Victoria Campa first reached out to Malindi Jo Walker online after moving to San Francisco and wanting to meet other photographers. They immediately bonded over feeling that the Bay Area photography scene was very male-dominated, and Counter Collective was born as an effort to highlight work by female, non-binary, and historically underrepresented artists. Particularly in COVID, they found that a lot of traditional art spaces were closed, and they wanted the ability to meet fellow female photographers.
“So we were both like, if there aren’t spaces for people like us to share work, then let’s create those spaces ourselves. I proposed the idea of the collective, which at the beginning was really just a way to meet other photographers over Zoom calls and critiques. Then, slowly, as things started to open up post-COVID, we realized that people wanted spaces to show work. ”
“As women, it’s often difficult to market yourself. It’s easier to be like hey we’re in this show, here I am. Counter Collective’s first exhibition was in 2021”
Has grown its reach and platform since, moving from San Francisco to New York, continually collaborating with women, trans and non-binary artists throughout the past five years. Campa has continued to run Counter Collective, in the same vein, building communities around photography. Currently, Counter Collective are showing at All Street Gallery, and presenting Seeing Desire, a group show featuring eight lens-based artists, which opened on February 5th, 2026 and is on until February 27th.
Campa and Counter Collective’s goals are two fold, demystify the art scene for the general public and to create opportunities for those historically excluded from traditional art spaces. Campa has focused on organizing exhibitions in both traditional and non-traditional art spaces and creating programming surrounding the work. While white cube galleries are essential for emerging artists, Campa also finds it valuable to hang artwork in coffee shops, bookstores, or bars because there is more foot traffic, and general audiences can access the work more easily, and imagine what it would be like to acquire the work for their own spaces. Additionally, she invests in public programming to narrow the gap between artists and audiences. Collaborative and multi-modal artist conversations, film screenings, musical performances, and interactive installations have all been a part of Counter Collective exhibitions. Since its inception, the collective has shown in a range of spaces in order to focus on accessibility and welcoming all kinds of artists as well as blending into the local communities of San Francisco and New York.
The current show investigates how various female and non-binary-presenting artists explore femininity and deconstruct gender through photography, e.g., Elinor Carucci’s duo of photographs featuring her and her then-boyfriend and now husband. All of these photographers explore the lens in manifestations of desire and femininity from various perspectives and generational takes. The work shown feels intimate and tender at the very root of things: selfies in bed, cuddles with partners, examinations of home.
The show expresses through medium and formatting what photography can feel like when displayed physically, expanding spatially, particularly with the work of Ana Vallejo. Vallejo’s work, which includes a mirror, curtain installation, and activation on the fourteenth, asks the viewer to participate in what intimacy and relationships contain within the frame and beyond it. The collective keeps the viewer engaged in the work and allows them to participate in the installation by submitting their desires, which will be shared via an unveiling ceremony by Vallejo on the fourteenth.
The eight photographers are on show at All Street Gallery, which platforms emerging artists. Counter Collective continues to expand its reach and gather diverse, unique narratives, creative and interesting conversation curatorially and thematically, showing just how different desire is in many different women’s lenses. At a moment when women’s desire is so heavily capitalized, this show explores what desire can be in our own eyes.
Another highlight of the show is Marisa Chafetz, whose portrait feels incredibly intimate and knowing. In Self in Bed (The Land of Love), 2019, from her selection from her series Snow Dogs, the lower half of her portrait is blurrily obstructed by herself, announcing intimately she is the focus. In the top left corner, her portraits are clear, herself holding the lens in a threefold mirror. She is repeated in this image, but also intentionally obscured. She herself knows her full image and is shaping what we see through the lens. At times, it almost feels like the act of desire is so intimate and personal that one must play with hidden intentions. This group show plays with that essence of desire, knowability and voice, playing on the multiplicities of forms that it takes through magnifying these artists’ perspectives. By featuring intergenerational and racially diverse artists, one can see how complex desire can be.
This game, between obstruction and revelation, plays heavily in the show, particularly with the works of Mara Catalan and Hannah Edelman. Edelman’s work is through the obfuscation of the bed sheet, while Catalan’s is unobstructed from the lens – but blurred. Softly through Seeing desire, one sees a side of femininity often ignored, journeying through sexuality, individuality, as well as moments of intimacy. The gentle and cared-for curatorial direction that Campa has taken creates contrast between the images, and allows the various artists’ stories to collide intentionally – fracturing and questioning each other’s images with a variety of manifestations – all with the ultimate desire of being seen as a whole.
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