Publications
The Last Things
Published by TBW Books
The Last Things explores the artifacts of an American archeological present. The work in this series depicts vernacular forms of architecture, signage, images, and objects that were hastily made in a rush for attention, or abandoned in place after their usefulness had expired. Lehr posits them as symptomatic symbols of the repetitive cycles of decline, rehabilitation, violence, and mourning that are woven into the fabric of contemporary American life. Embedded in the work is a belief in the power and absurdity of objects that—like a body—bear the traces of collective experience. In its distilled and emphatic sequencing, The Last Things reads as a prose poem and a cryptic cipher about a country at the brink of a tipping point.
Remote Sensing
Published by Georgetown University and the SETI Institute
In 2023 John Lehr was commissioned to make a project at the Heyden Observatory on the campus of Georgetown University. What he found was a building teeming with life, and traces of the incredible work that was done there by teachers, students, and researchers. In his photographs the celestial and the biological collide in places where chance meets intention, rationality meets accident, and accretion meets the present. In the basement of the building, Lehr found hundreds of glass plate negatives that were exposed and developed on site. He was drawn to the negatives that were, like the building itself, ravaged by the natural effects of time. His photographs assert that the damage does not ruin the negatives; it amplifies their autonomy. The cracks in the glass, the peeling of emulsion, and the accrual of mold makes one realize that these objects don’t just point to things that are or were once alive. They are alive too.
The Island Position
All Publications
2024
The Last Things, TBW Books, Oakland, CA
2023
Remote Sensing, Published by Georgetown University and the SETI Institute
2022
Object Lesson: The Legacy of Richard Benson, Aperture, New York, NY
2020
The Photograph as Contemporary Art, Thames and Hudson, London UK
Keeper of the Hearth: Picturing Barthes’ Unseen Photograph, Schilt, Amsterdam, Netherlands
2019
Photo Work: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice, Aperture, New York, NY
There There, Issue Three, theretherenow, Columbia, MO
The Island Position, MACK, London, UK,
2016
El Camino Real, Roman Nvmerals, New York, NY
Else #11, Musée De L’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland
2015
Photography is Magic, Aperture, New York, NY
C Photo “Don’t call me a Photographer”, Ivory Press, Madrid, Spain
The Pure Products of America Go Crazy, Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ
2013
Blind Spot Magazine 20th Anniversary Issue
Wax Magazine, New York, NY
Notes from the Foundry, Spaces Corners, Pittsburg, PA
2011
Generous Structures, Casco, Utrecht, The Netherlands
2008
Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
2005
The Physical Print, Jonathan Edwards College, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
Closer to Home: The 48th Corcoran Biennial, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC