Everything That Rises Must Converge, an exhibition of contemporary photography curated by Ginevra Shay and Carl Gunhouse for Current Space in Baltimore, addresses the process of image-making as a means of reacting to and honoring one’s community. The exhibition, borrowing its name from a collection of short stories by Flannery O’Connor, poetically intertwines the neighborhoods presented by photographers Andrew Laumann (Baltimore), Heyward Hart (Los Angeles), Irina Rozovsky (Brooklyn), RaMell Ross (Alabama), Joseph Michael Lopez (New York), and Trevor Powers (Boston). The triumph of this curatorial partnership is the parallel drawn between the content of the exhibition and the artistic and cultural landscape of its backdrop: Baltimore, Maryland.

Curator Ginevra Shay sought to portray a “sense of nostalgia that is both comforting and isolating,” and succeeded with Carl Gunhouse in developing a muted narrative that stitched together instances of youth, human connection, seclusion, and hardship. Tokens of privilege or class division, though certainly present, are less palpable than the sense of freedom or anxiety inherent in the spatial language of each city. Heyward Hart‘s depiction of a vast, deserted Los Angeles strikes the same haunting chord as Andrew Laumann‘s starkly contrasting images of a trashed and tagged Baltimore. The slow, intimate notes are found in the photographs of Irina Rozovsky and RaMell Ross depicting southern communities in warmer seasons.

Throughout the exhibition, the subjects, whether they be people, plants, or discarded furniture, radiate the comfort, familiarity, and balance of “home.” The intimacy between Trevor Powers, Irina Rozovsky, and their respective subjects inform the less personal renderings of urban anonymity by Heyward Hart, Joseph Michael Lopez, and Andrew Laumann, all of whom photograph in black and white.