At an Arm's Length: Expanding the Walls 2025

at an arm’s length: Expanding the Walls 2025 is an online exhibition that features photography by the fifteen artists in the 2025 cohort of the Studio Museum in Harlem’s signature teen program, Expanding the Walls: Making Connections between Photography, History, and Community. This year marks the program’s twenty-fifth anniversary. The phrase “at an arm’s length” suggests both physical proximity and emotional reserve, a desire to be close, yet the need to distance oneself. The artists in this exhibition capture a cautious intimacy shaped by the bittersweet edges of adolescence, exploring what it means to be in community while choosing what to share and what to hold close. Using techniques such as soft focus and black-and-white imagery to obscure detail and evoke a sense of timelessness, the images resist easy legibility. The works in at an arm’s length invite others to consider what it means to look without fully knowing.