Two Lenses, Eight Decades

These photographs began decades apart.

In 1947–48, my father, Harry Herold Jr., photographed people he encountered while traveling and working in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. His images were not made as part of a formal documentary project. They were personal observations—moments that caught his attention and that, somehow, survived.

I came to photography much later in life. Over the past several years, much of my own work has focused on people encountered in public spaces in the United States and Europe.

Only after spending time with my father’s photographs did I begin to recognize connections between his images and mine. A gesture, an activity, a relationship between people, or simply the way someone occupied a particular moment could seem unexpectedly familiar.

This exhibition brings those photographs together in ten pairs.

The places, cultures, circumstances, and eras are different. Yet across nearly eighty years, the photographs repeatedly return to experiences that are remarkably constant: work and leisure, companionship and solitude, routine and celebration, curiosity, humor, concentration, and the small negotiations of everyday life.

The pairings are not intended to suggest that our worlds are the same. They are an invitation to follow a story arcing over years and continents and look for what connects us.