
Between Seeing and Feeling
Selections from the Museum Collection
California Museum of Photography
August 16, 2025 to December 21, 2025
Touch is a deeply human experience, conveying joy, intimacy, love, and grief. Though it is not immediately associated with photography, throughout the medium’s history, artists have sought to capture feeling on film, asking what it means to feel a photograph. Drawing on the permanent collection of the California Museum of Photography, Between Seeing and Feeling features a dynamic selection of over 30 photographs. Together, works by Graciela Iturbide, Vivian Maier, Kenji Nakahashi, Catherine Opie, and others illuminate touch as a conceptual encounter in photography. Grounded in the idea of the “haptic turn”—a shift toward experiencing art through the senses—the exhibition highlights how photography can engage not just our eyes, but also suggest movement, touch, and even sound. This way of thinking invites us to connect more closely with the images, lessening the distance between the viewer and what is being photographed. Organized in the wake of a global pandemic, Between Seeing and Feeling invites reflection on how photography can mediate and evoke feeling beyond sight.
Gallery Guide
Exhibition gallery guide (pdf)
Between Seeing and Feeling is curated by Emily Citino, 2024–25 CMP Curatorial Fellow. Exhibitions at UCR ARTS are supported by the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at UCR, and by the City of Riverside.
Image: Kenji Nakahashi, Memory (Saye’s Memory), 1985. Collection of the California Museum of Photography/UCR ARTS, anonymous gift in memory of Kenji Nakahashi. © Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents.



