PHOENIX, AZ.- This summer, Phoenix Art Museum explores the use of comedy throughout the history of photography in Funny Business: Photography and Humor. Drawn primarily from the collection of the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona in Tucson, the exhibition presents 70 photographs that showcase the mechanics of photographic humor, while examining the reasons for which artists throughout time have employed it as a strategy in their work. Funny Business: Photography and Humor is on view at the Museum from June 14, 2025, through January 4, 2026.

Spanning nearly the entire history of the medium, Funny Business offers a compelling view into the ways artists have utilized visual humor not only to provoke laughter and delight, but also as a means of resistance, an antidote to the heaviness of the world, and a way to interrogate and subvert norms and hierarchies. The exhibition features wide-ranging examples of photographic humor that invoke a variety of comedic modes, including slapstick, irony, absurdism, satire, self-deprecation, and parody. Featured works include vernacular snapshots, mid-century street photography, tongue-in-cheek 1970s conceptual imagery, and contemporary works by the following artists:

• John Baldessari • Tom Barrow • Jo Ann Callis • Liz Cohen • Robert Cumming • Judy Dater • Steffi Faircloth • Jacques-Henri Lartigue • Zig Jackson • Kenneth Josephson • Tommy Kha • Tseng Kwong Chi • Helen Levitt • Jeff Mermelstein • Bucky Miller • Reynier Leyva Novo • Mike Mandel and Larry Sultan • Lisette Model • Clare Strand • William Wegman • Garry Winogrand • Guanyu Xu

“As the first original exhibition from Emilia Mickevicius, the Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography at Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography, Funny Business: Photography and Humor embodies a creative, clever, and innovative approach to viewing photography from a new perspective,” said Jeremy Mikolajczak, the Sybil Harrington Director and CEO of Phoenix Art Museum. “Funny Business personifies unique ways exhibitions can engage visitors and provoke delight, exemplifying that humor is oftentimes the best remedy for a challenging world.”

Funny Business is arranged in four thematic sections:

• All the World’s a Stage highlights slapstick and observational comedy through a constellation of early 20th-century gelatin silver prints and snapshots displayed in conversation with examples of canonical mid-20th century street photography. Viewers consider photographs as a source of joy and discover how successful street photography—like observational comedy—is fundamentally rooted in the photographer being keenly attuned to the theater or “raw material” of their surroundings.

• Inside Jokes charts the medium’s evolution in the 1970s, when art institutions began accepting and exhibiting photography as a legitimate art form. Featured works highlight photographers’ adoption of a tongue-in-cheek attitude toward their predecessors and the conventions and aesthetics of the medium itself. This approach to photography resulted in visually mischievous works that use humor to poke fun at photographic meaning.

• Context is Everything explores how subjects and photographic images can become absurd, ironic, and nonsensical when shown outside of their original contexts or in unexpected juxtaposition with one another.

• Comic Relief features the work of contemporary artists who use humor in a critical or subversive manner to explore issues of identity and belonging, politics, and general dimensions of contemporary life. Humor operates in their work as a means of resistance, a coping mechanism, a refusal to become cynical, or a way to subvert power structures and challenge stereotypes. These artists use varying degrees of comedy to question the status quo and consider how we relate to the world and one another.

“In my practice, I am always looking for ways to make photography more accessible to wider audiences,” said Emilia Mickevicius, the Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography at Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography. “Humor is a fun and approachable lens for visitors to consider the history of photography and explore the sophisticated dimensions of how we perceive images. I hope people come away learning something new about the medium and the role it plays in our perceptions and everyday lives.”