PRESENCE and RESILIENCE: COMMUNITY Photo Exhibits at BROOKLYN GRAIN
A pair of music photography shows hosted at Brooklyn Grain and organized by Ryan Muir of Experienced Visuals featuring 50+ contributing artists.
50+ Photographers, ONE PHOTO EACH, ONE WALL, One Event
Photographers, by nature, tend to stay behind the scenes—spending long nights under monitor glow, dodging spotlights to capture the artist in full flight.
Presence offered a rare opportunity to reverse that gaze, to make space for each other’s stories, and to reflect on the lineages—musical, visual, personal—that shape this kind of creative practice.
Presence was a group photo exhibition curated by Ryan Muir of Experienced Visuals and Ebru Yildiz, presented at Brooklyn Grain in March 2025. Featuring the work of over fifty photographers, the show explored how live music photography functions not just as documentation, but as an act of participation—a way of being in the room, feeling the energy, and translating that presence into image.
A SELECTION OF WORK FROM PRESENCE
(ARTIST CREDITED IN CAPTION)
The first exhibition ran from March 8–9, with gallery hours open to the public. Viewers were invited to engage directly with prints, stepping away from digital consumption and back into something tactile and human-scaled each presenting artist sitting along the next on the wall regardless of experience and age.
In contrast to the flood of daily uploads, Presence was about choosing what endures—what still feels alive once the amps cool and the screen goes dark.
The artists
As curators, Ryan and Ebru brought together a broad community of peers, collaborators, and fellow travelers—many of them friends and working artists whose paths had long intersected in venues, and photo pits across the country.
The exhibition served as a cross-section of styles, disciplines, and scenes, unified by a shared ethic of attention and mutual respect. It was less a genre survey than a community snapshot: a record of who’s been doing the work, and what that work has looked like up close.
An opening reception was held on Friday, March 7, with complimentary refreshments provided by Brooklyn Brewery. Friends, subjects, and supporters gathered in the Greenpoint space to mark the occasion—not as a party for its own sake, but as an extension of the same ethos that informed the show: show up, look around, and acknowledge the people who make it all feel real.
“
At a time where we almost always exclusively see each other’s work online, it is especially important to get together in person and celebrate the love and hard work that every one of us put into our work.
As photographers, we exist behind the scenes, often minimized for the benefit of the bigger work: long nights under the dim glow of monitor screens and darkroom safe lights.
This show is an opportunity to step forward, to acknowledge each other in community, and to honor both those who paved the way before us and those who will follow.
This is our ‘presence’”
RESILIENCE - oCTOBER 24-26, 2025
We returned to this iteration of Brooklyn Grain Photo Studio for the last time — in a bittersweet development, they are transforming the space into a training center for the WNBA team NY Liberty (don’t worry, they’re relocating!) — for another photo show, RESILIENCE. Curated by our leader Ryan Muir, and hosted by fellow NYC mainstay photographers Ebru Yildiz and Mitchell King, the show featured 50+ photographers who make the NYC music photography scene such a compelling and rich tapestry of style and talent.
It felt like a Brooklyn art warehouse celebration from another era, including a DIY install in the days leading up to the event! Life and our world have grown ever more complicated, so it felt right to reunite in such an important local cultural space to celebrate in spite of our challenging times, where RESILIENCE is needed more than ever. Featured photographers included Rolling Stone deputy photo editor Sacha Lecca, Tonight Show photographer Todd Owyoung, and many other cherished artists we know from many years in the trenches.
Row 1 (L to R): Dana Distortion by Luke Spiller, Surf Gang by DeShaun Craddock; Row 2: Pig Destroyer by Drew Gurian, Brooke Candy by Em Yu; Row 3: Pussy Riot by Ester Segretto, The Hives by Harriet Roberts; Row 4: Lucius by Katie Dedarria, Swampdogg by Ryan Muir; Row 5: FKA Twigs by Sacha Lecca, Japanese Breakfast by Vivian Wang
