Coinciding with the opening of Mackenzie Calle: The Gay Space Agency on view in ICP’s free first floor Incubator Space, join Sara Ickow, ICP’s Associate Director of Exhibitions, and ICP alumni Mackenzie Calle in the ICP Library for a conversation about the making of Calle’s project and new installation, followed by a toast and reception on the ground floor.
This event is being offered both in person at ICP, located on NYC's Lower East Side, and online. Tickets to attend the conversation in person are $5 and include access to ICP’s galleries. Arrive early to see current exhibitions Weegee: Society of the Spectacle, To Conjure: New Archives in Recent Photography, and American Job: 1940–2011, on view through May 5, 2025.
Tickets are only needed for the conversation in ICP’s library and are not required to view Mackenzie Calle: The Gay Space Agency in ICP’s Incubator Space or to attend the toast and reception at 7 PM.
About the ICP Incubator Space
ICP’s Incubator Space is a new flexible program centered around showing the work of emerging photographers who are responding in real time to the world around us. ICP will present a rotating selection of projects in our ground floor project space by an imagemaker experimenting and pushing boundaries in the documentary tradition. ICP’s Incubator Space is located on the ground floor in the ICP cafe. The space is free and open to the public during cafe and museum hours.
For the debut of ICP’s Incubator Space, ICP alumni ‘22 Mackenzie Calle presents a work-in-progress installation of her project The Gay Space Agency. This work will be on view from March 6 to May 1, 2025.
The Gay Space Agency confronts the American Space program’s historical exclusion of openly queer astronauts. Through documentation of queer history, manipulated NASA archival materials, and a re-imagining of an aspirational fictional space agency for LGBTQ+ astronauts, The Gay Space Agency offers a counter-narrative to the history of the astronaut program and imagines a diverse and accepting future, both above and below our atmosphere.
Mackenzie Calle is a freelance photographer and National Geographic Explorer based in Brooklyn. Her work typically focuses on long-term stories that investigate systems of power, science, and queer issues. Led by extensive research, she is interested in storytelling that utilizes original photography, archival material, and multimedia approaches to illuminate our past and imagine future possibilities.
She is the recipient of the 2024 World Press Photo in Open Format for North and Central America, was selected for Magnum Foundation’s Counter Histories Fellowship, and was a finalist for the 2024 Sony World Photography Awards, amongst others.
Her work has been published in outletBios that include National Geographic, The Washington Post, GAYLETTER, and The Wall Street Journal and has been exhibited in places that include Fotografiska Stockholm, Photoville, Somerset House, and Pride Photo Festival.
Mackenzie is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and was awarded the Director’s Fellowship to attend ICP’s Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism program. She was also selected to Eddie Adams Workshop XXXV. Prior to her freelance career, she was a Photography Producer with NBCUniversal.
Image: Mackenzie Calle
