3RD: Seeing Desire — All Street Gallery

NEW YORK, NY 一 All Street Gallery and Counter Collective are proud to present Seeing Desire, a group exhibition featuring works by Elinor Carucci, Mara Catalan, Marisa Chafetz, Hannah Edelman, Ashley McLean, Martha Naranjo Sandoval, Sophie Schwartz, and Ana Vallejo, on view from February 5 to February 27, 2026 at All Street’s Lower East side location (77 East Third st). An opening reception will be held on Thursday, February 5th from 6-9pm. There will be a multi-disciplinary artist activation on February 14th, unveiling Ana Vallejo’s in-gallery installation, and an artist talk on February 27th.

Who is allowed to desire, and how is desire shaped by power, visibility, and representation? In Seeing Desire, artists turn to photography to explore longing not as spectacle, but as lived experience shaped by gender, sexuality, identity, and relation. Through intimate gestures and deliberate acts of looking, the exhibition considers whether desire can be seen at all, and what it means to use the camera to claim authorship over one’s own wants.

To explore these themes, Seeing Desire binds together eight artists' experiences of sexuality, gender, and identity. Emerging from layers of societally imposed shame and historically co-opted representations, the artists featured use photography to structurally empower and reimagine expression.

Desire comes alive in quiet moments of connection, conceptual reflections on the body, and vibrant meditations on pleasure. At times, the artists turn the camera on themselves, using hazy mirror reflections and cropped self portraits to consider their own desirability. In this gesture of self examination, the work subverts the canon of patriarchal depictions of desire by refusing distance between subject and author. Rather than fetishizing, objectifying, or tokenizing the body before the lens, these photographers implicate themselves within the configuration of desire, acknowledging their own gaze, longing, and vulnerability as part of the image’s construction. In other moments, they seek friends, lovers, and strangers to explore an ever-changing kaleidoscope of human wants.

Formally, intimacy is paired with deliberate obfuscation: bodies are cropped, faces blurred, gestures partially concealed. The viewer is never granted access to “the entire image,” a move which questions whether desire can be known, owned, or completed through visual capture. These strategies speak to desire as felt but never fully possessed, and to the camera as a site where longing and restraint coexist. Whether photographing oneself, engaging in relational practices with lovers, friends, or collaborators, or depicting stigmatized expressions of desire shaped by femininity, age, race, or sexual orientation, the act of image-making here is inherently vulnerable. To desire, and to be seen desiring, means risking exposure, tenderness, and refusal, revealing emotional, sexual, and interpersonal connection as fragile, contingent, and profoundly human.

Skin comes to the forefront, through Elinor Carruci’s depiction of a tender bite, Mara Catalan’s hazy intertwined bodies, and Ashley McLean’s longing portrait of home. As these artists actively engage their desires, they adopt notes of a shared visual language, often blurring parts of the body, concealing eyes, or manipulating color to leave the viewer craving more. Through Ana Vallejo’s confessionary-style installation, visitors are encouraged to reflect on their own wants, provoking questions around social norms in public and private spheres.

Seeing Desire navigates the complexities of relational image-making and self-representation, and embraces the curiosities, tensions, and joys held in the vulnerable act of photographic connection. Across these works, desire emerges not as something to be captured or resolved, but as a shifting force that unfolds through emotional exposure, intimacy, and photographic dynamics that resist certainty. In acknowledging the risks inherent to being seen, seeing others, and desiring against normative frameworks, the exhibition foregrounds photographic practice as an act of trust, refusal, and care, where longing remains unresolved, and meaning is found in what cannot be fully held.

Text by Arden Sklar

About Counter Collective:
Counter Collective was founded in the summer of 2020 to create spaces that elevate the voices of those historically excluded from traditional art circles. We aim to provide the opportunity for female-identifying, non-binary, and trans folx to share their work in established spaces, to hold workshops to support their practices, and overall, to create a network where we can exchange ideas and encourage each other’s growth.

About All Street Gallery:
Founded in 2018, All Street Gallery is a gallery and platform for emerging and underrepresented artists whose work focuses on social engagement and community empowerment. Initially created as an artist collective and grassroots protest organization, All Street is driven by its roots in the city’s creative community. The gallery’s mission is to use art as a means of protest, resistance, and social change, highlighting voices that challenge the status quo. After opening its first location on East Third Street in the East Village, All Street expanded in 2023 with a second space at 119 Hester Street. Both locations continue to provide a platform for artists whose work addresses important social and political issues.

For press and sales inquiries, please contact:
gallery@allstnyc.com
+1 (646) 335-3717

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