Aperture has been publishing photography since 1952. Now it finally has a permanent home, and this one is built for the public.
Aperture, the nonprofit publisher behind some of the most important photobooks ever printed, opens its new home at 380 Columbus Avenue on New York’s Upper West Side on September 18. The space takes up the first two floors of a red brick building from 1886 on the corner of 78th Street, directly across from the American Museum of Natural History and a short walk from Central Park.
What’s inside
According to Aperture’s announcement, the new home covers just over 10,000 square feet, and much of it is given over to things visitors can use. There’s a dedicated bookstore for Aperture’s books, a gallery for rotating photography presentations, and flexible rooms that become a venue for artist talks, book launches and panel discussions. The renovation was designed by the New York architecture firm LEVENBETTS, and the plans keep the character of the old building, with its brick walls and tall arched windows still in view.
The gallery and bookstore are open Wednesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. The move was paid for through a capital campaign with a $20 million goal, and Aperture had raised more than $16 million of it by late 2025.
A long road to Columbus Avenue
Aperture was founded in 1952 by a small group that included Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Minor White, Barbara Morgan, and Beaumont and Nancy Newhall. It started in San Francisco, moved to Rochester a year later, spent time in Millerton in upstate New York, and eventually settled in Manhattan, most recently in Chelsea since 2005. After more than seventy years of moving around, this is the first home Aperture describes as permanent.
Why it matters to black and white photographers
So much of the black and white tradition runs through Aperture. Its founders were some of the most important monochrome photographers of the twentieth century, and the names on that list will be familiar to anyone who has read about the Zone System or studied documentary work from the Depression. The magazine they started treated photography as an art form at a time when very few publications did, and the books that followed have kept a great deal of black and white work in print for generations of photographers to learn from.
The opening installation makes that history easy to see. Aperture Loves New York, curated by executive director Sarah Meister, runs from September 18 to November 1 and pairs photographs with the Aperture books they appeared in. The photographers include Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Dawoud Bey, Nan Goldin, Stephen Shore and Carrie Mae Weems, so there’s plenty of classic black and white street and portrait work alongside the color.
Talks this fall
Aperture has also announced its first season of public programs in the new space. Stephen Shore sits down with MoMA curator Lucy Gallun on October 3, and Coreen Simpson talks with writer and curator Rujeko Hockley on October 21. On September 30 there’s a panel on independent photobook publishing around the world, and Elle Pérez launches the book Devotions on September 23. Registration details are on Aperture’s website.
For photographers who have only ever known Aperture through its books and magazine, the new space puts Aperture at street level on a busy corner. If you find yourself in New York this fall, it’s an easy stop to pair with a walk through Central Park, and a chance to see some of the photographs that shaped black and white photography hanging next to the books they first appeared in.