New Exhibition Celebrates Photography in Children's Books

A new exhibition celebrates the art of photography in picture books, bringing attention to a vibrant, under-explored strand of children’s book illustration. On view January 17 – June 7, 2026, CLICK! Photographers Make Picture Books is guest curated by children’s book historian Leonard Marcus and features more than 90 photographic works and a selection of more than 20 rare children’s books dating from the 1890s onward. The artists featured in CLICK! are George Ancona, Peter Buckley, Nina Crews, Saxton Freymann, Tana Hoban, Marcel Imsand, Susan Kuklin, Roger Mello, Abelardo Morell, Ken Robbins, Shelley Rotner, Charles R. Smith Jr., William Wegman, Walter Wick, Mo Willems, Peng Yi, and Ylla (Camilla Koffler).

“Photographer-illustrators have long trained their camera eye with young people in mind,” said CLICK! curator Leonard Marcus. “Their inventive, at times magical creations can be just what children, with their fascination both for real and imaginary worlds, crave.”

“We are excited to present an exhibition about an area of picture book art that is rarely spotlighted, featuring photographic work by so many visionary artists,” said The Carle’s Executive Director Jennifer Schantz. “CLICK! is a wonderful example of creative expression through a new lens that inspires readers to observe, imagine, and learn—it’s what The Carle is all about.”

Exhibition Highlights

CLICK! Photographers Make Picture Books is organized in three parts to highlight the three distinct ways that photos enrich the visual language of picture books: Real Worlds, showcasing images that document aspects of the world around us; Concept Books: The Alphabet and Other Good Ideas, in which photos illustrate first lessons such as the ABCs and numbers, and concepts like the difference between big and small; and Photo Theater, with staged depictions of imaginary worlds that surprise, delight, and make us look again.

Real Worlds

This section features images by the legendary twentieth-century animal photographer Ylla, whose uncanny knack for capturing animals as individuals with human-like awareness anticipated the discoveries of Jane Goodall and led to picture book collaborations with Margaret Wise Brown and Jacques Prévert. Other photographs on view, by author-adventurer Peter Buckley and others, take visitors around the world. Inspired by his wartime experiences to foster cross-cultural understanding through children’s books, Buckley created a landmark series about the everyday lives of the world’s young people, starting with Cesare of Italy (1954). In the photos of Children of the Tsaatan Reindeer Herders (2018), Chinese photographer Peng Yi documents the lives of an intrepid family of reindeer herders along the remote borderlands of northern Mongolia, as seen through the eyes of five-year-old Togshin.

Concept Books: The Alphabet and Other Good Ideas

The works on view in Concept Books: The Alphabet and Other Good Ideas prompt early learning by making photographs the starting point for a game-like visual adventure. A rare book on display is The First Picture Book (1930) by renowned photographer Edward Steichen and his daughter Mary Steichen Martin, which features black-and-white studio shots of objects from a toddler’s world, all presented without text to encourage conversation at home. Tana Hoban’s well-known picture books carry on this tradition through photographs of everyday people, places, and things, as in Exactly the Opposite (1970), which visualizes a basic concept while turning the act of looking into an absorbing pastime.

Puzzle pictures like Walter Wick’s brilliantly composed I Spy photographs can also lead to closer observation and enhanced memory skills. Saxton Freymann’s wildly exuberant images for How Are You Peeling? (2004), featuring cartoonish expressions on the “faces” of fresh fruit and vegetables, offer young children a chance to reflect on a range of emotions they are just beginning to recognize in themselves and others.

Photo Theater

The final section, Photo Theater, presents a variety of fantastical images created either by photographing staged three-dimensional scenes or by digitally manipulating photos in the computer. For Cinderella (1993), his first children’s book, William Wegman has dressed up his signature Weimaraner dogs for a deliciously arch retelling of the classic fairy tale. In Contradança (2011), noted Brazilian artist Roger Mello weaves a dreamlike fantasy about a dollhouse world whose inhabitants must find their way through a labyrinth of mirrors.

In Nina Crews’ The Neighborhood Mother Goose (2004), what’s old becomes new again in vibrant collaged images that take the Dish and Spoon of “Hey, Diddle, Diddle” and other traditional nursery rhyme characters to the streets of present-day Brooklyn. Mo Willems likewise found inspiration in Brooklyn for his Knuffle Bunny books, overlaying photographic streetscapes with his delightfully loopy drawings of Trixie and family. On view are process images that trace the step-by-step creation of one of the mixed-media illustrations for Knuffle Bunny Too, A Case of Mistaken Identity (2007)—further proof that in photographically illustrated picture books, there is almost always more going on than meets the eye.

Programming

Events related to CLICK! Photographers Make Picture Books include an Everyday Art Project: Picture This, available in the Art Studio from January 14 – February 22, 2026, for families to create their own collage scrapbook. The Carle After Dark monthly programming series will feature a CLICK!-inspired event on February 5 with Through the Lens, featuring photo ops, playful snapshots, and karaoke moments. Additional programs, including talks for an adult audience by the curator and participating photographers, will be announced.

About the Curator

Leonard Marcus (www.leonardmarcus.com) is one of the world’s leading writers about children’s books and the people who create them. He is the author of more than 25 award-winning books and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review and other publications. Marcus is a founding trustee of the Eric Carle Museum. He lives in Brooklyn, NY and speaks about his work across the world.