OPENING: UnBound15!
Candela Photographic Arts is excited to announce the opening of our fifteenth annual summer exhibition, UnBound15!, a group show featuring the work of 66 juried and invited artists from across the contemporary photographic landscape. This year’s exhibition will be on view from Wednesday, July 1st through Saturday, August 8th, 2026, and brings together a wide range of photographic practices. Featured works will also be viewable and available for purchase on our website throughout the run of the exhibition.
The UnBound! Party Becomes CANDELAFEST!
Join us on August 1 for CANDELAFEST!, The First-ish Annual Pagan Chicken Party & Summer Fundraiser as we prepare for another year of artist labor and collective possibilities. The evening welcomes the return of the beloved back alley fried chicken, live performers, raffle prizes, mildly mischievous activities, interactive pagan goddesses, and other ritual absurdities.
CANDELAR FEATURE: JUNE
Michael Young is a lens-based artist whose work explores themes of masculinity, personal identity, community, and memory. He has been named a Top 50 artist in Photolucida’s Critical Mass (2023, 2021), a Top 10 winner of LensCulture Critics’ Choice, and a winner of Feature Shoot’s Emerging Photography Award.
Introducing Candela Photographic Arts
After fifteen years as Candela Books + Gallery, we are excited to share that we have officially received our 501(c)(3) nonprofit status and are reintroducing ourselves as Candela Photographic Arts, a transition that has been years in the making.
CANDELAR FEATURE: MAY
Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Christian Lee is a 2026 Documentary Fellow at The Gotham, supported by NBC Universal, and a 2026 A-DOC Allies Fellow, working on his feature film debut, a docufiction drama on the first African American church in South Central, Los Angeles. Working between photography and filmmaking, Lee studied under Cauleen Smith, Andrea Fraser, Bridget R. Cooks, Cosmo Whyte, and Renee Tajima-Peña.
CANDELAR FEATURE: APRIL
Nicole Driscoll is a multidisciplinary artist based in Charlotte, working primarily with photography and video. Her practice explores themes of identity, memory, and the emotional impact of personal and collective histories. She uses analog and experimental techniques to create layered visual narratives rooted in nostalgia and transformation. Her work has been exhibited at The Light Factory, Goodyear Arts, The Curated Fridge, and McColl Center. In 2023, her photograph Hands in the Sky was selected by ArtPop Street Gallery for public display across Charlotte and in Times Square. Driscoll was awarded the Emerging Creators Fellowship in 2024 and participated in residencies at Mudhouse (Greece) and Walkaway House.
CANDELAR FEATURE: MARCH
Wes Bell’s photographs have appeared in publications such as British GQ, Conde Nast Traveler, The New York Times Magazine and People. Bell focuses on art photography, deploying his square medium format film camera, and photographing outdoors on location. Wes' analog hand-printed gelatin silver photographs have been widely exhibited internationally, including the recent Oil - Beauty and Horror in the Petrol Age at Germany's Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg and closer to home, Rapt and Callus, a solo exhibition at Contemporary Calgary for the Exposure 2022 Photography Festival. He is currently working on a photobook project called On The Line.
CANDELAR FEATURE: FEBRUARY
Christa Blackwood is a photo, text and installation artist working with themes related to identity, history, and popular culture. Raised in Oklahoma City and New Orleans, Blackwood now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
CANDELAR FEATURE: JANUARY
Kate Kaluzny is a photographer, collage artist, and photo archivist originally from Chicago. Her collage practice began as a creative outlet, allowing her to draw connections and create patterns from chaos. When not making art, she can be found reading and watching sad things, traveling, hiking, and hanging out with her dog and cat.
The Louis Draper Project
I want to write a few words about how excited I am to be working for the preservation trust of photographer Louis Draper.
