The George Washington University’s Corcoran School of Arts and Design is currently exhibiting a two part exhibition featuring acclaimed photographers Peter van Agtmael and Wesaam Al-Badry, whose work explores the complexities, contradictions, and lived realities that shape the American experience. For more than two decades, both artists have used photography to investigate the myths, memories, and tensions that define the United States offering intimate, challenging, and deeply human perspectives of “America” and those who inhabit it.
“In Response to Americas” is part two of the exhibit and focuses on the response of part one led by students in the Graduate and Upperclassman anchor groups, faculty, artists, and curators. Selected work is a mix of newly developed, work-in-progress art from Peter & Wesaam alongside student work. Later in the semester a Graphic Design group will cultivate large scale responses through the medium of collage to further the conversation
Al-Badry, who immigrated to the U.S. from Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, has devoted his work to honoring the often invisible communities that labor, serve, and sustain the country. His photographs center the bodies and lives of laborers, farm workers, strippers, families, and others revealing tenderness, connection, isolation, and quiet resilience.
Van Agtmael, who grew up in the DC suburbs, began documenting America through military embeds during the Iraq War. His work interrogates the forces unleashed after 9/11 and the unresolved histories of violence that shape the nation’s identity, ultimately bringing him back home to explore how America became what it is today.
Together, their project Americas confronts urgent questions: What makes American myths so seductive? Why do we struggle to reconcile national greatness with a legacy of contradiction and harm? And whose realities are repressed or erased to sustain those myths?
On View:
Thursday, October 2, 2025 to Sunday, January 25, 2026
1pm to 5pm daily
Where:
Flagg Building, Atrium and Gallery 1
500 17th Street NW, Washington DC 20006
In-person attendance:
Members of the media interested in covering should contact the media contacts listed above.
-GW-