their wedding day.
The Power of Protest Photography
THE ATLANTIC, January 2017
“A new exhibition captures the rallies, riots, marches, and demonstrations that erupted in New York City between 1980 and 2000. Entitled “Whose Streets? Our Streets!” the current show at the Bronx Documentary Center explores residents’ reactions to two decades of swift economic and demographic change. The era was consumed by issues of police brutality, gentrification, AIDS, gay and lesbian rights, reproductive rights, U.S. foreign policy and military actions, and education and labor relations.
‘While this cohort of photographers had made very powerful photographs of protests in New York City during these tumultuous decades, because they were working independently and before the advent of the internet and social media, much of their work had never been seen,’ Tamar Carroll, co-curator of the show, said.”
A history of protests in New York City—in pictures
THE GUARDIAN, January 2017
“A new exhibition at the Bronx Documentary Center features the work of photojournalists who captured conflict on the streets of New York between 1980 and 2000. Whose Streets? Our Streets! covers moments of violent confrontation like the Tompkins Square Riot, the creativity of the AIDS protesters of the 1990s and non-violent civil disobedience triggered by racial tensions.”
‘Whose Streets? Our Streets!’ New York City 1980-2000 at the Bronx Documentary Center
PHOTOGRAPH MAGAZINE, 2017
“A photographer has only a few seconds to take a picture. How she prepares for that moment can run the gambit. Dona Ann McAdams spends years ‘learning the language’ of her subjects before she captures an image she’s satisfied with. ‘When I do anything, I need to immerse myself in it and be responsible, photographically and humanistically,’ she says. ‘I need to understand the language [of what I’m shooting].’
McAdams’ subjects range from performance artists in New York City’s East Village to thoroughbred horses at Saratoga Race Course; immersion has meant understanding, common language and friendship. ‘I don’t want to be dictated to by my lens,” she says. ‘I want that rapport.’ The result is portraits that are disquietingly intimate.”
‘Whose Streets? Our Streets!’: New York City, 1980-2000
THE EYE OF PHOTOGRAPHY, 2017
“Featuring work by thirty seven independent photojournalists, this exhibit captures ordinary New Yorkers as they rallied, rioted, marched, and demonstrated. These stunning images document historic moments of violent confrontation such as the Tompkins Square Park and Crown Heights Riots and as well as organized protests involving non-violent civil disobedience and creative street theater. Collectively, these photographs, which have never before been exhibited together, chronicle New York’s history from 1980-2000.”
A love letter to Greenwich Village by luminaries who have called it home
THE VILLAGER, April 2014
“‘Greenwich Village Stories: A Collection of Memories,’ a 102-page book by 67 artists, writers, musicians, photographers, actors and entrepreneurs, had a coming-out party last week. The April 8 event drew about 100 friends of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation—co-publisher with Universal, a division of Rizzoli International—to Morandi, Keith McNally’s restaurant on Waverly Place.”
Saratoga’s Backstretch Photographers’ Personal POV
THE HUFFINGTON POST, July 2011
“‘A View From the Backstretch,’ the National Racing Museum‘s blockbuster photography exhibit, shows the flip side of racing, from the inside of the Sport of Kings looking out. The turnout at the exhibit opening rivaled that of the record setting Seabiscuit exhibit a few years ago. A group of photographers, who also work behind the scenes at the Saratoga Race Course in Saratoga Springs, NY, apprenticed with project director and documentary photographer Dona McAdams for an eight month intensive workshop on recording their stories through the racing season.”
Artful Talents Beyond the Track
ALBANY TIMES UNION, July 2011
“Their teacher and photography project coordinator was Dona Ann McAdams, a photographer who lives in Arlington, Vt. She has published two books of photographs and her work has been widely exhibited. She came to the track in 2004, looking to get a few riding lessons, and ended up becoming immersed in the la familia essence of the backstretch community—a rustic ground of well-worn cottages redolent of straw and manure that puddles up badly when it rains, its muddy paths traversed by sinewy mutts workers keep as pets.
‘This place bit me hard and I just fell in love with it," McAdams said. "The backstretch workers often have no voice. I wanted to give them cameras and a chance to tell their own stories.’”
Backstretch beauty: Track life minus glitz, glamour
THE DAILY GAZETTE, July 2011
“As a backstretch worker—one of the people who walks, rides, bathes and grooms thoroughbred race horses—[Wallace] is an expert on sights few people see…Fifteen of these experts have taken photographs of the early-morning and late-afternoon routines. Their candid camera work is on display in ‘A View from the Backstretch,’ a new exhibition at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs…The project began when Dona Ann McAdams, a longtime photographer who lives in Arlington, Vt., teamed up with Karen Wheaton, the education curator at the museum.”
See 'Some Women' with photographer Dona Ann McAdams
ALBANY TIMES UNION, November 2009
“Opalka Gallery at Sage College of Albany is showing an important exhibit by celebrated photographer Dona Ann McAdams. Titled ‘Some Women,’ the exhibit consists of silver gelatin prints from various series shot throughout McAdams' career and functions as a retrospective (she calls it a ‘sampler’).
McAdams categorizes her work as social documentary and says it usually involves spending years on one subject. ‘I end up immersing myself into a community and become part of it,’ she says. ‘Basically I fall in love with a project. I don't go searching for subjects.’”
Dona Ann McAdams at Opalka Gallery
GET VISUAL, December 2009
“McAdams is a fun study, because her work crosses so many boundaries and mixes freely from contrasting sources. First, there is the nostalgia of her traditional, rigorous 35mm black-and-white technique, right down to the 12" x18" darkroom-made prints—in this digital world, we don't see much of that anymore, and it is still refreshingly direct and visually rich.”
ARTNET MAGAZINE, 2009
“When Dona Ann returned to her hometown of New York at the end of the ‘70s and into the ‘80s, she shot the mean streets of Loisaida’s Alphabet City, patients in a mental ward, the Hasidim in Williamsburg, Barcelona before the Olympics and more. But especially she more or less became the top photographer of downtown performance art. Now when anyone needs pictures of the outrageous talents moshing the club scene and PS 122 in the East Village, Eric Bogosian, Holly Hughes, Ann Magnuson, Meredith Monk, Ethyl Eichelberger, David Wojnarowicz, etc., McAdams is the one they go to. That work became Caught in the Act, published by Aperture in 1996.”
METROLAND, 2007
“A photographer has only a few seconds to take a picture. How she prepares for that moment can run the gambit. Dona Ann McAdams spends years ‘learning the language’ of her subjects before she captures an image she’s satisfied with. ‘When I do anything, I need to immerse myself in it and be responsible, photographically and humanistically,’ she says. ‘I need to understand the language [of what I’m shooting].’
McAdams’ subjects range from performance artists in New York City’s East Village to thoroughbred horses at Saratoga Race Course; immersion has meant understanding, common language and friendship. ‘I don’t want to be dictated to by my lens,” she says. ‘I want that rapport.’ The result is portraits that are disquietingly intimate.”