Gallery Luisotti is delighted to participate in the 28^th edition of Paris Photo and return to the iconic Grand Palais. The theme of our booth this year is investigations, and the various connotations of that word. The gallery will present a tightly curated selection of artists who investigate social phenomena from a quasi-anthropological point of view. Works by Ursula Schulz-Dornburg and Mark Ruwedel explore the vestiges of time from civilizations long past. On the other hand, Lewis Baltz, Robert Cumming, Christina Fernandez, and Catherine Wagner examine the traces of modern society, from an iconic prior Olympics to the mundanity of American Classrooms to Laundromats in disadvantaged neighborhoods, to the ubiquitous New Industrial Parks of Orange County. Lastly, as a contrast, Ron Jude gives us a close examination of the natural world. His close ups of Fungi show organisms that have been here long before us and will remain long after. It’s a perspective that is much needed in our accelerating and forgetful world.

Lewis Baltz

Robert Cumming

John Divola

Christina Fernandez

CJ Heyliger

Ron Jude

Arlene Mejorado

Simone Nieweg

Simon Norfolk

Mark Ruwedel

Ursula Schulz-Dornburg

Catherine Wagner

Lewis Baltz

Continious Fire, Polar Circle, 1996
The New Industrial Parks, near Irvine, California, 1974
The Protoype Works, 1967-76

This year we are pleased to bring with us Lewis Baltz’s Continuous Fire, Polar Circle, 1986, a full portfolio of seven gelatin silver prints, capturing a landscape quietly burning at the edges of the Arctic. In addition, we will have on display works from a broken portfolio of The New Industrial Parks near Irvine, California, 1974, as well as early photographs from The Prototype Works. All three bodies of work offered are rare opportunities to have acces to Baltz’s early work.

We are pleased to share two vintage gelatin silver works from Lewis Batlz’s The Protoypes Works, 1967-76. These prints have a limited editiion, and unqiue size.

Robert Cumming

The Olympic Portfolio, 1984

In 1984 Robert Cumming, along with nine other photographers, was asked by The Museum of Contemporary Art to photograph the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. From this project Robert Cumming produced a portfolio of twenty-five images, known as The Olympic Portfolio.

John Divola

Dogs Chasing My Car in the Desert, 1996

While traversing the desert dogs would frequently chase John Divola’s car. John’s portraits of these dogs in motion turned into a series that he titled Dogs Chasing My Car in the Desert.

“The desert is not empty. However, it is vacant enough to bestow a certain weight to whatever is present. Add this to a heightened awareness of your own presence and the desert can take on an existential quality.” – John Divola

Christina Fernandez

Lavanderia, 2002

Christina Fernandez’s Lavanderia series—reflects her long-standing interest in exploring personal, cultural, and social issues within a larger historical and political framework. By responding to the urban landscape of East Los Angeles in the storefronts of Lavanderia, Fernandez creates images that combine the personal and historical and, in doing so, further explore the complex issue of photographic representation.

We are pleased to present a new printing of Lavadneria 1, which has been long sold out. The new 45 x 50 in. work will be offereed in a small edition of 3 prints. 

CJ Heyliger

Rather than depicting fixed moments, Heyliger’s photographs illustrate a more speculative view of time. Through a multitude of gestures–blurs, inversions, and even the physical manipulation of prints–his work questions the photograph as a means to describe time and space.

View more of Heyliger’s work in his recent solo exhibition Minding Time.

Ron Jude

Low Tide, 2024

Ron Jude’s 12 Hz alludes to the ungraspable scale and veiled mechanics of nature, while acknowledging a desire to gain a broader perspective, beyond the human enterprise, in a time of ecological and political crisis. We are pleased present work from Low Tide, the newest iteration of Jude’s 12 Hz. 

Mark Ruwedel

Ice Age, 1995–2000

Mark Ruwedel’s  Ice Age images look at the physical evidence of human activity over some 11,000 years of habitation, reaching back to the time of hunter/gatherer societies to groups that lived, for instance, along the shores of the long-disappeared Pleistocene lakes. Addressing notions of time, Euro-American exploration and settlement, as well as twentieth-century land use, whether military, industrial, agricultural, or social.

Each Ice Age work is a vintage gelatin silver print made on long extinct Agfa Portriga Rapid paper with several images out of print. 

Simon Norfolk

Shroud, 2018

Ursula Schulz-Dornburg

Mesopotamia, 1980

“In the very fraught situation just before the Iran-Iraq War broke out, I was trying to get to the ancient sites of the Sumerian Empire, such as Eridu, Uruk and Ur. I explored the terrain all around the ruins of the ziggurats. If you examine the ground there more closely, you can see that the surface is very lively. Here and there it has been broken open and you find shards, some of which even have cuneiform writing on them. There are more or less complete ceramic vessels, and you can imagine people using them to store wheat or barley. If you engage with that ‘nowhere’, as you call it, you soon see that the ground is incredibly alive. It’s not just about the vertical of the temporal axis going back through the millennia, you can also find many astonishing physical objects in the present horizontals.”

–Ursula Schulz-Dornburg

Simone Nieweg

Forests and Trees 

Nieweg’s images of forests and trees are inspired by a nineteenth-century poem written by Heinrich Heine, titled Waldeinsamkeit (Forest Solitude). Referencing Heine’s concepts of seclusion and the natural sublime, Nieweg makes picturesque images which engage the viewer with their piercing clarity. Nieweg’s work also conveys her concern with ecological issues. Her remarkable landscapes are frozen in time and inspire awe, but also remind us of the environmental concerns which threaten their very existence.

Catherine Wagner

American Classroom, 1986

“In visiting different sites of learning, or educational systems, throughout the United States I was drawn to the marks left on blackboards, the arrangement of chairs, and the basic information in the room. This evidence of human presence speaks of our endeavors and aspirations, addressing who we are as a culture.” – Catherine Wagner, on American Classroom, 1996

We are pleased to bring with us a vintage set of American Classroom from the artist’s archive.  

Arlene Mejorado

Interior/Exterior, 2025

In Arlene Mejorado’s Inerior/Exterior spatial play is highlighted in the black and white silver prints where the use of reflective glass and previously taken photos on vinyl banners collapses multiple dimensions into one. The figures holding the mirror-like devices up also point to the way the artist is implicated in the construction of the scene, but also that she is embedded within the physicality of a cityscape as well.