Join us for a conversation between artist Dean Sameshima and art historian Andy Campbell to celebrate the launch of being alone, a book of photography by Sameshima published by Soft Opening. Together, Sameshima and Campbell will explore such topics as documentary photography and the memorialization of queer spaces. Sameshima will also discuss his work Traces (no.1)(1990/2023), currently on view in Scratching at the Moon, co-curated by Anne Ellegood and Anna Sew Hoy.

Dean Sameshima (b. 1971, Torrance, CA) lives and works in Berlin. This year Sameshima is included in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Adriano Pedrosa. Recent and forthcoming exhibitions include Digital Capture: Southern California and the Origins of the Pixel-Based Image World at California Museum of Photography, Riverside (2024); being alone at Soft Opening, London (2024, solo); Scratching at the Moon at ICA, Los Angeles (2024); Revolt of the Body at Tina Kim Gallery, New York (2023); being alone at Queer Thoughts, New York (2023); Radical Perverts: Ecstasy and Activism in Queer Public Space at Museum of Sex, New York (2023) and Politiken der Berührung (Politics of Touch) at Amtsalon, Berlin (2023). Sameshima’s work is held in the permanent collections of the Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle. He was the 2022 recipient of The Artist Acquisition Club award.

Andy Campbell is a historian, critic, and curator whose focus is on how aesthetic programs in art and design are shaped by competing definitions of community, the unruliness of archives, and the varied conditions of making a life in this world. He is the author of Bound Together: Leather, Sex, Archives, and Contemporary Art as well as Queer X Design: 50 Years of Signs, Symbols, Banners, Logos, and Graphic Art of LGBTQ. Together with Amelia Jones he co-edited the catalog Queer Communion: Ron Athey, and with Chelsea Weathers the book Jennifer West: Media Archaeology. He is the curator of the forthcoming survey exhibition of Susan Silton’s work entitled Diving Into the Wreck, opening at the Blaffer Museum in Houston in early 2026. Currently, he is Associate Professor and Chair of Critical Studies, and Interim Director of the graduate Curatorial Practices in the Public Sphere program at USC’s Roski School of Art and Design.

being alone was published on the occasion of a solo exhibition of the same title at Soft Opening, London from 25 April–15 June, 2024. Designed by Robert Milne, the book features a newly commissioned essay from Bruce Hainley.

This event is supported by Soft Opening, London and Kristina Kite, Los Angeles.