Sometimes the best photography exhibits in the D.C. area come from big venues, and sometimes they come from smaller ones. This year’s list of the best D.C.-area exhibits is dominated by smaller galleries, including Photoworks, Multiple Exposures Gallery, Touchstone Gallery, and Studio Gallery. 

As City Paper’s photography critic, I have assembled a list of the top exhibits in the D.C. area on a (mostly) annual basis since 2001. This year, I’ve selected—and ranked—eight exhibits that merit a place on the list of best local photography exhibits of 2024. I have also included a pair of photography-adjacent exhibits that merit special mention.

8. Winter at Multiple Exposures Gallery

To have your work chosen for a photography exhibition with the theme “winter,” you could have gone the dramatic route, as Van Pulley did with the fog-shrouded peak of Punta Bariloche or as Alan Sislen did with his image of a silvery inlet hugged by ice-covered peaks. But the 13-artist group show at Multiple Exposures Gallery demonstrated that the humdrum can produce equally compelling imagery. For Tom Sliter, the charm came from how wet snow filled the voids of wire lawn flamingos; for Soomin Ham, it was how a group of ducks formed a line against a misty backdrop. Clara Young Kim captured how a single evergreen stood out against an almost horizonless white expanse, while Maureen Minehan made a rare use of color by documenting a yellow-hued shed within an otherwise monochromatic sweep. But the standout was Irina Dakhnovskaia–Lawton’s tiny (2-by-3-inch) landscape, with a lovely blurring that stemmed from its eccentric solarplate etching process.