New Photography Exhibition at The Ringling Museum

August 19, 2024 | Sarasota

The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art (The Ringling) presents I want you to know my story on view in the Keith D. Monda Gallery of Contemporary Art from August 17, 2024, through February 25, 2025. The exhibition features the work of renowned contemporary photographer Jess T. Dugan.  

This solo exhibition includes new photographs from their ongoing series Look at me like you love me that consists of portraits, self-portraits and still lifes. Dugan’s use of rich textures, vivid colors, and dramatic lighting evoke a feeling of the Baroque and grants their interior scenes a powerful sense of intimacy. But when COVID restrictions pushed Dugan to work outdoors, the artist took their subjects into the landscape to create poignant scenes bathed in the ephemeral “golden hour” light at sunset.  

 “My photographs function as an extended, oblique self-portrait as much as a catalogue of friends and loved ones,” says Dugan, and notes that the series of work in this exhibition, “brings our attention to one of the most powerful and complex forms of intimacy—that of seeing and being seen.” Grounded in their own experience as a queer, nonbinary person, Dugan’s work offers a reflection on the universal human need to express oneself and connect with others, and the ways our identities are shaped by experiences of intimacy, desire and companionship.  

The exhibition also features two videos, Letter to My Father and Letter to My Daughter. These works consist of autobiographical monologues by the artist that reflect on their struggles and discoveries being a gender non-conforming person, both as a child and now as a parent.  

“Together, these heartfelt personal works meditate on the intensity of the relationship between child and parent,” says Christopher Jones, Stanton B. and Nancy W. Kaplan Curator of Photography and Media Arts at The Ringling, and notes that “the exhibition will resonate broadly with anyone who has navigated similar complex family relationships.”