Framing Moments: Photography from the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts offers a distinct and inclusive overview of photography in the United States and beyond. Dr. Deborah Willis’s selected gems from the KIA’s significant photography holdings range from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, revealing how photographers can uniquely preserve moments, people, and places. Expressly interested in highlighting the time in which these photographs were made and collected, Willis imagines the stories and events that encouraged KIA curators to acquire these images over the past 60 years.

This seminal exhibition includes nearly 100 photographs that juxtapose a diverse group of photographers who reveal everyday life across rural and urban communities, explore modern photographic aesthetics, document pivotal moments of social change and conflict, and present artists as both celebrities and ordinary people.