“Why We Look: Questioning the world before us” is a juried exhibition that “invite(s) photographers to look outward—questioning the social, political, and environmental forces that shape our world. The selected works confront how we see, what we overlook, and the truths that demand our attention in a time of cultural and ecological reckoning.”

One work by Jo Birdsell is featured, alongside 39 other artists.

“Why We Look” opens at the Vermont Center for Photography on March 6 and runs through the month.

Jo Birdsell will show three works in the group show “Postcards: images and whispers” as a park of the Women’s Photo Festival in Athens, Greece.

Postcards is a show inspired “by the gesture of the postcard — an image sent across distance, carrying a personal trace or ‘voice’ … By bringing together image and text — or image and drawing, or image and “silence” — a dialogue emerges about communication, distance, memory, and the human need to share moments and emotions.” (From the Womens Photo Festival Website")

Jo will show three images, each with an accompanying message.

Jo Birdsell will show a number of portraits from their series “Us” in the 2026 mowe festival.

“mowe is a new festival for art and urban culture that transforms (North) Moabit and Wedding into a stage. Over the course of three years, a space for encounters will be created in which migrant-decolonial, queer and urban perspectives as well as artistic newcomer positions become visible. Organised decentrally, the festival opens up studios and project spaces, brings art to the streets, to Spätis, to snack bars and to unknown places. With performative walks, urban space stagings and participatory actions, mowe connects neighbourhoods, local artists, institutions and initiatives.” (From the mowe festival website)

Selected works from “By Our Nature” will be featured in the 2026 Wschodni Festiwal Fotografii (Eastern Photography Festival) in Lublin, Poland.

Jo Birdsell will exhibit works from a new, growing collection of photography and writing at 48 Studen Neukolln. The emerging body of work, “Sanctuary//Exile,” centers themes of migration and safety-seeking.

By Our Nature gallery exhibition at Hopkins Hall Gallery

“By Our Nature” is a photography based exhibition that explores the relationship between queer identities and the natural world. “By Our Nature” asks “what does it mean to be natural?” What privileges are awarded to those deemed natural? And how do we relate to our own natures when the natural world around us is deteriorating? Through large format DSLR landscape photography, queer portraiture, and integrated queer landscape photography, “By Our Nature” seeks to ‘naturalize’ queerness and to assert queer people’s right to take up space. The photographs in this series play with color, form and location. They build off of principles of classical portrait photography, draw from lineages of queer archives, and ask the audience to consider what’s next, both for queer Americans and for American nature.