Durham Exhibitions
Harlan Campbell at Durham Arts Council
2026 Durham Exhibitions
July 5, 2026 – Setpember 30, 2026
Golden Belt ARts
ELizabeth Opalenik: Veils of illusion
(c) Elizabeth Opalenik 2014, Reflecting on the Edge, White Light in Red.
This years Click! Festival jumps out to an early start with a sampling of work by Elizabeth Opalenik at the Great Hall at Golden Belt Arts.
Elizabeth Opalenik is a contemporary photographer whose work occupies the luminous space between memory, transformation, and the natural world. Best known for her mastery of the mordançage process—a rare and unpredictable darkroom technique that chemically alters silver gelatin prints—Opalenik has expanded the medium beyond experimentation into a deeply personal visual language. Through mordançage, images dissolve, veil, and reemerge, echoing themes of impermanence, beauty, and possibilities.
Opalenik's photographs balance technical innovation with poetic sensitivity that feels suspended between dream and reality where stories are left untold. Her contribution to contemporary photography lies not only in advancing the expressive possibilities of mordançage, but also in crafting a body of work that elevates the ephemeral into the enduring, creating images that linger long after they are seen. Her painterly style invites viewers into a contemplative realm where beauty is never fixed but perpetually unfolding, shaped by chance and creative illusion into profound meditations on transformation and grace.
Elizabeth will be joining us for a closing reception on September 30 in the Great Hall at Golden Belt Arts.
To learn more about Elizabeth and view her working in the mordançage process, visit www.elizabethopalenik.com
Through This Lens Gallery
Opening Oct. 23, 2026
303 East Chapel Hill Street in downtown Durham, North Carolina.
QUARTET: Four North Carolina Photographers
Quartet: Four North Carolina Photographers is a 2005 hardcover photography book published by Safe Harbor Books that showcases the work of four prominent regional photographers. Through This Lens Gallery is pleased to gather these four photographers together for a Quartet inspired exhibition.
Quartet presents a sampling of the work of Rob Amberg, Elizabeth Matheson, John Rosenthal, and Caroline Vaughan. Their images, for the most part made in North Carolina, are both quiet and passionate, in time and outside of time, revealing both surface and depth.
Mr. Amberg documents life in rural, southern communities. Ms. Vaughan's landscapes and portraits detail the increments and textures of time. Ms. Matheson's pictures present the architecture of formality that expresses the character of those who built and lived in such spaces as well as what is past and passing. Mr. Rosenthal’s photographs freeze ordinary moments thereby allowing us to see in them what is extraordinary and permanent.
As Georgann Eubanks notes in her introduction, Quartet presents images "that hum with subtle harmonies, each photographer adding another dimension to the resonant chord, all reminding us that against the din of digital media, there is yet a place for still images and deeper reflection”
In the Course of Human Events
Rubenstein Arts Center Gallery
October 20th, 2026
Durham, NC 27708
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An exhibit of work by duke visual arts faculty that uses this phrase, taken from the first paragraph of the declaration of independance, as a jumping off point for works of art in a variety of media.