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In photography, the phrase “long view” serves two primary functions: long-distance vision and long-duration viewing.
But it also implies a broader perspective, one that places emphasis on distance, duration and how we should consider both past and present. It’s a type of thinking that can be brought into different facets of life, whether you’re simply viewing a work of art, or even creating a community space that allows for forward-thinking while paying homage to the artists and craftspeople who came before us.
For FotoFocus, a lens-based art nonprofit in Cincinnati, “The Long View” is the theme of its upcoming Biennial, a month-long series of exhibitions that take place across dozens of venues throughout the region every other October. But the theme could also apply to the organization’s latest and biggest project: the FotoFocus Center, a community-based gallery, exhibition hall and artistic hub that will open on Liberty Street in Over-the-Rhine this spring.
“As we’ve gotten larger, as the Biennial has occurred, I think something that we realized was lacking was a place to call home and a place for people to visit us outside of that programming, to know that we’re truly a year-round staple in this community,” FotoFocus Executive Director Katherine Ryckman Siegwarth told CityBeat. “And I think that was really what started the idea of how do we cement that?”
The opening of the FotoFocus Center marks the first time the nonprofit will have its own space for the Biennial, now in its eighth iteration. But the center will also allow the nonprofit to offer year-round programming, like exhibits, educational events, artist talks and film screenings — all for free — and a chance to expand its reach into the community and center photography in Cincinnati’s arts landscape.
“I think the Biennial and being able to have our own space, it just helps us really ground the organization while still being able to provide more to the community,” said Emily Akil, FotoFocus’ communications and outreach manager. “We’re hoping that having this space will allow us to connect with more people and allow more people to understand what FotoFocus is and what we do.”
Past and future through a viewfinder
Good art takes time, and the FotoFocus Center is a work of art in its own right.
The project will be over four years in the making from the time it was announced to the public in 2022 to its opening, projected for May 29 this year. But now that it’s nearing completion, you can see the vision that has taken place: both an homage to photography (as well as the people who built Over-the-Rhine nearly 200 years ago) and a place where everyone is welcome to explore art through a lens.
The building, located at 228 E. Liberty St., is two stories and around 14,700 square feet, with an enormous lobby and two spacious galleries, as well as an office space and conference room for the FotoFocus team. The exterior mimics photography’s gray scale: an ebonized black brick on the lower level that moves to a steel terrace and then white Travertine stone, which sits on a custom gridded steel frame that resembles a viewfinder of a camera when you look at it head-on from Sycamore Street.
“These are little details that people may or may not pick up on, but photo enthusiasts will likely see some of it and think, ‘That’s super cool,’” Akil said.
Initially, more of the building was going to be made of steel, but prices for the material skyrocketed as the project began. Project architect Jose Garcia of local firm Jose Garcia Design decided to replace that steel with Cross-Laminated Timber, a light and sustainable engineered wood that is both fire-resistant and strong enough to use as an alternative to concrete and steel.
And while the FotoFocus Center was the first construction project in the area to utilize Cross-Laminated Timber, it wasn’t the first project completed that used it. That honor belongs to Cincinnati Public Radio’s new building in Evanston, which finished construction last spring.
But the pivot from steel to Cross-Laminate Timber only added to the FotoFocus Center’s photography-inspired exterior aesthetic.
“The warmth of the wood, along with the white of the stone, is really supposed to reflect the warmth of photography and the different scales and colors within images,” Akil said.
FotoFocus staff touring the construction site in December, 2023. Photo provided | FotoFocus 
Installation of cross-laminated timber in October, 2023. Photo provided | FotoFocus 
Installation of cross-laminated timber in October, 2023. Photo provided | FotoFocus 
Architect Jose Garcia and FotoFocus Executive Director Katherine Siegwarth at the construction site in late 2023. Photo provided | FotoFocus 
Construction progress on the FotoFocus Center and installation of windows as of April, 2024. Photo provided | FotoFocus
The large windows on the front of the building, while offering tons of natural light, also play into the history of photography, as early studios had to have a bank of windows for exposures, Siegwarth said.
