“I have two memories of being alive before I was a magician,” says artist Jeanette Andrews. “I have no conception of being a person before becoming a magician.” At four years old, Andrews’s parents gifted her a magic kit for Christmas. Taken by the theatricality of a Siegfried & Roy television special, she performed for the first time in front of her preschool class a few months later.

For Emma Hapner, the color pink brings back sweet memories of girlhood – of shimmering unicorns, scented lip gloss, and elaborate frilly accessories. The figurative painter primarily works in oil, and her semi-realistic art appeals to the kind of people who dotted their i’s with tiny hearts in middle school, myself included. Since she specializes in self-portraits, Hapner is her own leading lady, loading canvas upon canvas with vibrant iterations of her likeness. Fully accepting her femininity was a gradual process, though.

Morrison Gong’s artistic practice explores the body and its carnal pleasures, using nude portraiture to challenge traditional ideas of intimacy, reciprocity, and sexuality. With a background in experimental filmmaking, the analog photographer arranges interior or exterior scenes centered on nature and domesticity. As part of IMPULSE’s Migration in Dialogue conversation series, Gong discusses subverting gender norms, their experience immigrating to the United States from China, and applying for an O-1 visa as a queer photographer.

As I step inside Chellis Baird’s studio, I’m immediately entranced by all the soft textures — samples of silk, lace, and other fabrics cover the space’s visible surfaces, beckoning to be touched. The mixed-media artist focuses her practice on tactility, and she’s well aware of her craft’s woman-centric history. Instead of shunning its link with domestic work, she chooses to embrace these complexities.

When she captured her iconic Self-Portrait/Cutting in 1993, Catherine Opie was longing for a life that felt out of reach. Depicting the photographer with her bare back facing the camera, the visceral image centers on a childlike scene of a house and two skirt-clad stick figures holding hands, carved into her skin with her own blood. Then in her early thirties, Catherine had already found a community in Los Angeles – the lesbian leather-culture circles that appear throughout her pictures from that decade – but a deeper yearning for another type of family led her to turn the lens on herself, a statement she intended as both personal and political.

Iiu Susiraja balances an umbrella above her head, tilting it slightly to reveal a set of suspended sausage links. She’s barefoot, wearing a blue bathing suit, and stands against a plaid background, beside a few fish stretched out on a candelabra. As is typical of her intriguing images, the Finnish photographer locks eyes intensely with the viewer, inviting us inside a visual universe that, though seemingly bizarre, continues to suck us in.

Patric McCoy initially resisted labeling himself a photographer — at least in the traditional sense. Coming from a creative family, the Chicago native inherited an artistic sensibility from his father, a painter, a designer, and a photographer, as well as from his grandmother, who documented her travels throughout the 20s. Still, he didn’t want to be the type of person who paid excessive attention to the craft’s technical aspects. Photography’s potential for facilitating new connections fascinated him the most, not so much the possibility of mastering the medium.

For her New York solo show Origin Story, multimedia artist Janet Loren Hill has transformed KAPOW's intimate Tribeca space into a wonderland of multicolored surrealism. Still, as the series's signature binocular shape signals, there's much more to this exhibition than meets the eye. Interweaving fantasy and satire, Origin Story grapples with the concept of identity and, in the process, asks the audience to ponder: what lengths will we go to defend the myths we sell to others, and to ourselves?

Any survey of the 20th century’s most memorable images would be lacking without a mention of Richard Avedon, often praised as a pioneer of fashion photography and an icon in his own right. Capturing everything from Old Hollywood stars like Audrey Hepburn or Marilyn Monroe to his father’s struggle with cancer, he blurred the boundaries between genres and helped shape visual culture as we know it in the process.

Like most angsty teenagers in search of broader horizons, when photographer Julia Gorton made the decision to move from Delaware to New York City in 1976, she was lured by the exciting subcultures she read about in Rock Scene, Interview, and other publications lining the shelves of her local library. Her then-boyfriend, musician Rick Brown, had already settled in the city a year prior, so she lived vicariously through his postcards while finishing high school.

Throughout the span of her prolific, decades-long career, photographer Mary Ellen Mark made it her mission to document people on the margins of society — those whom she referred to as the “unfamous.” From homeless teens on the streets of Seattle to circus performers in India, she displayed unwavering compassion for every subject she met and inevitably kept in touch with most of them, a practice she maintained until her death in 2015.

The artist Sophia Giovannitti’s boyfriend welds a white bed frame into a sculpture, as she sits alongside him in an alleyway, embodying the role of the author and viewer; muse and artist. She is nearing the culmination of her six-hour performance piece, titled A Machine, when we meet during the off-site opening of her newest solo show with DUPLEX Art, Study 4: Collateral.

For almost six days a week, Steve Keene spends eight hours behind a chain-link fence—a secluded spot he refers to as a “cage.” Alternating loose brush strokes between dozens, sometimes hundreds, of plywood panels, the multimedia artist moves through his dedicated workspace with machine-like efficiency, starting and finishing each painting in the set simultaneously.

It’s a mother’s worst fear: to spend nine months giddy with anticipation, eager to meet the tiny being growing inside you, only to be overwhelmed by the suspicion that something isn’t right. What’s usually a chapter full of joy and precious milestones starts to sour, and the burden of existence becomes too much to handle. People say it’s probably a case of the ‘baby blues,’ and in due course, like everything, the phase should pass. But what happens when it doesn’t?

Downtown Albuquerque is steeped in legend and homegrown traditions, from offbeat after-hours spots to all kinds of experimental music and art. The infectious sound of camaraderie ripples beyond Central Avenue, where the neighborhood’s charm is on full display through a combination of community and irreplicable style. Souped-up automobiles cruise through city corridors in an ​​effervescent expression of individuality, signaling how here, a lowrider isn’t only a type of car – it’s a flourishing lifestyle.

For Stacy Kranitz, confronting the complicated tradition of documentary photography means reckoning with a long history of colonialism and capitalism. The question of how these three forces intersect to exploit vulnerable populations shapes her practice, which, at its core, calls attention to the medium’s limitations by subverting what we inherently perceive as true or false.

In the center of Copenhagen, you can often find British-born sculptor Nicholas Shurey wielding a chainsaw, dust flying all around him as he works with a large piece of leftover timber from a friend’s sawmill.

Alex Moss knows how to make an entrance. When we meet at his Manhattan showroom, the jeweler is decked out in blinding diamonds: two flashy necklaces, a white gold bracelet, and a pair of mini hoop earrings, his curly hair pulled back. At over 6 feet tall, his towering presence radiates confidence, filling his headquarters with an air of authority.

When Robin Graubard came of age in the 70s and 80s, against the backdrop of the Lower East Side punk scene, her camera guided her through the extravagant universe of leather jackets, liberty spikes, and edgy melodies. Photography was a way to make sense of an ever-changing world, and consequently, her place in it. “I’ve always considered myself a hybrid artist and photographer,” she tells me.

From Brooklyn stoops to buzzing street corners in the Bronx, a kind of unmistakable energy defined New York City in the 80s. Rollerskates were all the rage, and no style trio was as iconic as bomber jackets, bucket hats, and track pants. After clawing its way from the brink of bankruptcy in the late 70s, New York emerged stronger on the other side, ready to tackle the new era with effortless confidence. Slowly but surely, the city started to come alive again – though many might argue it never died in the first place.