About

Jonathan Calm is a visual artist, represented by Rena Bransten Gallery in San Francisco, and an assistant professor in Photography at Stanford University.

In his recent work, based on an ongoing research project into The Negro Motorist Green Book, he has focused his critical eye toward the representation of Black (auto)mobility, which includes the Underground Railroad, mass migration due to forced displacement or in search of better life opportunities, socioeconomic upward mobility and the freedom of leisure travel, and the mobilization of activism through various branches of the Civil Rights Movement. Across these intersecting dynamics, Calm exposes how the mythical promise of a boundless journey across the land often masks a more compromised reality for African Americans.

Calm's art practice is international in scope and has been exhibited at renowned venues around the world, including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Tate Britain, the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid and the ICA in Boston. His work has been reviewed in numerous publications, among which The New York Times, Art in America, The New Yorker, The Village Voice, Artforum, The Washington Postand The Wall Street Journal.

Calm was the 2019 recipient of the prestigious Larry Sultan Photography Award. The KQED Arts profile Jonathan Calm Revisits ‘Green Book’ Locations in Search of America’s Past and Present was nominated for a 2020 Northern California Area Emmy Award for Best Historic/Cultural-Feature/Segment.