The windows, as well as some of the building’s other architectural elements, also represent the industrial architecture of historic places in Over-the-Rhine, like Findlay Market — buildings that made the community what it is today. While the FotoFocus Center is a new and shiny building, Garcia wanted to ensure it also fit cohesively into the community’s mix of Italianate and industrial architecture.
The black brick of the lower level is also a nod to the German and Italian masons who built the neighborhood in the 19th century, as is the corbeling (a shifting layout for the bricks) design of those bricks. If you stand at the corner of the building opposite of Sycamore, you’ll see how prominent that corbeling design is. Siegwarth anticipates a lot of Instagram selfies to be taken at that corner.
“They didn’t have luxurious material, so they used just humble brick,” Garcia said. “And with the few means that they had, they managed to create this beautiful neighborhood. If you look at all the details on the brick, you see the care that they put in, making the brick something extraordinary … So all the corbeling is a reference to that. It’s a reference to cornices — [the builders’] understanding [of] decoration and elevating the building just by using a very simple thing. I always loved the neighborhood, and this is basically a tribute to that.”
Ensuring the building merges cohesively with the neighborhood isn’t just a fun design choice; it also signals that it’s a place meant for the community. Not a place of pretension or exclusion, but somewhere everyone can come and appreciate lens-based art.
“We want the community to know that [the FotoFocus Center] is a space for them,” Akil said. “We truly want everyone to feel welcome and like the FotoFocus Center is accessible to the entire community.”
“And I hope — to anybody and everybody who drives by or walks by — I hope it feels exactly like a friendly and open, welcoming [space],” Garcia added.
As you move into the lobby of the building, you’re greeted by soaring ceilings and spacious galleries — a 3,000 square-foot one on the first floor and another 1,500 square-foot one on the second — but the airiness and the white walls ideal for exhibiting artwork don’t detract from its warmth; instead, the knotty pine ceilings and red oak trim complement the space and turn it into an invitation — an artsy retreat in the middle of the city.
“It feels tall, but warm, with the wood up and down,” Garcia said, gesturing to the pine ceiling in the lobby. “That was something that we love, how wood is [implemented] throughout the building and makes you feel at home.”
While the aesthetics themselves are impressive, so is how they were maintained from concept to reality. Garcia said that when they had to pivot from using mainly steel, they opted for this alternative structure, which was designed here in Cincinnati in conjunction with a Canadian company. The building came to Cincinnati in pre-cut and pre-finished pieces and had to be assembled on-site, with very little room for error — 4 millimeters, said Siegwarth.
With so little wiggle room, Garcia had to figure out how to conceal the components of the building that make it function — the HVAC system, electric, plumbing, the duct work — without compromising on the aesthetic of the FotoFocus Center. Normally, those parts would be hidden in the floor or ceiling, but that wouldn’t work in this space if they wanted to keep the pine ceiling, Garcia said.
“Normally, you hide all the guts of the building above the ceiling, below the floor. There’s no space in here for that. That wood up there,” he said, pointing to the pine ceiling, “that’s the floor, and we don’t want to cover it because it’s beautiful … So we didn’t want to cover all this beauty with drywall or floating ceiling or anything like that. So we had to plan very carefully: How [do] we [install] all the guts that make the building work without exposing them?”
The answer: behind a very thick wall. A wall at the back of the first-floor gallery hides all those components, with just some round, metal HVAC vents at the top of the wall hinting at the heavy lifting happening out of sight, allowing the space to focus solely on the design and art, as intended.
As you move throughout the galleries, you’ll notice the exhibit walls jut up from the floor and out into the space, like they’re their own canvases waiting to be decorated. The galleries are flexible too, offering the ability to switch from one kind of exhibit to another, or to add more components like wall builds, Siegwarth said. And while the galleries are spacious, the lighting system offers the potential for more intimate exhibits, and the building has been wired so FotoFocus can lean into other forms of lens-based art, not solely photography.
