DOUBLE TAKE. Photographs in Pairs
The Fahey/Klein Gallery is pleased to present Double Take, an exhibition that brings together pairs of photographs linked by striking visual affinities despite originating from different eras, cultures, and artistic intentions.
Photography has always existed in dialogue, with the world it records, with its own history, and with the images that came before it. Double Take explores this conversation by placing photographs in carefully considered pairings, allowing each work to be reinterpreted through its proximity to another. These unexpected juxtapositions reveal formal echoes that might otherwise remain unnoticed when the images are viewed separately, divided by artist, genre, subject matter, or chronology.
By setting aside conventional categories, Double Take groups photographs according to shared visual structures: the angle of a body, the geometry of a space, the relationship between figures, or the use of color. In doing so, the exhibition highlights the recurring patterns and visual instincts that connect photographers across generations and circumstances.
Although created sixty-one years apart, Walker Evans’s Parked Car, Small Town Main Street, 1932 and Lauren Greenfield’s Mijanou and Friends from Beverly Hills High School on Senior Beach Day, Will Rogers State Beach, 1993 are remarkably similar in composition. Both images peer into an open convertible, placing figures prominently in the foreground while another vehicle drifts across the background. Evans documents everyday American life with his characteristic restraint and clarity, while Greenfield turns her attention to the affluent youth culture of Southern California. Seen together, the photographs become parallel chronicles of American society, where the automobile serves not merely as a setting but as a marker of identity, status, and aspiration.
A similarly compelling visual correspondence emerges between Nik Wheeler’s Don McCullin, Hue, Vietnam, February 1968 and Tom Bianchi’s Untitled, NYC 079, 1975–1983. In both works, a reclining figure dominates the foreground while a second individual appears just beyond the subject’s left shoulder. Yet the worlds they depict could hardly be more different. Wheeler’s photograph arises from the charged reality of the Vietnam War; Bianchi’s from the intimate landscape of downtown Manhattan during the years of sexual liberation preceding the AIDS crisis. Their shared compositional framework demonstrates how identical visual structures can convey profoundly different political, social, and emotional realities.
The phenomenon of repetition in photography is nearly as old as the medium itself. Double Take does not seek to introduce a new concept so much as to illuminate an enduring one—an idea that becomes impossible to ignore once seen. The exhibition’s title pays homage to Richard Whelan’s influential book Double Take: A Comparative Look at Photographs (Crown Publishers, 1981), which similarly explored the unexpected connections that emerge when photographs are viewed side by side.
Double Take features more than twenty pairings of photographs by Ruven Afanador, Miles Aldridge, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Diane Arbus, Peter Beard, Janette Beckman, Tom Bianchi, Julie Blackmon, Harry Bowers, Harry Callahan, Patrick Demarchelier, John Dominis, Arthur Elgort, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Flor Garduño, Lauren Greenfield, John Hamilton, Erik Madigan Heck, Teun Hocks, André Kertész, Peter Lindbergh, Herbert List, Mary Ellen Mark, Sheila Metzner, Duane Michals, Helmut Newton, Frank Ockenfels 3, Irving Penn, Herb Ritts, Sandford Roth, Paolo Roversi, Steve Schapiro, Mark Seliger, Harry Shunk, Melvin Sokolsky, Alex Stoddard, Sam Taylor-Johnson, Albert Watson, Todd Weaver, Bruce Weber, Nik Wheeler, Dan Winters, and Bastiaan Woudt.
DOUBLE TAKE. Photographs in Pairs
June 11 – July 18, 2026
Fahey/Klein Gallery – Los Angeles, CA 90036
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