WHAT THE EYES CAN SEE: PHOTOGRAPHS SELECTED FROM THE CELSO GONZALEZ-FALLA COLLECTION
11/13/2026
Adriana Herrera, PhD. | Curator & Director of the Saladrigas Gallery
What the Eyes Can See: Photographs Selected from the Celso González-Falla Collection opens on December 1, 2026, at the Olga M. & Carlos A. Saladrigas Art Gallery as one of the most noteworthy exhibition projects in the history of Belen Jesuit Preparatory School. Dedicated to the memory of Sondra Gilman, who devoted her life to advancing the recognition of photography within institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the exhibition reveals how Celso González-Falla’s passion for art has shaped a vision of the world we share.
A 1953 graduate of Colegio de Belén in Havana, Cuba, González-Falla has played a distinguished role in the arts as former president of the CINTAS Foundation and former chairman of the Board of Trustees of Aperture Foundation (2005–2014).
“Photography must speak to you—and do so in such a way that each time you look at it, it tells you something new, not only about the world but also about yourself,” says González-Falla. After decades of collecting alongside Gilman, this exhibition marks the first curated presentation in the United States devoted exclusively to his personal collection.
What the Eyes Can See brings together nearly 120 photographic works by 94 artists, ranging from nineteenth-century pioneers such as Edward S. Curtis to Sebastião Salgado’s extraordinary portraits of Indigenous and rural communities. Visitors will encounter iconic works by Alfred Stieglitz, Walker Evans, Ansel Adams, and Brett Weston, alongside color photographs by William Eggleston, Richard Misrach, Joel Meyerowitz, David Graham, David Alekhuogie, William Klein, and Andrés Serrano.
Among the unforgettable images is Ruth Orkin’s American Girl in Italy (1951), in which a young American woman walks through postwar Florence, followed by the gaze of seemingly idle men in a country still grappling with poverty. Pioneering women photographers such as Lisette Model share space with contemporary artists Wendy Red Star, Penelope Umbrico, and Rania Matar. The remarkable photographic genealogy of Mexico, represented by Tina Modotti, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Graciela Iturbide, and Flor Garduño, is presented alongside internationally influential figures including Daidō Moriyama, Alberto García-Alix, and Zanele Muholi.
The exhibition devotes an entire section to childhood, ranging from Lewis Hine’s 1910 portrait of a young factory worker to Steve McCurry’s Boy in Mid-Flight (2007), including evocative portraits of young Gypsy girls by Jacques Léonard and Lucien Clergue. In Landscape as a Way of Seeing in Photography, a dialogue unfolds from Carlo Naya’s nineteenth-century photographs to Jerry Uelsmann’s surreal imagery and the contemporary explorations of Abelardo Morell, Ana Teresa Barboza, and Michael Kenna.
Moving portraits of humans and animals grouped in All of Us, historical and conceptual landscapes, urban visions, and surrealist imagery reveal photography’s unique capacity to illuminate the connections that unite us across cultures, generations, and geographies—and extend beyond humanity to the living world we share.
Coinciding with the bicentennial of photography’s earliest surviving image, the exhibition celebrates not only two centuries of photographic vision but also the enduring power of images to transform the way we see, feel, and understand our place in the world.
Click here to RSVP to attend the Opening Reception on December 1. Additional details, including public events, will be listed at www.belenjesuit.org/saladrigas-gallery.