This is a story that is going to take a long slow while to tell but over the coming months we are going to try to share our experience of discovering and preserving Mr. Draper’s photography and we are going to do what we can to get the word out about this incredible individual. A native Richmonder, Draper moved to New York City in 1957 and, as a young photographer, was a peer to many important figures from New York’s cultural and artistic scenes and eventually became an innovator, educator, and Civil Rights activist. In short, we hope to bring some long overdue recognition to a man who spent his life refining and sharing his knowledge of photography. And it should prove to be exciting for anyone with an interest in 20th c. photography or the Civil Rights movement or photography upon or New York City photographers or Harlem in particular, or any of a dozen other visual and aesthetic threads that can be found in such an expansive life’s work.
EXHIBITION: Taking Liberties
Just in time for the 2012 presidential election as well as the release of Steven Spielberg’s Richmond-filmed “Lincoln,” Candela Books + Gallery presents Taking Liberties, a selection of photographs from Virginia photographer Greta Pratt. The exhibition draws on several series of her work including “Using History,” her portraits of The Association of Lincoln Presenters, called “Nineteen Lincolns,” “The Wavers,” which document Liberty Tax Service employees, and the most recent “Trail Maids.
PRESS: Sunburn | Style Weekly
Burning Bright
Posted on Sep 11, 2012
WITH HAND-BUILT CAMERAS, OLD PAPER AND IMMENSE PATIENCE, CHRIS MCCAW CREATES SEARINGLY BEAUTIFUL PHOTOGRAPHS.
By MELISSA SCOTT SINCLAIR, from Style Weekly, September 12, 2012
BOOK RELEASE + EXHIBITION: Sunburn
Sunburn is now available for purchase at candelabooks.com! Candela’s third book release, in collaboration with Chris McCaw and Scout Design, features a collection of forty-three extraordinary images with essays by Katherine Ware of the New Mexico Museum of Art and Allie Haeusslein of Pier 24 Photography. In Notes on Watching Shadows Move in this volume, McCaw writes, “During [this project], I’ve become attuned to the reality that we’re all running around on a spinning marble orbiting a fiery ball. It’s that simple and amazing, but we rarely give ourselves time to ponder this.”
ACQUISITIONS: UnBound!
The first annual invitational and juried exhibition, UnBound!, was a success! Ticket and raffle sales at the blow-out culminating event on Friday, July 20th, 2012 allowed us to acquire a whopping eleven works from the exhibition to found the new Candela Collection.
EXHIBITION: UnBound!
Candela Books + Gallery is excited to announce our inaugural summer invitational exhibition, featuring work from over 50 contemporary fine art photographers! Friday June 1, 5-9pm, Candela Gallery will open UnBound!
The UnBound! exhibition and UnBound! gala event will raise proceeds in order to purchase select works from the exhibition. Purchased works will subsequently be featured in Candela’s newly-founded UnBound! Collection. The mission of the UnBound! Collection will be to support photographers through the purchase and collection of original photographic work while also actively pursuing opportunities to donate said work to notable art institutions.
EXHIBITION: Julio Mitchel
We are proud to announce our upcoming exhibition of photography by photographer Julio Mitchel, opening April 6th, 2012 and running through May 26th, 2012, at Candela Books’ newly renovated gallery in downtown Richmond, Virginia.
OPEN CALL: UnBound!
Candela Books’ inaugural invitational exhibition, Unbound, will be an annual event featuring work from a wide range of contemporary fine art photographers. The Unbound exhibition and its associated Unbound event, will raise proceeds which will be used to purchase select works from the exhibition. Works purchased through this event by Candela will subsequently be featured in Candela’s newly founded Unbound Collection.
EXHIBITION: Gita Lenz
We are proud to announce our upcoming exhibition of photography by New York photographer Gita Lenz, opening February 3rd, 2012 and running through March 31, 2012, at Candela Books’ newly renovated gallery in downtown Richmond, Virginia.
BOOK RELEASE + EXHIBITION: Salt & Truth
Candela Books is proud to announce our upcoming exhibition of photography by Shelby Lee Adams, opening December 1, 2011 and running through January 28, 2012, at Candela Books’ newly renovated gallery in downtown Richmond, Virginia.
BOOK SIGNINGS: Salt & Truth
D.A.P. will be hosting a book signing for Salt & Truth, by Shelby Lee Adams,at the ICP Bookstore in New York City on November 18th, 2011. More information to be on the ICP Bookstore website soon.