Getting to Know the Curator: Claudia Sohrens
Small Works — A Fundraiser Exhibition
As Professional Women Photographers celebrates its 50th Anniversary, we are proud to present Small Works, a fundraiser exhibition curated by Claudia Sohrens. Centered on cell phone photography, the exhibition embraces immediacy, accessibility, and collective storytelling while supporting the production of the PWP 50th Anniversary Documentary.
We spoke with Claudia about her practice, her curatorial approach, and what she hopes artists and audiences will take away from Small Works.
Can you share a bit about your practice and what draws you to working across photography, archives, and visual culture?
My practice moves between photography and photographic representation, archival research, and independent curatorial projects. I think through the practices of collecting and transforming archives into new material and conceptual forms. I approach the archive as a living system—an organism in flux—shaped by acts of organizing, preserving, looking, remembering, and reinterpreting.
Working across disciplines, generations, and geographies allows me to trace how images migrate, erode, and regenerate meaning through material processes and social exchange. The intersection of care, temporality, and transformation continues to underlie both my artistic and curatorial work.
What interested you in curating Small Works, particularly as a phoneography-based exhibition?
Small Works invites us to look closely and reconsider scale as both a physical and conceptual framework. The phone, as a creative instrument, embodies accessibility, immediacy, and play; it collapses hierarchies of authorship and democratizes image-making.
My long-standing relationship with the PWP community—through workshops, gallery tours, and collaborations—makes this project especially meaningful. It reflects the values of exchange, mentorship, and shared experience that define PWP, while engaging a medium that is deeply embedded in contemporary life.
What excites you about cell phone photography as a creative and storytelling medium?
Cell phone photography is a fluid and collective medium, a form of visual thinking that moves with us. Its accessibility transforms the act of documentation into an expanded practice of attention and response. I’m fascinated by how artists use it not only to record, but to intervene, interact, and imagine.
In 2022, I launched CALL AND RESPONSE, an online project exploring photography as social practice through email-based exchanges between artists, image-makers, and enthusiasts. Over the course of a year, we produced twenty-one poetic text-and-image chains—many created on phones—mapping connections between the personal and the global. Later published as a Riso edition, the project reflects how images circulate as signals of care and reciprocity.
How does PWP’s 50th Anniversary resonate with you as an artist and curator?
PWP’s 50th Anniversary is both a celebration and a continuum—a moment to honor the collective energy of women photographers who have built a space for visibility, dialogue, and mentorship. The organization’s history embodies resilience, generosity, and friendship.
Curating Small Works within this context feels like extending that lineage into a new era, one that embraces evolving technologies while reaffirming photography as a relational, community-driven practice.
When reviewing submissions, what qualities or approaches tend to stand out to you, especially in small-format work?
My curiosity lies in how people engage with images and with one another—how documentation, memory, and imagination shape the narratives we construct and share. My work often unfolds without a fixed direction, guided by the materials, archives, and communities each context reveals.
For Small Works, I’m interested in how accumulation becomes an event: how small photographic pieces can function as fragments or catalysts for broader narratives that bring overlooked or forgotten stories to light. Image-making, curating, and theorizing are intertwined processes of inquiry and collaboration. What continually drives my practice is envisioning collective possibilities and spaces that foster equitable participation and activate dialogue with audiences often marginalized within cultural discourse.
How do you see Small Works functioning as both an exhibition and a fundraiser for the PWP Documentary?
For me, Small Works exists at the intersection of immediacy and legacy. Each contribution acts as an individual gesture and a fragment within a larger mosaic of community, care, and creative resilience.
As a fundraiser, it reflects the spirit of shared labor and mutual support that defines PWP’s mission. Together, these small works accumulate into a living archive of collaboration and continuity, reaffirming how art sustains relationships and collective imagination.
What do you hope artists and viewers take away from this exhibition?
I hope Small Works encourages slow, attentive looking as an act of care and resistance in a time defined by speed and scarcity. The exhibition brings diverse perspectives into dialogue, emphasizing collective making over individual authorship.
Through a feminist lens, it reflects on interdependence and collaboration, reminding us that creativity and community thrive through shared presence, generosity, and sustained attention.
About the Exhibition
Small Works — A Fundraiser Exhibition
Exhibition Dates: March 8–21, 2026
Location: The Breezeway at BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, New York City
The exhibition supports the PWP 50th Anniversary Documentary, preserving and amplifying the history and voices of women in photography.
- Call for Entry – Small Works
- PWP 50th Anniversary Documentary Page
- Become a Member of PWP
- More from Claudia Sohrens
