BROOKLYN, NY.- Closing on August 3, the retrospective exhibition Consuelo Kanaga: Catch the Spirit presents the work of Consuelo Kanaga (1894–1978), a critical yet overlooked figure in the history of modern photography. Co-organized with and first exhibited at the Fundación MAPFRE in Barcelona and Madrid, Spain, followed by a presentation at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), the groundbreaking survey will return to the Brooklyn Museum, which houses the world’s most extensive Kanaga collection.

Catch the Spirit explores the artist’s groundbreaking work in photojournalism, modernism, and social documentary, tracing the evolution of her art both chronologically and thematically through nearly 200 photographs, ephemera materials, and film. Over the course of six decades, Kanaga captured the urgent social issues of her time, spanning urban poverty and labor rights to racial terror and inequality. Catch the Spirit charts the artist’s outstanding photographic vision, from her pioneering photojournalism as one of the only women working in the field in the early twentieth century to her modernist still lifes and celebrated portraits of artists and anonymous sitters alike. Kanaga’s oeuvre includes key figures and moments in early 20th-century North America, with a particularly strong focus on the lives of African Americans. The Museum holds a unique and invaluable collection of works by Kanaga that features nearly 500 vintage prints, 2,500 negatives, and archival material.

Consuelo Kanaga began her career as a staff writer and photographer at the San Francisco Chronicle in 1915 before moving to New York in 1922 to work for the New York American newspaper. Soon after, she met Alfred Stieglitz, who encouraged her to pursue photography as an art form. After moving back to California in 1924, Kanaga met the Italian photographer, actress, and activist Tina Modotti and organized an exhibition of her photographs in San Francisco in 1926. During the early 1930s, Kanaga became associated with Group f/64 and was included in its landmark 1932 exhibition at the de Young Museum. In 1935 she returned to New York and began producing photographs for leftist journals such as Sunday Worker. She eventually joined the Photo League, where she lectured and became a leader of documentary group projects. During the 1940s and 1950s, she continued her commitment to photographing African Americans, documenting workers in the South during the Jim Crow era. In 1955 she was included in the landmark exhibition Family of Man at MoMA.