North North South
Ayda Gragossian
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 22nd, 6 – 8pm
On view: Friday, October 23rd — Tuesday, November 24th, 2026
Gallery Hours: Monday – Friday, 2 – 6pm
Image courtesy Ayda Gragossian.
Penumbra Foundation is pleased to present North North South, the first New York City solo exhibition by visual artist Ayda Gragossian. Exploring the tension between visibility and erasure, her documentary images capture quotidian details of Los Angeles's sprawl as experienced on foot rather than by car, revealing moments that ordinarily escape attention. Drawing on Gragossian’s book of the same title, published by GOST in 2025, the exhibition highlights her visual narrative approach through the intimate closeness of vertically oriented images of working-class spaces in a city characterized by polarities of glamour and squalor. A poetic sensibility marks her urban portraiture, tracing humanity through rhythms of light and space shaped by an unseen populace.
About the artist:
Ayda Gragossian is an Iranian American visual artist based in Los Angeles. She holds a BA in Photography and Painting from California State University Northridge and an MFA from the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford. Her work, which addresses notions of displacement, impermanence and longing, has been featured in platforms such as 'Fotofilmic', 'Nowhere Diary', 'All Cities are Beautiful', and 'Another Place'.
aydagragossian.com
Acknowledgments
Penumbra's Exhibition Space is supported in part by the Lawrence Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, Ruth Arts, and Joy of Giving Something.
About Penumbra Foundation
Penumbra Foundation is a non-profit organization that brings together the Art and Science of Photography through education, research, outreach, public and residency programs. Its goal is to be a comprehensive resource for photographers at any level, artists, students, professionals, historians, researchers, conservators and curators. Penumbra specializes in advancing the use of historic and alternative photographic technologies for contemporary image-making.