About the artist
Ada Calloway,
photographer.
I make large photographs of the American Southwest: its weather, its distances, and the people who still work it from a saddle. I trained as a painter before I picked up a view camera, and I still compose like one.
Every plate is printed by hand and framed in the shop next door, in walnut, white oak or barnwood pulled from old fence lines. A few hang bare, stretched on canvas with a white border. All of them are hung flat on one plain wall.
I take a handful of commissions a year: landscapes, ranches, people and their animals. When I’m not on the road I’m in the darkroom in Marfa, or asleep.
Exhibitions
2025 Sundown, solo, Desert Arts Hall
2024 Long Light, group, Plains Museum
2022 Survey, solo, Riverside Gallery
Collections
Southwest Museum of Photography
Private collections, US and EU
Hotel Mesa, permanent lobby
Press
2025 “The patient eye,” Photo Quarterly
2024 Ten to watch, Western Review
2023 Interview, Field Notes Podcast
Process
How a plate gets made.
i.
Scout
Weeks on the road, mapping where light will land and when.
ii.
Expose
One sheet of 8×10 film per scene. No bracketing, no burst.
iii.
Archival pigment on cotton rag, proofed sheet by sheet.
iv.
Frame and hang
Walnut, white oak or reclaimed barnwood, finished by hand. Some plates go out bare on canvas with a white border.