High Resolution: Penelope Umbrico

What a great way to start 2026!

I have been following Penelope Umbrico’s work through her Suns from Sunsets on Flickr ongoing project, which she began in 2006. Accumulating images of people capturing themselves in front of sunsets on Flickr, Umbrico created a stunning collage of the sun’s vibrant colors at dusk, and while doing so, she captured our shifting understanding of participation in the world through digital images and the social rituals that were developing around them online.

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In 2025, we finally got to work together, as part of Reservoir: Loneliness, Photography and Well-Being which I organized at LACP (and shout-out to @Jennifer Pritchard, who helped develop the concept!). The program brought together nearly 40 artists from across the world, who were invited by mentors to work with them for a period of nine months and incubate new work about loneliness. The results of their extraordinary efforts will be shown in an exhibition at LACP, opening January 29, 2026, before traveling to other locations.

Under her guidance, Penelope’s cohort explored the meeting points of consumerism, technology and well-being, producing work that navigates our shared and strange lives with robots, landscapes that are re-defined by Amazon distribution centers, or how AI captures a thematic image of female aging.

During the first week of the new year, she and I got to have a conversation about her path, projects from recent years and how all of this connects to a beloved department store in Toronto.

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