SONJA THOMSEN AND AARON R. TURNER

In conjunction with the 2026 Filter Photo Festival, Filter Photo is pleased to present a conversation between Filter Space exhibiting artists, Sonja Thomsen and Aaron R. Turner. They will discuss their individual practices and how their on-going dialogue of over 6 years has informed their current two person installation at Filter Space, Light Slip: Archive, Abstraction, and Phenomena.

Sonja Thomsen creates luminous installations grounded in the lacunae of photo history, materializing imbalance, collaboration, reverence, and grief through images and sculptures. Exhibitions include the Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin; Reykjavik Museum of Photography; Fonderia 20.9 Gallery, Verona; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe; Higher Pictures, New York; and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago. Collections include the Art Institute of Chicago, Beinecke Library at Yale, MoMA Library, and Milwaukee Art Museum. She holds the Josef Breitenbach Fellowship at the Center for Creative Photography and is Full Professor Adjunct at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Aaron R. Turner is a photographer, educator, and independent curator, born and raised in the Arkansas Delta. Turner holds an MA from Ohio University and an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts. In his studio practice, he uses the 4×5 view camera to create still-life studies on identity, history, abstraction, and archives.