“We have the ability to wire projections to multi-video, multi-channel installations. We want to play with what photography can be,” Siegwarth said.
What’s coming to the FotoFocus Center
Walking through the galleries, Siegwarth pointed out how each has its own personality. The first-floor gallery is double the size of the one on the second-floor, with slightly higher ceilings, offering for more flexibility in programming. But the second-floor gallery feels cozier and more intimate and can serve as either an addendum to an exhibit on the first floor or host its own.
“It’ll make it easier for us to kind of consider how programming fits in each one,” Siegwarth said. “Our first exhibition will be on both floors, but this allows us also the ability to have two exhibitions simultaneously, to stagger our schedule. Those are things we’ll figure out in the first couple of years — what makes the most sense for us.”
The FotoFocus Center is projected to open May 29, kicking off programming with its inaugural exhibit, the details of which FotoFocus will announce in the coming months. Siegwarth sees this first year and the inaugural exhibit as a chance to experiment, with programming becoming more robust in 2027. Akil said they foresee having between three to six exhibits a year, depending on how they decide to use the two gallery spaces and what the curatorial process will end up looking like.
Programming itself will focus on community and accessibility, as well as being able to appeal to a broader audience. But Siegwarth said FotoFocus has also always considered its programming to be interdisciplinary and at the forefront of conversations about the world through photography as well. They also won’t try to reinvent wheel when it comes to arts programming in the city.
“We’re a nice equidistance between the Contemporary Arts Center and Cincinnati Art Museum, and our programming has always complemented, not competed, with them,” Siegwarth says. “So I really see this as an exciting moment for Cincinnati at large.”
“We want it to be a place to collaborate,” Akil added. “We still anticipate working with other venues and having guest lectures and bringing students into the space. So really, we want to make it a place for everybody, where people feel comfortable and can learn about photography, whether they are brand new to it or seasoned patrons of ours.”
The Long View
Following FotoFocus’ inaugural exhibit, which will run through August, the team will begin prepping the new center for its 2026 Biennial. While the center will offer a home for the nonprofit’s own Biennial exhibit this year, the FotoFocus team said the event’s overall structure will not change, with other exhibits on display at around 70 different venues, like museums, galleries, universities and public spaces, throughout Greater Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus and Northern Kentucky.
FotoFocus artistic director Kevin Moore is curating the works that will make up this year’s event. All works will fit into the theme of “The Long View,” with selected art focusing on the aspects of time and perspective in photography and film and how these media shape our understanding of the world. While the theme fits with the opening of the center, it also coincides with the United States’ 250th anniversary, offering attendees the opportunity to reflect on the country’s history, as well as its future.
“Our country is undergoing a lot of turbulence as it approaches its 250th anniversary, and a lot of us are anxiously caught up in the moment, worried about what the future holds,” Moore said in a previous press release. “The Long View suggests we might benefit from gaining a broader perspective by looking to the past to better imagine a future.”
FotoFocus will announce more Biennial details, including programming, in June, but Siegwarth said, like previous years, it will balance both emerging artists and established voices.
“Our Biennial system, in and of itself, is a way of balancing that,” Siegwarth told CityBeat. “It’s been very democratic. We do bring in international artists, nationally recognized artists, but we also have our own call for entry. We’re working with artists directly here, regionally, to produce exhibitions and support their work. And through the Biennial at large, we’re providing grants to local institutions to create programming that fits their mission, and much of that then goes toward local artist support. This building will continue that too.”
Since its inception in 2012, FotoFocus’ Biennial has attracted over 1 million visitors. The Opening Weekend will be held on Oct. 1-3 and include programming like talks, tours, panel discussions, and receptions, with the rest of the Biennial running through October.
To stay updated on the FotoFocus Center and Biennial, visit fotofocus.org.
This article appears in Feb. 18-March 3.