Public exhibition highlights photography of Ohio’s food system

An intimate view of the Ohio food system is the subject of a Denison student photography exhibition “2026 Farmscape,” which examines local sites, juried by Nannette Maciejunes, a member of the Denison class of 1975 and the emeritus executive director of the Columbus Museum of Art. The exhibition opening, which will feature artists’ talks by thirteen student photographers and comments by the juror.

The exhibition will also feature open hours from noon - 6 p.m. on Saturday, May 2, and Sunday, May 3, and is free and open to the public. For more information on Farmscape, contact Abram Kaplan at 740-398-7892 or Kaplan@denison.edu. 

The 2026 Farmscape Juried Exhibition celebrates the work of thirteen Denison University students who have spent a semester learning about the American food system through the lens of a camera. After visits to eight different sites, including two dairy farms, an Amish mill, greenhouse operation, produce distribution center, meat processing facility, coffee roastery, and our own Huffman Dining Hall, each student submitted his or her own best work. Out of 130 images, Maciejunes selected 40 to be included in the exhibition, maximizing image quality, course thematic elements, and student representation in the show. 

“Photography is the ubiquitous medium of the contemporary world,” said Maciejunes. “It has always been tempting to think of photography as an objective medium — that the photograph simply records what the camera sees, that human agency is minimized. A project and exhibition such as this reminds us that nothing could be further from the truth.” 

More about Farmscape: 

The American food system offers many mysteries – questions we’d love to answer, curiosities we wish we could understand better. Those issues are commonly explored through the paradigms of social and natural sciences. Farmscape instead uses arts-based research, an experiential approach, and “a process that uses the expressive qualities of form to convey meaning.” Through aesthetic exploration, the students questioned many answers about the production of food, and construct narrative lines of inquiry in the form of visual imagery. 

Farmscape students include Kian Deutschman, Bingwen Ding, Vanessa Gerakines, Ana Gerhardt, Christine Keough, Jonas Kling, Chinenye Obiechina, Clarissa Paiz Garcia, Sydney Schlatter, Alice Vella, Sophia Weber, John Whiting, and A.J. York. Teaching assistant: Mya Cusson.